Chapter 1: I'll make your heart weak every time
Notes:
hello my beloveds <3333
I am holding ur hands. I am waiting for the next two episodes and to see if they give us a miracle. and I am living in AUs rn, hence this fluff.
on a lighter note, my dad used to be a firefighter and when I asked him for stories, his were mostly about the big competition days they had between stations. It sounded very fun and like a perfect opportunity for an alt first meeting, so--voila!
title from summerboy by lady gaga, which has the ideal vibes for this // chap title from how bad do u want me
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The firefighter was there.
Technically, a lot of firefighters were—that was to be expected at the 63rd Annual Los Angeles Fire Muster & Firefighter’s Family Day. And maybe a small part of him had agreed to be on station 6’s team in the hopes that the 118 would also be there. But he hadn’t, like, actually prepared himself to see him there.
“Is that lover boy?”
Eddie started as Lena appeared next to him. He supposed he wasn’t really being subtle as he stared at where the 118 was congregating under their station tent. Most stations brought a similar set-up for the tailgate—a tent, folding tables, a grill. But the 118 had an entire mobile kitchen there, with a mini fridge, several coolers, a full-size barbecue, and so many Tupperware containers spread out it looked like one of those cooking shows where chefs had to prepare four-course meals in abandoned warehouses.
Whatever food was being made over there looked amazing—brats and burgers and grilled peaches he could smell across the parking lot—but Eddie was drooling for a different reason.
Firefighter Buckley was standing next to the guy manning the grill, looking like he stepped right out of the Hot Days and Smoldering Nights Men of the LAFD calendar. August edition.
He was in his turnout pants, his neon yellow suspenders hanging down on either side of his massive thighs, and he wore a tight tank top that used to be white but was damp and dirtied with soot and sweat and other things designed to torment Eddie. The tank showed off his biceps, which might as well have been oiled up for how mouthwatering they looked and—was there really not an LAFD photographer around? Because that was a real missed opportunity. They would sell so many calendars. To Eddie, specifically.
As he watched, Buckley pointed at something in the far corner of the tent. When the guy turned away to look, Buckley pulled a strip of zucchini off the grill and shoved the entire thing into his mouth. He seemed to regret it immediately, coughing and fanning himself, and when the other guy turned around and caught him, Eddie could make out his exasperated look from twenty yards away.
The guy used a dishtowel to smack Buckley’s side, and then shooed him away. Buckley, laughing now—god, he looked like he had a great laugh—took a few steps towards a cooler and bent over, and Eddie really had to stop staring now.
“This is so embarrassing,” said Lena. Eddie had forgotten she was there again. He turned to face her, because Buckley was now putting a straw in a juice pouch for a boy around Chris’s age, and if Eddie had to watch Buckley be good with kids, he was going to combust.
“I mean, look at him,” he said to Lena, gesturing towards the tent. Lena’s eyes traveled over Eddie’s shoulder—he resisted the urge turn and look again, like a compulsion—and then settled back on his. She had a decidedly unimpressed look on her face, and Eddie knew Lena didn’t swing that way but, like, she had eyes, right?
“He is, I repeat, just a man.” Lena had spent approximately nine months dealing with Eddie’s tragic pining, so she had a right to be tired. But still—calling Buckley just a man was patently false.
The first time Eddie saw him was during the earthquake, his first week at Station 6. Eddie had been tasked with setting up the crash-pad under the area of a high rise where people had been spotted—the pad still wasn’t fully inflated when an aftershock hit, and a woman nearly fell out a window, only to be snagged at the last possible minute by a firefighter. The crowd under the building had watched in anticipation, ready to shift the crash-pad if needed, so they all saw the guy’s dramatic save, his impressive form as he lifted her back into the building.
“Holy shit,” said someone. It might have been Eddie.
“Is that Buckley?”
“Think so,” said another guy on his team—Eddie was still learning their names, he thought it might have been Bowler. “Looks like he had better luck this time.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. In a very normal, casually curious kind of way.
“Guy was on the news a few months ago for a rescue on a roller coaster where the vic fell. It was rough.”
Eddie absolutely did not go home that night and google LA roller coaster accident, because that would have been really fucked up. But he did google firefighter buckley LA amusement park interview.
And—there he was. Firefighter Buckley. He looked around his age, and he had really, really blue eyes. Eddie had only recently come to terms with the fact that he was gay, and every once in a while, this happened to him: he’d see a man and go, oh, yep. Definitely gay, then.
But even though the guy had amazing shoulders and a very tight t-shirt and a lot going on, face-wise, Eddie was also struck by his shell-shocked expression and his tone of disbelief. Eddie had lost enough people in combat to recognize that look—it was his first time. For a moment, he contemplated reaching out. Calling the number for station 118 and offering to buy him a beer; telling him, it’s fucked up, but it gets easier.
But that would be creepy. And weird, and invasive.
So instead, Eddie developed a secret, one-sided, absolutely pathetic crush on the guy.
It might not have happened, except that a few weeks later, station 6 was called in for back-up to assist the 118 on what should have been a routine medic call at a child beauty pageant. A fight between moms escalated, but the real problem was that half the 118 had been served laced brownies and were tripping at the scene.
When Eddie arrived, a no-nonsense cop directed him towards the nearest firefighter and said, “make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.” Which didn’t seem like that hard of a job, since the guy was just standing still, staring intensely at a bunch of balloons. But then he read Buckley on the back of his turnouts and thought they should really assign a second person to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid, either.
Before he had a chance to panic, Buckley turned around, and if Eddie thought his blue eyes were striking on screen, it was nothing compared to seeing them up close.
“Hey, man,” he said, sounding overwhelmed. “Did you know there are tiny ladies here?”
“What?” He told himself that formulating a response to Buckley would have been hard, even if he had said something comprehensible.
Buckley gestured down the hallway, where a bunch of six-year-olds in miniature prom dresses were descending into chaos. Eddie imagined this would be disorienting to someone who didn’t know they’d been drugged. “They’re kids,” he explained. When Buckley scrunched up his nose in confusion—it was so cute, Eddie was going to die—he clarified, “they’re little kids, dressed up.”
Buckley blinked, slowly, and then started nodding. “Oh, man, I love kids,” he said, and then he grinned at Eddie. “Aren’t they the best? They’re just so weird, you know?”
Eddie did know. The other day, Chris used up an entire notebook’s worth of paper drawing what he called Pencil World, which was, as far as Eddie could tell, a pretty vicious community of writing implements dealing with a pen dictator.
He wondered if Buckley always liked kids, or if he was just more enthused by them while he was under the influence. Not that it mattered, or anything.
Buckley didn’t bother waiting for an answer, which was good, because Eddie had no idea what to say under the circumstances. Eddie was so in over his head, it was a relief when Buckley just laid down on the floor and stared up at the ceiling until a 118 paramedic came to collect him.
“Thanks for watching him,” said the guy, shaking Eddie’s hand. “I’m Chimney. You from station 6?”
“Yeah,” said Eddie, schooling his face so he appeared relieved to be off Buckley-sitting duty. “Eddie Diaz. It was no problem.”
“I know he can be a handful,” Chimney said, using his foot to prod Buckley. “Come on, Buckaroo—time to get you to the bunkroom.”
“Chimney?” Buckley said, whispering for some reason. His eyes widened as he stared up at Chimney. “Isn’t it crazy that there are fires in chimneys, and you’re a fire-fighter?”
Chimney rolled his eyes at Eddie, the kind of frustrated-but-fond gesture Eddie understood fundamentally, as a parent. “Astute observation there, Columbo.” He reached down to offer Buck a hand as he stood up. Eddie should have done that. “You know who’d want to hear about that?”
“Who?” asked Buckley, riveted.
“Bobby.”
“Bobby! I love Bobby,” Buckley replied. His smile made Eddie want to do something stupid.
“I know you do,” said Chimney, reaching out to grab his shoulders and steer Buckley towards the exit. “Let’s go find him, okay?” Then he called over his shoulder, “see you around, Diaz!”
“Bye,” Eddie called after them, quietly enough that Chimney didn’t seem to hear it, but loud enough that it caught Lena’s attention. She saw his face as he watched him go, and she’d been giving him shit for it ever since.
“I have a crazy idea,” said Lena, snapping her fingers. “What if you talked to him?”
This was roughly the thirtieth time she’d suggested that, and, like he had every previous time, Eddie scoffed. Talk to him, she said, like it was that easy. Like Eddie was going to finally dip into the world of gay dating by going after Buckley. That would be like deciding he was going to get into running by signing up for an ultramarathon: it was so out of his league it might actually kill him.
“I’m serious,” Lena said, pressing the issue. “It’s the perfect time for it. Tell me one good reason why you shouldn’t?”
Eddie thought for a minute, still keeping his back to the 118 tent so his brain would continue to function. Regretfully, she kind of had a point. The last time Eddie spotted Buckley, Eddie had been dropping a patient off at the hospital and Buckley was wearing blood-stained civilian clothes, pacing in the hallway while having what sounded like a very stressful conversation on the phone.
The time before that, he’d been on the platform in front of an overpass sign, being held at gunpoint by a woman in a bathrobe. Eddie had been frozen, watching the whole time: first, in fear, and then in awe as he managed to talk the woman down. Was there anything Buckley couldn’t do?
But the point was, all the previous times he’d been around Buckley had been dangerous, or stressful, or otherwise inappropriate times to strike up a conversation. So Lena wasn’t technically wrong that LAFD’s cookout and muster games—an event whose entire purpose was inter-station fraternization—was, kind of, an ideal time to actually introduce himself.
Maybe, if Eddie were someone else. Someone who wasn’t a widowed father with PTSD, a terrible track record with relationships, and two decades in the closet.
“Chris needs me,” he said, instead, and sidestepped both Lena and the question.
He found Chris playing a video game under the far end of the tent, while this week’s home health-aid, Lisa, sat on a chair nearby on her phone. Eddie really, really had to figure out better childcare for Chris.
“Hey buddy,” he said, crouching down in front of him. “Are you hungry?”
“Yeah!” Chris said, so enthusiastically that Eddie felt a pang of annoyance at Lisa. She wasn’t even supposed to be there—his family was supposed to bring him, but abuela had gotten sick and Pepa needed to stay with her. Chris had been so heartbroken at the idea of missing out that Eddie ended up asking the aid service to add a day but he might as well have just brought Chris alone, for all she was doing.
Lisa continued scrolling her phone and entirely missed his dirty look, so Eddie just told Chris he’d be right back and went to make a plate up.
From the buffet line, he had a clear view of the 118 tent, where—shit, was that Lena? Fuck. Lena was talking with Chimney and another woman in uniform. His only saving grace was that Buckley was nowhere to be seen.
He tried to focus on Chris’s plate—he skipped the potato salad, because who knew how long it’d been sitting out—but he glanced up again when he heard Lena laughing. That was never a good sign. After snagging the last good pieces of watermelon, he glanced up again and realized all three firefighters looked at him; he startled so badly he dropped Chris’s hot dog.
Chimney lifted up his hand in a friendly wave. Eddie calculated that it would actually be way more embarrassing to duck under the buffet table, so he lifted his hand and gave a quick wave back, before grabbing another hot dog off the grill and hurrying to deliver the food to Chris.
“Guess what,” said Lena, ten minutes later. She appeared out of nowhere, blocking out the sun as she stood over where Eddie was sitting on the ground next to Chris, explaining the afternoon muster drills.
“What,” said Eddie, flatly.
“He’s single,” said Lena, victoriously. “Fresh off a break-up with someone from the 146. A guy. Who sucked, apparently.”
Chris looked back and forth between Lena and his dad, scrunching his eyebrows together behind his red glasses. “Who?” he asked, guilelessly.
“No one,” said Eddie.
“A guy your dad has a crush on,” said Lena.
At age seven, Chris was starting to understand the concept of crushes. Unfortunately, this coincided with his new Disney phase, so now he was very into the idea of happily ever afters. He perked up and asked Lena, “another firefighter?”
“Yep,” said Lena, with complete disregard for Eddie’s privacy. Or dignity. “His friends said he’s really nice. Don’t you think your dad should ask him out?”
Eddie had been banking on using the Chris-isn’t-ready-for-me-to-date excuse for at least a few years, if not decades, so he felt a stab of betrayal when Chris nodded, eagerly. “Yeah, dad! On a boat ride. Or to a library. Or a ball. And then you guys can get married.”
It wasn’t his sanest thought, but he couldn’t help resenting Disney for never making movies with evil step-fathers.
“Okay, mijo,” he said, messing up Chris’s hair and standing up. “I gotta go get ready for the next event.”
“Cooper’s making you do the ladder climb?” Lena asked, eyes raised.
“Apparently, I’m the fastest,” Eddie said. The things he did for a chance to see Buckley. Or—the things he did for his station. “I’m supposed to report to the event stage, if you want to take Chris over to watch in twenty minutes?” Lena looked pointedly at Lisa, who was still ignoring them, and back at Eddie, who shrugged in resignation.
“Fine,” she said. “Should we go cheer for your dad, kiddo?”
“Yeah,” said Chris. “Are you going to climb to the top like Mulan?”
“Gonna try,” said Eddie, because that was better than most princess comparisons he got.
“And then the guy will fall in love with you, like Shang does,” Chris continued. Lena was doing a terrible job of hiding her laughter.
“I’ll see you over there, buddy,” Eddie said, and then he grabbed a bottle of water and headed towards where participants were supposed to gather prior to each event.
He was just cutting through two firetrucks, when a man bounded around the corner and smacked into him. It took him a moment before he registered that the man whose body had just been on his was Buckley. Buckley.
Eddie opened his mouth to say something—probably an apology for being in his way, or something equally pitiful, when—
“Are you homophobic?”
“What?”
“Will you be my boyfriend?”
“Yes,” Eddie answered, automatically, even though his mind had volunteered several other pressing questions, like what are you talking about and what is happening and did I recently sustain brain damage.
“Thanks,” said Buckley, and then he pushed Eddie back against the side of the firetruck and kissed him.
Buckley. Was. Kissing. Him. Buckley was kissing him. Buckley was—dear god.
It was a good kiss, too. It didn’t have to be—Buckley could have had the technique of a dead fish and it still would have been Eddie’s best kiss. It was his first with a man. It was Buckley. Buckley, who was kissing him. He felt like his brain had gone offline.
He wrapped one hand around Eddie’s head so it wouldn’t slam into the truck, and he was tilting him back, and Eddie felt his mouth slip further and further open. He smelt like charcoal and summer sun, and the angle he was leaning, pressing against Eddie made him feel a little insane, and he wanted to—
“Evan,” said a voice.
Buckley froze, but didn’t pull away yet. Instead, he pressed forward again, intentionally, pushing another kiss onto Eddie’s swollen lips. Only then did he move back, his eyes blinking into Eddie’s, before pulling away to look at the intruder.
“Oh, Tommy,” he said, and even Eddie could tell he was putting on a front. “Didn’t see you there.”
And—oh. Oh. He’d meant will you be my boyfriend like, can you act like my boyfriend in front of my ex. Not do you want to commit to each other, long term. That made sense. In a sick sort of way.
The man, Tommy, looked too old and too surly to be worthy of Buckley. Fresh off a break-up, Lena had said. Well. Eddie was about to be the best fake boyfriend Buckley ever had. He was going to be so damn good at it that Buckley would consider dating him for real.
Tommy made a noise low in his throat that sounded insultingly skeptic. “Can we talk, please?” His tone reminded Eddie of the parents he judged on the playground—the ones that always sounded annoyed when their kids wanted them to play, too. Like they were tired of dealing with their silliness. Eddie always wondered why those people bothered having kids, if they found them so annoying.
He couldn’t snap at those parents—it was frowned upon, in playground etiquette—but he could say something now. Buckley opened his mouth to reply, but Eddie beat him to it.
“Can I help you?” The disdain in his voice was audible, slipping out when he thought of this man, getting to date Buckley and messing it up.
Tommy finally looked away from Buckley and focused his attention on Eddie. “Listen,” he said, patronizing. “I don’t know what he said, but this is between us.”
Both Tommy and Buckley watched him, like they were expecting Eddie to gracefully bow out.
Well. He was a better fake boyfriend than that.
“Oh,” he said, looking back at Buckley, gratified to see his eyes dilated in the bright summer sun. “This is him, huh?” He said it in a conspiring tone, raising his eyebrows and trying to sound as bitchy as his sisters always said he did.
It did the trick—Buckley relaxed, and Eddie felt a rush of satisfaction at the sight of his face clearing, his posture straightening. His eyes flicked to Tommy and then landed back on Eddie, and he said, “yep.” He popped the word and Eddie felt it in his gut, and for the first time since rudely barging in on the best kiss of Eddie’s life, Tommy looked wrong-footed. Good.
“Right,” Eddie said nodding his head like he now understood something terrible about Tommy. “Well, we were kind of busy, so if you don’t mind, I’d really like to get back to making out with my boyfriend.”
“Your boyfriend?” Tommy had a look of disbelief, which Eddie found insulting, at this point. What else did he have to do—stick his hand down Buckley’s pants? He would.
“Yeah,” said Buckley, and Eddie felt a little thrill of pride at his defiant tone, even though he still had like, no idea what was going on.
“It’s been two weeks,” said Tommy. He narrowed his eyes at Buck, and said, “or did you start something while we were still together? I thought you were done with all that.”
“No,” objected Buckley. “I didn’t, I just—”
“We met the day after you broke up,” Eddie interrupted, hoping this wasn’t easily contradictable. “Hit it off. Bonded over having shitty exes—” sorry, Shannon, he thought, “—and it got serious, fast. Not sure how that’s your business, though, Tommy.”
He kept Tommy’s gaze. It was only difficult because he could feel Buckley’s eyes boring into him from the side, and he'd much rather be looking at him.
Finally, Tommy lost their staring competition and glanced at Buckley. “Really, Evan? You immediately ran out and got a new boyfriend?”
“Yeah,” said Buckley, his voice sounding surer now. “And guess what? This one’s not racist,” he said, gesturing at where Eddie stood.
He couldn’t help it—he burst out laughing. What the hell? For a second, he worried he blew their cover, but when he glanced at Buck, he found him grinning back.
Tommy was annoyed now, which was, in Eddie’s opinion, was a telling response. “Look, whatever Chimney and Hen said—”
“I really don’t think you want to go there,” Buckley interrupted, his low, firm voice doing things to Eddie.
But before he could say more, a whistle trilled in the distance, and through a megaphone, someone said “those competing in the ladder climbing event please report to the main stage!”
“That’s me,” said Buckley, grabbing Eddie’s hand—holding Eddie’s hand—and pulling him past Tommy. “See you around.”
Eddie let himself be dragged until they were well out of range of Tommy, content to go along, hand in his, until Buckley stopped and turned around.
“Thank you so much for that, I—seriously, I’m really sorry, I just—thanks,” he said, his cheeks pink. Eddie had no idea what he was apologizing for. Eddie should probably be the one thanking him, actually. “Maybe I can buy you a drink? After—I wasn’t lying, I do actually have to compete in the ladder climb—”
“Me too,” said Eddie. “I’m also climbing—yeah,” he trailed off. He managed to not say I’d rather climb you like a tree. Was it usually this hard to form sentences?
“Oh, yeah?” asked Buckley, giving him a once over. Eddie felt goosebumps break out down the back of his neck. “So, you’re the competition?”
“Guess so,” said Eddie.
“I’m Buck, by the way,” he said. Eddie thought of the way Tommy called him Evan and wondered if this was a victory or not.
“Eddie,” he said. And why couldn’t he manage to be even a little bit charming for Buck’s first impression of him?
“So, Eddie,” Buck said, still talking to him for some reason. “Loser buys the winner a beer?” Jesus Christ. Was this—what was this? A date? Eddie wished he was brave enough to clarify. Brave enough to say how about loser buys the winner dinner?
“Deal,” he said instead.
They’d reach the main stage, which was less of a stage and more of a big open stretch of parking lot, reserved for the muster games, with stands set up for people to watch on either side. Ten firetrucks were lined up in the middle, their ladders extended the full 100-foot height, and Eddie noticed that the station 118 engine was only one away from station 6’s.
“Good luck,” Buck murmured to him, veering off to the 118 before Eddie had a chance to reply. Focus, he told himself as he climbed up on top of the truck, where Bowler was waiting to help him get in his harness.
While he buckled the carabiner into the safety track, Eddie turned and scanned the crowd. It wasn’t hard to spot Chris in the front row of the stands, his blue crutches gleaming in the sunlight. Lena was pointing at one of the other trucks—probably the 118, knowing his luck—until she caught sight of him and gestured there instead. Eddie watched as Chris saw him and started waving, madly.
“Love you!” he called out into the stands, waving back.
Bowler slapped his shoulder and said, “all set, Diaz—be careful up there,” and then climbed off the truck. When he dropped out of sight, Eddie’s eyes flicked over to the station 118 engine, where Buck was similarly harnessed up, and found him watching him intently. Eddie lifted his hand in a wave, and Buckley’s eyes darted to the stands before they landed back at him, giving a tight smile. Maybe he was nervous?
Eddie didn’t care about heights, or about these stupid muster games, if he was being honest. All he wanted to do was get it over with so he could take Buck up on his offer.
“On our mark, the competing firefighters will race to the top of their ladder, where a bell has been placed. The first one to ring the bell will win ten points for their station, the second will win seven points, and the third place will win five points. On your mark, get set, go!”
At the crack of the starting gun, Eddie took off. He knew he was a fast runner, though he hadn’t thought that would necessarily translate to climbing speed, but halfway up he chanced a glance at his competition and realized he was in the lead. In fact, the only one with a chance of catching him was Buck.
A competitive thrill shot through him, and it spurred him on faster. It wasn’t like he had to worry about Buck buying someone else a beer if Eddie didn’t win, but still—he wanted that number one spot. He wanted Buck to see him at his best.
He snuck another look over at Buck’s ladder, three quarters of the way up, and saw him gaining speed, but then Buck met his eyes, and Eddie snapped his focus back to his own ladder so he didn’t start losing ground. Distantly, he could hear yelling from the crowd, but he tuned it out and kept going, until—ding ding ding!
Only after he finished ringing the bell did he risk another glance over to Buck. But—his ladder was empty. Eddie scanned the other ladders, seeing everyone else nearly a minute behind him, but the 118 ladder was bare. But then—
Ding ding ding!
Another bell rang out, and the crowd roared, and it took Eddie a moment to figure out that Buck had, in fact, come in second place, only, for some reason he was on the opposite side of the ladder. Eddie watched as Buck maneuvered himself around the side, climbing until he was in front of the bell, his face red.
Once he could hear listen past his own pounding heart rate, Eddie realized that the announcer was talking about him.
“—from station 6 secured first place, while Evan Buckley from station 118 managed second place after slipping off and being caught by his harness. With impressive recovery, he finished climbing the backside of the ladder which, our judges ruled, is not technically illegal, so seven points for station 118! And then we have station 136 coming in third, with—”
Holy shit. Eddie kind of wished he’d seen that. He watched Buck wave at the stands, sheepishly, and waited for him to look over, but he never did.
After a minute, he gave up and climbed back down the ladder. Next to the engine, the rest of his station crew was gathered around, cheering for him and slapping him on the back, and Lena stepped forward and punched him in the shoulder. “Knew you had it in you, Diaz.”
“Where’s my kid?”
Lena gestured towards the stands. “Lisa remembered she had a job—said she’d take him to the refreshments area and meet you guys there.”
Refreshments—like where they sold beer. Beer that Buck now would buy for him. Hopefully.
Eddie nodded absently and looked over her shoulder at where Buck was receiving the opposite greeting from his station. At his height, he was easy to spot, looking contrite while the guy from the grill, who Eddie was pretty sure was his captain, laid into him. He gestured at the ladder, Buck’s harness, and then over towards Eddie, for some reason, in what looked like a pretty stern lecture.
At least, it was, until a short brunette woman snuck through the ranks and interrupted, hopping onto Buck and hugging her arms tightly around his neck. Which was—fine. Eddie was fine with that.
He turned back to his team, catching up mid-conversation.
“—Eddie can fill in on the water target event, because he’s got that Silver Star aim—”
“I didn’t get a Silver Star for aiming,” Eddie reminded them. “Also, I have to go meet Chris at the refreshments section.”
“Come on, Eddie,” said Lena. “Lisa’s got Chris, he’ll be fine for another fifteen minutes.”
He looked at her, considering how much he would regret telling her that he maybe, sort of, had plans to get a drink with Buck. But, they hadn’t said, like, immediately after the event. And Chris probably would be fine, if he was by the food—Eddie knew they had ice cream. And the rest of his crew was staring at him, waiting for his answer.
“Fine,” he said. “Where’s the target range?”
Nearly a half hour later, he finally made his way to the food trucks. He didn’t spot Chris and Lisa in his first scan of the area, but he did immediately notice Buck.
He was sitting with someone—there were two ice creams on the table, though his view of whoever he was sharing them with was obscured by an oversized menu board.
For one terrible second, Eddie imagined it was Tommy. What if he’d waited too long to claim his offer, and Buck changed his mind?
No—he’d called Tommy racist. They probably weren’t splitting sundaes after that. But what about the brunette woman who’d hugged him?
How many love interests did Buck having waiting in the wings?
Eddie didn’t know how long he’d stood there, staring towards Buck, before he finally glanced up and noticed him. He said something to the person sitting across from him and got up, all before Eddie had time to school his face into a normal expression, and oh god—he was coming over there. Eddie was fucked.
“Hey,” said Buck, running his hand through his hair until the curls stood up on end. He glanced back at the table, and Eddie felt a pang in his stomach. Reluctance wasn’t usually a look you saw on people who were happy to see you. “Nice job on the ladder climb.”
“Thanks,” said Eddie. This was supposed to be his triumphant moment; but he couldn’t bring himself to bring up the beer, because then Buck would just say—
“I’m sorry,” he started, just like Eddie feared he would. “I know I owe you that beer, but . . .”
“That’s okay, man,” said Eddie, hoping the words came out normally. “I get it.”
“Get—?” Buck started, but then turned back to the table. He clearly wanted to get back to his ice cream date, and Eddie was just here, taking up his time, and—
“Yeah,” Eddie interrupted. “You don’t owe me anything. It was like, a joke.”
“A joke?” Buck repeated, scrunching his eyebrows in a way that Eddie was decidedly not finding cute.
“Yeah, like, I know it’s just a thing you say,” Eddie said, defensively. “I’ll buy you a beer. It’s not—I mean, no sweat, man.”
“No,” corrected Buck. “I definitely want to buy you a beer. It’s just—it’s complicated—I have a kid—” he said, gesturing back towards the ice creams and—oh. Oh.
Buck had a kid. Eddie hadn’t expected that, though it made sense, with how much Buck seemed to like children. And in an unexpected way, it eased something in Eddie’s chest. Maybe Eddie being a single father wouldn’t scare Buck away, if he was, too.
“Oh,” he said, a twinge of hope in his voice. “You have a kid?”
“Yeah,” said Buck, smiling back at him. But then a moment later, he blinked, and hurried to add on, “I mean, he’s not my kid. I’m not a—I don’t have a—you know,” he said, flustered. “Kid.”
“You have a kid, or you don’t have a kid?”
“There is a kid I am watching right now,” Buck spelled out. “But he is not mine. He’s—actually, I think he belongs to someone at your station? Chris Diaz—he said his dad is from station 6?”
“Diaz—wait, what?” Eddie said, alarmed. He brushed past Buck, beelining for the table until he could see— “Chris?”
“Hey dad!” said Chris. He was pulling a gummy worm out of the soupy remains of his melted ice cream, looking happy as a clam.
-----
Buck almost hadn’t come to the games that day.
He’d been sulking, mostly. Dealing with the whiplash of realizing he was bisexual, falling for a hot gay helicopter pilot, committing to the first person since Abby, and then learning said helicopter pilot used to work at the 118 during Gerrard’s reign and that he’d happily followed his toxic, racist, homophobic lead and been a real dick to Hen and Chim. Plus, the messy break up and the ugly fallout, during which Tommy implied that Buck was immature for not seeing his side of things, naive for not understanding the closeted experience, and probably going to be single forever.
All in all, it hadn’t been a great two weeks for Buck. So, signing up to spend an entire day pretending to care about interstation relations and worrying about running into Tommy was not exactly his idea of a good time.
But Bobby said they needed him for the ladder climb, and Hen said Denny was looking forward to seeing him, and Maddie said she’d be going to see Chimney either way, so it would really just be Buck, moping alone on his day off if he didn’t come.
So, he gave in.
And he was so, so glad he did.
Part of his bi awakening had been realizing how often he’d clocked hot guys in the past, and how normal that wasn’t, if you were completely heterosexual. Every once in a while, he saw someone that he’d checked out in the past, and now, through his newly outed eyes, he’d realize: I’d let him do things to me.
The guy at the gym on Thursdays, who offered to spot him on the bench. The sleepy barista who always got his order wrong before early morning shifts. The firefighter from station 6 who looked sinful in his turnouts.
The first time he’d seen the guy, he’d been at the Academy. Bobby had asked him to drop off some paperwork with the chief, and he’d stopped to watch the grunts on the obstacle course that still made appearances in his nightmares. One guy was so far in the lead that no one even had a hope of catching him; and when he made it over the final hurdle, he barely looked winded.
Buck remembered seeing his floppy brown hair and lean build and thinking, that guy could be in the firefighter calendar.
No one ever accused him of being too self-aware.
He was memorable enough that it jogged Buck’s memory when he spotted him passing out pizzas during the long shift that followed the earthquake. Buck had been sitting next to Ali while she warmed up in a shock blanket and drank something with electrolytes, when he noticed him—one of the few first responders in a blue LAFD t-shirt instead of the heavy-duty turnout gear.
He was probably a probie at the time, relegated to site management tasks like restocking supplies, running messages, and supplying food to the scene. It was the kind of job that Buck hated when he first started, the type of assignment that would have had him itching for action, bugging Bobby to let him prove himself. But this guy—who Buck had seen lap his peers with ease in training—seemed perfectly happy delivering pizzas.
He made sure first responders knew where the food was and smiled encouragingly at victims and crouched down to make silly faces at kids as he went. He seemed to intuitively understand what it had taken Buck months to learn about the job—that there were quieter ways to help people, and that those mattered just as much as the big things.
But the guy could do the big things, too. A few months later, Buck spotted him a third time, scaling the side of a house like Spiderman, finding the only route to a kid who was stuck in his room, above where a fire engulfed the first floor.
But all of those times were before Buck’s bi realization; so the point was, he was primed to be a little flustered when he spotted the guy under station 6’s tent.
He was in his LAFD t-shirt again, tight enough that Buck could make out his abs from across the lot, and his hair was doing this swoopy thing that reminded him of Elvis, which, come to think of it, had probably been little Evan’s first gay crush.
So, when Tommy spotted Buck on his way back from the bathrooms, when his ex started following him despite the fact that Buck was trying to sprint away, and when Buck then ran smack into the hot guy in question, he really shouldn’t be blamed for reverting to a scheme so harebrained that it wouldn’t even be believable in the rom-coms Maddie used to make him watch.
“Are you homophobic?” Because, while this was LA, some firefighters could be old-school assholes. You know, like his ex.
“What?” the hot guy asked, which was fair enough.
But he didn’t have time to explain, so he just cut to the chase and answered, “will you be my boyfriend?”
And the hot guy—the one with the lean waist and handsome face and ass that Buck really had to stop objectifying, said, “yes.” Easy as anything.
How was Buck not supposed to kiss him?
He cradled his head, eager to feel that soft hair, and tilted his face up and then his mind went up in a puff of smoke. There was nothing left behind his eyelids except sparks and heat.
He was just thinking that he could do this forever when they were interrupted, and he was forced to remember why he’d started kissing him in the first place.
He hated a lot of things about Tommy, now—including the way he could appear reasonable and charming, even when he was being very unreasonable and un-charming. The way he kept a cool head always made Buck feel like he was being childish and overemotional.
So, when he asked if they could talk, please, and he said it in that way, the one that made him sound very rational and Buck very ridiculous, Buck worried that maybe he should agree to talk with him. Or maybe the nice, muscley firefighter whose tongue Buck had sucked would think Buck should agree to talk to him.
But the nice, muscley firefighter surprised him again and instead snapped, “can I help you?”
Which just caused Tommy to act like more of a dick, and Buck was starting to feel bad about dragging this guy into his drama. He wouldn’t have blamed him for bowing out—this would be a lot to deal with, even if you had signed up on purpose, but then he gave Buck a look like they understood each other perfectly, and said, “Oh, this is him, huh?”
And Buck felt a thrill of something—fun, maybe. Camaraderie. The kind of delight you got from being in cahoots, like Maddie used to say. He wasn’t running from Tommy anymore; he and this guy were a united front, willing to wait until Tommy was the one who left.
“Yep,” he said, reveling in the feeling of someone having his back.
“Well,” he went on, looking back at Tommy. “We were kind of busy, so if you don’t mind, I’d really like to get back to making out with my boyfriend.” And even though it was a lie, it gave Buck an unreasonable feeling of satisfaction.
“Your boyfriend?” Tommy asked, which—he didn’t have to say it like that. Like he was shocked Buck found another man who wanted to date him.
“Yeah,” he said.
“It’s been two weeks,” said Tommy, doing that thing where he made Buck seem like one who was being ridiculous. “Or did you start something while we were still together? I thought you were done with all that,” he said, managing to sound both hurt and patronizing. And now, the guy was going to think Buck had some sort of reputation. Or, a worse reputation than the one he actually deserved.
“No,” he tried. “I didn’t, I just—”
“We met the day after you broke up,” the guy said, rescuing Buck yet again. “Hit it off. Bonded over having shitty exes and it got serious, fast. Not sure how that’s your business, though, Tommy.”
And Buck maybe, a little bit, kind of, fell in love with the guy.
“Really, Evan? You immediately ran out and got a new boyfriend?”
“Yeah,” said Buck, wishing he was telling the truth. Wishing Tommy would just leave them alone already so Buck could get on with, like, proposing. “And guess what? This one’s not racist.”
He’d been meaning to piss Tommy off with that comment, but he also made the guy laugh, which was an added bonus.
“Look, whatever Chimney and Hen said—”
And that was the final straw. Because Buck was really not about to let Tommy stand there with their names in his mouth, when Buck knew what he’d said to them. “I really don’t think you want to go there,” he warned.
Before he could say more, a whistle trilled in the distance, and through a megaphone, someone said “those competing in the ladder climb event please report to the main stage!”
“That’s me,” said Buck, and he seized on the excuse. He grabbed his hand and pulled him past Tommy. And he would have kept pulling him all the way to the event stage, if he could. He would have asked the judges if he could compete with a buddy, because he actually didn’t want to stop holding this guy’s hand.
But this guy didn’t sign up for that. So instead, as soon as they were far enough away, he dropped his hand and stumbled through an apology. But then he managed to say, “maybe I can buy you a drink? After—I wasn’t lying, I do actually have to compete in the ladder climb—”
“Me too,” said the guy. “I’m also climbing—yeah,” he trailed off, and for a brief moment, Buck let himself entertain the idea that this sudden infatuation wasn’t entirely one-sided.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked, scanning his defined shoulders and down his body. “So, you’re the competition?”
“Guess so,” he said; and if Buck wasn’t totally off his game, he thought, maybe . . .
“I’m Buck, by the way,” he said
“Eddie.”
Eddie.
Eddie Eddie Eddie.
It was a good name.
“So, Eddie,” he said, enjoying the way his name felt in his mouth. “Loser buys the winner a beer?”
By the time Buck made it to the 118’s ladder truck, he only had two minutes until the race started.
“Where were you?” said Chim, snapping to get Buck’s attention as he handed him the harness.
“Sorry,” said Buck, feeling punch-drunk. “Ran into someone.”
“Not Tommy, I hope,” said Hen, from where she was securing the other end of his harness.
“Oh, yeah,” said Buck.
Both Hen and Chim stopped what they were doing to look at him.
“You did?” asked Hen, her eyebrows raised.
“You didn’t hook up with him, did you?” asked Chimney.
That finally cut through his daze. “What—no!” Buck scrunched up his face in disgust. “Why would you say that? Of course I didn’t—what do you take me for?”
“Oh, good,” said Hen, going back to fixing his ropes.
“Yeah, sorry man, you just had a dopey look on your face,” said Chimney.
“Well, when I ran into Tommy I was, like—with someone.”
“Ooh,” teased Hen. She and Chim locked eyes and then both of them looked at Buck. “Who?”
Buck felt hot around the ears. “Uhm,” he said, his eyes darting to where Eddie was harnessing himself up, on top of the station 6 engine. Hen and Chim both turned to follow his gaze.
“Station 6?” asked Hen, her voice playful.
Buck grimaced at how fast they’d caught onto him, but Hen and Chim were too busy having a silent conversation to notice. He was about to interrupt when Bobby called up that it was time for them to come down.
Instinctually, Buck found where Eddie was, smiling at the stands, a beaming grin that Buck hadn’t seen on him before.
And then he shouted, “love you!”
Oh.
Buck’s head snapped towards the stands so fast he felt a crick in his neck; but it was impossible to tell who Eddie had been shouting to. A family member? Or a partner?
Bang.
The starting gun sounded, and it caught Buck off guard. He tried to focus on climbing, on being the fastest, but not even the rapidly increasing space between himself and the ground could fully keep his attention. He knew he shouldn’t, but still—his eyes slid left, searching for Eddie on the station 6 ladder.
He was a little ahead of Buck, which wasn’t surprising. But then he turned and met Buck’s eyes, and which was surprising—so surprising, in fact, that Buck felt his foot miss a ladder rung. He was moving at a clip, so his other foot had already moved, expecting the support, and when his foot didn’t land, the other slipped, too, and then—fuck, was he really about to fall off a ladder in front of thousands of people?
Maybe he should have stayed home, after all.
For a second, he managed to keep one hand secured to the ladder; but then the momentum from the rest of his body was too strong and then he was just very, very grateful that Hen had been the one securing his harness, because if it had been him, he’d probably be dead now.
But he wasn’t about to finish this event by having his team lower him to the ground like some sort of first-day-probie, so he pushed Eddie out of his mind, heaved himself up on the rope until he got his hand around a rung, and finished the race on the backside of the ladder.
It was embarrassing, but at least he’d managed second place.
Bobby didn’t see his perspective on that.
“What the hell was that, Buck?” he said, the moment Buck’s feet touched down on the ground, still harnessed up.
“What?” he asked, innocently, fiddling with the harness buckles as if he could put off the inevitable.
“Don’t what me,” said Bobby. “That was reckless, if that had been a real rescue—”
“If that had been a real rescue, he wouldn’t have been sprinting,” Chim pointed out.
“If it had been a real rescue,” Bobby continued, undeterred, “he still would have been rushing, and if you don’t learn that you can only go as fast as you can be careful—”
“Cut him a break, Bobby,” said Hen, also coming to his defense. “He was just trying to impress the guy from station 6.”
Possibly, Buck could have done without their help.
Bobby’s eyes flashed, and Buck knew he was in for it, now. “That was because of a guy?” His voice was incredulous. “We’ve had this talk before, Buck—you cannot let your love life interfere on the job, it’s dangerous for others and also for yourself, if you hadn’t had your harness on, you could have died, all because you were making eyes at—”
“Evan!”
Maddie finally passed the barrier of people around the engines, and her squeal cut through Bobby’s voice, breaking the tension. She jumped on him, with one of her patent big-sister hugs that made everything feel better, even the fact that Buck had was so down bad it’d nearly killed him.
For a guy he’d spoken to once.
And who may or may not be taken.
“You scared me!” Maddie yelled into his ear, still hugging tight around his neck. Buck squeezed her back in apology, waiting until she let go first.
“Sorry, Mads,” he said finally, when she pulled back. He glanced over her head to where Bobby was only looking slightly less aggrieved. “It won’t happen again,” he promised.
Bobby nodded, and then said, “so who is this guy from station 6?” Which, of course, caused Maddie to whip her head back towards him, and couldn’t anyone mind their own business?
“What guy?” she demanded.
“A guy who likes him back,” teased Chimney, in a sing-song voice, and—wait. What?
Hen elbowed Chimney, who stopped dragging out the word back and looked apologetic.
“What—what do you mean?” Buck asked, looking back and forth between him and Hen. “What do you mean he likes me back?”
“What guy?” Maddie tried again.
“We were sworn to secrecy,” said Hen, fixing Chim with a look. “But this morning, Bosko came over. Said she wanted to know if you were single, for a friend.”
“Did she say who?”
“Nope,” said Hen. “But I’ve seen her with your ladder man.”
“He’s not my—” Buck started, then broke off. Because he just remembered what he promised. Loser buys the winner a beer. “I gotta go,” he said; and then without waiting for anyone to reply, he started weaving his way to the refreshments area.
“What ladder man?” he heard Maddie ask behind him.
But—fine. Hen and Chim could fill her in. He had a beer to buy.
Eddie was nowhere to be found. Food trucks formed a big semi-circle around picnic tables, offering everything from ice cream to churros to bao buns, and Buck kind of wanted to try all of it, but he didn’t want to miss Eddie because he was waiting in line for a tofu dog; so instead, he found a table facing the entrance and leaned up against it, watching.
It was decidedly uncool behavior. When—if?—Eddie arrived, it would be immediately apparent that Buck was waiting for him, and that he had absolutely nowhere else to be.
But Buck had never played it cool in his life, and he certainly wasn’t going to start now. Eddie already knew about his shitty ex and his slutty reputation and his willingness to beg strangers to for help, even if it involved French kissing. Really, he had nowhere to go but up.
“Excuse me?”
Buck was so focused on the crowds filtering in through the entrance that he missed a kid appearing at his elbow.
“Me?” he asked, just to be sure.
“Yeah,” said the kid, glancing up at him through red framed glasses. He was adorable—curly hair and a button nose, and crutches covered in stickers. “Were you the one who fell off the ladder?”
He was so blunt, Buck almost laughed. Things like this were why he liked kids more than adults.
“Yep,” he said, cheerfully. “That was me.”
“That was really cool,” said the kid, and this, too, was why Buck loved kids so much. The things he did that made other adults roll their eyes always got a much warmer reception from them.
“You think?” he asked, because he was pretty sure he gave half the crowd a heart attack and deeply unimpressed the other.
“You were like Spiderman,” said the kid, quickly becoming his new favorite person. “Dad always says that just because you don’t do something like everyone else doesn’t mean you can’t do it. And that’s what you did, you climbed the wrong side of the ladder, but you still got second place.”
“Thanks, kid,” said Buck, feeling inordinately pleased. He was struck with the parental urge to ruffle his hair. “Are your parents around here?”
“I was here with Lisa, but she had to go,” the boy said, unbothered. “My dad knows where I am, and he’ll be here soon. He’s a firefighter, like you,” he added, dragging out the words, like Buck was supposed to get an inside joke.
Buck tilted his head, thinking. He wasn’t the best with kids’ ages, but this boy couldn’t have been over eight years old. “What station is he at?”
“Six,” said the kid. Like Eddie, Buck’s mind supplied. At least if Eddie showed up, he’d be able to help return this kid to whoever he belonged to. “I’m Chris,” he added.
“I’m Buck,” said Buck, scanning the crowd for a stressed-out father. He didn’t know who Lisa was, but he was pretty sure kids Chris’s age weren’t supposed to be left by themselves, even if it was an LAFD-sponsored event.
“What’s your dad’s name?” he tried, pulling out his phone and opening up the 118 group chat as he waited for Chris’s reply.
He scrunched up his tiny nose in thought and eventually said, “I forget.” He shrugged. “I just call him dad,” he explained.
“Makes sense.”
“Dad Diaz,” Chris offered. “That’s our last name.”
“Got it,” said Buck. “Let me just see if my team can tell him where you are.”
can u guys tell station 6 that someones son chris diaz is with me by the food trucks? kid’s here unattended.
Chim replied first with did you kidnap a child? I don’t want to be a party to this.
Followed by Hen’s more practical is he okay? And Bobby’s thumbs up emoji.
He looked up to find Chris watching him, intently. He turned his ringtone on loud and tucked his phone into his pocket. “Want some ice cream?”
Chris grinned, and Buck thought that he’d buy this kid several gallons of dessert if he kept looking that happy. He gestured for Chris to head towards the closest food truck, which had a big rotating ice cream cone on top.
They got on line, and Buck watched Chris as he studied the menu with a level of concentration he usually saw in the back of an ambulance. Chris’s hair looked just like Buck’s did, as a kid; and the wild thought crossed his mind—did people who saw them together think they were father and son?
He shook himself out of the train of thought and asked, “you are actually allowed to have ice cream, right? Your dad isn’t going to yell at me?”
Chris finally turned to look up at Buck, and he used a finger to push his glasses up his nose and said, earnestly, “dad doesn’t yell.”
“Oh,” said Buck. “Well, that’s good.”
“It is,” said Chris, still looking at him like this was very important information Buck needed to know. “He did a little bit, back when we lived in Texas. But only at abuelo and grandma.”
Buck pinched his lips together. “Mhm,” he said, diplomatically.
“Yeah, and he understands how, sometimes you just need ice cream.”
“A wise man,” said Buck. He stepped forward in line and Chris copied him.
“Is that good?”
“What?”
“Being wise? Is that good? Sometimes dad calls me a wise guy but I think he means I’m being silly.”
“It—yeah,” said Buck. “It means, like, you’re smart and make good decisions.”
“Oh, then yeah, definitely,” said Chris, nodding enthusiastically.
“Next?” The guy in the ice cream truck leaned out to take their order. Buck waited for Chris to order something that sounded very complicated—it had three different ice cream flavors and four toppings, including gummy worms—and Buck was so intrigued he just asked for two.
He paid, and then told Chris to grab the seat closest while he got their sundaes. He watched until Chris sat down, and then pulled out his phone to reply.
yeah were getting ice cream he wrote back, glancing up to make sure Chris had stayed put.
Chimney said, so you’re saying you made a friend.
And Buck didn’t have the heart to thumbs down it because honestly, he was having a good time talking to the kid. He put his phone away and and grabbed the ice creams from the man.
“So,” he said, sliding into the bench across from Chris and passing him the overloaded cup. Chris wasted no time digging in. “You came here to cheer your dad on?”
“Yeah,” he said, brightly. “He’s the best.”
Buck watched him, feeling his mouth pull up at the corners. For a kid who’d been abandoned at a food truck field, he seemed to be in very high spirits.
“It’s just us,” Chris went on, in between spoonfuls of rocky road. Buck should probably be eating his, too, before it melted. “My mom left when I was four and then she died last year.”
“Oh,” said Buck, frozen with his spoon midway to his mouth.
“Yeah, we miss her,” he went on, like he was chatting about the weather. “But dad is fine. He wants to date men now. And he doesn’t have luggage from it.”
“…luggage?”
“Yeah,” said Chris, unbothered. “Like when adults have suitcases and stuff that mean other adults don’t want to date them. He doesn’t have any of that.”
Baggage, Buck thought, and then he wondered if it would be better or worse if he corrected him.
“Well . . . that’s good,” he landed on.
“He also makes really good s’mores,” Chris went on, unprompted. “And boxed mac ‘n cheese. Do you like boxed mac ‘n cheese?”
Buck was, honestly, a little soured on it after living off it for most of his twenties, but he didn’t want to ruin this kid’s fun. “Oh yeah, I love it.”
Chris beamed. “I bet he’d make you some,” he said. “He’s also really good at doing the voices in stories, and he can play basketball.”
“Wow,” said Buck. Even though he was a little confused about why this kid was giving him his dad’s dating profile, it was kind of warming his heart, seeing how clearly he loved his father. If you’d asked seven-year-old Buck to describe his own dad, he’d probably have been hard pressed to say anything beyond he wears glasses. “Your dad sounds pretty great.”
“He is,” said Chris. “He can even dance,” he added. “I mean, I’ve never seen him dance, but Tía Sophia said he’s really good. She said he could be pulling guapos at the club every night.”
Buck snorted and the ice cream burned in the back of his sinuses. He tried to swallow back a coughing fit.
“I don’t really know what that means,” Chris went on, undeterred. “He’s not in any clubs. I’m in a science and robotics club, but it only meets once a week.”
“Right,” said Buck, which was all he could trust himself to get out without his voice cracking. He shoved a gummy worm in his mouth and chewed it until he could be sure he wasn’t going to laugh.
“Maybe if he was in a club, he’d meet a boyfriend,” Chris said, looking up at Buck with sincerity. “But he’s not, so I need to help him.”
“You’re a very good wingman,” Buck concurred.
“What’s a wingman?” Chris asked, and Buck probably should have seen that coming.
“Oh, uh,” he paused, trying to think of a PG way to describe it. “Like, a person who helps someone else . . . get a date.”
Chris nodded solemnly, as if he was aware of this responsibility. “Like Cinderella’s fairy godmother,” he said. “Or the Genie in Aladdin.”
Buck couldn’t remember the last time, if ever, he’d watched either of those movies, so he just nodded in agreement. But then he started getting that prickly feeling he got when he was being watched; he turned to scan the crowd and saw—Eddie.
Eddie was standing by the entrance, watching him, and Buck felt like the gummy worms were alive and wriggling in his stomach. A guy who likes you back.
“Hey, buddy,” he said to Chris, standing up before he’d even fully thought about it. “Can you wait here one sec? I just have to talk to someone, super quick.”
“Sure,” said Chris, looking very focused on digging out a chunk of cookie dough from the bottom of his sundae.
He jogged over to where Eddie was standing, looking unreasonably good for someone who’d spent the hot summer day competing in physical activities. His hair was windswept and his eyes were such a warm shade of brown and Buck really had to stop thinking about the fact that they’d been kissing less than an hour ago.
“Hey,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound as breathless as he felt. Eddie had come. Eddie had shown up so that Buck could buy him a beer and—and Buck couldn’t actually buy him a drink, because he had to make sure Chris didn’t get kidnapped on his watch. “Nice job on the ladder climb,” he said, instead.
“Thanks,” said Eddie.
“I’m sorry,” said Buck, “I know I owe you that beer, but—”
“That’s okay, man,” Eddie interrupted, and—man? “I get it.”
“Get—?” Something was off in Eddie’s tone, but unfortunately he couldn’t give it his full attention, because he had to turn back to make sure Chris was still where he’d left him.
“Yeah,” said Eddie. “You don’t owe me anything. It was like, a joke.” His voice sounded gruffer than it did earlier, when it had just been the two of them. In fact, it sounded more like the deeper tone he’d put on when he was lying in front of Tommy.
“A joke?” He couldn’t tell what had changed; why Eddie was sounding like that.
“Yeah, like, I know it’s just a thing you say,” he went on. “I’ll buy you a beer. It’s not—I mean, no sweat, man.”
There was that man again, and it irked something in Buck, the worms twisting unpleasantly, now. Buck had kissed this man and then asked him out for a drink, and Eddie had agreed. Enthusiastically. And now he was calling him man? What was next, bro?
“No,” disagreed Buck. “I definitely want to buy you a beer. It’s just—it’s complicated—I have a kid—”
“Oh,” said Eddie, his posture finally relaxing. His eyebrows did this cute thing where they went up in the middle, and Buck finally understood what people meant when they said doe-eyed. “You have a kid?” He asked, his tone warm again.
“Yeah,” said Buck, relieved that they were back on track. Good thing he explained—oh wait. “I mean, he’s not my kid. I’m not a—I don’t have a—you know, kid,” he finished, lamely.
Eddie scrunched up his face in confusion, which. Fair.
“You have a kid, or you don’t have a kid?”
“There is a kid I am watching right now,” Buck explained, hoping this made him sound helpful and responsible and not creepy. “But he is not mine.” He winced—not his best phrasing. “He’s—actually, I think he belongs to someone at your station? Chris Diaz. He said his dad is from station 6?”
“Diaz—wait, what?” Eddie asked, darting past him, towards where Buck was pointing. Buck hurried to follow, and within a few steps he saw Eddie freeze and say, “Chris?”
“Hey dad!” said Chris, happily. And oh—oh. Buck’s brain glitched. Chris just called Eddie dad. Which probably meant that Eddie was Chris’s dad and well. Clearly, charm ran in the family.
“What are you doing here?” asked Eddie, sounding flustered. “Where’s Lisa?”
“She had to go,” Chris said, ignoring his dad’s panic and going back to his ice cream.
“She had to go?” Eddie repeated, voice going up in pitch. He dug around in his pockets and pulled out his phone—going off how quickly he looked at it and put it back, Buck was guessing he didn’t have any messages from Lisa. “What do you mean she had to go? She just left you by yourself?” His eyes cut over to Buck, and Buck could see the flush rising up his neck, though he couldn’t tell if it was from anger or something else.
“Not really,” said Chris. “I told her I knew Buck and he’d watch me.”
“You did?” asked Buck.
“What?” asked Eddie. He was now looking back and forth between Chris and Buck, and Buck had to remind himself that he didn’t need to feel guilty because he hadn’t actually done anything wrong here. “Christopher,” he said, and Buck was definitely not thinking about how hot his stern-dad voice was. “Why would you do that?”
Chris just looked at him and raised his eyebrows. Dad doesn’t yell, he’d said—well, that much was apparent. Any kid demonstrating that level of sass to a father as outraged as Eddie had clearly never wound up on his actual bad side before. Buck felt his lips twitch up and he swallowed back his smile in case Eddie looked at him.
Unbelievably, instead of snapping, Eddie’s flush grew even deeper. He rubbed his hand over his face, but it was too late—Buck had already seen what he looked like when his cheeks were glowing with red. God, he was cute.
“Jesus,” Buck heard him mutter under his breath. “What has Lena been telling you?”
“Nothing,” answered Chris, in a sing-songy tone that wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that he was lying. Buck had no idea what they were talking about, but he felt like he could watch them interact all day. Their father-son dynamic was—
Wait. Chris was Eddie’s son. Which meant Eddie was a widow who wanted to date men. And he was raising the cutest kid in the world. And he could dance.
Maybe Buck had fallen off the ladder after all, and he was in a coma right now—it would explain why Eddie seemed like he’d been cooked up in a lab dedicated to bringing Buck’s wildest dreams to life.
“I’m so sorry,” Eddie said, finally turning to face him, and Buck couldn’t imagine what he was apologizing for. He rubbed his hand over his face again, this time where his five o’clock shadow was growing, and Buck felt inexplicably jealous of Eddie’s hand. “I don’t know what he’s been saying to you—?”
He’s the best. He doesn’t have any luggage. He makes good s’mores and does funny voices and he can’t find a boyfriend, so Chris wanted to help.
“Nothing,” Buck said, and he didn’t even mean to, but his voice sounded just like Chris’s had.
Eddie narrowed his eyes in suspicion. Behind him, Chris gave him a thumbs up, and oh yeah, he thought, definitely already in love. It was honestly unfair that one family could contain so much cuteness. How was Buck supposed to cope with that?
Eddie opened his mouth, closed it, huffed out a breath. His glanced back and forth between Buck and Chris like he was trying to decide his next move, and Buck had an idea for what it could be.
“I know I owe you a beer,” he said, lightly. “But how about an ice cream?”
Notes:
and everything was beautiful and nothing hurt!!!!! still considering adding a second chapter because the whole idea that sparked this was buck and eddie and a bucket brigade, and I didn't manage to squeeze that in, but tbd if ill be able to disassociate enough to write that.
thanks for reading!!! love u!!!!
Chapter 2: I'm here to kiss you in real life
Summary:
“You lost a kid . . . and got a date?” Maddie asked.
“Okay, well, it sounds weird when you say it like that,” Buck complained. “I didn’t lose Chris. Eddie’s got him. Eddie, from station six. Eddie, who I have a date with.”
Notes:
hi! so a thing about me is im extremely susceptible to peer pressure. and u guys were so nice about this silly little au and who am I to not deliver extra fluff?? I mean. really. so here is part 2!!!! <333
keeping up the gaga theme - chapter title from how bad do u want me
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Nothing about Eddie’s day had gone the way he expected, including the fact that he was currently eating ice cream with Buck and Chris, after finding them, inexplicably, hanging out.
He kept oscillating between feeling a little impressed by his son’s independence and genuinely horrified by Chris’s complete lack of stranger-danger instincts, by Lisa just leaving his son, by the home health-aid company for ever hiring Lisa, and by his own failures as a parent for letting any of this happen in the first place.
When Eddie had agreed to stay for an ice cream, Buck insisted he should get the Chris Special and pointed him to a seat at the table while he got in line. He felt a little awkward, sitting and waiting for Buck to fetch his food, but that was nothing compared to his overwhelming need to keep Chris directly in his line of sight for the foreseeable future.
“Chris.”
Chris hummed in acknowledgement, too focused on using his spoon to scoop up the melted remains of his mint chocolate chip to pay attention to anything else.
“Chris,” he repeated. He wasn’t sure how people did this—his own parents were yellers, and he never wanted Chris to be around that . . . but how were you supposed to make a kid understand when they had actually done something very wrong? “Mijo,” he tried again. “Look at me.”
Chris put his spoon down and blinked up at Eddie, and Eddie was reminded of why he’d never once yelled at him before; how could he, with that face?
“Listen, I know this all seems very fun—having ice cream with Buck,” he said, gesturing to the table. “But what you did . . . telling Lisa to leave you alone with someone you didn’t know, that was really dangerous.”
“But Lena said Buck’s friends said he was really nice!” Chris protested. “And he’s a firefighter like you.”
“That’s not the same as knowing someone,” Eddie said. “What if Buck had left before you talked to him? What if he hadn’t been able to stay and get ice cream? What would you have done?”
Chris squirmed in his seat, buckling under the weight of Eddie’s unusually serious stare. “I don’t know,” he said, quietly.
“I wouldn’t have known where you were,” Eddie continued, pressing the point. “I would have been really scared and worried, Chris.”
“I didn’t want that,” Chris said, with a small sniff, and Eddie felt like a monster who was trying to make his son cry, but he really, really needed Chris to understand that he could never do that again.
“I know you don’t,” Eddie said. “But it could have happened. In my line of work, I see what happens when things go wrong. And what you did today—a lot of things could have gone wrong. You could have gotten hurt, or lost, or worse. It’s my job as your dad to make sure those things never happen to you.”
Chris was biting his lip now, and Eddie saw tears welling up in his eyes, and he felt awful about twisting the knife, but—
“And I bet Buck would have felt really bad, too, if anything had happened to you.” Chris’s chin wobbled in that tell-tale pre-cry reflex, but he had to drive home the point. “Chris, I need to hear you say you understand,” he said, leaning in and keeping eye contact, even as he felt his own eyes sting. It never got easier to see Chris upset—especially when he was the cause of it.
“I—I understand,” said Chris, a few teardrops falling. His breath hitched.
“And that you won’t do it again,” Eddie continued, reaching out to rest a hand on Chris’s shoulder. The touch did him in, and Chris began crying in earnest.
“I won’t,” he said, in between snotty breaths. “I—”
“Okay, one Chris Special—”
Buck arrived back at the table at the exact worst time. He paused, midway through presenting Eddie with an enormous monstrosity, and stared at where Chris had dissolved into a puddle of tears.
Ideally, Eddie would have made it through, like, one hour with Buck before giving him a front row seat to Eddie’s worst parenting moment since Shannon died. But still—no matter how much he regretted that Buck was witnessing this, his first priority was always going to be Chris’s safety.
“Uh,” said Buck, looking back and forth between Chris and Eddie. “Should I—give you guys a minute?”
Chris wailed harder, and Eddie winced, rubbing his back gently and trying to figure out if by ‘a minute’ Buck meant ‘forever.’
“We were just having a talk about safety,” Eddie explained. “And how Chris won’t ever pull something like this again.”
Buck nodded, but remained standing; Eddie couldn’t blame him for wanting an out. He was about to say so—that Buck should feel free to go find some more cheerful company—when Chris hiccupped; he pulled in three hefty sniffs and said, “I’m sorry, Buck!”
“Oh, hey, buddy,” said Buck, pulling out a chair and sitting back down, which Eddie thought was very brave of him. “Why are you apologizing to me?”
“Dad said—” another sniff, and Eddie felt like the worst person in the world, “dad said that, that you would have felt bad if my plan went–went wrong and I didn’t want that, I just—”
Just as fast as he’d sat down, Buck stood up again, and for a moment Eddie panicked that he was leaving and then Chris would really be inconsolable, but then he was back, armed with a pile of napkins.
“I would have felt bad,” Buck said, gently, offering the napkin to Chris. “Because you’re such an awesome kid, and I’m glad I got to meet you. But you know what your dad and I care about even more?” Buck waited until Chris met his gaze, and Eddie tried not to replay the words your dad and I over and over again. “That you’re safe. That’s definitely the most important thing. In the whole world.”
Chris nodded, a sad little nod, his lip wobbling. He looked back at Eddie, and in a pitiful voice he said, “I didn’t want to make you upset, dad.”
Eddie looked back at him, wondering what the right reply was. His instinct was to say you didn’t make me upset; to assure Chris until he was smiling again. But the parent in him knew that he couldn’t undercut the lesson he’d just taught him.
After a moment of prolonged silence, Buck looked at him, gestured at Chris, and said, hesitantly, “can I—?”
Your dad and I, Eddie thought. He hadn’t co-parented since Chris was three, if you could even call it that. During the small windows he’d been home with Shannon, they’d been less like partners and more like antagonistic colleagues, passing their son back and forth, like parenting was shiftwork, and only one person could be scheduled on at a time.
Before he could second-guess it, he nodded to Buck.
With Eddie’s permission, Buck honed in on Chris. “You know what?” He waited until Chris met his eyes. “When I was your age, I did something similar.”
“Really?” Chris asked, and Eddie was relieved to hear his voice sound less shaky.
“Yeah,” said Buck. “I got it in my head that I’d go on an adventure. I had it all planned out. I was going to run away from home. See, I grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania, you know, where all the candy comes from? And I thought that living in a candy factory would be way more fun than my house, so one morning I packed a bag, and instead of going on the school bus, I snuck to the regular bus stop.”
“What happened?” asked Chris, riveted. “Did you get there?”
“It was terrible,” Buck said, laying it on thick. “It was so rainy, and the bus was really scary, and they don’t actually let you into the factory—I could really only go into the giftshop. They do have a little tour where you get a free candy bar, so I rode that, like, twelve times, ate all the candy, and then threw up in a garbage can outside.”
“How old were you?” Eddie interrupted.
Buck scrunched up his face in thought. “Seven, I think.”
“And they just let a seven-year-old wander around the giftshop all day?” It didn’t even occur to Eddie that he could be making this up as some sort of lesson for Chris—there were way too many details.
“That place is always packed with kids,” reasoned Buck. “No one was really paying attention.”
“What happened then?” Chris asked, staring at Buck with wide eyes; Eddie remembered that they’d recently read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
“Well, I felt awful, you know? So, I ended up taking the bus back to my house. And you want to hear the worst part?”
“What?”
“My parents didn’t even notice!” Buck said it like a punchline, but Eddie felt it like a punch to the gut. Buck was shifting in his vision, coming more into focus with each minute he spent with him. And even after only knowing Buck for a few hours, he couldn’t imagine ever being unaware of his presence—or lack thereof.
“They didn’t?” Chris said, his eyebrows drawn in confusion.
“No,” said Buck, his tone light. “See, my parents didn’t really like being parents, so they didn’t always notice if I was around or not. It didn’t feel great,” he said, with a shrug. “But not your dad,” he said, still keeping his eyes on Chris. “He got so upset at not knowing where you were. I think it’s really nice—it means he loves you a whole lot.”
Well. Now Eddie kind of felt like he was going to cry. He blinked roughly and hoped that neither Chris nor Buck could pick up on his watery eyes.
“Ye–yeah,” he said, coughing to clear his throat. “He’s right, Chris. I love you so much, you know that, right?”
“Yeah,” said Chris, using his sleeves to wipe his eyes and breathing more normally, thank god. “I love you, too.” Eddie smiled at him.
And shoved down the urge to turn to Buck and say something insane.
“I’m sorry your parents weren’t very good parents,” Chris said to Buck, and Eddie knew he should probably correct him but, honestly, he shared the sentiment.
“It’s okay,” said Buck, waving them off. “My big sister noticed I was gone and she was so mad at me that it made up for it.”
“You have a big sister?”
“Yeah,” said Buck. “Her name is Maddie and she’s the best. She’s actually here today.”
Eddie thought of the short brunette woman who’d hugged him next to the 118 ladder truck. He has a sister.
“She is?” Chris asked, and Eddie lost track of the conversation as he watched Buck and Chris go back and forth.
It was weird, how quickly he trusted Buck around Chris. Usually, Eddie felt hypervigilant around his kid; between his parents and the myriad of strangers who thought they could weigh in on his parenting choices, Eddie had become wary of even his friends, when it came to Chris.
But Buck—he just . . . got it. Eddie could spot it in their interactions—the way he talked to Chris instead of at him; the way he listened and hyped him up and let him do things for himself. The way he and Buck had tag-teamed that lecture, making sure Chris knew he had done something wrong but that the rules existed to keep him safe.
Something about this moment—about Eddie, Chris, and Buck at a table for three, felt unaccountably right. It didn’t even feel like Eddie got a wish granted, that he finally got the attention of the man he’d been thirsting after for months. It felt more like he hadn’t known what to wish for in the first place—because not even in Eddie’s embarrassing daydreams had he imagined Buck, like this. Buck getting on so well with Christopher—what were they even talking about, now? He thought it had something to do with leopards—that Eddie was the third wheel. And he couldn’t be happier about it.
“—what do you think, dad?”
“Hm?” Eddie blinked out of his daze to find identically eager looks from Buck and Chris, which—he really didn’t stand a chance, there. “Sorry, kid, what did you say?”
“Buck said there’s a new otter exhibit at the zoo, and it’s really cool. Can we go?”
But before Eddie could reply, a blaring ringtone interrupted. All three of them startled at the noise, and Buck said, “sorry, sorry, I’d turned it on loud—oh, one sec, it’s my captain.”
Eddie watched as he stood up from the table, his bicep curling as he held the phone up to his ear.
“Can we, dad?” Chris continued, undeterred. “Go to the zoo?”
“Yeah, of course, bud,” he answered, looking at Chris and consciously not thinking about any of Buck’s body parts. “Once I get my schedule for next month, we can figure out a date.”
“And Buck can come, too!”
Before Eddie could try to temper his expectations—did Buck actually want to go to the zoo with them, or was he just good at finding things to talk about with a seven-year-old? Eddie couldn’t tell—Buck returned to the table.
“Hey guys, that was my team. They need me for the bucket brigade and it’s starting in fifteen minutes, so I have to get down to the main stage. I’m on ladder duty,” he added, preening. The firefighter stationed on ladder duty had the hardest job—they had to lift the bucket from the ground and pass it up to the person above them, all while staying balanced. Eddie’s arms were still aching from the ladder climb, so he had no idea why Buck was looking excited at the prospect.
“They’re letting you back on a ladder already?”
Buck gave him a look, like why are you being mean to me? It was, unfortunately, really cute.
“Are you in the event?”
“No,” said Eddie, grateful he’d thought to bargain for an exemption in exchange for participating in the ladder climb, because he wasn’t about to leave Chris under someone else’s watch any time soon. “We’ll be cheering from the sidelines, though.”
“Oh yeah?” Buck asked, raising an eyebrow. “For who?” Eddie felt his face warm; and suddenly the idea of getting buckets of water dumped on him wasn’t so unappealing.
“Well, station 6 beat station 118 on the ladder climb and the water targets,” Eddie said, channeling all of his pent-up feelings into sounding competitive. “So . . . I’m betting we keep our streak.”
“Cold,” winced Buck, and he clutched his chest, his forearms flexing.
Behind him, Eddie heard Chris pipe up and say, “I’ll be cheering for you, Buck!”
“Thank you, Chris,” said Buck. “That’s why you’re my favorite. Okay, gotta run,” he said waving and turning to go. But he only made it a few steps before he turned back around—Eddie knew this, because he’d been watching him walk away.
He stopped in front of Eddie, his eyes squarely back on him. He ran a hand through his hair and then huffed out a laugh and then said, “can I get your number?”
A beat of silence fell over the table, during which Eddie’s brain tried to process the fact that Firefighter Buckley had just asked for his number. Ultramarathon, here he came. “You—want—my—?”
“I know it!” Chris piped up. “It’s nine, one, five—”
“Thank you, Chris,” Eddie interrupted, before his son could shout his phone number across the table. There was amusement dancing in Buck’s eyes, but Eddie thought he saw a hint of doubt there, too, which was insane, because Eddie still hadn’t quite figured out why Buck was still interested in him, after everything.
“Yeah,” he said, feeling breathless. He dug his phone out of his pocked, unlocked it, and handed it to Buck. “Put yours in, and I’ll text you.”
Buck took it, and Eddie watched his tongue poke out of his mouth in concentration as he typed, fast, and then handed his phone back, giving Eddie an indecipherable look as he did.
Eddie should say something, I’ll text you, or good luck, but the words got caught in his throat as he met Buck’s startlingly blue eyes. And then Buck waved, and he left for real.
Eddie looked down at his phone, which was showing his newest contact, Buck (fake boyfriend). He only managed to stifle the bark of laughter that bubbled up because he knew Chris would ask about it, and he really didn’t know how to explain.
Hey
It’s Eddie Diaz
He put his phone down and looked up at Chris. “Should we go watch the bucket brigade?”
“Yeah!” Chris gathered his crutches while Eddie cleared the garbage, and as they walked towards the main stage, Eddie checked his phone.
He had a new message: hey Eddie Diaz followed by hope you enjoy watching 😉
Luckily he was walking behind Chris, so his son didn’t see him trip over his own feet. Jesus Christ.
He stared down at the message thread and willed himself to be brave. He thought of Buck’s easy smile, his tentative ask for his number, his lips on his.
Loser buys dinner? He typed out, and hit send before he could stop himself.
ur not competing, Buck sent back, lightning quick.
Eddie replied, heart in his throat, guess dinner’s on me, then
He hit send, and he waited. And waited. And Buck didn’t reply.
Which was fine. He was probably with his team and—yeah. It was fine, was the point.
“Come on, dad,” said Chris from where he’d pulled ahead. “We have to get a good spot!”
Thirty seconds into the bucket brigade event, Eddie realized he had made a critical error.
The space that had previously held ten ladder trucks was now set up with ten platforms made of scaffolding and plywood. Twelve-foot ladders rested against each, and on the top of the platform was a big clear tank. Each team had their own hose, placed twenty yards away, surrounded by eight buckets.
He knew the drill—they’d done it a few times in the Academy, because even though it was outdated, it used a lot of skills they needed on the job. Several firefighters would be designated to fill and run the buckets to the ladder, where the two strongest firefighters were stationed to pass the buckets up. Then one person at the top was responsible for grabbing the bucket, emptying it into the tank, and tossing it off the scaffolding to a runner, who would be waiting to sprint and get the bucket back in rotation.
It usually took under ten minutes. But it had already been the longest thirty seconds of Eddie’s life.
Because Chris had insisted they get a good seat right in front of station 118—god help him if Bosko noticed him in the crowd—he had a front row view of Buck in all his flexing, water-drenched glory.
Buck was stationed at the top of the ladder—harnessed in again, thankfully—so he kept bending and reaching to grab the buckets from below, and then twisting and lifting to heft it to the person above, and inevitably, water would splash out onto him, soaking his tank top and dripping down his body and—how was this legal? Who said they could just do a bucket brigade in public?
He was squirming in his seat. He was finding it hard to breathe normally. He was wishing Buck had replied to his last text, so he could know if the way he was thirsting over Buck right now was welcome or creepy.
Next to him, Chris was having the time of his life. “Go Buck!” he shouted, enjoying the scene with innocent, non-lecherous enthusiasm.
The woman on his other side turned and looked at them, wearing a friendly smile as she watched Chris cheer. “You from the 118?”
“Ah, no,” said Eddie. “You?” he asked, before she could ask why he was rooting for a different station.
“Yeah, I’m Karen, that’s my wife Hen on the platform,” she pointed to the woman who was in charge of dumping water into the tank, who he owed a personal thank you note to, for how much water kept ending up on Buck. He recognized her as the woman Bosko had been talking to that morning.
As he watched, Buck shook out his right arm and switched it to hold onto the ladder, bending down to reach with his left. He’d need a shoulder massage after this for sure. The man under him, who Eddie was pretty sure was Chimney, shouted up, “getting tired, Buckaroo?”
“Never,” he shouted back. Between the deep tenor of his straining voice and his stamina, Eddie felt a little lightheaded.
Oblivious to his struggles, Karen gestured to the woman next to her, and said, “she’s here to cheer on her boys on the ladder.”
She turned, and Eddie recognized her as the brunette woman he’d seen hugging Buck. Chris leaned around Eddie and said, “you know Buck, too?”
The brunette woman’s eyes flicked to Eddie before moving back to Chris, and Eddie thought please be his sister please be his sister please be—
“Yeah,” she said, smiling at Chris. “I’m his sister, Maddie.”
“He told me about you!” Chris said, so excited he might as well be meeting a celebrity. “We just met Buck. We got ice cream!”
“Oh,” said Karen, ignoring the brigade to face them fully. Eddie couldn’t do the same—his eyes kept pulling back to where Buck was bending and heaving, bending and heaving, and dripping, and fuck— “Are you Chris?”
“Yeah!” said Chris. “I told Buck I’d cheer for him,” he said very seriously, and then he stood up from the bench and stepped forward to lean on the railing. “You got this, Buck!”
Eddie was so distracted by how cute his kid was that he almost missed Maddie sitting forward to catch his attention. “Which must mean you’re Eddie,” she said, eyes flashing. “From station 6?”
“Yeah,” said Eddie, feeling much differently than Chris did about being recognized. Maddie and Karen grinned at each other before turning to him, and he pulled his shoulders back, feeling scrutinized.
“Buck wouldn’t stop talking about you two before the event started,” Maddie said. Physically, she looked totally opposite to Buck, but her easy smile was the same as his. “I heard you two have a date.” She had a knowing twinkle in her eye that reminded him of Pepa; that look never boded well for him.
“Oh, uh, mhm,” he said, voice coming out strangled. At least Chris didn’t seem to be listening; one less person to gang up on him.
“He’s really good with kids, you know,” Maddie volunteered.
“Oh, yeah,” said Eddie. “I, uh, could tell.” Did they know about how he’d left his son unattended?
“And with all people, really,” added Karen. “He’s one of those people you can’t help liking. Even Hen loves him, and she doesn’t suffer fools.”
“He’s the best,” agreed Maddie, and he realized her smile had gotten a little tighter. “Always has been.”
Eddie forced a chuckle. “I get it,” he said, feeling flushed. “He’s perfect. This one’s already got a case of hero-worship,” he said, nodding towards where Chris stood, not paying them any attention. Karen and Maddie met eyes again, and Eddie felt bad that he could see their enthusiasm dim. But he wasn’t sure how to explain it to them; or if it was even something he could explain.
“Is it—” Karen started, then looked at Maddie before lowering her voice and continuing. “I mean, we love Buck, but you don’t have to date him because your kid likes him.”
“No, no,” objected Eddie. “It’s not that. I just—”
“Just what?” prodded Karen, and her direct question made it easy to answer.
“I just—feel a little out of my depth here,” he admitted. “He’s—yeah.” He gestured towards the brigade, where Buck’s back muscles were visible through his shirt, where his smile was visible from the stands. “And I’m—I’m widowed, and since Chris’s mom—” he couldn’t finish it, couldn’t make himself say I’ve never dated a man before, but he was pretty sure Karen understood.
“Oh,” said Karen. “Well, I mean—Buck’s great, but he’s certainly not perfect.”
“Well, no, but—” Maddie started, and then at Karen’s look, changed tack. “No, yeah, Karen’s right, definitely not perfect. I mean, you should have seen him when he was younger—a total disaster. Bike accidents, skateboard accidents, car accidents, you name it. He bounced around jobs, states, I think he was living out of his car for a while—”
“He actually got fired when he was a probie,” offered Karen. “He got rehired, obviously. But still.”
“Wait, he did?” asked Maddie, looking alarmed. “For what?”
“Ah—” said Karen, grimacing in regret. “Shoot . . . I kind of feel like I shouldn’t say. Oh, but now he’s going to think Buck did something really bad. Shit.”
“It had to have been bad if he got fired,” Maddie said. Eddie suspected she’d forgotten he was listening.
“He—” Karen dragged out the word, like she was waiting for an excuse volunteer itself. Her eyes flicked to Eddie and she said, “he’s grown a lot since then, you know? But, uh . . . he did . . . steal the ladder truck to hook up with someone they met on a call.”
“He what?” Maddie was so outraged that Eddie wanted to laugh. Which was good, because he also kind of wanted to throw up. He’d suspected Buck was out of his league, experience-wise, but he didn’t need it confirmed.
“He felt terrible!” Karen hurried to add. “And then he ended up saving Athena’s life. And a little girl,” she said, turning to Eddie as she said it. “They gave him a second chance and he’s been perfect ever since. Well—not perfect—”
“And station 118 wins the Bucket Brigade!” The announcer’s voice cut through Karen’s stuttering, and Eddie turned back to see the crew celebrating the win. Buck unhooked his harness and climbed down the ladder with shaky arms, nearly falling the last few rungs. But even exhausted, it didn’t stop him from jumping on Chimney’s back. Eddie watched as the guy buckled under his weight, shoving Buck off and into Hen, who laughed and wrapped an arm around his neck. Eddie liked station 6 well enough, but he felt a pang of envy at their ease and familiarity—they looked more like family than coworkers.
“Let’s go!” said Chris, already getting up to go join in the excitement. Eddie hurried to follow, and when he stood up, Karen and Maddie did, too.
“He’s not like that anymore,” Karen continued, as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “He dated this woman, Abby, and it got really serious—”
“Not that serious, though,” interjected Maddie. “She went to Europe and ghosted him.”
“True,” said Karen, and Eddie tried valiantly to keep his eye on Chris and follow their conversation. “And then he realized he was into men. So, he’s pretty new to that, too.”
“Really new! So, even though he’s been with a lot of people, almost all of them were women.”
“Yeah, so he’d understand,” Karen added, and Eddie reminded himself that he could absolutely not sprint away from this conversation and abandon his son twice in one day.
“And either way, he’s had awful taste in partners before, so,” said Maddie. Eddie had a flash of Buck saying guess what? This one’s not racist, and almost laughed. He helped Chris navigate the stairs down from the bleachers while he tried to figure out how to respond to any part of this conversation.
Maddie misinterpreted his expression, and hurried to add, “but—not to say that you—I mean, that’s not his fault, you know—he just wants to find the right person. He’s got a really big heart.”
“So big,” Karen agreed. “Bigger than his brain I think, sometimes—did you know he believes the full moon affects, like, the ions in the air and gravity and shit? I mean, even if I wasn’t an astrophysicist, I’d know that was BS. Curses, jinxes—he puts way too much stock in those things.”
“But he’s smart in other ways,” Maddie noted. “Like, puzzles and fun facts and picking up new skills.”
“Hen said he’s learning to cook from their captain, and he helps make family dinners all the time.”
“Yeah, but he’s not that good at it,” Maddie amended. “Buck can only cook breakfast foods, which, you know, isn’t that impressive, really, it’s just eggs and—”
“Maddie—what are you doing?”
Eddie’s head snapped up from where he was watching Chris step off the last stair onto solid ground. Buck had appeared next to the railing, and he was looking between Eddie and his sister with an expression of betrayal.
“Oh, hey Evan,” Maddie said, voice tight. “Uh—great job on the bucket brigade!”
“Did you just say I’m a bad cook?”
“Is that Chimney and Hen calling us?” Karen elbowed Maddie and pointed over Buck’s shoulder.
“Oh, yep,” said Maddie, not even bothering to look where she gestured. “Let’s go.” She and Karen scurried around where Eddie was on the last step. Buck narrowed his eyes as he turned to watch them leave, and it gave Eddie the opportunity to appreciate Buck’s wet, sweaty form up close.
“That was so cool,” said Chris, drawing Buck’s attention away from where he was scowling after his sister. “Is that really how they used to put out fires?”
“Yeah,” said Buck, his expression clearing as he turned towards Chris. “They’d use horses, too, before we had trucks. That’s actually why fire stations used to have dalmatians—they kept the horses calm. Isn’t that wild?”
“Yeah,” said Chris. “Dad, can we get a dalmatian?”
Chris turned his puppy-dog eyes on Eddie, and Eddie could feel the weight of Buck’s stare, too. “Uh,” he said, his mouth dry.
“Dalmatians actually aren’t super easy dogs to have as pets,” Buck continued, after a second, and Eddie could kiss him. For multiple reasons. “They need to spend a few hours running around every day.”
“Oh,” said Chris, considering that. “Maybe we could get a lazier dog, dad.”
Buck met his eyes right as they both snorted out laughs, and Eddie thought about that unfamiliar coparenting feeling he’d had earlier. Your dad and I, Buck said.
Eddie kept his gaze for a beat too long, and realized he hadn’t said anything yet. “Good—uh, good job,” he said, clearing his throat. “On the brigade, you . . . you were really, uh, good at that.”
“Better at heaving buckets than I am at cooking, apparently,” responded Buck. “Did Maddie say what recipe—”
“No,” said Eddie, heading him off. He didn’t need to be following that thread of conversation. “No, I don’t think she meant anything by it. Maybe she’s just tired of breakfast food.”
“Ooh, I’m hungry, dad,” said Chris, perking up at the mention of a meal.
“You just ate an ice cream the size of my head,” Eddie told him.
“Yeah, but that was sweet,” Chris complained over his shoulder, moving to get a closer look at the old-fashioned hose they’d been using for the brigade. “It’s almost dinner time,” he reminded Eddie, like he was the parent.
“He’s right, you know,” said Buck, stepping closer to Eddie and lowering his voice. “And I believe you owe me a dinner.”
“So, you did see my text,” said Eddie, and he watched Buck’s lips pull into a smirk. He wanted to be annoyed, after the way Buck had left his stomach flip-flopping with no reply. But unfortunately, he was only turned on.
“I did see your text,” he conceded. “And I happen to know a very good taco truck not far from here.”
Tonight. He wanted to have dinner with Eddie, tonight. He felt a little giddy at the prospect, at the idea that Buck, too, didn’t want this day to end. It reminded him of those long summer days when he was a kid, young enough that he could still sometimes shirk off the weight of responsibility, when he and his friends could bike to the lake and then swim and then play video games and then go to the movies—when days sprawled on endlessly, full of possibility, of nothing but seeking joy.
But— “I want to buy you dinner, it’s just . . . Christopher needs to eat.”
“And? Does he not get dinner unless he wins a competition, too?” Buck asked, his eyes sparkling.
“No, I just—after today, with everything, even if I had someone to watch him—”
Buck’s brow furrowed as his eyes slid to Christopher, who was now examining the old timey leather buckets littering the area under the 118’s abandoned brigade structure. “Does Chris not like tacos?”
“Oh,” said Eddie, feeling a little breathless. “You want—dinner with Chris?”
“Yeah,” said Buck, smiling easily. As if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “He’s my favorite Diaz.”
A huff of laughter slipped out, and Eddie said, “mine, too.” He raised his voice then, and called, “hey Chris, want to get dinner with Buck?”
And Chris lit up like it was the best idea he’d ever heard.
Like father, like son.
Eddie waited for their orders by the food truck window while Buck and Chris and found an open picnic table next to the water, and he watched them from afar, marveling at how normal it all felt.
A lot of people didn’t realize how lonely it could be, being a parent. It happened to every parent, probably—that moment when you’re out having lunch with your kid and you realize you left your wallet in your car, and you can’t leave your kid as collateral, but you also don’t want to make him walk all the way back to where you parked, and then there’s the fact that the wait staff might think you’re trying to dine and dash . . .
Or, your kid wakes up in the middle of the night with an earache, and you’re out of Motrin. The school calls because he forgot his field trip permission slip and you’re across town. The parent-teacher conference is scheduled during a shift, the dentist appointment moves, the wrapping paper runs out.
And the good stuff, too—the first time he snuck a dollar under Chris’s pillow in exchange for a gross little baby tooth. When he got four tickets to Chris’s kindergarten graduation, and he still had an extra after inviting abuela and Tía Pepa. The time Chris dropped his lollipop and said fuck, and Eddie laughed until he almost cried.
All parents experienced moments like that, times where they would kill for an extra pair of hands, or eyes, or someone to back you up, to bounce things off of. But when you’re a single parent, it’s like that all the time. He can never let his guard down, never turn his brain off, never count on anyone else to pick up the slack.
So when Buck saw that Chris’s energy was flagging, and he said, “why don’t you wait for the food while Chris and I grab a table?” it hit Eddie right in the solar plexus.
He felt it echo in his bones, felt something warm and sluggish spreading through his veins; burning hot and leaving relief in its wake. It felt like a safety net; like being at ease; like someone had his back. It felt like he knew that he wanted Buck around, all the time.
It felt, insanely, a little bit like love.
-------
Buck would like it known that he absolutely didn’t panic when Eddie asked him to put his number in his phone.
Just because someone replying to “can I have your number,” with “why don’t you give me yours, instead,” was the universal signal for no but I’m going to let you down easy by never reaching out, didn’t mean he had to get in his head about it. And it really wasn’t a surprise, if he thought about it—Buck had first accosted him and used him as a human shield in front of Tommy, and then basically kidnapped his kid, and then butted in when Eddie was trying to have a serious conversation with Chris, and—
His phone buzzed. Buck stopped so abruptly to look at it that someone walked into him. He ignored their apology and opened up to find a message from an unknown number: Hey, followed by It’s Eddie Diaz.
Holy shit.
Well. If Eddie was going to give him his number, he was going to use it.
hey Eddie Diaz, he sent. And then, hope you enjoy watching 😉
He didn’t bother writing something harmless enough that it could be mistaken for platonic. Unless he was reading this the wrong way, then . . .
Loser buys dinner?
The text came through right as he was getting into the main stage area, which meant that both Chimney and Maddie witnessed him do an actual fist pump, but, whatever. He sent back: ur not competing
It was the moment of truth. The moment Eddie could make it real, concrete plans.
guess dinner’s on me, then
He let out a whoop of joy, staring at the open message thread on his phone. When he looked up with a big, dumb grin across his face, he found that along with Chimney and Maddie, Hen, Karen, and Bobby were now watching him, all with varying degrees of judgment.
“Didn’t you have a kid?” Chimney asked, after a moment.
“No,” said Buck, gleeful in his success. “I have a date!”
He was so happy, he didn’t even mind that they were all exchanging looks in some silent conversation that wasn’t even about Eddie Diaz. “You lost a kid . . . and got a date?” Maddie asked.
“Okay, well, it sounds weird when you say it like that,” Buck complained. “I didn’t lose Chris. Eddie’s got him. Eddie, from station six. Eddie, who I have a date with.”
“Station—the guy from the ladder?” Hen asked, “You just gave him the kid you found?”
“What? No—I found his kid. Eddie has a son, and he’s the cutest kid in the world, you guys, and Eddie’s such a good dad, like—”
“Bobby, can we use one of these buckets to drown me?”
Chimney interrupted him midstream, so he couldn’t even finish telling them all about how Eddie had given Chris such a good speech about staying safe, and how hot his responsible parent voice was, and how he kind of wanted Eddie to use that tone on him, and actually maybe it was a good thing Chimney cut him off.
“No one’s drowning today,” said Bobby. “Buck, I’m very happy for you, he sounds like a nice guy. We can talk about it more later, but right now we have to get to our positions—I’ve got Hen at the top, Buck on ladder one, Chim on ladder two—”
Buck zoned out while he harnessed up, replaying everything Eddie had said to him that day, starting with what and ending with guess dinner’s on me then, and oh shit—Buck didn’t reply to Eddie yet, did he?
But it was too late; Bobby was ordering him up the ladder, and if he didn’t zip his phone into the waterproof pocket in his turnouts, he wouldn’t be able to reply to Eddie at all.
When the whistle blew, he, Chim, and Hen became a finely oiled machine, just like they always did on the job. And yeah, maybe the aching in his shoulders was getting a little unbearable, but once he hoisted enough buckets of water, he’d be able to talk to Eddie again, and if that wasn’t an incentive, what was?
“That’s it, that’s it!” Hen finally yelled from above him, and his whole body sagged so abruptly that he nearly brained Chimney with the full bucket he had lifted halfway above his head.
“And station 118 wins the Bucket Brigade!” The announcer reported. Buck felt high on adrenaline, and victory, and that text from Eddie, and—oh god, Eddie was there.
Eddie did say he’d be watching, but Buck wasn’t expecting to see him and Chris in the front row, next to Karen and Maddie. And the fact that they were comfortably sitting next to Hen and Chimney’s partners was absolutely not something Buck was going to think about.
He made an excuse and ducked out from under Hen’s arm, beelining over to the bleachers. He wondered if they’d made the connection, or if Buck was going to have to awkwardly introduce Eddie to his entire family before he could even take him on one date. But maybe it was a good thing . . . if there was one person he could trust to talk him up, it was Maddie—
“—he’s not that good at it,” Maddie was saying. “Buck can only cook breakfast foods, which, you know, isn’t that impressive, really, it’s just eggs and—”
“Maddie—what are you doing?” Was she . . . complaining about him? To Eddie?
Why would she do that?
“Oh, hey Evan,” she said, her voice going up an octave. “Uh—great job on the bucket brigade!”
But he wasn’t buying it; and he wouldn’t let her change the subject that easily. Besides—did he even do a great job? If she’d been lying about liking his omelets, then who knew what else she’d lie about?
“Did you just say I’m a bad cook?”
“Is that Chimney and Hen calling us?” Karen chimed in, rescuing Maddie and also betraying him.
“Oh, yep, let’s go,” said Maddie, jumping at the excuse to escape. He gaped at her but she still wouldn’t meet his eyes; either way, he was going to have to decide how mad at her he was later, because apparently, her reviews of his culinary skills weren’t enough to drive Eddie away.
“Hey Chris,” Eddie called over to Chris. “Want to get dinner with Buck?”
“Yeah!” said Chris, his face lighting up at the prospect. Buck realized he was, like, ridiculously excited, too; he wasn’t even sure he’d be able to eat, with the way these two were messing with his stomach.
“It’s over on Sixth,” he told Eddie.
“Then we’re driving,” Eddie said, nodding to Chris that he should start walking in the direction of where they parked.
“Yeah,” said Buck. “Uh—maybe I should swing by our tent and see if I can borrow a change of clothes.” He held out his arms, gesturing down to where is tank was soaked through. “Not sure you want me in your car, like this.”
“Hm.” Eddie patted down his pockets to make sure he still had his wallet and keys on him, and he kept walking, not looking at Buck, when he said, “think you’d be surprised the places I want you, like that.”
Buck’s shock quickly morphed into delight; he hadn’t pegged Eddie for a dirty talker. Eddie was blushing a little, but still—he’d said it. And, well. Buck wasn’t going to leave him hanging.
“Go easy, Eddie,” he said, voice low enough that Chris couldn’t hear, but not so low that no one else might. “I’m already dripping wet.”
He was rewarded when Eddie spluttered out a cough; Buck pursed his lips and focused on keeping a straight face as they crossed the parking lot.
“You, uh.” Eddie cleared his throat and trying again. “You don’t need to get your car?”
“Nah,” said Buck. He hung back while Eddie got Chris situated in the car. “Maddie and I carpooled. She has my keys, and also, she’s a traitor to me, and to siblings, everywhere.”
Eddie bopped Chris on the nose before closing the car door and turning to face Buck. “In that case—you said you know a good place for tacos?”
“Yeah,” said Buck, opening the car door.
“Good thing,” Eddie called out as he rounded to the driver’s side. “Cause I hear your cooking’s shit.”
Buck barked out a laugh; he slid into the passenger seat and directed Eddie towards the food truck. They ordered enough tacos for an entire firehouse, and then Buck took Chris to find a good picnic table near the water while Eddie waited for the food.
They passed the time watching a family of ducklings splashing near the shore, and Buck watched Chris, watching the ducks. He felt like that scene in The Grinch, like he could feel his heart growing three sizes. There was just something about this kid; looking at him soothed an ache in Buck, settled something in his chest. It felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be, which was something he hadn’t felt in—in so long that he didn’t even remember when he ever felt that way in the first place.
“Hey Buck?”
“Yeah, buddy?”
“How does the duck family know to stay together?”
Buck followed his gaze, where the hen had set off into the water, inspiring a row of five ducklings to fall in line, the drake swimming behind. “I think it’s just instinct,” he said.
“But not all parents have that,” Chris said. His voice only sounded curious, but his words felt like a direct hit to Buck’s newly oversized heart. Was Chris thinking about what Buck said about his parents? Or about his own mom?
“No,” he agreed. In the water, the last duckling started veering away, and the drake nudged it back on course with his beak. Next to him, Chris swung his feet back and forth where they hung off the bench. “But do you want to hear something really cool?”
“What?”
“Sometimes, animals make their own families.” Chris used his finger to push his glasses up his nose again, turning so Buck could see his confused expression. “Like, there was this eagle named Murphy, and he lived in a bird sanctuary. And the people there noticed he built a nest and was sitting on it, but he didn’t have an egg—he actually just had a rock.”
Chris scrunched up his face. “He was trying to hatch a rock?”
“Yeah,” said Buck, and he let out a little laugh, even though that part of the story made him kind of sad. “They think he just really wanted to be a dad. But then one day the sanctuary got a tiny orphaned eaglet—a little baby bird that was only a week old. And they needed someone to take care of it. So they gave it to Murphy.”
“And he took care of it?”
“Yeah,” said Buck, grinning. “He did.”
“That’s really cool,” said Chris.
“And there’s a bunch of other stories like that, you know? Even ones across species—like, at this zoo in India, a tortoise adopted a hippopotamus.”
“A turtle adopted a hippo?” Chris’s eyes were wide as saucers. “Wouldn’t it have gotten stepped on?”
“Well, it was a tortoise, so it was pretty big. And the hippo was a baby, at the time.”
“I guess they both swim, and go on land,” Chris pointed out. “And they’re both herbi–herbivores.”
“Exactly,” Buck said. “And there’s a famous story about a gorilla named Koko, who was really smart, and they taught her sign language, and she asked for a cat, so—”
“What are we talking about?”
Eddie was back, carrying two trays full of food and placing them on the table between them. The evening sunlight was hitting him in all the right places, casting him in a warm glow, and Buck was struck dumb at the sight.
At least, until Chris said, “adoption.”
Eddie turned to him with a questioning look on his face, and he hastened to explain. “Cross-species adoption,” he clarified. “Like, Koko the gorilla. And it’s not just adoption, you know, there are a ton of instances of inter-species friendships. Like, did you know they sometimes give cheetahs in zoos dog friends? They pair them up and then they just live together as best friends. You might not think it makes sense, like, what’s a super cool cheetah doing with a dopey golden retriever, but actually they balance each other out, and—”
Eddie was smiling at him, and he should really, really stop talking, but the words just kept coming out. “And sometimes it’s entire families, you know, there were two gay penguins who adopted a chick named Tango.”
“You really know your stuff,” Eddie commented, his voice light. He turned to Chris, and said, “you’re right, we gotta take this guy to the zoo with us.”
And then Buck shoved a taco in his mouth, to stop himself from saying something stupid, like, take me home forever.
They dug in, then, and when Chris finished eating, he asked if he could give his leftovers to the duck family. Buck jogged over to the food truck and paid the employee ten dollars for a bag of duck-safe lettuce instead; and when Chris took off towards the pond with it, Buck sat down on the same side of the bench as Eddie, so they both had a clear view of him.
After a few minutes of watching Chris realize he had to scrunch up the lettuce leaves so they would go where he threw them, Eddie bumped his knee under the table.
“So,” he said, keeping his eyes forward. “Gay penguins, huh?”
Buck groaned and leaned his elbows on the table and hid his face in his hands, while Eddie laughed. After a minute, he said, “I go down a lot of Wikipedia rabbit holes, okay?”
“Mhm,” said Eddie, still not looking at him—Buck knew, because he’d taken his head out of his hands to study Eddie’s profile. His eyelashes were very long. After a moment, Eddie said, “what about, you know. Mating habits?”
Buck watched in delight as color rose up on Eddie’s cheeks. “Are you asking me about the sex lives of gay penguins?” Eddie’s lips pursed, and Buck could tell he was really close to getting a smile out of him. “I’ve never gone that far down a rabbit hole, Eddie.”
Got him—Eddie snorted out a laugh. But he still wasn’t looking at Buck, and then he shook his head and looked more serious than the topic called for. “I just meant—like, if the one guy penguin had only ever been with one girl penguin before. And maybe he didn’t really know what he was doing.”
“Ah,” said Buck.
“And maybe, the other penguin had more experience. You know, with other penguin partners. Before.”
“Did that penguin’s sister say something about that?”
“No,” said Eddie, so quickly that Buck knew it was a lie. But he finally glanced at Buck, and at least that was a win. By now, his blush had reached the tops of his ears. “No. Just, like. How would that work?”
“Well,” said Buck, using his thigh to push back at Eddie’s leg under the table, considering. “Some species of penguins change partners every season. But some mate for life. I think the slutty penguin would probably like getting out of the game.”
“Hm,” said Eddie, glancing at him again, holding his gaze for longer this time.
“It’s a lot of work, you know. Finding all those rocks, building new nests . . .”
Eddie’s mouth twitched again, and he looked back out towards Chris. “Some people might say that the widowed penguin is a lot of work, too.”
“Nah,” said Buck. “A pre-made nest? A fluffy little chick? That’s the dream.” Eddie’s leg pushed back against his. “On the other hand, a slutty penguin who can’t cook? That’s a gamble.”
Eddie finally looked at him, then, really looked at him. “No one called you a slutty penguin, Buck.”
“But Maddie said I was a bad cook,” he pointed out.
Eddie made a sound of frustration and rubbed his hand over his jaw. It was debilitatingly sexy. Buck almost missed that Eddie also said, “she was just trying to make me feel better.”
“Feel better?”
“Yeah,” said Eddie. He picked up a napkin off the food tray and started shredding it; Buck watched his long, thick fingers, and then looked away, so he could pay attention to Eddie’s words. “I, uh,” he huffed out a laugh and rolled his eyes. “This is so embarrassing. I’ve actually had, like, a thing for you. For a while.”
“For me?” Buck asked, too excited to play it cool. “Really?”
“Yeah,” said Eddie. “I’ve—I don’t know. I’ve seen you around.”
“Oh,” said Buck. He knew his appearance had gotten him far with a lot of strangers—he guessed it was nice to know that Eddie was one of them. “I mean, me too.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” said Buck, happy to offer Eddie this information; to put his absolute lack of chill on display. “I saw you at the Academy once, and the day of the earthquake. Oh, and that call where the whole neighborhood was on fire, and you scaled the side of the house?”
Eddie was looking at him with the same wide-eyed look Christopher had given him earlier, and Buck felt gratified. And also like he wasn’t going to survive this family. “You were there?”
“Yeah,” said Buck. He shrugged. “I hadn’t realized I was into men yet, so I was just like, damn, look at that guy.” He chuckled. “And then I saw you again today and was like, oh, that’s what that was.”
“That’s what what was?” Eddie asked, the barest hint of teasing in his tone.
“Like you don’t know,” he answered. “Okay, tell me yours, then.”
“Tell you what?”
“Your embarrassing crush,” Buck said. “What was so bad that Maddie had to shit-talk me?”
“I saw you the day of the earthquake too, you know,” Eddie admitted. “And a few times after. Lena’s been after me to talk to you for months.”
“Months, huh?” Buck knew he had a smug grin on his face, but he let it stay; Eddie wouldn’t look at him, anyway.
“There were a few calls—I was there when you guys were drugged, and that woman on the freeway, and . . .” Buck was begging him to go on. He was aching for Eddie to keep talking.
“Yeah?”
“Do you remember the fire at the high school, in Pasadena?”
Buck did; about six months ago, a stage production of The Wizard of Oz had gone up in flames when some faulty wiring ignited the set backdrop. Station 118 had been responding, but another station had been nearby and rerouted their ambulance to help out. Buck mostly remembered how scared the kid playing the Wizard had been; he’d been trapped above the stage in a wicker basket, and his green costume looked extremely flammable. Buck got him down, got him to the ambulance, but that was it. Had Eddie been there?
“I was in the ambulance when you brought that kid by. He was scared shitless, you know? Shaking and coughing and clearly mortified that he’d been carried out by a hot firefighter,” Eddie said, glancing towards Buck and away again. “But you were so kind to him, and you didn’t talk down to him at all. You said, people think firefighters are brave, but you thought he was braver, because you never would have gotten on stage in high school.”
Buck watched in awe as Eddie recited his own words back to him; he remembered more about what he’d done that night than Buck did.
“I was a kid like that, once,” Eddie admitted. “Closeted, in high school, performing in some stupid, sequin outfit and praying that no one said anything about it. I would have died if someone like you had looked at me, back then. But you—you look at me, and . . .” Eddie turned to him, and Buck sat perfectly still as Eddie’s eyes roved over his face. “It’s not scary,” he finished. “It’s not scary at all.”
That made one of them, then; because Eddie was making Buck feel a little terrified.
But still—
“Oh my god,” he said, finally. “You, like, really liked me.”
Eddie’s cheeks were still pink. “I just said that,” looking at Buck like, what is wrong with you?
So much, Buck thought.
“And,” Eddie went on, accusation in his voice, “you confessed you liked me first!”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know I was into men,” Buck pointed out. “I mostly thought you were cool. You, like, liked my personality.”
“It’s still early,” Eddie reminded him.
“Oh my god,” Buck said again. “You were so intimidated by me that Maddie had to talk me down! I knew she wouldn’t sabotage me.”
“She did a great job,” Eddie said, interrupting his gloating. “Now I know you were a disaster growing up.”
“I was,” Buck agreed.
“And that you’ve had really bad luck dating.”
“I can feel it all turning around,” Buck said, optimistically.
“Karen said you believe in curses and the full moon—”
“It’s science—”
“And that you got fired as a probie,” Eddie added.
“Pulling out the big guns, huh?” Buck didn’t look bothered in the slightest. “You must have been really nervous about me.”
“That’s definitely all gone, now,” Eddie said, huffing out a sigh and playing with his straw. Buck wanted to watch his expressions, wanted to study them until he could read him like a book.
“I think I could change that,” Buck said, dropping his voice an octave. He paused, waiting until Eddie took a drink from his soda and then added, “I bet I could find some ways to keep you on edge.”
Eddie choked on the drink and Buck felt a buzz of victory. This was going to be so much fun.
“Are you okay, dad?” Chris asked, walking back up the short slope towards their table. Buck patted Eddie on the back, and then switched to rubbing, gently. Going by Eddie’s extended coughing fit, it wasn’t very helpful.
“Drink just went down the wrong pipe,” he explained for Eddie, who was glaring at him.
“Oh, well, I’m out of lettuce,” Chris said, holding up the bag.
“That’s okay,” Eddie said, clearing his throat one more time. “It’s time to get you home, anyway. It’s almost bedtime.”
He started stacking their garbage on one tray, moving to stand, so Buck couldn’t see his face when Chris asked, “can Buck come?”
“Oh,” said Buck, staring between Chris’s eager smile and Eddie’s turned back. “Uh . . .”
Yes, he wanted to say. Take me home and keep me. But he’d already pushed his luck with dinner, and even though it felt impossible, he and Eddie had only technically met that morning. Yeah, Buck had gone home with people after less conversation; but none of those people had introduced Buck to their child, so.
“Of course, kid,” Eddie answered for him, walking towards the garbage. “We drove him here—did you think we were going to leave him?” He dumped the trash in and stacked the tray on top, and then gestured for him and Chris to follow him back to the car.
Buck stayed quiet, watching as Eddie and Chris executed their car-seat routine seamlessly, Eddie holding Chris’s crutches while he clambered in, Chris buckling himself in and waiting for Eddie to pull the straps tight. There was something intimate about watching them move so in sync; he felt like an anthropologist, observing unfamiliar behavior; getting a glimpse into a private world. This was how Eddie and Chris lived, day to day. This was their normal life. And now, Buck was there.
Eddie closed his door, and instead of getting into the passenger seat, Buck followed him around the back of the car. “I could call an uber to meet me at the house,” Buck he offered, voice low.
“You could,” Eddie agreed. It was fully dark, now, and the streetlamps were reflecting in Eddie’s eyes. It didn’t make sense that one man could be so pretty.
“Do you . . . want me to?” Buck asked. He was vibrating with need; aching with it. He was begging for Eddie to give him a bone.
The night noises drifted up in the silence, and a cool breeze caused goosebumps to rise along the back of Buck’s neck. Eddie’s gaze dropped to his lips, and then back up again. “No,” he said, finally. “I don’t.”
Buck had run up a hundred-foot ladder that day, which was probably why he felt like his knees were going to give out.
“Okay,” he said. “Then I won’t.”
They were quiet on the drive to Eddie’s house, cognizant of Chris dozing in the backseat. Eddie lowered both their windows a few inches, just enough to let the night air in, and a radio station played hits Buck remembered from high school. He felt a little like that, right now—like a teenager who had no idea what he was doing; like he might as well take some risks while he didn’t know any better.
When Eddie pulled up out front of an adorable bungalow, Buck glanced at the GPS and calculated that they were only about ten minutes from where his own apartment was; he thought about telling Eddie but then decided it could wait.
He watched as Eddie hefted Chris out of his car seat, the kid’s sleeping form slumped over Eddie’s shoulder; the scene was so cozy, unbearably domestic. Buck hurried ahead to get the door, taking the crutches and keys from Eddie so he could let them in, turning the light onto the lowest dimmer setting as they followed him into the house. He felt like he was auditioning for a part; see how good I can be? He wanted to say. Let me stay and help.
Eddie hadn’t told him to follow, but he hadn’t told him not to, either, so Buck trailed after him and leaned against the doorway while Eddie arranged his son under the covers. His oversized heart felt so tender at the sight; there was a slight chance he was going to cry.
When Eddie finished arranging Chris’s blankets, he turned and paused at finding Buck there; but then he gestured for Buck to follow him, closing the door gently and leading him into the kitchen.
Buck took in every detail; the bright blue stove, the frog-shaped sponge holder, the calendar that might be color-coded. When Eddie opened the fridge, Buck could see several stacks of take-out boxes, and he thought of Bobby saying it’s an act of love to cook for people, that’s why family meals are so important.
Maybe Bobby would let him move onto lunch foods. Maybe he could learn how to make kid-friendly mac ‘n cheese and homemade French fries and dishes that parents used to sneak veggies into their children’s diets.
“Want a beer?” Eddie asked, taking two bottles out and offering one to Buck. He took it, and then held it out while Eddie used a bottle opener to pry the cap off; something about the pressure of him pushing down against the bottle in Buck’s hand was, like, really doing it for Buck right now.
“Thanks,” he murmured, taking a sip. Eddie uncapped his own bottle and turned away, busying himself with throwing the caps in the garbage and wiping down the countertop. “Hey,” Buck said, a thought occurring to him. “You’re not still nervous, right?”
“Why would I be nervous, Buck?” Eddie asked, folding a dishtowel with way more care than it required. “Just because you’re the first—and I don’t know what I’m doing—and, like, you’ve speed-run through every milestone I’ve been overthinking for ages, and now you’re in my house, and—”
Buck stepped until he was directly behind Eddie and reached over to take the dishtowel out of his hands. He set his own beer down on the counter, took Eddie’s and set it down next to his, and then guided Eddie to turn around until they were face to face.
And even though Buck was grateful for all of his past experience, so that he wouldn’t fumble this, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d actually never been in this position before.
Eddie was barely breathing, studying Buck with his beautiful brown eyes, the pupils blown.
“Up,” Buck said, using both arms to maneuver Eddie until he was sitting on his own countertop. Eddie’s breath hitched, and Buck stepped in between his spread legs.
“You,” he said, ducking down to press feather-light kisses up the side of Eddie’s neck, “—have nothing—” he used his teeth to tug on Eddie’s earlobe, “—to be nervous—” he nosed across Eddie’s cheek, leaving a slick trail of saliva on his path to Eddie’s mouth, “—about.” He finished in a whisper, an inch away from Eddie’s lips; Buck could feel his shaky breath, and he wanted, god, he wanted.
But he pulled back, instead; because he needed to make sure Eddie was looking wrecked in a good way. Eddie’s eyes fluttered open, dazed; and Buck remembered that they’d already kissed once today. This time, it would be for real.
“I’m—I’m not,” lied Eddie, his voice cracking.
Buck placed his hands on Eddie’s thighs, rubbing his palms over the material and using his fingers to squeeze. He was gratified to hear Eddie let out a strangled noise, and he dove back in towards his throat, wanting to chase the sound.
“Good,” he said, making his way up to Eddie’s other ear, where he murmured, “because no one’s watching this time.”
“Buck—” whined Eddie, and it was all the permission Buck needed to dive in, capturing Eddie’s lips with his own. The warmth of his lips, the heat of his body, the electric feel of Eddie’s hands on him; Buck was never going to get over any of it.
He tugged on Eddie’s bottom lip, biting until he opened his mouth and Buck could lick his way in; his hand found its way into Eddie’s hair, and Buck thought, mine. This was nothing like any kiss he’d had before, better than any backseat, bar bathroom, bad-idea. His lizard brain took over, and carved down Buck’s focus until there was nothing left but Eddie, his lips, his hair, his hands, his thighs.
He felt like he wanted to crawl up onto the counter with Eddie, press his body into his until there was no room left for Eddie’s nerves or doubts. He wanted to make it so good that Eddie would have to keep him.
But eventually, he had to stop.
He swallowed down the moan that was climbing up his throat and forced himself to still; he closed his lips and pressed a few more kisses into Eddie’s mouth, like he was trying to draw him out of a stupor.
“Hey,” he said, eventually.
“Hey,” repeated Eddie. He looked so good like that, with beard burn and mussed hair and his shirt rucked up where Buck had started tugging on it. Buck probably deserved some sort of award for what he was about to do.
“I really, really like you,” he said. “And I don’t want to mess this up. I have a history of—I can get carried away, and I just, I want this to be different. So, I’m going to stop,” he said, feeling physically pained, “and ask if I can—”
“Yeah,” interrupted Eddie, pushing back in for another kiss. “Yeah, anything.” He got the words out as well as he could with his lips attached to Buck’s.
“This isn’t really taking it slow,” he said.
“Slow’s overrated,” said Eddie. “Can’t get carried away if I’m right there with you.”
“Yeah?” Buck asked, heart in his throat.
“Yeah,” said Eddie.
Buck felt laughter bubbling up. “I think this might be the best day of my life,” he said, while Eddie kissed his way down to the hollow at the base of his neck. “Give me your phone,” he said, reaching around to tug it out of Eddie’s back pocket.
He used the hand in Eddie’s hair to pull his head back, so he could unlock Eddie’s phone with his face, but Eddie resisted; Buck was pretty sure he was going to have several hickeys in the morning.
“Doesn’t work,” Eddie said, voice rough; he pulled back only far enough to type a password into the phone, and then went back to the spot on Buck’s neck that was giving him shivers. Through the lust-haze fogging up his brain, he just managed to open the contacts, to find his name, and to delete the word fake.
He hit save and tugged on Eddie’s hair again until he looked at the screen; when he did, he let out a laugh that Buck felt in his bones. Eddie looked so fond that Buck thought he might melt into a puddle of heartsick goo right there in his kitchen.
Eddie was looking at him like he couldn’t be happier; like adding Buck (boyfriend) to his contacts after one day was the best idea he’d ever heard. He was looking like everything Buck had always wanted.
“Deal,” Eddie said.
Notes:
notes:
- 'Eddie, who I have a date with' should be read with the same inflection as 'Eddie has a SILVER STAR'
- when I was writing the scene where maddie & karen were trying to shit-talk buck to make eddie feel better i kept picturing that scene in parks & rec when april and andy were trying to level out chris's mood by naming good & bad stuff
- similarly buck's 'you like my personality??' is giving schmidt from new girl. sorry, u can probably tell that my subconscious is only full of sitcom fluff
- 'deal' is what eddie says to buck after he says 'or u could have mine' in his first ep, which is. like. so cute.
- rip to murphy, u a real one
- why can't I stop writing bird metaphors about buck??? he is not bird-like in anyway. his shelter-dog rizz is so strong and yet Im like. that's a duckling. that's a single father eagle. that's a gay penguin. ??? idkk
I hope you liked this!! I guess that for the next thing I write ill have to come up with a real plot?? that isn't just them sitting across from a table, staring at each other with heart-eyes??? honestly, tough. shout me out if u have ideas.
thanks for reading and we can make it to the finale I believe in us!!!!