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The afternoon sun beat down on the stadium, but Eddie didn't seem to mind the heat. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, eyes tracked on the pitcher with a level of focus usually reserved for a complex extraction.
Buck, on the other hand, was mostly focused on the overpriced soft pretzel in his hand. He understood the basics—hit the ball, run around the squares—but the nuance of a “perfectly executed bunt” was lost on him. Still, he found himself grinning every time Eddie cheered. There was something infectious about seeing Eddie this relaxed, his shoulders down, the constant tension in his jaw finally absent.
The past year had been hard on him, with the Kim thing, Chris leaving, Bobby d—
Point was, Buck was glad he seemed lighter these days.
“Did you see that?” Eddie asked, nudging Buck’s shoulder with his own. “The rotation on that pitch was insane.”
“Totally,” Buck lied effortlessly, enjoying the way Eddie’s excitement made his own chest feel warm. “Insane rotation.”
By the time they reached the truck, the sun was beginning to dip, casting long, golden shadows across the parking lot.
“Best game of the season,” Eddie breathed, unlocking the doors. He sounded genuinely satisfied, almost rejuvenated. The golden light made Eddie’s canines glint as he grinned. Buck’s hand itched to touched him but holding back the urge had stopped being a new fight several years ago.
“If you say so, Diaz,” Buck teased instead, climbing into the passenger seat. “Now, per our very legal and binding agreement, I get my Thai food. I'm starving, dude, I can taste the crab som tam already.”
Eddie didn't even put up his usual fight about Buck’s preferred spice levels and his mismatched whiteboy intolerance. He just drove straight to the little hole-in-the-wall place on 4th Street, reaching ahead of Buck to hold the door open. Then, he watched Buck navigate the menu with a strange, contemplative expression, his honeyed brown eyes tracing the movement of Buck’s hands. When the bill came, Eddie intercepted it before Buck’s fingers could even brush the folder.
“I got it,” Eddie said, his voice firm but not unkind. Buck’s heart lurched weirdly and he had to swallow before he made a weak attempt to fight him on it. He knew it was useless to protest. For reasons that continued to escape him, Eddie had been spoiling him more and more lately. Still, Buck put on a whine, knowing it would bring a smile on his face.
“Eddieee, come on. You got the tickets, and the parking, and those weirdly expensive peanuts—”
“I said I got it, Buck. Don't worry about it,” he laughed.
The day concluded at a tiny, artisanal cafe Buck had been stalking on social media for weeks. He’d been meaning to come here alone on a break but Eddie had seen him scrolling through their website on shift and asked if he wanted to go together. It was decorated with hanging plants and mismatched velvet chairs, the kind of place Eddie usually called “too trendy for its own good,” yet he’d agreed to come without a single complaint.
They sat at a small round table in the corner. He was sure two burly men sitting at a cute place looked comical but Buck didn’t really care. Thanking the waitress, he took a hopeful bite of his lavender-honey scoop and
frowned. Eddie noticed immediately.
“What’s wrong?”
“It's... fine,” Buck admitted, cheeks slightly puffed out as he poked at the greyish mound with his wooden spoon. “Kind of just tastes like cold soap and disappointment.”
It felt a little mean to complain out loud in the café itself but he couldn’t help it. He’d been looking forward to tasting their signature artisanal ice cream for weeks. He even hyped it up in front of Eddie—how embarrassing.
Eddie let out a soft huff of a laugh, but then he went quiet. When Buck looked up from the half melted ice cream, he realised Eddie wasn't looking at his own coffee anymore. He was looking at Buck.
“Huh,” Eddie murmured.
“Hm? Do I have soap-ice-cream on my face?” Buck reached for a napkin, feeling suddenly self-conscious.
Eddie didn't answer. He just kept looking at him, his expression softening into a tender, private smile—the kind of look he usually reserved for Christopher. It made the air in Buck’s lungs feel suddenly very thin, and a familiar heat began to crawl up Buck's neck, settling in his cheeks against his will.
After several seconds of heavy, expectant silence, Eddie rolled his bottom lip between his teeth, then let it go.
“I love you, Buck.”
What?
Buck’s heart did a panicked, violent somersault. He was glad the ice cream sucked because if he was eating anything right now, he would've choked. He let out a nervous, jagged laugh, his brain immediately reaching for the safety of their usual rhythm.
“L-love you too, man,” Buck stammered, trying to keep his voice light. “But look, I'm still not paying the bill, even if you try the 'best friends' card. You set the precedent at the Thai place.”
He felt embarrassed. Eddie probably meant that in a platonic, I-love-you-brother-ha-ha way but Buck’s stupid, helpless heart took it the wrong way. Get yourself together, Buckley. He’s straight.
Except.
Eddie didn't laugh. He just shook his head and grinned. He looked pink-cheeked and bright, his eyes shimmering as if he were barely containing a surge of pure giddiness.
“No, no,” Eddie said, his voice dropping an octave, steady and sure. “I’m in love with you.”
---
For Eddie, his life started when his dad put a hand on his little shoulder and said, “mijo, you’re the man of the house now. I’m going to work; you take care of your mama and sister. If anything happens, call me. Understand?”
“Got it.”
For decades, he took those words and carved it into the space between his ribs, close to his heart along with his dad’s other teachings.
A real man was a provider and a protector. A real man had to be tough and stoic, an unwavering pillar of confidence and dependability so his family could rely on him. A real man must not be weak, must not cry or throw tantrums—he must be physically and mentally strong, avoiding display of soft emotions and vulnerability.
On one hand, it was bullshit, but on the other, Eddie was grateful that he’d spent the majority of his life repressing his feelings because faced with his parents’ again, he definitely needed the stoicism.
Leaning his iPad against a box on the kitchen counter, Eddie crouched down to inspect the cabinets. He was on a video call with his parents, discussing Chris’s living arrangements and school transfer.
“You’ve found a new house, so soon?” His mother’s voice crackled from the tiny speaker.
“It’s the same one, Buck’s renting it,” he replied easily. Eddie stared at the array of ridiculous animal themed plates in the upper cabinet, a smile tugging at his lips at the new bits of personality he kept discovering in Buck’s space.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, ah, I sublet this house before I moved to El Paso. Buck ended up helping me keep it by renting it, so I won’t be homeless looking for a leash in this market just in case I want to go back. Thank God for his foresight,” he half joked, placing his plain plates next Buck’s. “Didn’t I tell you?”
His mom’s voice was quiet when she replied. “No, you didn’t.” A beat. “That’s very kind of him.”
The smile of his face was involuntary. It was kind of him to go so far just to help Eddie keep his house. He’d already known Buck had a heart of gold, but even after all these years it still felt humbling to be on the receiving end of it.
“That’s Buck for you,” he muttered, then louder to his parents. “Besides, the transition for Chris will be easier this way. Buck’s already cleared out half the closet for me and he still has some of the old furniture.”
He didn’t notice his parents sharing a look on the other side of the screen, too busy deciding where his pots and pans were going to in Buck’s kitchen. Nonsensically, he thought about how convenient it would be if he had a mini-Buck in his pocket telling him where to put this stuff into. “I’m thinking of bringing the old desk from home to LA, Chris said he wanted somewhere to put his things on but I don’t know. Buck said he doesn’t mind the desk there as long as he has space for his baking—what?”
The silence made him stop on his track and when he finally looked up, they were sharing a look—one of those long, weighted pauses usually reserved for a lecture about his life choices. He’d thought they would give him more grace after the Texas fiasco but apparently not. Sighing inwardly, Eddie braced himself for a comment about the logistics of two grown men and a growing teenager living in a two-bedroom house.
Surprisingly, that didn’t happen.
“Eddie,” Helena said softly, her voice uncharacteristically careful. “Mijo, how long have you and Buck been together?”
Eddie blinked. He wanted to laugh—he almost did—but her earnest face made him pause. “What? We’ve been friends for years, mom. You know that.”
Bafflingly, there was no judgement, only a strange, heartbreaking sort of pity that tripped the thousand alarms in his head. He didn’t think their relationship had improved so much to warrant such an emotional response over Buck helping him. Even his dad, usually the portrait of the stoic man Eddie had tried to emulate, cleared his throat. Ramon looked straight at the camera, his expression vulnerable in a way that made Eddie’s skin itchy with discomfort.
“Uh…”
“Listen, Eddie,” his dad said, visibly picking his words carefully. “It’s okay. You don’t have to hide who you are from us. I—your mom and I, we’re sorry if we ever made you feel like you had to keep your sexuality a secret. We know we’ve been overbearing and had placed unfair expectations on you but I hope you know this Eddie—we love you. No matter what.”
His stomach dropped to his ass. It was like someone had pulled the rug under his feet and sent him tumbling into the void. Biting his inner cheek, Eddie felt some sort of hysterical laugh crawling up his throat because what?
“What are you talking about? I’m not—we’re just best friends. I told you, he’s my partner at work, he’s Chris’s… he’s Buck.”
His parents shared another one of those meaningful looks, like Eddie was 17 again and covering for his older sister sneaking out in the middle of the night. But they didn’t push. They chatted for a few more minutes, small talks that Eddie barely processed before he was saying ‘goodbye, love you’ to the screen.
Eddie stood in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded by dishes he promised to wash after Buck cooked them spaghetti with the fresh tomato and basil from his backyard. The sound of LA traffic reminded him that Buck wouldn’t be back for another hour from his grocery run and so Eddie tried to get back to his half-unpacked boxes, one two three cups placed in the cabinet until he couldn’t ignore the elephant in the room anymore.
How long have you and Buck been together?
Buck and him. Him and Buck. BuckandEddie.
Eddie rolled the words in his mind and couldn’t help but laugh.
He’d never tried to define what being BuckandEddie meant. They were family, sure, but as he looked at his shoes sitting neatly next to Buck’s crocs by the door, he realised it wasn’t as simple as that. With the 118, they were all family, good people he trusted with his life and could depend on when times were hard. Hell, it was different even with Pepa, who knew him when he was Eddito, a snot nosed kid who scraped his knees on the asphalt because he couldn’t wait to give his mom the flower he picked on the way home from school.
Buck was… special. More, in a way.
He stared out the kitchen window, watching some kids play chase on the road and tried to imagine what life with Buck would look like. He thought back to the brief flickering years when he and Shannon had been husband and wife. Sharing meals, meaningless talks under the quiet nights, the way they—young and bright eyed—had promised to navigate the world as a single unit.
Then, he compared it to the years with Buck.
Their tacit understanding in and out of the field, the meals they shared with Chris laughing between them, the quiet nights where the beer loosened their lips until they were somehow talking about the slugs Buck saw during his morning job.
It didn’t feel all that different.
The realisation hit the soft bits of his heart with the force of a physical blow. He didn’t even have to imagine a different reality. If he were to exclude the non-existent sexual aspect of their relationship, they had already been doing the same things he’d done with his actual wife for years. The only thing missing were the label and the courage to admit that the real man he’d brought from El Paso about a decade ago had softened and found his strength in the softest place imaginable.
---
As much as he wanted to shout it to the world, Eddie didn’t dare to rush it.
When Buck came back with his biodegradable bags filled with groceries, Eddie simply smiled and took them from his hands, keeping his ears open to Buck’s latest ramble. Apparently, someone had placed a plastic duck wearing a cowboy hat on Buck’s Jeep, and oh my God, Eds, you have to see the insane amount of Gatorade these pack of girls bought, they had two trolleys full of them! Two! In this economy! Who the hell likes Gatorade that much?
“Maybe they’re starting a very hydrated cult,” Eddie offered nonsensically, just to draw a laugh from Buck and he did. His heart did a strange little stutter as Buck laughed, bright and loud.
But despite the warmth, Eddie was a man of logic and procedure. He needed to be sure. He needed to know if this—this magnetic pull toward Buck—was a localised phenomenon or a late-blooming revelation.
So he did what he had to do.
He waited until Buck was in the shower and performed a quick, guilt-ridden sweep of Buck’s phone to ensure there was no Tinder or Hinge installed so he wouldn’t accidentally swipe right on his best friend—he did feel a brief bout of jealousy when he saw Grindr there—and quietly retreated back to his boxes once he was satisfied.
That night, after Buck had retreated to the bedroom, Eddie sat on the sofa and downloaded a dating app. When it asked for his preferences, his thumb hovered over the settings. He didn't know the labels; didn't know if he was bi, or gay, or if there was even a word for Buck-sexual. There better not be because that meant someone else had already been Buck-sexual and Eddie wasn’t one for sharing.
Eddie sleepily snickered to himself, watching the icon of the app load in front of a blinding white background. He just knew that for the first time in thirty-some years, he was curious about the other side of the aisle, so he set the preference to 'Men' and immediately felt a jolt of adrenaline hit his stomach.
For the next week, Eddie became a man of excuses.
“Going to the gym, Buck,” or “Gotta meet an old army buddy for a drink.”
Buck’s eyes would narrow, his brow furrowing in that suspicious, puppy-like way he had. “You've been going to the gym a lot lately, Eddie. You’re gonna overtrain.”
“Just need to blow off some steam,” Eddie would mutter, avoiding eye-level contact as he headed out the door. He’d always feel like a cheating husband leaving his pregnant wife and going to meet his mistress, but this was necessary research.
While he could come forth and say he was meeting other people—he didn’t think Buck would mind as much—he just… didn’t want to. He wanted to keep this thing close to his chest first, figure things out before he present his findings and kiss Buck silly in the kitchen.
But first, he had someone to talk to.
---
Eddie closed the door on Chris’s old bedroom, chest aching when he realised Buck had kept the room like a tomb. It felt like an intimate secret, a peek into the blond’s grief as he held into everything he could after losing so much. He wondered what would happen if they’d decided to stay in Texas permanently.
Shaking his head, Eddie sat at the dusty desk, propping his iPad and taking a deep breath before he pressed call. It took three rings before Chris’s face filled the screen.
“Hey, mijo.”
“Hi, dad.”
Things had gotten so much better after their initial talk at the bathroom in El Paso but Eddie still felt a lot more nervous about this than he would’ve if it was anyone else. He made small talk. His heart was doing that familiar, heavy thud against his ribs—the one that usually preceded a tactical breach or a difficult extraction.
He had spent a decade preaching to Christopher about the importance of communication, about being honest and showing up. Yet, he’d spent the last year failing miserably. He’d cheated on Marisol, he’d chased a ghost in a woman named Kim who wore Shannon’s face, and he’d essentially driven his son halfway across the country because he couldn't get his own head on straight.
Redemption had to start somewhere. It had to start with the truth.
“Christopher,” Eddie started, his voice steady despite the pounding in his heart. “There’s something I need to tell you. I didn't want to keep hiding things from you, and I know this is... it's a big thing to hear over a screen.”
“…I’m listening.”
He took a breath, bracing himself for the reaction. “I’ve realised something about myself. I’ve realised that... I like men.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Through the tiny lens of the camera, Eddie watched Christopher’s face. The boy went quiet, his expression unreadable, and a wave of guilt crashed over Eddie. He felt like a failure for springing this on him so soon after the trauma of the previous months, after the mess he'd made with Kim and the memory of Shannon. But he had to.
He wanted Christopher to be the first one to know.
Finally, Christopher spoke. He shifted in his chair in El Paso, his voice sounding young and dangerously vulnerable when it finally cracked the silence.
“It’s Buck, isn't it?”
Eddie froze. He felt a phantom heat rise to his cheeks, but he didn't look away. He nodded slowly, his throat tight. “Yeah. It’s Buck.”
Christopher pursed his lips, looking down at his lap for a moment before meeting his father’s eyes again. There was a maturity those wide blue eyes that always caught Eddie off guard—a remnant of everything they’d survived together. Sometimes he still saw Shannon in the shadows of his features but had grown up to be his own person; someone strong and kind.
“I’m happy for you, dad,” Chris said softly, before his expression sharpened with a bit of that classic Diaz stubbornness. “But if you guys ever break up... we’re still keeping Buck.”
The tension in Eddie’s chest snapped, replaced by a startled, half-relieved laugh that bordered on a sob. He wiped a hand over his face, feeling the weight of the world lift just a fraction. What had he ever done to deserve his beautiful boy?
“You don't have to worry about that, bud,” Eddie promised, his voice thick with a new kind of certainty. “He's not going anywhere.”
---
He went on four dates.
The first was a sweet guy, a curly haired teacher, who talked about his cat for forty minutes. The second was a blue-eyed corporate lawyer who was handsome and sharp. The third was a guy named Julian, who was perfectly nice but looked nothing like the mental image Eddie kept subconsciously comparing him to. Midway through a glass of overpriced red wine with Mark, the hilariously buff baker, Eddie realized he was staring at the man’s mouth and feeling... nothing.
Physically? Sure. Eddie had always liked sex; he wasn't dead. But there was no spark, no 'click,' no urge to tell Mark about the squirrel he saw skittering up the mango tree next to his house because he didn’t know if Mark would actually find it cute.
Mark seemed to sense it too, giving Eddie an awkward and far too sympathetic look before they agreed to call it an early night.
Like the others, Mark had no question for a second date. Eddie would feel worse about it if he didn’t have another dozens of bad openings he’d been ignoring.
---
The house was dark when he came back, a sweating can of coke sitting forgotten in front of the dark TV.
“It’s Friday,” he muttered to himself. He could’ve been home with Buck in an old hoodie and sipping beer while laughing at Buck’s irrational beef with every “old” CGI movie. Instead, he went to an overpriced bistro in a nice, too-small shirt and sipped wine with a stranger.
He sighed and shuffled into the bathroom.
A late-night deep dive into Reddit and a few frantic Google searches later, Eddie tossed his phone onto the sofabed. Staring at the ceiling, he decided didn't really care about the labels after all. Straight, gay, bi, queer, he’d figure that out later but what he definitely knew was he didn't need to date the rest of Los Angeles to realise that they weren't Buck.
So, he stopped the “gym trips” and shifted his strategy.
He started small. He’d drive Buck around during their “hangouts”, refusing to let Buck drive. He’d take him out to dinners—real dinner, not just takeout on the couch—and he’d intercept payments before Buck could even blink. He started consciously opening doors, lingering a little longer when they said goodnight, and watching the way Buck’s confused face slowly melted into a flustered, pink-cheeked shyness.
Seeing Buck blush because of him—not because of a joke or a mistake, but because Eddie was looking at him with intention—gave Eddie a sense of giddiness he hadn't felt since he was a teenager.
Ah, Eddie thought during one of those “hangouts”, watching Buck ramble about the history of ice cream and the way the sunlight caught on his curls while they were sitting in a new café. This is it. This is the feeling.
Love swelled in his chest, until he couldn’t help but blur it out. “I love you.”
Oh.
Just as he imagined countless times, Eddie watched Buck react with predictable confusion and a good amount of hilarious mental leaps to justify Eddie’s straightness. At the same time, the shock on Buck’s face was so profound it almost made Eddie want to take it back, to retreat into the safety of the stoicism he had spent thirty years perfecting.
But there was no amount of imagining that could predict how terrifyingly happy Eddie felt after the confession. A borderline delirious joy bubbled in his chest, stretching his grin wide until his face hurt. He felt pink-cheeked and light, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
“L-love you too, man,” Buck stammered, his voice jumping an octave as he reached for a shield that didn't exist. Eddie’s eyes involuntarily drifted down to his mouth, to the little teeth poking between pink lips. “But look, I’m still not paying the bill, even if you try the ‘best friends’ card. You set the precedent at the Thai place.”
“No, no,” Eddie laughed, before his voice dropped into a register of absolute certainty. “Buck, I’m in love with you.”
Buck’s mouth fell open, a tiny dot of that soap-flavoured ice cream still on his lower lip. Eddie wanted to lick it off. “But... you’re straight.”
“Thought so too,” Eddie replied with a shrug that felt like shedding a heavy winter coat. It was a bit silly to act so brave while Buck was losing his mind but the teasing him was one of the little pleasures in life that he always indulged in. “But nope.”
“I... what are you doing?” Buck asked, his eyes darting around the small cafe as if looking for a hidden camera or a punchline.
Eddie reached up, his fingers find the familiar rough skin of his jawline. He rubbed it, a nervous tic he couldn’t suppress despite the confidence vibrating through him. “I’m trying to ask you out, Buck. Properly.”
Buck was speechless. For a long minute, he just stared, his expression flickering between disbelief and a deep, aching sort of caution. When he finally spoke, Eddie straightened in his seat thinking oh, this is it, but Buck’s voice was small, coloured by the ghosts of his past. He started talking about Tommy, about the words that had clearly been festering in his mind like a wound—how a first couldn’t be a last, how Eddie needed to ‘discover’ himself before he could ever think about settling down with one man.
Eddie listened, but the more Buck spoke, the more ridiculous it sounded. It was a logical fallacy, a rule written by someone who didn't know the weight of what Eddie and Buck already shared. Not for the first time, Eddie was amazed by how much of an insecure idiot Tommy was for fumbling Buck. His beautiful, bright Buck came to him bringing love and joy and he, what, broke up with him because he was scared off by his own imagination that one day Buck would leave him for some other man?
What a load of bullshit.
“Stop,” Eddie cut him off, his voice firm. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not! Eddie, you have to go out and explore what’s out there. You can’t just—you haven't even looked!”
Eddie could’ve told him around Tinder, about how those interesting, handsome guys couldn’t even hold a candle to Buck, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he took a slow, deliberate look around the crowded cafe. He looked at the guy typing on a laptop, the couple in the corner, the barista behind the counter. He turned back to Buck and leaned in. “Okay. Done.”
Buck frowned, his brow furrowing in confusion. “What?”
“I looked around. I’m done.”
“Eddie, I’m serious. You don’t—”
Eddie cut him off softly. “Buck, I’ve been loving you for years. I didn’t just wake up and decide I like men in the abstract. I realised I love you. I’m not suddenly gonna fall in love with some random dude at a club just because I’ve realised I’m allowed to like men.”
He watched Buck’s throat bob as he swallowed hard. He didn’t even know why Buck was such a staunch defender of his non-existent heterosexuality, it was kinda fascinating to watch. “B-but a platonic relationship is different from a romantic one, Eddie. It’s a jump. It’s... it’s not the same.”
Ah. Eddie leaned back, a small, knowing smirk playing on his lips. “It’s not all that different, actually.”
Buck looked even more bewildered, his hands twitching on the table. “What does that even mean?”
“It means,” Eddie began, his voice grounding and steady, “that I’ve been taking you out on dates for the last few weeks. The dinners, the movies, the way I pick you up and won't let you pay—none of that changed my mind. In fact, it just solidified what I already knew: I’m in love with you.”
He watched the realization wash over Buck like a physical wave. Buck’s eyes went wide as he clearly started replaying their last few hangouts in his head. The embarrassment was immediate, a deep red flush creeping up Buck’s neck and into his ears. He looked pathetically, beautifully flustered, and Eddie felt a surge of protectiveness so strong it made his hands twitch to hold him.
“I’d spent a long time being confused,” Eddie continued, his voice dropping into that vulnerable space his parents had forced open weeks ago. “Trying to improve myself. As a dad, a husband, a man. Sometimes I thought I should wait, that I should be better because you deserve someone better. But then I thought, why wait? What if someone unimaginably perfect came along and swept you off your feet?”
They both let out a short, breathless laugh at the absurdity of it, but Eddie sobered quickly. He looked Buck straight in the eye and hoped to God that he saw the earnest vow spilling from his face.
“I didn't want to waste more time fooling around in hopes of finding a love like this,” Eddie said, “not when I could just go home to you.”
---
When they climbed into Eddie’s truck, the air was thick with an electric kind of silence, like the air right before a lightning strike. Eddie kept his hands at ten and two, his eyes fixed on the road, though he was acutely aware of every shift and fidget Buck made in the passenger seat.
The caution was still there, radiating off Buck in waves. Eddie could practically see the gears turning, the younger man trying to reconcile the best friend version of Eddie with this new, terrifyingly honest version.
Finally, Buck broke the silence, his voice a little tight and breathless.
“You know I snore, right?”
Eddie didn't look away from the road, but a small, permanent smirk took root on his face. “I know, Buck.”
“Like, really loudly. It’s not a cute whistle, it’s like... a chainsaw,” Buck continued, his words tumbling out faster like he was trying to chase Eddie away. “And I get too clingy when I sleep. Even if it’s a hundred degrees and the AC is broken, I’m gonna be like a koala with separation anxiety. You’ll be sweating and miserable.”
Eddie navigated a turn, his movements smooth and practiced. “I know.”
“I'm a blanket stealer. I'll take the whole thing and leave you shivering in the middle of January,” Buck added, his hands gesturing wildly in Eddie's peripheral vision. “And I get pissy easily if I haven't eaten. And I forget to do the dishes often because I get distracted by... things. I'm a lot to handle—”
“Buck.”
Eddie pulled the truck to a stop at a red light. He finally turned his head, catching the way Buck’s blue eyes were wide and searching, looking for any sign of hesitation or regret in Eddie’s expression. Sighing inwardly, he reached over, briefly resting his hand on Buck’s bouncing knee, a grounding weight that seemed to settle the frantic energy in him.
“Buck,” Eddie said again, his voice low and steady. “We've been living in each other's pockets for close to a decade now.”
The light turned green, and Eddie pulled away, but he didn't let the conversation drop.
“I know you snore. I know about the dishes. I know about the way you ramble when you’re nervous and how you need the heater turned on even when it’s too hot for me because your body lose heat like a small animal. We’ve been through shootings, kidnappings, and enough trauma to last three lifetimes. We’ve raised Chris. We’ve survived everything else—we’ll figure out the rest.”
He felt Buck’s tension bleed out, replaced by a soft, shaky exhale. Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie saw Buck lean back into the headrest, a small, shy smile finally touching his lips. He looked—dare he say—pathetically in love, and Eddie felt a fierce, burning pride that he was the one who got to see it.
“Yeah?” Buck whispered.
“Yeah,” Eddie promised, pulling the truck into their familiar parking spot.
He had spent years being a man for everyone else, following a blueprint that never quite fit. But as he looked at Buck in the dim glow of the dashboard lights, he realised he didn't need a map. He was already home.