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Since moving back to LA from El Paso, Eddie and Chris have been living with Buck as a…temporary solution. That temporary solution has become more and more permanent with every apartment and house Buck has been denied for. Things were a little prickly initially, rushed mornings with only one bathroom, tension bleeding from when Eddie first came back to LA, arguments about the ‘equal distribution of chores’. But they quickly fell into a comfortable rhythm. Buck cooks, Eddie does the dishes. They alternate who drops Chris off at school and who spends the night on the couch.
Eddie has a now-permanent crick in his neck in the shape of the couch armrest, but it’s a fair trade-off.
They all have the day off, a rare weekend where Buck and Eddie are off shift, Chris is off school, and the day hasn’t been loaded with appointments or activities already. They’re sitting around the kitchen table, Chris with his too-sweet cereal, Buck with his coffee loaded with creamer, and Eddie with his black coffee and a splash of milk.
The morning sun bleeds through the blinds that hang over the windows, bathing the room in warm, amber light. Eddie listens intently to the familiar chatter of Buck and Chris. He wholeheartedly believes that they could talk for hours and not run out of things to say to each other.
It’s akin to watching a tennis match; they seamlessly transition from whatever topic catches their interest in the moment, each fun fact is parried with a detailed anecdote, bouncing the conversation back and forth between each other with ease.
Buck pulls out his phone as Chris is explaining the mechanics of the newest ‘R.P.G.’(?) he’s been playing. Buck mumbles sounds of interest and agreement as his attention is split by whatever he’s looking at.
He flips around his phone to show the table, weather app open with ‘79°’ written in bold. “Hey, it’s a nice day out, why don’t we go out for brunch?” he asks with cautious hope plastered all over his face. “Chris, do you want to go to that cafe we went to the other week?”
“Oh yeah! Their waffles were delicious,” says Chris enthusiastically.
Twin puppy dog eyes flip over to him, “C’mon Eds, let’s do something today.”
And Eddie—the weak man he is—agrees almost instantly.
—
“Can I get an iced caramel latte with oat milk? He’ll get a latte with one Splenda,” says Buck to the waitress. “And Chris, what do you want?”
“Can I get a mocha frappe, please?”
“Sounds good!” The waitress scribbles down their orders in her notepad. “Do we know what we want for food, or should I come back?”
“...I think we can order now?” answers Buck, looking to Chris and Eddie for confirmation.
“Yeah, I'll just get the Belgian waffles with some cream,” orders Chris with a practised, polite smile.
“And I’ll get the Tofu poke bowl. Eddie, do you want the salmon potato rosti?” Buck adds.
Eddie just nods. He hasn’t even opened the menu, hasn’t opened a menu when he’s out with Buck in years. Initially, they would go out to eat, and Eddie would always somehow order the wrong thing, then would stare longingly at whatever Buck had ordered until he inevitably gave in and swapped their plates around. So now Eddie just lets Buck order for him, which has not steered him wrong.
He trusts Buck’s tastes quite a lot, like this cafe, for example. It’s a little trendy for his taste—the signage is entirely in lowercase for whatever reason—but the food on everyone's tables looks mouthwatering.
“Alright, I’ll get those started for you.”
Twin ‘Thank you!’s spill from Buck and Chris’ lips, perfectly in time like a rehearsed duet.
Ten minutes later, their food and drink come out, and his food is—unsurprisingly—delicious. Turns out that ‘potato rosti’ is just a fancy way of saying hashbrown, but it’s really, really good. He can feel Buck’s eyes on him, watching for approval on his meal selection. In lieu of an answer, Eddie stacks a perfectly proportioned bite onto his fork, making sure every element of the dish is present. He takes the fork and holds it in front of Buck. The food wobbles precariously before Buck wraps his lips around it.
“Mhmm, that’s fuckin delicious,” mumbles Buck, mouth still filled with rosti.
“Don’t talk when you're eating,” chides Eddie lightly.
Buck waves his hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah…” he watches as Buck starts building his own handcrafted bite of his poke bowl, edamame precariously balanced on the edge of his spoon, rice and tofu piled on top of each other.
Buck extends his hand out to Eddie once he decides he's happy with his creation. He holds his spare hand underneath Eddie’s head to catch any food that falls, the tips of his fingers grazing Eddie’s chin. He veers forward to take the food off Buck’s spoon, leaning into Buck’s space further.
Eddie hums appreciatively as he eats—not opening his mouth, mind you—it’s good, but not as good as what Buck got him.
“Jesus Christ,” Eddie hears from the other side of the table. He turns his head to see a very unimpressed Christopher shaking his head disapprovingly.
“What?”
“The fact that you don’t know, means you’re too far gone for me to explain,” retorts Chris in his now-signature sass.
Eddie just shrugs. Teenagers are so cryptic nowadays.
The rest of the meal continues in a familiar fashion. Buck spends the time recounting one of the calls they had last shift to Chris, who listens like he hasn’t heard a very similar story since he was seven years old. Eddie pipes up with the occasional correction where Buck has exaggerated majorly, only to earn a ‘Shhh, I’m storytelling’ and a dismissive wave.
Eddie and Christopher both have to wait about 10 minutes after they’ve finished their meals for Buck to finish his—as his incessant yet endearing chatter meant that he was barely able to get a bite in before he launched into another segment of his story.
“Alright, everyone done?” Eddie asks rhetorically to the table. “You guys head to the car, I’ll go pay.”
“No, no Eds, I got it,”
“Buck, go to the car.”
“He’s not gonna let you, Buck, just give up.” Chides Chris.
Buck lets out a commiserating sigh, turning to leave the cafe with Christopher.
Eddie stalks up to the register, weaving between the considerable queue that has now formed. The first group staring daggers into him for the amount of time they took at their table.
The waitress—Kylie, according to her nametag—greets him with a bright smile.
“Sorry just paying for…”
“Table 12! I remember,” she injects brightly whilst ringing him up.
Eddie only winces slightly at the final count of the bill as he reaches into his wallet for his card.
“You have a gorgeous family.”
Eddie feels his face split into a wide grin. “Thank you,” he responds sheepishly.
“How long have you and your husband been together?”
The words rattle around in Eddie’s head for a moment as he stammers like a fool mid-swipe of his card. “I—Uh, seven…seven years.”
The waitress smiles brightly. “That’s so sweet. Have a great rest of your day, sir.”
“Uh, yeah. Thanks.” Eddie places a fiver in the tip jar and spins right on his heels, leaving the cafe in a rush.
God. Who did she—did she mean? Buck?
Husband, Husband. Evan Buckley as his husband. Eddie feels his heart thumping, threatening to break straight through his ribcage as if he just ran a marathon—not engaged in small talk with a waitress who was eager for tips.
Why did he—why didn’t he correct her? How hard would it have been to have just said, ‘Oh, no, you’re mistaken. He’s my roommate and best friend and work partner and the legal guardian of my child, but he is NOT my husband’.
Buck is gonna—God, if he heard Eddie say that? He’d be so fucking uncomfortable. If he knew that Eddie was just running around Los Angeles, lying about their relationship to anyone who asked.
Eddie sees Chris and Buck walking down the sidewalk toward the car and takes off into a near-sprint to catch up with them.
Buck smiles as Eddie approaches the pair. “Hey Eds! All settled up?”
“Hmm,” He grunts out like a caveman. The mumble of agreement seems to satisfy Buck as he furrows his brows, but doesn’t ask any follow-up questions.
He watches from a comfortable distance as Buck opens the back passenger door for Chris, taking his crutches and putting them in the seat next to Chris with such routine care. Husband.
He shakes the thought off as he gets into the passenger seat of the truck. The car pulls out of the parking lot as Eddie stares ahead into the traffic, listening to the sounds of his son and his—no, wrong, his son and Buck conversing back and forth about Chris’s upcoming chemistry project.
They get about halfway through the short drive home before his dissociation is rudely interrupted by a punctuated cough in his direction. Eddie turns his head to see Buck looking right at him, red light from the stoplight illuminating the frown lines on his forehead, wrinkled in confusion and concern.
“Eddie, what’s up? You haven’t said a word since we left the cafe. I can feel you vibrating in your seat.”
“It’s—It’s nothing,” he stutters.
Buck tilts his head in disbelief. “It’s clearly something, you’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“Y’know, when you pick at the skin around your nails when you’re nervous.”
“I don’t—” Eddie looks down at his hands to see that the skin of his fingers is red raw, the first layer peeled to the side.
Eddie collapses into his hands, rubbing roughly up and down his face. “Shit,” he mutters into his hands. “God. I’m really sorry, Buck.”
“Sorry? Why are you sorry?”
“That woman, the waitress. She called you my husband, and I—I didn’t correct her. I’m sorry I should’ve said something, I should’ve…”
The car is silent for a moment, a long, agonising moment, before the whole car shakes in raucous laughter.
“Eddie,” Buck croaks out before dissolving into another fit of laughter. “I could not care less if you let people think I’m your husband.”
“Yeah, Buck. That would be very hypocritical of you,” contributes Chris in between laughs.
“What—What do you mean, hypocritical? Why are you laughing at me right now?”
Buck’s face goes green as he rolls through the now open intersection. “I have been mistaken for your husband for years. I’ve been called ‘Mr Diaz’ more times than I can count.”
“What!? Who?”
“Well, there was that Elf.”
“Elf?”
“People at the school, our neighbours,” he continues, notably not addressing the elf thing. “Wait, you were there when your real estate agent in El Paso thought we were together!”
“That real estate agent did not think we were together.”
Buck scoffs. “She one hundred percent did! She said ‘can I get your partner's email’ and you said ‘no, my email is fine’.”
“Yeah, partner. You’re my partner.”
Chris lets out an undignified snort. “Oh my god. Dad, you cannot be this dumb.”
“Yeah, your work partner, but that is not what people mean when they say that; they mean romantic partner,” clarifies Buck.
Eddie scoffs. “No, they don’t. People call you my partner all the time.”
“Yes, Eds. They think I’m your boyfriend or husband nine times out of ten.”
Eddie shakes his head vehemently in disagreement.
Buck scoffs at Eddie’s contestation. “Okay, you don’t believe me? Fine.” Buck turns to face the backseat. “Chris? How many times have people thought your Dad and I were married?”
“At least 40 times, I stopped correcting them about five years ago,” he answers.
“Y’know, I stopped correcting them seven years ago. It’s just easier.” Buck says with a shrug, like it’s a completely casual thing.
“So don’t be sorry. I really, really do not care if people think you’re my husband.” He continues, shooting Eddie a toothy grin as he pulls the truck into the driveway with a familiar ease.
Eddie once again freezes as he watches Buck put the car in park, jumping out to grab Chris’s crutches. He watches as Buck runs around the car to hand them off to Chris just as he jumps out of the backseat. Husband.
Eddie looks down at his left hand and waits for a wedding band to materialise.
It doesn’t.
It takes a moment of staring into the abyss before Eddie is able to snap himself out of his stupor, but he manages to pull it off. He hops out of the car, shutting the door so softly he has to do it again so it properly closes.
As he walks up to the house, Buck turns around and lightly jogs back to him, face now caring and apologetic. “I’ll correct people from now on. I shouldn’t have assumed it would be okay with you, I’m sorry.”
“No, no Buck, I don’t—” Buck calling Eddie his husband definitely does not bother him. The thought evokes some kind of emotion, but it doesn’t feel like a negative one. “I was just worried about making you uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable with it.” Buck shakes his head for emphasis. “It’s kind of nice if I’m honest.” The words come out like a bashful whisper.
Nice. Nice? Buck finds it nice that people think Eddie is his husband. “Okay, yeah… I—I’m fine with people assuming.”
“Okay, then we’re good, right?” Asks Buck with his blindingly charm-filled smile.
Eddie nods slowly. “…We’re good, Buck.”
—
They are not good.
Throughout the day, Eddie looks at Buck, and all he can think is Husband. Buck’s making dinner? Husband. Vacuuming the rug? Husband. Dozing off on the couch, history book hanging limp in his hand? That’s his husband right there.
And now Eddie is staring at the popcorn ceiling of the living room, thinking about it—like he’s some kind of teenager in a coming-of-age movie.
It’s been years since Eddie was anyone’s husband, and he’s never been a good one at any point. But he’s been walking around, living as Evan Buckley’s husband for seven years, unbeknownst to him.
Fuck, are they married? They live in the same house, share a bed—technically—, both contribute to Chris’ college fund, have a shared bank account for bills, they have a chore chart for god's sake. That would at the very least be recognised as some kind of de facto relationship in the eyes of the State of California.
No wonder every stranger who sees them apparently thinks they're in a committed, gay relationship.
And Eddie has been running around California, declaring to everyone that Buck is his partner—when did that change to mean romantic by the way? And why did no one tell him?
What the fuck does he call him now? Because that’s what Buck is, his partner. He’s also obviously Eddie’s best friend, but that descriptor feels…dismissive, almost. It’s not enough to paint an accurate picture of what they are to each other. Technically, technically Buck is no longer his partner in the original meaning. That’s Hen now. But it feels odd to call her that, almost an insult to Buck and what he means to him.
Because Buck means everything to him. Eddie doesn’t think there are enough adjectives and descriptors in the English language to describe what he is to him.
Two weeks ago, Eddie offhandedly mentioned missing a marinated short rib from a local barbecue place in El Paso. Three days after that, Buck kicked him out of the kitchen, refusing to even let Eddie get a cup of water, only to emerge two and a half hours later, apron covered in marinade, holding a plate of short ribs in his hands and a proud grin on his face. Buck had gone online and tracked down the tiny barbecue place, and found a Facebook post from 2017 of some abuela explaining the recipe, then translated it from Spanish and recreated it in their home in Los Angeles.
So yeah, husband is starting to feel like an accurate description the more he thinks about it.
And Buck, he’s the best faux husband he could ask for. He’s never met someone so…just downright good. That's not to say Buck doesn't have flaws; he has become intimately familiar with them over the last eight-odd years. But they don’t really feel like flaws to Eddie—just part of the complex infrastructure of what makes him Buck. You can’t get his care without his tendency to self-sacrifice, his loyalty without his abandonment issues. Eddie doesn't think there's a single, microscopic cell of Buck that he would change.
And fuck, he’s got no clue what he did to deserve it.
He doesn't know why Buck has been so comfortable letting people think that Eddie is his boyfriend, or husband, or whatever. The last relationship he tried to have resulted in his son running across state lines. Then promptly left Buck with his house while he chased after said son, just adding himself to the list of people who left Buck—something he never thought he would do.
Eddie can’t put his finger on the why, but people thinking they’re together makes him…sad. He doesn't think there's anything wrong with people thinking he and Buck are a couple. It just feels wrong that people think they are when they absolutely, categorically are not. Like some sort of perverted stolen valour. It feels wrong for him to be walking around letting people think that Evan Buckley is his husband if that is not the case.
—
The next morning, Eddie wakes up to the smell of coffee wafting into the living room. He rubs the sleep off his eyes as he walks into the kitchen. He’s met with the sight of Buck leaning casually against the island, completely at ease—like he’s part of the furniture, a foundational piece of the house.
Buck’s smile nearly reaches his ears when he sets his eyes on Eddie. He reaches across the counter for the two mugs that were waiting there, steam still rising into the air.
Buck pulls the chipped mug towards himself that is decorated with prints of old Superman comics, faded from years of use. The coffee inside is a pale tan, majority of it being his sickly-sweet vanilla creamer. He extends the other mug to Eddie, it’s the clay, lumpy one that Chris brought home from his 5th grade art class, the ceramic is rough against his tongue, Buck knows it’s his favourite.
Eddie looks at Buck with his sleep-stirred hair and the lines from his pillow etched into his cheeks and thinks, husband.
—
“Do I look gay?” Asks Eddie, crowding Hen in the loft after the morning debrief.
“Hello, Eddie, good morning to you, too,” responds Hen dryly.
“Hi, Hen, do I look gay?”
“You don’t want me to answer that question.” Hen walks past Eddie’s lacklustre attempt to box her in for an answer.
“Yes, I do. I really, really do.”
“Before I say anything I can’t take back, where has this come from?”
Eddie hasn’t stopped thinking about the whole thing since it happened. He knows he’s been stilted with Buck, stumbling over his words with him in a way he’s never done before. Buck hasn’t called him out yet, just looked at him with sad, deep blue eyes whenever he thought Eddie wasn’t paying attention.
“Chris, Buck and I went out for brunch on the weekend. There was this waitress, and she thought Buck and I were… married,” he whispers the last words, cautious of the others in the loft.
Hen huffs out a laugh, “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Eddie stares at her, unimpressed.
“Eddie, sorry, but when you, Chris and Buck are together, you look like the picture-perfect gay family on adoption pamphlets”
Eddie huffs out a shallow laugh, not because he finds it particularly funny, but mostly because he feels a little like he’s been made a fool, completely unaware of how they came off to the rest of the world.
“Yeah, apparently that’s what everyone’s been thinking for years,” he responds sharply.
“And what? You’re worried people think you’re gay?” asks Hen in a defensive tone.
“No, I—I’m not homophobic. I’m just worried people are seeing something that I’m missing, that I’ve been missing.”
“Okay, so this woman thinks you are married. What happened after that has got you so freaked?”
So Eddie explains the whole story, from his panicked word vomit of telling the waitress they’ve been together for seven years, to Buck telling him this has been happening for their entire friendship. Hen jokingly mentions that Jefferson from C-shift thought that they’d had a very amicable divorce, which was not helpful, but whatever.
“...and then Buck said that it’s ‘nice’ that people think we're a couple. What does that mean?”
Hen’s face turns pensive. “Okay, Buck said he likes it. What about you?” Asks Hen. “Do you…hate it?”
“I don’t,” he shakes his head in disagreement. “I don’t hate it.
“God, with Anna...” he takes a steadying breath. “When someone thought she was Chris’ mother, I fucking collapsed, had a panic attack right then and there. But with this? I was stressed, yeah—but because I lied, because it wasn’t the truth, it wasn’t real. Even though it felt so fucking right.
I didn’t hate it because they thought Buck was my husband. I hated it because he isn’t.”
Oh.
Well fuck—that’s just it, isn't it? Eddie doesn't want it to be a lie, a misinterpretation of their relationship. He wants Buck to be his in every conceivable way. He wants that family, not the ready-made one he could’ve had with Anna, but the one that has been forged over years of trauma and loss alongside the love and joy. The one that people have been correctly identifying as a unit, a partnership, for so long.
Eddie lets out a long-held breath that he has been laying dormant for years—just waiting to come out with this sudden, crushing realisation.
Before he knows it, Hen pulls him in for a tight hug, somehow in her arms despite the three inches of height he has on her, he feels like a kid again, tiny and overwhelmed by life.
“Hen, what do I do?” he whispers into her shoulder where his head is securely tucked. “God, I’m in love with him, aren’t I?”
“The only person who can answer that is yourself, Eddie. I think you need to do some reflection and then go talk to your boy,” answers Hen into his ear in a hushed tone.
“He’s not my boy,” he mutters like an embarrassed teenager with a crush.
“Then change that.”
“But what if—”
“But nothing,” interrupts Hen, pulling back to make direct eye contact with him. “He loves you. Anyone with eyes can see that.”
“Anyone but me, apparently.”
Hen laughs sharply. “Anyone but you, yeah.”
—
So Eddie spends the rest of the shift doing what Hen told him, reflecting. The shift is pretty dull, so it leaves him plenty of time to do just that.
His brain keeps on reverting to Anna, that looming dread he felt when he was with her, when she tried earnestly to take their relationship further. It was like a physical barrier would draw up instinctually. A barrier so strong that he was somehow diagnosed by a doctor with repression. He almost wants to laugh at how obvious it is in hindsight. Another to add to the long list of people who knew him better than he knew himself.
Anna leads him smoothly into Shannon. The only emotion Eddie can feel about Shannon now is grief. Grief and copious amounts of regret. But he loved her, he thinks—no, he definitely did. Shannon was a shining light in his life when he was in El Paso, his north star guiding him out of the suffocating weight of his mother's control and his father's expectations. Their relationship was easy; conversation flowed without hesitation or anxiety.
It was easy until it wasn’t. That familiar weight of expectation loomed over them, so they did as they were told, the right thing—the Christian thing. When Christopher was born, it felt worth it, but it didn’t heal the rift that had formed between them, didn’t reattach the severed bond that he had become so reliant on for so many years. When they reconnected, they were never able to get back that familiar ease they had as teens, after the world told them what they needed to be to each other. He loved her, but never the way he was supposed to.
And finally, he lands on Buck. Buck is both easy and hard. It was almost too easy to let Buck into his life and into Chris’s. He just slotted right in, like Eddie carved out a life-sized hole for him, and maybe that's exactly what he did. What’s hard about Buck is really more about Eddie—about him being honest with himself about what Buck is to him, what he means to Eddie.
But he thinks he’s finally figured it out.
At the end of the shift, Eddie is pretty sure of what he needs to do. As he’s driving them both home, he lets the new silence stew, not out of the uncomfortability that had been brewing the previous two days, but rather that quiet that precedes something, the calm before a hopefully very good storm.
Buck does not seem to be in the calm before the storm. He is tapping on the dash with absolutely no backing track—a one-man, slightly out-of-time drumming solo. He keeps on glancing at Eddie, opening his mouth to speak and then promptly slamming it closed. Eddie can’t stop the smile that rises on his face watching his anxious fiddling. They arrive home quickly—LA traffic being uncharacteristically forgiving today—Eddie slips his work boots off, placing them next to Buck’s and hanging his jacket on the hook, whilst Buck throws their uniforms in the wash.
It's less than one minute after their front door shuts that Buck snaps, storming back into the entryway in a huff.
“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, Eddie. You’re acting off, and I know why. You can’t even look me in the eyes, and it’s all because of the married thing. I should’ve corrected them—”
“Buck.”
“Because you’re uncomfortable, which makes sense! Because I’m an idiot and we’re not a couple, and you’re straight and—
“Buck.”
“I let people think that we were together for years without telling you about it, and I swear to god Eddie, I—I will call everyone. The school, the waitress, the fucking elf and tell them that we aren’t together. Tell them the truth, because I cannot lose you Eds, I cannot lose you because I got too caught up in the fantasy to correct them, just please, please, I need us to go back to normal. So I’ll stop pretending and lying, and I’ll tell them all that we’re just frien—”
“I don’t want to be just friends, I want to be your fucking husband!
“God, Evan. I have been going insane because I couldn't stop thinking about how right it felt, how badly I wanted it to be real, for us to be real. I don’t want it to be an easy lie we tell for convenience's sake. I want it to be a hard truth we tell because I’m pretty sure that I’m in love with you!” He shouts. “And I'm also pretty sure that you love me back.”
That is not what Eddie was meant to do. He had a plan! A plan that involved a date at a swanky Italian restaurant, maybe lady-and-the-tramp-ing some pasta and a kiss right after they walk on the beach—a perfect, storybook date. But Buck, in all his adorable anxious brilliance, has forced it right out of him as an attempt to shut down his crazed ramblings.
Speaking of Buck, he’s a statue. Completely unresponsive.
Eddie walks up to him slowly—not wanting to spook him—and places both hands on his shoulders. Buck’s jaw is hung open, and it looks like he’s trying to form words, but they just aren’t getting out.
“Buck? You still there?” he asks in the tone he uses for shellshocked patients in the field.
“I—” he croaks out, blinking twice like he’s trying to snap himself out of a spell. He tries to speak one more time before he wraps his arms around Eddie’s waist and pulls him in for a rough kiss.
It immediately lands wrong. Eddie’s mouth is slightly open, so it hits his teeth rather than his lips, but then he repositions, closing his mouth to line them up properly.
And oh, that's more like it.
Buck’s lips are even softer than they look—and look he has—but they press into him with intensity. Like he’s trying to prove something to Eddie, perhaps himself.
The kiss is instantly dizzying, like nothing he’s ever experienced. Every one of his nerve endings seems to have been rewired to where Buck's skin meets his, so that all he can feel is the warmth provided by Buck and the steady pressure he’s applying to his waist and his lips. Eddie instinctively moves to wrap his arms around the back of Buck's neck.
Buck pulls him in even closer, and Eddie wouldn't be surprised if he turned around and had one leg bent up as if he’s the female lead in a '90s romcom. He groans into the kiss, and Buck takes it for the invitation that it is, sliding his tongue between Eddie’s lips and licking into his mouth. Eddie snakes one of his hands up to Buck’s hair, gripping the curls as he pulls Buck down to deepen the kiss impossibly further. The sound that elicits from Buck has Eddie’s brain completely scrambled, just a repeating chant of ‘make him make that sound again’.
They make out like that for what somehow feels like both seconds and hours, pure desperation as their hands try to grip whatever they can, moving all over each other's bodies. Eventually, they do have to come up for oxygen, Buck pulling away first.
“I love you, I love you so fucking much,” he huffs through rough breaths. “I didn’t correct them because I loved the idea of someone out there thinking that I’m yours.”
“You are mine. You’re mine, and I’m yours,” affirms Eddie, voice hoarse. “I think we’ve been each other's for a long time—longer than either of us realised.”
“Yeah,” says Buck wetly, “Yeah, I think so too.”
Eddie can both see and hear the tears that are welling in Buck’s eyes. He pulls him in tightly, slotting Buck’s head into the juncture between his shoulder and neck. He very, very slowly walks them to the couch, sitting them both down, and somehow managing to keep Buck velcroed to him the whole process. “You okay, bud?” he asks after a minute of comfortable silence.
“Mh-yeah, just can’t believe this is happening.”
Eddie moves one of his hands to cup Buck’s face, moving him gently so he meets Eddie’s eyes. “Buck, listen to me.” He runs his thumb back and forth over the plump skin of Buck’s cheek. “I love you. I’m sorry it took me so long to figure it out. But you’re it for me, and the next time someone assumes I want them to be right.”
Eddie stares into those blue eyes, which are somehow sparkling even in the dim late-afternoon light. Buck’s face breaks out into that beautifully familiar, blinding smile. “So husband, huh?” he teases.
“Shut up.”
“Pretty shit proposal, where’s my ring?” Buck asks, looking at his hand, searching for that glint of metal wrapped around his finger.
“I’m not proposing!” he declares loudly. “When I propose, it’ll be a whole affair, with rose petals and candles. The whole shebang.”
Buck’s face goes bright red. “Oh, when? So how long do I have to wait?” he asks with that signature shit-eating grin on his face.
“I don’t know, Buck, maybe like two months—”
“Two months?! What is this, a shotgun wedding?”
“You’re the one who’s desperate for a ring on his finger!” He snarks back, throwing his arms up in protest. “You know what, fine. You can propose then if you’re gonna be a pain about it.”
“No, Eds. I’m sorry,” Buck whines petulantly, “I will wait as little or as long as you want.” he leans in for a peck to punctuate his message.
Eddie immediately reciprocates, exchanging slow, honey-sweet kisses with Buck, a sharp departure from their previous state. “One thing, though,” he mumbles against Buck’s lips.
“Stop looking for a new place.”
Buck lets out an undignified snort. “Gladly, my credit is terrible.”
“Also, neither of us are sleeping on that god damn couch ever again.”
—
Eddie manages to wait six months to make ‘my husband’ a reality. He thinks that’s pretty good innings all things considered. It’s not the fairytale proposal he had in his head. It's a quiet dinner that pushes him over the edge. He looks into Buck’s eyes, impossibly adoring and full of life, feels the grip Buck has around his hand that hasn't faltered the entire meal, and he just can’t wait a second longer. Eddie rushes into their room to grab the ring box that has been sitting in the back of his bedside table for the last two months.
Buck accepts with tears streaming down his face, and Eddie gets off one knee to kiss his snot-covered face.
So the next time someone asks Eddie if Buck is his husband, he says yes without hesitation.