Chapter Text
“Pick someone who’s supportive,” Buck says, the ends of his words blurring together. “You know? That's like—evidential.”
“Essential?” Eddie asks, handing Buck another cracker. He takes it, and squints at it a little before he nods, dislodging the crumbs already scattered all over his gown.
“You're right,” the nurse says, carefully taking the oximeter off Buck's finger without him noticing. “It's really important to have a supportive partner.”
She smiles at Eddie as she says it, a wide and friendly thing that should set him at ease, but all it does is make the back of his neck feel hot. He should correct that assumption. He doesn't usually, but it feels wrong with Buck like this, when he doesn't even know which way is up. Like Eddie's taking advantage.
“Okay, Mr. Diaz,” she says, running the tip of her finger down Buck's chart. “You have the room for another hour. I'll get the discharge papers together, and you come out whenever you're ready.”
Inexplicably, Buck starts giggling, loud and bright for a second before it dissolves into hiccups.
“Thanks,” Eddie says, not really looking as the nurse leaves the room, because watching Buck like this is making him feel barely functional. He wants nothing more than to crawl into the bed and pull Buck into his arms and kiss his hair. To smooth out the deep, confused wrinkle that appears in his forehead every other minute as he encounters something he doesn't understand, like the bandage over his ear or the little tray table that folds up and down or, a few minutes ago, Eddie himself.
“You're supportive,” Buck says, blinking very hard. He puts his hand down on the bedspread and stares at it, like maybe he wants to make it move but doesn't remember how.
Eddie sighs. Reaches forward. Takes it, because he's only one man hopelessly in love, and his willpower is being tried today.
“I am?” he asks, only shivering a little when Buck slots their fingers together.
Buck nods. He overshoots a little, and his chin hits his chest, but he manages to get his head upright again.
“You gave me crackers,” he says. “They were good.”
“I'm glad,” Eddie smiles. He knows he probably looks all cow-eyed and embarrassing, but there's no one here to see him, and if Buck's a little defenseless, it's only fair that he be the same. “I’m gonna take you home in a minute, okay?”
Buck wrinkles his nose, purses his lips. “Home?”
“Yep,” Eddie nods. It’s technically a lie, because they’re going back to Eddie’s, but he’d suggested it that way - I can just come get you and take you home, don’t worry about it - and been rewarded with one of those squinty, head-down smiles, so he figures he can get away with it. “You’re probably going to get sleepy again, and I promise the bed at home is better than this.”
“Home,” Buck tilts his head, almost all the way down, his cheek brushing his own shoulder. “I have one?”
“Buck,” Eddie says, his voice so nakedly affectionate it scares him a little. Buck had warned him, had apologized for anything he might say before the anesthesia wears off, and Eddie knows he goes from happy straight to maudlin when he’s drunk, but he was hoping that high Buck might just be funny.
Instead, he’s hunched in an uncomfortable hospital chair on a Thursday afternoon, and he wants to hold Buck close so badly he aches with it.
“You have a home,” he says, and runs his thumb over the back of Buck’s hand. “That’s where we’re going to go so you can sleep this off, and I’m going to take care of you for a couple of days.”
Buck blinks, his eyes glassy and so, so very blue, and then his face splits into a brilliant grin.
“Yeah?”
“Of course,” Eddie squeezes his hand.
“Wow,” Buck replies, and clumsily reaches out to touch Eddie’s face. He almost pokes Edie in the eye, his fingertips bumping into Eddie's cheekbone and the side of his nose, but Eddie doesn’t dare move.
Finally, he has the side of Eddie’s face cupped in his hand, still grinning until he squints, his entire face scrunching with it.
“Are you my husband?”
Eddie wheezes. “Um,” he says as Buck presses a curious finger to the corner of his lips. “What makes you ask that?”
Buck squints harder. “Do you know that video?” he asks the ceiling. “There’s a guy in a hospital, and his wife is really hot.”
Slowly, Eddie takes a breath and wills it to stay in his lungs. What is he supposed to do with this?
“I do know that video,” he says, holding on to Buck's hand for dear life. “You showed me. When you asked me to come pick you up from the hospital, actually.”
Buck blinks. “I'm in the hospital,” he says. “And you're hot.”
“So I'm your husband?” Eddie laughs, and then keeps laughing, a little hysterically. Buck keeps his hand on Eddie's face, poking at where his teeth come out as he laughs, trailing his fingers up over Eddie's temple, into his hair. His mouth is open a little the whole time, awed.
“You gave me crackers,” he says. “And you’re going to take care of me. And you were nice to the nurse. He’d be nice. My husband.”
And it's funny, really, that Eddie has spent months and months trying to find the perfect moment, the exact right time, to tell Buck how he feels about him. It's funny, because he's had to turn away and curl his hands into fists and swallow so many things that felt like they were too close to the truth, afraid he was going to get his one chance wrong.
But he looks at Buck now, messy-haired and squinty in the artificial light of the hospital room, wearing a gown covered in crumbs, trusting Eddie even when he doesn't remember who Eddie is, and it's never been harder to hold the words back.
So he squeezes Buck's hand again, and laughs when Buck accidentally pulls his hair, and thinks—tomorrow.
Tomorrow, he's going to tell him.
But for today—
“I'm not your husband,” Eddie says, and reaches for Buck's clothes with his free hand. “I'm sorry.”
Buck nods. He sighs so dramatically the corners of his eyes go a little shiny with tears. “Course not. Nobody would—ugh. My mouth is salty.”
Eddie sets the clothes down and reaches for some water, untangling their hands so he can run his fingers through Buck's hair and help him tilt his head. He's being so gentle about it that it makes him flush a little, but then Buck's eyes flutter closed, and his face furrows a little with the pain he'll probably start feeling soon, and Eddie's touch goes softer still.
“Nobody would marry me,” Buck says once he swallows, continuing right on. He picks at a pill on the bedspread, rolls it between his fingers. “Right? 'M not—relationship material.”
Eddie presses a kiss into his hair. “Where'd you hear that?” he asks, as he reaches behind Buck's neck to untie his gown. Buck leans forward to give him room, keeps his arms up when Eddie nudges them there, but he gets tangled trying to put them in the sleeves of the t-shirt he'd brought.
“Don't know,” he mumbles as Eddie wraps a hand around his wrist and slowly guildes it through the opening. “Someone told me. Too—” he sniffs, “too much.”
“Okay,” Eddie says, repeating the same thing on the other side, soothing a thumb over where Buck's pulse is a little on the quick side. “I can't tell you how I know this, but if you help me put on your pants, I'll tell you a secret.”
Buck tilts his head and looks at him with wide, sad eyes. Eddie wishes he could kiss it away, wishes he could tell Buck that he's his husband, but he's a second-guessing son of a bitch, so all he can do for now is poke at Buck's cheek, where his dimple usually sits.
And it works.
It's not a real Buck smile, not so wide it almost makes his eyes close, but it's happy enough that when Eddie dangles the sweatpants in front of him, he does his best to get into them, leaning on Eddie's shoulder when he has to stand up.
“I have pants on,” he says, staring down at them. Eddie only realizes now that they're his own, because the cuffs he usually trails on the floor come to about mid-calf on Buck. “Wow.”
You packed my sweatpants to go home from the hospital, Eddie wants to say, so in love with this ridiculous, ridiculous man he might choke on it. But Buck does, indeed, have pants on now, and Eddie has a promise to keep.
“So,” he says, standing steady as Buck carefully sits back down on the bed. “You want to know a secret?”
“Yeah,” Buck grins. He reaches out, watching his hand like he's not quite in control of it. He curls his fingers into the hem of Eddie's t-shirt and yanks, strong enough to get Eddie to move a couple of steps forward, until he's standing in the open vee of Buck's legs. Buck's shorter than him, this way, looking up at Eddie wide-eyed and sweet. “Tell me.”
“I know someone,” he says, ghosting his fingers over the pink skin of Buck's birthmark, “who'd love to be your husband one day.”
Buck's mouth drops open. “No.”
“Yeah,” Eddie grins, and bends down to kiss the top of Buck's head again, cradling Buck's face in his hands. “He doesn't think you're too much. He thinks you're the best thing that ever happened to him, actually, and I know for a fact that he'd love to marry you.”
“Me,” Buck says, and goes through a dozen facial expressions as he processes what Eddie just said. “Will he give me crackers too?”
“Sure,” Eddie says, and blinks the sting of tears out of his eyes, “he'll give you crackers.”
Buck nods, schooling his face into something serious, only a little undercut by his bottom lip jutting out in a pout.
“Who is he?” he asks.
“You can meet him tomorrow,” Eddie promises, and tries his best to stand his ground when Buck tugs on his shirt again, frustrated, like he wants Eddie closer. “Okay? I promise. You'll meet him tomorrow, and then you can decide if you want to be his husband, too.”
“Only if he's nice to the nurse,” Buck replies, his eyes falling shut for a beat too long. Eddie catches his head before it drops down against his chest, soft hands on Buck's jaw, and Buck smiles with his eyes closed.
“Hey,” Eddie says, and pokes a finger into Buck's cheek again. “Let's go home? You can't meet him until you've had some sleep in a real bed.”
“Home,” Buck repeats, that dazed look back in his eyes. “And you're going to take care of me?”
Eddie breathes in, and swallows the words down another time. Tomorrow.
“Yeah, Buck,” he smiles instead, with his heart fluttering behind his ribs. “I'm going to take care of you.”