Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Okay, wait,” Chris says around a mouthful of pizza. “If tardigrades are indestructible, what happens if you, like, yeet them into space?”

“They actually did.” Buck waves his slice in Chris’s direction to punctuate his statement. They’re sitting at the loft island, capping the end of what Chris (to Buck’s delight) still refers to as a “Buck Day” with pizza and cranapple juice.

He had picked Chris up from school and said “Hey bud, do you wanna go to the library?” and Chris had shaken his head and said “No, I wanna go to the aquarium,” and to keep the illusion that he isn’t as agreeable as Eddie has him believe, had responded with a laugh and “Don’t they close in a few hours?” and Chris had quickly jutted back “Don’t you have season passes?” and who was Buck to argue with that logic?

And anyway. After learning the aquarium, in fact, closes at eight, the trip was bookended with a headache-inducing drive home and a last minute decision to grab a pizza from the chain across the street upon the remembrance of oh. There are absolutely no groceries at the loft. The faint glow of horizon is imperceptible through the overhead lights coating the loft in a soft, warm light, and a conversation about the new exhibit at the aquarium had devolved into a dissertation on tardigrades, thus: “So, in 2007 they… yeeted…” He curls his finger in a faint air-quote gesture around the word. “them into space, on a satellite, where they found out they can survive in a vacuum and, like, a bunch of radiation.”

Chris swallows, nodding, and says something, vaguely sounding like “Wood’n a little light?” which, Buck knows, makes absolutely no sense in any context. He shakes his head in confusion.

“Say that again?”

“What do they look like?”

“Oh,” That’s not what he said at all. He grabs his phone with his free hand, swiping it open and thumbing “tardigrade pictures” across the keyboard. Google loads the images, and he taps the first one – a computer generated image of a beige blob floating in a green space. It might as well be a still from a cheap sci-fi movie for all anyone knows. He holds it out to Chris, raising his glass to his mouth. “Here.”

Chris snorts. “Their faces look like assholes.”

“What?”

“I said-”

“Yeah, I heard you that time.” He flicks his wrist dismissively at Chris, juice sloshing in the suspended glass. “Why would you say that?”

Chris throws his arm out, an open hand gesturing towards Buck’s phone. “Look at them! They look like Doctor Who aliens, Buck.”

“Okay, well,” he tries, looking back at the image.

“It’s literally in their name.” Chris’s giggles drown out Buck's attempts at honoring the little guys' dignity.

“Well… yeah. It is, you’re right,” he concedes. He turns his phone off and sets it face-down on the counter.

“Are you…offended for them?” Chris stares at Buck's face which is, without a doubt, turning a shade of pink. He can feel the warmth underneath his cheeks. “I don’t think they have feelings.”

“You–you don’t know that!”

“They’re indestructible, right? I think they’ll be fine.”

A lull falls over the conversation, and Buck makes a mental note to set aside leftover pizza for Eddie and Chris to take home. Chris asks for the juice jug, raises an eyebrow at something he’s thinking about, and snorts into his glass. He opens his mouth to say something, a smile tugging at the corners.

“Chris, I swear if you call them assholes again–” Buck starts.

“I wasn’t going to!”

“Oh, really? Because-”

Buck swings his arm out while gesticulating, pulling the jug away from Chris and crashing his arm into the edge of the counter. The impact knocks it and sends juice onto Chris’s face and down his shirt.

He freezes, a wave of guilt creeping up his spine as he looks over the mess he’s made. The force of the impact sent liquid flying, and what didn’t hit Chris was on the counter, racing to the edge. “Oh, sh– I mean, shi– uh, sorry, sorry, sorry,” he repeats, scrambling for the napkins beside the pizza box.

Chris rolls his eyes, handing Buck the stack when he can’t reach them. “You can curse in front of me, you know.”

He falters, dabbing the napkins on the trail of liquid making its way down the side of the island. “What, does your dad curse in front of you?” comes out of his mouth before he can think about the implications of it. As if he and Eddie need to be a united front in the parenting department. As if, even after six years and there’s nobody I trust with my son more than you, he is in any position to compare himself to Chris’s dad.

Chris’s dad wouldn’t spill juice all over him. He would have had the spatial awareness to avoid hitting the counter. He wouldn’t have stood there watching as the liquid soaked through his child’s shirt instead of immediately jumping in to help him. Chris's dad doesn’t curse in front of him, at least not in front of Buck, setting a good example is important.

In the corner of his peripheral, he sees Chris roll his eyes, as if to say duh, a hint of a smile tucked in the corners of his mouth.

Oh, he realizes. Chris’s dad is the parent of a thirteen year old who can handle swear words and getting drinks spilled on him.

The napkins in his hand are straining under the weight of the juice in every fiber, buckling and tearing in response to the pressure of Buck’s grip. Buck shakes the thin film of liquid from his hands and strides over to his sink in search of paper towels, washcloths… anything sturdier than fast-food napkins.

“Hey, why don’t you go upstairs? Use my bathroom, and, uh, you can grab a shirt from my closet. Whichever one you want,” He directs at Chris, who is now standing from his spot at the island, holding his shirt out from his chest as it drips onto the floor. Chris looks up at him and giggles.

“You don’t have that many good shirts, Buck.”

Buck smiles, rolling his eyes affectionately. “Did you want a clean shirt?” He extends his arm and points his index finger emphatically up towards his closet, any worry he had about upsetting Chris dissolving. “Go.”

Chris mock-salutes at him before turning around and heading up the stairs.

Buck busies himself with clearing the rest of the island, tossing out Chris’s pizza crusts and a tree’s worth of napkins stained red. When he turns around several minutes later, Eddie is closing the door behind him, watching him.

He startles. “Hey! Uh, sorry, I didn’t hear you coming in.”

Eddie looks apologetic. “I did knock.”

“You didn’t have to, you know.”

“I know,” Eddie says simply. His eyes shift from Buck’s face to the wad of napkins that he continues to run through. “What did you do?”

“Uh, got too excited about tardigrades.” Buck’s shoulder jut up with the words like that will provide enough context. He gestures between Eddie and the pizza. An offering.

“About what? Actually, don’t answer that. Where’s Chris?” Eddie waves him off, crossing the distance from the door to the counter and takes the biggest slice from the box. Buck watches as he mouths tardigrade to himself, like he’s searching for the definition of the word in its syllables. He recognizes the habit– Eddie picked it up from him years ago.

As if to answer, they hear a thud emanate from upstairs, followed by an “ugh!”

Chris mumbles something unintelligible. Buck looks to Eddie for confirmation, mouthing, “What?”

Eddie exhales, shaking his head. “He says he’s fine. What’s he even doing up there?”

“Getting a clean shirt since I dumped juice all over him.” Buck gestures to the napkins, scrunched up and full of dark red liquid across the tabletop. Ta-da.

“Does this have to do with the tardigrades?” Eddie asks for the hell of getting a rise out of him.

Buck really wants to change the subject. “So. How was…?”

“Therapy?” Eddie fills in. He sighs, taking another bite of pizza. “It was fine.”

Therapy is a new thing. In the months Chris had been in Texas, Eddie was committed to doing whatever he could to provide a more stable home, and that included stabilizing himself. Buck was usually the one to take him there and pick him up every Tuesday, so he’s been privy to the toll it’s taking on Eddie. He’s not sure entirely what’s been mentioned to Frank, just that he comes out of it heavier than when he went in, mentions of wanting to punch Frank expected after every session now. Last week his eyes were red-rimmed and his cheeks shined with tears well after the appointment was over. He wants to hug the pain out of Eddie, absorb it into himself through reverse osmosis– he can make room for it somewhere.

Today, he seems lighter. His voice has that hoarse, textured quality to it that comes with an hour of emotional release, but the weight that’s been hanging around has rolled off. Eddie leans against the counter, tending to his slice of pizza. As Buck is giving the granite a final pass with a washcloth, he wishes they were in Eddie’s kitchen. In Eddie’s home– his by association, the family he’s built with the Diazes just feels more real. He knows his loft has always been a placeholder while he searched for something else to fill the void of domesticity he’s been missing, if he would ever be selfish enough to reach out and take it.

Even in the artificial lighting of his industrial bulbs and the physical effects of a session with Frank pulling the corners of his face, he looks beautiful.

It’s not a new discovery by a long shot. He doesn’t think there’s ever been a set point where it clicked. Even before he had realized the name for what he was feeling, the physical ache of it was there. As it settled, the manifestation of it changed; jealousy was another brand of infatuation, he slowly learned. Desires to punch had become gentle knocks of knees and shoulder bumps and something too fragile to press into any firmer. Not that he hasn’t tried– if one too many suggestive comments and soul searching looks were to go by. He’s honestly surprised that nobody else has commented on his Pavlovian responses to Eddie’s presence. Anyone could see it if they knew to look for it. Tommy had.

He goes to clear his throat and say something to fill the silence, but Chris beats him to the punch.

“You never said you lived in Peru!” Rings out into the loft, and seconds later Chris excitedly emerges with a plastic box in his hands. He’s replaced his stained t-shirt with one of Buck’s several navy LAFD shirts – which is draping off his shoulders, the fabric swallowing him whole. The box bounces on Chris’s hip as he slowly walks down the stairs; Buck recognizes it by the barely legible “MUSEUM OF EVAN BUCKLEY” scribbled on the side in sharpie. Oh, great.

“I’m pretty sure that I did mention that –” he tries, pointing a finger into the air to accentuate his point, but Eddie cuts him off.

“Chris,” Eddie scolds. “You can’t just snoop through his closet, c’mon."

“It’s fine, I told him he could.” Buck shrugs, taking the box from Chris’s hands and setting it on the countertop just left of Eddie.. The lid is missing, and the contents are shuffled– having already been skimmed through by Chris. “This is what I get for dousing you in juice, I guess.”

“Yep,” Chris affirms, the word popping like gum on his lips. He hoists himself back onto his barstool and slides the box closer to himself. Peering down, he plunges his arm into the contents, sifting through decades of memories Buck has, contrary to his own belief, barely mentioned.

“Museum of Evan Buckley, huh?” Eddie nudges his shoulder, a quiet tinge of amusement in his voice. His eyes are set on his son, never wavering.

“Shut up, I was literally seventeen,” he shoots back quickly, more bashful than he means for it to be. Eddie just laughs, a soft exhale to his left.

Chris pulls out the artifacts, carefully studying them like the fish in the aquarium hours ago. Birthday cards from Maddie, a stack of cheap, touristy postcards he never sent, and a neon green CD case labeled “Miranda’s Mixtape 2007” in loopy handwriting.

“What’s a mixtape?” Chris asks innocently.

“Oh my God,” Buck blurts, and Eddie snorts. They look at each other, eyebrows pulled to say how does he not know what a mixtape is? and oh, god, we’re old. “It’s, uh, kind of like a playli–, no, yeah, it’s basically a playlist. My– oh, okay.”

Buck cuts himself off; Chris has already moved on, setting the CD aside and plucking out a keychain of a glossy peach. He vaguely recalls when he purchased it at the Atlanta airport, how he had laughed at the suggestive shape of the fruit. It was funny in 2013, he supposes. Attached to the keychain is a metal key, what was once silver now tarnished into yellows and blue-greens and browns.

“Are these…car keys?” Chris examines the head of the key, stroking a thumb over the raised Jeep branding. It’s been worn down with 37 years’ worth of hands doing just the same.

“Yeah, uh, my first car was from 1987, so…” He shrugs, feeling slightly protective of the memories Chris is handling. It’s stupid, he knows, to feel possessiveness over something he hasn’t thought about in years.

Or maybe it’s guilt. He’s been thinking of the half of his life before the 118 as an overstuffed closet of memories he tries to compartmentalize, stacking each overfull box up and stuffing them haphazardly into the room. Once the closet was built, that was it: the halves were separated, the reds shouldn’t bleed into the whites– they can’t touch. That's why they were boxed away, hidden in the deepest corner of his closet (he gets the closet metaphors now) where he could acknowledge it still existed in his own time. As long as the door is still there, closed, he could pretend it was locked. Impenetrable.

Sure, talking about it is nice, reminding himself of the physicality of the person he used to be before he settled. How the rough edges were worn down by the families he’s built, and the impulsive, violent streak softened into the fulfillment of being needed that he craved all along. Sometimes though, it gets to be too much pressure, and he can sense the boxes pressing against the door despite his best efforts to keep it jammed shut.

The door has only come off its hinges once since he built it: four years ago– when he finally learned about Daniel and was forced to realize everything he did growing up was just the consequences of a little boy desperate for validation. Every scraped knee and cry of pain he hoped would be soothed, that one time when he–

“You’re a hoarder.” Chris’s blunt, teenage-laced tone cuts through his thoughts.

Chris shoves his hand to the bottom of the container, moving past old bar menus, horse photos, and a ratty t-shirt with Los Angeles Fire Department printed– albeit faded– on the back, amongst other little things. Buck recognizes it as his first t-shirt he received in the academy. He wonders how he owned all of these things in a time in his life when he didn’t know Eddie and Chris. A hoarder wouldn’t have left almost everything behind when he skipped out of Hershey, confining the first 25 years of his life to a box light enough to be carried by a lanky thirteen year old.

When Maddie left, he held onto gifts and cards she had gotten for him. It was a habit he kept in the transitional period of his life– the notion that these physical objects could remind him of who he was and who he had been. When Maddie came back, the physical objects were replaced by the real thing, and the reminders were shoved away. The weight of the box came not from the collection of items inside, but the memories they held. He might be a hoarder– if not of physical objects, then of tethers.

“Are you kidding me?” His voice is deceptively light, manually injected with buoyancy to offset the weight of the impending spiral in his mind. “You should’ve seen the amount of-”

When his eyes catch what Chris is pulling out, he short circuits. He didn’t expect to ever think about some of these things again. He never expected to see those again. His blood runs cold. A box topples and falls against the mental door– some tethers should have been severed.

Chris is holding a once-white rectangular box – yellowed with age, covered in a random assortment of stickers that were absolutely not manufactured after 2003. The box– case, no bigger than Chris’s palm and so much smaller than he remembers, has a sliding function on the side, and Chris pulls on it. When the case opens, it reveals two electronic earpieces. He takes one out and pinches it between his fingers, studying it.

“Oh, are these, like, your old AirPods?”

Buck is fucking frozen. His mouth is dry, and his brain is blank except for oh no, oh fuck reverberating in his frontal lobe. He can’t answer. He feels the pressure against the metaphorical closet door, the hinges creaking against the weight of the boxes crashing down.

“Buck?” Eddie reaches out.

He might be dizzy– the on and off ringing in his ears is back. He feels a hand press into his shoulder.

He registers through the ringing, “Are those… hearing aids?”

It takes him a moment before he can finally whisper it out. He feels his head nod against his will.

“Yeah.”

The door gives out.

-

If you had asked his parents, they would say their son refused to listen. They would say they had an ignorant child who couldn’t pay attention to save his life.

Sometimes, Evan thought they might be right. Paying attention meant listening, which was just something he couldn’t do half the time. Not when they couldn’t give him the same back when he asked.

And he did ask.

Like when he had the TV turned on too loud because his parents always had it too quiet, like they had super hearing or just didn’t care about the volume. Somehow he had noticed he could feel the thunder but not hear it, and that his parents were always complaining about how loud the dishwasher is, but he could only see it shake. He realized he can’t talk on the phone because the voices are too garbled to understand; that there was always one word he heard the other person swore they didn’t say that changed the entire conversation. How, after multiple attempts at trying to understand what other people had to say, they eventually gave up trying entirely.

Which was how he ran out of another argument with his mother, who screamed at him because that’s how she knew to communicate with him. As if he wouldn’t respond to anything other than anger, when he just wanted to understand what she was asking of him, and was frustrated because her two settings were to mumble or scream.

“You just want attention so bad!” She had yelled, throwing her hands up in exasperation. Like her son asking her to repeat herself was a demand. Like I can’t hear you somehow meant I’m being difficult on purpose.

Evan had run into his room, slammed the door, and cried into his covers when he saw his door knob jiggle once, then turn all the way around. It twisted back into place, accentuated with a click. Maddie’s knock, he knew.

“Com’n,” he sniffled.

Maddie twisted the knob again, this time cracking the door open. She peeked her head into his room and immediately found his eyes; empathetic brown meeting clouded, pink-edged blue.

“Oh, Evan.”

He had always hated the way his name fit into people’s mouths– sharp and bitter, like he was being punished before he ever did anything. With Maddie, however, she said it the way she did most things: soft, patient, with the genuine care of a future nurse. She’s the only one who, even when he didn’t realize he was being addressed, treated every call of his name like the first.

She closed the door behind her and slowly made her way to the bed. She sat down on the edge of the bed, leaning into his shuddering frame and wrapping a comforting arm around him. He pressed his head into her chest and nestled in as she lightly massaged his scalp, the repetitive motion a comforting distraction.

“What happened?” She asked, hand still scratching through his hair.

“They just," he started in a whimper. “I try so hard and– and they think I don’t listen and I do, Maddie! I try so hard to listen and I get in trouble because I don’t know they’re talking to me and I don’t know why because I want to so bad and-and…” Evan choked on an inhale, his breaths ragged and shallow. He coughed wetly into Maddie’s chest.

She had shushed him, cupping his face with her hand and stroked his cheek– a soothing gesture his mother could never think to provide. Not when she was the root cause of the tears his sister was wiping away.

Her head was hung, cheek brushing his forehead, and he watched as she chewed on her lip as if she was thinking over what to say.

“Have you ever thought about…you know how sometimes people wear glasses?” Is what she went with.

“Yeah,” Evan wiped his nose across the cuff of his hoodie, “because they can’t see super well. I’m pretty sure I can see fine, though.”

Maddie had given him a soft chuckle in response. “Yeah, I think so too. But,” she took a breath, “there are also people who can’t hear very well.” She glanced down at his face, probably searching for some kind of reaction.

His eyes widened slightly as her implication settled. “Do you think… d’you think that’s what’s wrong with me?”

“I think there might be something going on with your ears, yeah,” She replied. “We could do some tests, try to figure it out together?”

Evan had blinked– once, then twice his lashes flicked tears onto his skin. The words marinated in his mind: the idea that there was an explanation for his inability to listen, to hear on the off-chance when someone wanted to acknowledge him. He thought about how he had put so much effort into something he probably couldn’t help to begin with.

“I don’t want the only thing I hear to be them yelling at me,” he said, and the admission was immediately followed by hot tears welling back up and a painful lump in his throat. The idea that he was cursed to only hear anger directed at him–

Maddie’s face was something akin to heartbreak. Motherly. She cradled his face against her chest as sobs tore out into the fabric over her heart. She had wiped the tears from where they pooled under his baby blues, even when they ran too fast for her to catch them all. “I know.”

Once he had calmed down enough, his sobs had quieted into snotty inhales and shaky exhales. Maddie had stroked his back, tracing her fingers up and down his spine in a soothing rhythm and planted a kiss at the crown of his head. When he pulled away to wipe his nose, she wordlessly handed him a wad of tissues. He never figured out where they came from.

They sat like that for several minutes, Evan being cradled by his big sister. He felt her lift her arm to check her watch. He felt her sigh when she realized the time. He felt his hand squeeze her tighter, a plea for her to stay.

“Oh, ugh, Evan, I have to go,” she said apologetically, slowly peeling him away. “Doug is picking me up, like, now.”

At the mention of Maddie’s boyfriend, he huffed. She stood up, and he was alone on the bed again.

As she walked to the door, she had offered, “How about we go get dinner tonight after I’m off? Whatever you want.”

He nodded.

And as she stepped past the threshold of his room, he remembered what she had said earlier– about people who can’t see. He stopped her before he could forget again. “Maddie?”

She turned around to look at him. “Yeah, Evan?”

“Do they make, like, glasses for your ears?” He paused, the question processing after it had come out. He laughed at the silliness of it, and Maddie did too. “I know they’re probably not glasses, but.”

She smiled at him, her eyes still pink and shining from her tears. “Yeah, they do.”

-

There’s no reason for him to freeze up the way he does now. It’s two pieces of plastic. Flimsy, hollow, cheap plastic– the coils had given out after a few months of disuse and they refused to turn on. It’s not like he was using them anymore at that point, he remembers.

Still.

Buck is sitting on his god-awful couch– somewhere between seeing the box in Chris’s hands and the black spots in his vision subsiding, Eddie had moved him to more solid support. He presses his palms flat into the leather cushion under him, the cool sensation almost soothing. He sees that Chris is sitting on the coffee table facing opposite him, knees just shy of knocking into his own. He hasn’t let go of the case- if anything, he’s holding it tighter, afraid to drop it.

“Chris? Can-can I?” Buck asks, flipping a palm up. Chris head shoots up to meet his eyes, probably in reaction to Buck finally saying something. He wonders how long they had been sitting in silence, waiting for him to come back. He feels the distantly familiar weight of the case as it’s placed in his hand, and he rubs his thumb over the front of it.

The case is covered in stickers. Pokémon and smileys he had collected from school – prizes teachers had given out during review sessions where he got to prove he could pay attention to the important things. The hearing aids have scuffs and scratches and the batteries inside are definitely corroded to fuck but they’re so, so small– a betrayal to his memory of them being too big to fit behind his 11 year old ears. They’re a reminder that someone once saw him struggling, and listened.

In 2003, they were heavy– made his ears stick out perpendicular to his face. Today, they would be crushed if he pinched them hard enough. He can barely feel them in the palm of his hand, a disservice to the significance they carry.

“I’m sorry,” Chris says.

It’s instinct for Buck to reach out and grab Chris’s hands. “What? No, you have nothing to be sorry for, Chris.” It’s the first clear thought he’s had in a minute. He’s still trying to wrap his mind around why he’s feeling so much at the sight of them, and wasn’t aware that Chris was blaming himself for it. “It’s-it’s my own thing. It’s not you, I promise.”

Chris searches his face, and Buck musters the most serious look he can to match the truth in his words.

“Okay,” he finally says.

“It makes sense,” Eddie mutters to his left. He’s not as close as he usually is when they’re sitting on the couch together. He’s clearly trying to give Buck space to breathe. He can almost feel the strain of the distance (read: 1 foot) between them, and he hates it.

It takes a second for his words to process. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Eddie sighs, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck.

“They’re hearing aids, right?” Chris interjects. Buck nods. “Your favorite word is ‘what’. You’ve said it, like, four times tonight.” There’s a lighthearted, teasing glaze to his voice.

“Because you had food in your mouth the whole time,” Buck argues weakly.

“Mhm, sure.”

“Buck, it’s not like you haven’t had moments where you can’t hear,” Eddie cuts in. “I’m not talking about just the repeating bit. Remember when I told you your car was making that noise and you blew me off? I thought I was going insane until your engine light came on.”

Chris continues, insistent. “You never notice when we listen to Dad’s country station you hate because he has it turned down below volume five. And, you never hear the dishwasher, that’s why you’re always touching it to see if it’s running.”

“If having bad hearing means that I don’t have to listen to that station, I’ll take it,” Buck says. It’s a bad joke. He’s trying to lighten the mood, do anything to get the conversation to lift off of him, but they both just give him a look that says read the room instead.

“That’s… not normal, Buck.” Eddie says slowly, staring him down with a weighted seriousness. “Did you just– forget about your hearing situation? Have you been living like this the whole time?”

Buck doesn’t think he’s heard Eddie so concerned for him since the lightning. It feels like those calls at work where they’re worried about someone who did something so spectacularly stupid, then turn around and laugh about it afterward. Not that Eddie would laugh at him, but the feeling still stands– he feels caught.

“I didn’t forget about it. I-I just, uh, it’s kind of been my whole life, you know? I don’t really know what I’m missing, Eddie.” Buck struggles to explain. How does he explain that he thought at one point he might be hard of hearing, got hearing aids that didn’t fix the problem, and was forced to live with the idea that nothing could be done to fix it? He never forgot about it, he just treated it as normal to the point that the idea that it was something to fix just…waivered. Repressed, maybe.

“Buck.” He reads Eddie’s lips around his name, the word too low to register except for the click of the end of the word.

“Eddie, I promise it’s fine. I haven’t, like, lost anything. I’m not missing out. I think I can hear most stuff, anyway; I don’t need to take more resources away from people that need them more.” He really wants the conversation to be over. He bows his head down, staring at a loose thread sticking out of his hoodie.

Eddie stares at him, surely lost.

“You… had hearing aids. You wore hearing aids at one point in your life, and then you quit. I just don’t understand.” He shakes his head at Buck, who huffs in irritation and stares back up at him.

“I looked it up. Figured out that based on what I can and can’t hear, it’s probably sensorineural.” He hasn’t thought of that word in years, but it somehow comes out perfectly. It also comes out ragged. “You can’t fix that, Eddie. There’s no surgery to cure it, and the hearing aids didn’t work. It’s not the end of the world. I’ve dealt with it this long.” There’s a sharpness to his voice, the culmination of his headache from earlier and being forced into a conversation he doesn't want to have.

Softer, he adds, “Besides, I wasn’t in a family that would have gotten me new ones, and insurance is a–”

Chris yawns, and Buck, distantly remembering something about setting a good example, shuts his mouth. “...yeah.” He sighs, pulling on the loose thread.

“We’re gonna come back to this, okay?” Eddie almost threatens as he stands, and Chris takes that as a cue to grab his crutches from the kitchen.

They both follow him, watching as he puts his arms into the cuffs of the crutches. He anticipates the feeling that arises in himself– that guileless, childlike feeling of a friend leaving and the immediate loneliness that follows, and he again wishes they were at the Diaz house. He would take that couch over his own bed a million times.

Eddie’s hand finds its home in his shoulder, thumb settling in the crook of his collarbone. “Are you okay?” The fierceness in his tone is gone, replaced with something mellow and dim. Buck wants to curl up and live in the warm security of that timbre.

“Yeah, just tired.” He uses his excuse to lean into Eddie’s touch.

“I wasn’t trying to start anything, Buck. I just care about you too much to see you do that to yourself.”

“Yeah, I know,” Buck reassures him. “For the record, I appreciate it. The caring.”

Eddie smiles, looking into his eyes so briefly, and that smile leaves an erratic stutter behind his third and fourth rib long after they’ve said their goodnights.

-

The thing about his compartmentalized closet is that once the door swings open and the mess falls out, it takes a while to meticulously refold everything, each pass less organized than before. Everyone can see the struggle of making it fit.

Before Chris had brought that box downstairs and dredged up all of those buried memories, Buck had honestly repressed the idea that he might be missing out in the hearing department so deeply that he might as well have forgotten about it. Any noises he didn’t pick up had just been a consequence of him not paying attention. It probably wasn’t important enough to warrant said attention anyway. It’s fine.

It’s fine.

Except, for the past two days, it hasn’t been.

He remembers how, when he nearly lost his leg and subsequently his job, he had clawed his way toward any fixes– throwing himself into surgeries that would make him whole again and soothe the itch to combat his helplessness. Six years removed, he can feel the itch crawl up his spine; the feeling he could be doing more for himself.

The urge to scratch this itch is back, he thinks.

He notices it more though, is the thing. Or the absence of it, rather. It being the sounds everyone reacts to, the overlapping conversations in the loft between calls. The heads all turning to follow a sound outside, comments about speed and recklessness and not their job following shortly behind. He barely catches any of it.

He never truly forgot about the possibility that he was missing part of his hearing. He had a brief hyperfixation on audiology in high school when he found the hearing aids again after a few years. Through research, a Wikipedia article on the history of hearing aids and cochlear implants, and hearing loss types, he came to the conclusion that he had either nerve damage or was born missing parts. And when he later discovered auditory processing disorder was a symptom of ADHD, it was easier to blame it on that.

It’s harder to hide behind the inability to perceive specific frequencies, though.

In between calls, the curiosity bites at him, and he scrolls through audiologists listed under his LAFD-provided insurance. He once got all the way to verifying appointment details before the bell rang, and he forgot about it.

Eight a.m. finally rolls around, signaling the end of shift. Buck follows the truck ho– to the Diaz house, traces Eddie’s steps across the threshold, and makes a beeline for the sofa. He breathes in the silence, sliding himself down the backrest of the couch until his head rests against the top of the cushion. Eddie slots into place beside him, pressing into him seamlessly and matching his breathing.

They sit like that for a few minutes, basking in each other’s presence. The squeak of door hinges turning vaguely behind him breaks the moment, and seconds later Chris comes into view. He stares at them, mainly Buck, until Buck finally turns his head to face him properly. He’s clearly just woken up, with pillow-frizzy curls covering his eyes and sleep still puffed under his cheeks.

“I want waffles,” he says simply.

So they make waffles.

Or rather, Buck makes waffles. Eddie takes the opportunity to change into comfier clothes, and Chris takes a shower. They reunite in the kitchen just in time to plate their own breakfasts.

They sit at the tiny dining room table, shoveling waffles and fruit and syrup into their mouths until their hunger pangs subside.

“So,” Chris starts, looking at Eddie then at Buck. “I was looking up hearing aids yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah?” Buck prompts, setting his fork down. “Why, you thinking about getting them?”

Chris rolls his eyes. “Shut up. No, I was just curious, but did you know they’re Bluetooth now? You don’t even need headphones– you can just play your music through the hearing aids. And there’s an app you can control them with. I think that’s only for some brands, but it’s still cool.”

“Oh, you did a lot of research, huh?”

“He gets it from you,” Eddie supplies.

Like that is a normal thing to say, god. He turns to look at Eddie, who is pointedly looking down at his plate, shuffling crumbs of waffle through syrup.

“Have you decided if you’re gonna get them?” Chris asks, ignoring the way Buck’s face is thrumming with hot blood.

“I don’t think so, Chris. Like I said, I don’t know what I’m missing and-”

Eddie’s fork clatters on the table. “You’re right, you don’t! So why are you so adamant on not needing help?”

“-and they clearly didn’t work the first time!” Buck raises his voice over Eddie’s, the tight, sickly feeling of frustration grabbing hold of his chest.

Eddie stands from the table, grabbing his plate. “Those were cheap ones from Walmart. You said so.” He juts his plate subtly at Buck. He continues as he walks into the kitchen. “Do you think Chris would have been fine without his aids? Do you think I would be a good dad if I just let his prescription expire? Told him to get over it?”

“Oh, c’mon, it’s different! It-it’s Chris. And CP is different from hearing, anyway,” Buck argues at the kitchen doorway.

Eddie reappears with a damp washcloth in hand. “What about his glasses? Do you know how many people need glasses every year? What if I had said no because some other kid needed them more?”

“Eddie–”

“Buck, it’s clear that you would benefit from them.”

“You don’t know that," Buck whispers.

“I do. I just…” Eddie inhales. “Just because you lived your whole life without something doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it. Thinking you can live without it doesn’t mean you should. You’re so fucking selfless, it’s about time for you to do something for yourself.”

“Oh, so I can’t swear but you can?” Chris calls from the couch. Buck hadn’t even realized Chris had moved. He looks at Eddie, who is rolling his eyes in annoyance.

“Chris, don’t even start right now,” Eddie says firmly towards the living room.

Chris huffs in response. “Whatever,” he mumbles. “I sent the links to you guys on the hearing aids.”

Eddie deflates a bit, making his way toward the table. He leans his hands onto it– still clutching the washcloth, almost at eye-level with Buck. “Listen, I saw you try to make the appointment, so you can’t say you don’t think so too on some level.”

Buck sighs, just shy of defeatist. “You really want me to get them, huh?”

“I think it’s stupid that you’re refusing to try something that would actually help you,” Eddie says. “You’re always looking for ways to be better at the job, right?”

“If I make the appointment, will you move on?”

“Maybe,” Eddie shrugs. He watches over Buck’s shoulder as he slides his phone open, going back to the tab he filled out the night before, and clicks Make Appointment. The screen reloads, and a pop-up thanking him for his appointment jumps onto the screen. He swipes out of the internet tab before he can try to find the cancel button.

They sit there for a few moments, scrolling through the links Chris had texted him. The new models look so different than his old pair; they’re smaller, more modern looking and less like the old man’s from that Pixar movie. They even come in trendy colors and finishes, almost glittery like car paint. He has to admit, they kind of look cool.

“This isn’t about the hearing aids,” Buck finally says, quietly. “It hasn’t been the whole time.”

When Eddie sets his phone down and turns into him, he continues. “It’s– you’re such a good dad, Eddie. You love him so much. Of course you wouldn’t deny him that.” He feels the tears well up. “But mine did.”

Eddie’s eyes widen, and his mouth drops. His eyebrows are pulled together– he looks worried.

“The pair I had? Maddie got me those when I was ten. She saw I needed them, and spent her own fucking hard-earned money to buy them for me.

“And I-I tried them, right? I thought that if I just got used to them, they would fix everything. Then when my parents saw them, they were so embarrassed. And they– anyway, the fucking things stopped working and then they never helped me get tested. Said if I just tried harder to pay attention my problems would be solved. There wasn’t really anything I could do, you know?

“And I just– technology’s changed and if I go there and it comes back that I wasn’t faking it the whole time, it’s just another reminder that they never gave a fuck about me.” He shudders on an inhale. “If I go in there tomorrow… and come back with a diagnosis, it’s gonna hurt. And I know I should be fucking past it, I should be over it, I should–”

At that moment, Eddie’s arm comes up behind his neck and cradles the back of his head. He feels him push it towards him, leaning himself into the junction of Eddie’s neck and shoulder, tucked under his chin. The movement feels almost reminiscent of Maddie’s cradling all those years ago. He feels the Pavlovian urge to sob.

“You deserve to have all the options. You deserve more, Buck.”

“I… there’s so many stupid things I did when I was little, trying to get them to see me and care for me, and the whole time I’ve had this thing, that they probably knew about when I was born– cause they do those tests on newborns, right? And, they just couldn’t give enough of a shit to actually do anything for me. They didn’t care about me outside of one fucking thing. I don’t think they ever wanted me to be better.”

“You used to fight so hard to fix yourself, Buck. That’s not something a kid's supposed to do.”

“I… I know that now. But it’s hard to believe it sometimes.”

Eddie exhales. “You know, I’m doing this thing. Dunno if you’ve heard of it-”

“Eddie.”

“It’s called therapy–”

“Eddie,” Buck groans.

“I know it’s been a while since you’ve gone.”

It’s not an accusation. It’s a statement, an objective recall of the facts. He had been in therapy, and taking advantage of his health insurance to let someone sit and listen to him ramble for an hour a week had been constructive while it lasted. But after the shooting and the panic attacks that followed, his general presence in the Diaz boys’ lives took precedence, and Dr. Copeland got left behind. He knows Eddie knows this; the admission causes his heart to flutter anyway.

“Yeah.” Buck pushes himself off from where he had been pressed into Eddie, regretting it as his Eddie-warmed skin is hit with cool air. “Let me worry about one doctor’s appointment at a time, though?” A laugh escapes him, a choked, wet thing that sounds a little too pleading to be genuine. He looks up to meet Eddie’s eyes through tear-soaked lashes. They hold each other’s gaze, and he swears he feels the gravity shifting in the liminal space between them.

Eddie breaks contact first, turning to look at Chris, who is still on his laptop– presumably doing 13 year old shit in the living room.

“Okay,” Eddie says, still looking at Chris. Buck knows the words are directed at himself anyway.

“What?”

Eddie’s focus shifts to Buck. “Let’s focus on your doctor’s appointment. Do you know what to expect?”

“I mean, I’ve gone on, like, twenty deep dives on the internet about it.” Despite all the Googling he doesn’t really understand what’s going to happen. Maybe he didn’t read it properly, or his brain rejected the information because acknowledging it makes it real. This is a thing that’s happening. He signed up for this.

“...I could still cancel,” he thinks aloud.

Eddie flicks him softly on the heel of his palm. “Bobby and Chris would smite you, probably.”

“Yep!” Chris shouts. Buck huffs out a laugh.

“And, look, tomorrow won’t change anything. If that audiogram comes back with a diagnosis and you decide you don’t want them, that’s fine, but just know you have options.”

“You sound like you know more about this than I thought you would, actually,” Buck prompts, his voice and head a lot lighter than they were on the other side of this conversation.

Eddie picks up the washcloth and continues wiping the table. “Well, I helped Abuela when she got them a few years ago, so I’m aware.”

Buck smiles, a soft tease of a smirk pulling at the corners. “Oh, well, I should have just gone straight to the expert herself instead of the technophobe.”

Eddie smacks him.

-

Evan was hunched over at his desk when he heard the click of his door knob turning.

“Hey, come in,” he said, eyes still lasered onto his textbook.

Maddie entered, crossing the distance from his door to his desk. “Hey, I have a surprise for you.” She said around a smile.

He set his pencil down and turned to her, only to be met with a red gift bag in his face. She giggled as he jerked back in surprise, taking the bag into his lap. “I think you’re gonna really like it, Evan.”

He stared at her warily as he pulled the tissue paper out of the bag, watching as she gauged his reaction. When he looked down into the bag, he gasped.

Evan pulled the box out of the bag, letting the latter flop to the floor. “Are you serious?” He gaped at her, almost disbelieving. On the top of the box it said “Deluxe Hearing Kit” in a bright green sans-serif font, and next to the type was an image of two hearing aids.

He thought back to the tests Maddie had conducted after their conversation two weeks prior. The way she had covered her mouth, asking him to repeat so many words without a drop of impatience. How she would hear a rumble of thunder during a storm and ask, “Did you hear that?” despite knowing the answer was most likely “No.” He had already developed a habit of telling her exactly when he heard one– usually when it was a clap that shook their house.

“Yeah,” She beamed at him. “Do you wanna put them on?”

“Duh,” he giggled as Maddie took the box from him.

As she opened them, he came to a realization. “Aren’t these, like, super expensive, Maddie?”

She shrugged, waving him off. “I got these from Wal-mart.” The box opened, revealing several booklets, extra batteries, and a white plastic case containing two hearing aids. He took one into his hands, running a thumb over the flesh-toned plastic. They almost covered his entire palm.

The instructions were confusing, spread out over multiple pages and broken up into several languages, but they finally learned how to put the batteries in and turn them on. He clicked the battery into place on one of them, closing the little door and watched as the light turned green. Maddie smoothed the hair behind his temple back as he cupped it over his ear. As he pushed the dome into his ear, every sound had gotten louder and more electronic.

“Woah,” he gushed, beaming up at Maddie.

She helped him put in the other hearing aid. “Well, what do you think?”

“Is everything this loud for you?”

“It’s probably just loud because you’re not used to it,” she explained, giggly, flipping through the pamphlet. “The more you use them, the more you’ll get used to it.”

A car whizzed by outside, the unexpected roar of it causing Evan to wince in pain. Maddie looked at the pamphlet, then back at his ears. She reached up to the hearing aid on his left, pressing the button a couple times. With every notch, the loudness subdued a little more, until the sounds were easier to process outside of their sheer volume. “Is that any better?” she asked.

“Yeah, thanks.” He felt the weight of them pressing into his ears, folding them ever so slightly. ”They’re heavy.”

She made a point of inspecting his ears. “Yeah, they’re a little big, but you should grow into them!”

He focused on those last few words, on the idea of growing into them. Oh, he realized. He’s gonna get to grow up hearing normally. He set the box down on his desk and threw himself into her arms, clutching his hands around her waist. “Thank you,” he mumbled into the hair grazing her neck. Her hair rustled against the hearing aid, sending tiny screeches of feedback into his ears.

She squeezed him back. “I love you so much, Evan.”

-

The waiting room is cold. Fucking freezing, actually.

He sees a child, no older than seven, leaned over a book across the room. The kid has very large hearing aids behind his ears, attached to a cable that’s slotted into the side of his head. Cochlear implants, Buck recognizes.

He had checked in at the receptionist’s desk thirty minutes ago, hoping that he might get it over with sooner rather than later. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to be called before 12pm, he started pacing the room, eager to be doing something with his body. Eddie seems a lot calmer about the whole thing, watching him carefully from his seat. It’s not like his ears are about to get prodded, anyway.

Eddie gives Buck a sympathetic shrug, and Buck sighs before plopping himself down in his chair.

“Evan Buckley?” A short woman in a white coat calls from the back door, only a few feet away. He stands back up quickly, wiping his palmy hands on the front of his jeans. He looks at Eddie, who gives him a nod of encouragement.

He walks towards her, shaking her stretched out hand when he reaches her. She has long, curly black hair and warm eyes behind her glasses. A few wrinkles hide in the corners of her face.

“Hi, Evan, it’s so nice to meet you,” she says, a little too loudly for the size of the room and distance between them. She has to tilt her head back to greet him. “I’m Dr. Castillo, I’ll be doing your audiogram today.”

“It’s, uh, it’s just Buck. I don’t go by Evan anymore,” he gently corrects. He never wants to hear that name again. He thinks, if he had it his way and got to marry Eddie, he would just change his whole name in one fell swoop. Buck Diaz on every legal document– a reminder that he would own himself just as much as Eddie would. Which, well, not the time. “But it’s nice to meet you, too.”

Dr. Castillo takes the correction in stride to his relief. “Okay, Buck.” She nods. “Ready to go on back?”

He follows her past several rooms, traditional patients’ rooms with posters of ears, sinus cavities, and other illustrations pertaining to otolaryngology. However, she doesn’t walk into any of those rooms. They breeze right towards the offices, where she leads them into one with a tag on the door that reads “Dr. Angela Castillo, Au.D.”

She gestures towards the chairs in front of her desk. It’s a cozy office, Buck thinks. There’s a lot of frames on her desk, topping piles of paperwork and pictures of graphs from what he can see. On the wall behind him, there’s a poster from Hawkeye, next to framed issues of the comics. Huh.

Next to the posters and attached to her desk is a large, metal booth that kind of looks like a prison cell.

“So, you said you wanted an audiogram done?” she finally asks after she’s settled at her desk, crossing her hands on top of the table.

Buck shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Uh, yeah-yes.” He really doesn’t want to rehash the whole history of his hearing quirks if he can help it. “It came up this week and I realized I hadn’t gotten a test done in a while. I had hearing aids when I was little but never followed up, uh, and I figured it was time again.”

“Okay,” she says brightly, kindly skipping over the fact that he had admitted to ignoring that part of his health for so many years. He was kind of expecting to be chastised for it, like how the dentist knew he forgot to floss that one time after he finally got health insurance. “We can go ahead and get a test done, and from there we can look at options if you feel like that’s something you want to explore.”

Dr. Castillo seems to grasp the weight of this visit, the strength he’s bearing by showing up and making it this far. There’s no pressure on him to buy any product, or to even go through with the test. He likes her. “Yeah, that sounds great.”

She stands up and walks towards the booth, inviting him into it. “It’s not a performance test, you’re not trying to get a hundred. Just answer what you can. Sound good?”

He nods.

He steps into the booth, and notes how tiny it is. There’s only room for a chair, and it faces a window that looks out into Dr. Castillo’s desk. He sits down, and she puts the headphones on his head. They’re uncomfortable– they have a clamp pressing into his temples. Once she’s satisfied with the placement, she hands him a joystick attached to a bunch of cables.

When she closes the door, the room isn’t just quiet. It’s completely soundproof, like his ears were manually turned off. The only reason he knows that’s not the case is because he does hear himself breathing heavily, the sound rattling in his skull.

The stuffy silence breaks when Dr. Castillo turns on her own headset and speaks into the mouthpiece. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” he nods. It’s a jerky movement, restricted by the weight of the cables attached to his head.

“The first test is super easy. You’ll just hear some beeps at different sound levels and frequencies. When you hear a beep, just click the button once.”

And for the next ten minutes, he does just that. He presses the button after every beep, slightly aware of the gap of silence between some of the higher-frequency sounds. Dr. Castillo moves on to another test, where she covers her mouth with a piece of paper and has him repeat back the words she says into her headset. He asks her to repeat only a few of them, mainly the words that have softer consonants, like “bean”, “new”, and “bummer.”

Once he’s settled back in his seat at her desk, she hands him a piece of paper with two graphs on it. One is labeled with an L, the other with an R.

“So, if you look at this graph, the blue line is normal hearing, and the red line is your results.”

He looks at the audiogram, the left half of the red line is significantly lower than the blue line on both graphs, sloping upwards until it passes the 55dB mark, at which point it tapers out under the blue line. On the right graph, the slope is almost identical, but the gap between the lines is wider.

He looks up at her. “What does it mean?”

“Based on the curve of your graph– we call it cookie cutter hearing loss,” she explains, smiling, but Buck is too focused on her words to process the joke. “It looks like you have moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss. You were born with it; the low frequency hearing loss is a mix-up with your nerves, most likely.

“The good news is that you qualify for hearing aids, and would benefit from them, looking at your graphs.”

“Oh.” He’s not sure if the rush of emotion he’s feeling is relief or fear, but it’s adjacent to validation. An official diagnosis, 21 years in the making. “Can we look at the options? There’s a pair I’m interested in.”

They look at the options together, and Dr. Castillo explains the difference between the in-canal hearing aids, behind-the-ear aids, and receiver-in-ear aids. He goes with the behind-the-ear ones, because he knows that as soon as he drops the tiny canal sized ones, it’s gone forever, and his insurance isn’t kind enough to replace them.

At the check-out window, there’s a display of pediatric stickers, ranging from Disney princesses and kitties to SpongeBob and trucks. He sifts through the stack while the receptionist processes his co-pay, and finds two fire truck stickers. He grabs them and sets them on top of his papers.

Eddie walks up to him, shoving his hands in his pockets. “So, how was it?”

“She said my hearing looks like someone took a bite out of it.” He hands Eddie the copy of his audiogram so he can see for himself. “She says it’s, uh, moderate-to-severe sensorineural. I wasn’t too far off. Anyway, she said I qualified for…them.” He follows Eddie’s eyes to the pile of paperwork he’s holding, the stickers resting on top of them. “It’s a fucking ladder truck, I had to,” He defends.

“I know,” Eddie says seriously.

“I was thinking of putting it on the case, you know, so I don’t lose it.”

“That’s a good idea, Buck.” His name sounds gentle on Eddie’s lips, like he’s aware of the delicacy of the situation. He probably knows what Buck’s implying, but just in case:

“I ordered them. I thought about what you said last night, about Chris, and, uh, you were right. It’s not easier to avoid it.”

Eddie brings a hand up to Buck’s elbow, gripping it ever so slightly. “I’m really happy for you.”

On the way back to Eddie’s house to collect his Jeep, he sorts through the papers in his hand. He thinks of little Buck, who officially wasn’t just prying for attention the whole time. He thinks of Chris, who has Eddie to vouch for him and make sure that he never has to go through what Buck did. And now, Buck has an advocate in both of them.

Before there was Eddie, there was Maddie, he remembers.

He needs to tell Maddie.

-

“Jee! Uncle Buck’s here!” Maddie calls, panning the door wider for him to step in.

“Buck!” He hears a squeal trail from the back of the house. The squealing gets louder until he sees her bounce into view, wearing overalls and a shirt with kittens printed on it. She’s dragging an old stuffie with her; he recognizes it as the giraffe he got for her second birthday after a trip to the zoo with Chris.

Buck gasps loudly, leaning over and stretching his arms out comically wide. “Miss Jee!” He scoops her up and swings her in a circle, carefully sidestepping the toys scattered on the floor. He drops himself onto the sofa, and makes an oof sound as she lands on top of him, earning a giggle from her. He only feels slightly dizzy.

Maddie walks into the kitchen to grab her glass of water. When she offers one, Buck turns it down. “Thanks, but I just got back from lunch.”

She sits down to his left. “That’s… a late lunch. We just got back home a few minutes ago– Jee was refusing to leave the classroom until she finished her drawing.” Maddie chuckles. “Her teacher had to pinkie promise she wouldn’t move it before tomorrow. It was a whole thing.”

He checks his watch– it’s only two o'clock. “So, she likes the school?” He asks.

Maddie nods, fidgeting with the ridges of her glass. “She was nervous at first, but she looks forward to it now. I think it helps her to have friends she sees now that Mara’s gone back home.”

Buck sits up, readjusting Jee on his knee, bouncing it while she pets her giraffe’s fur. “Are you having so much fun at school?” He pitches his voice softer to coo at her.

Her big brown eyes looked up at him, an open mouthed smile spread across her face. “Yeah!”

“So, what’s going on with you?” Maddie nudges his arm.

“I, uh, went to the audiologist today.”

She stills, clearly not expecting those words from him.

“I got an official test done, and it, um, my hearing is, like, not good, actually. Who knew?” He laughs softly, trying to absolve some of the tension he’s laid in the air between them.

“Did you…” she trails off, subtly pointing a finger in her lap towards his ears.

Buck nods. “I ordered new ones. I get them next Thursday.”

“Oh?” She smiles. “I’m really proud of you.”

“I mean, it wasn’t so much my decision as it was Eddie and Chris yelling at me about it, but, I don’t know, it’s been so long and I kind of realized that I needed them.”

“I mean, yeah, you do,” she agrees. “How are you feeling?” She takes a sip of her water.

“Honestly?” He sighs. “I’m terrified. I’m just scared that they won’t help. I know the technology’s better, and it’s stupid to feel that, but…” Jee’s plush giraffe stomps on his hand, slowly hopping its way up his arm. He tickles Jee gently, basking in the laugh it gets out of her.

“It’s not stupid, Buck,” she says, quickly and seriously. “Change is scary, especially when it comes to something you don’t have a good experience with.”

Buck makes a noise in agreement, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff.

“I’m glad you’re taking the steps to get them,” she adds, a touch brighter. “You deserve it.”

“Yeah, Eddie said the same thing yesterday.” He smiles, a little thing to himself. Maddie catches it instantly.

“Oh, Eddie? How is he?” She asks nonchalantly.

“He’s good. Therapy’s been good for him, I think. He took me to the appointment today, actually.”

Maddie hums at that, taking another sip.

“What?” he asks, knowing full well what. Maddie had been hinting at her brother’s feelings for a long time. Since he cried over three glasses of wine a couple months ago and admitted his feelings for Eddie out loud to her, she’s been even more insistent.

“He wouldn’t do that for just anybody, Buck,” she relents.

“Maddie–”

“Look, I’ve been saying–” she tries gently, setting her glass on the coffee table.

“I…know that. I know, Maddie. And I want to believe it, but...” he takes a breath, looking down at Jee. “he’s in therapy right now, right? And in all honesty I’m not sure he’s ever going to date again. That’s what he said after the whole thing.” He alludes to the reason Eddie’s in therapy delicately– Eddie wasn’t exactly keen on everybody knowing all the details of why Chris left, and Buck has been consistent in his efforts to follow Eddie’s wishes. “Like you just said, change is scary. I’m not ready to tell him.”

Maddie nods. “I understand that.”

“Besides, I’m not here to talk about him. I just–” he inhales. “Thank you.”

Maddie turns to him, a bemused look on her face. “For what?”

“For all of it. The hearing aids, the tests, everything you did for me back then.”

She smiles wetly, lips quivering as she reaches over Jee to pull him into a hug. She holds him like that for a moment, running her hand along his back. He hooks an arm around her waist, the other still wrapped around his niece. “Evan,” she whispers softly beside his ear.

“It wasn’t fair, you know, for you to have to do that.” He sniffs quickly. “And I know how much effort that was on your part. I-I don’t think I could ever repay you for that.”

Maddie pulls away to look at him, and her eyebrows rise. “You are repaying me. Get those hearing aids and wear them, and that’s all I need.”

Jee wriggles out of his hold, sliding down to the ground ungracefully, and runs to her basket of toys in the corner. Maddie watches her fondly before adding, “I’ll say it again, I’m really proud of you for doing that. I know Christopher will appreciate it.”

He beams at the mention of Chris. “Yeah, I hope so.”

-

After dinner the night before his next appointment is when he finally tells the others about the lifestyle change.

He was going to, anyway, he just forgot how damn nosey Ravi is when he’s bored.

Not that he would ever say it out loud again, but the shift is just too quiet. They only had two calls, back-to-back, both of which combined took up two hours total out of the 12 they’ve been here so far. Bobby had taken advantage of the slow shift to pull out all the stops for dinner, making a seared chicken dish with multiple sides, a salad, and two dips for appetizers. After dinner, Bobby had retreated into his office after Buck hounded him about the risotto recipe, and the rest of the A-shift was sprawled about the loft.

He’s sitting at the counter, dipping pretzels into the leftover vegan buffalo dip and hunched over his phone. Chris had made a good point on watching videos of reviews on TikTok, which is why he’s watching a middle-aged woman vlog about her new hearing aids. Turns out, there’s a market for everything.

“Didn’t realize you were that old, Buck.”

Buck immediately sits up, turning around to see Ravi leaning in behind him. His face must have a wild expression plastered to it, because Ravi freezes. “I was joking, man. I’m sure you’re… very young and sprightly…” He clearly winces at the words that just fell out of his mouth.

“No, it’s fine.” Buck relaxes, waving a reassuring hand at Ravi. “I, um, actually am getting them. The hearing aids. Tomorrow, actually.”

“Wait, back up,” Hen says from the couch. “You… are getting hearing aids.”

“Yes,” he trails hesitantly.

“So, all those times you’ve ignored us, that wasn’t just you getting out of doing something.”

“Uh, no. I wouldn’t do that. I am hard of hearing.” It’s the first time he’s said it out loud to someone in casual conversation, and it’s to defend himself from Hen and Chim’s bullying.

“Oh, I’m sure,” Chim says with a grin. When he processes the end of Buck’s sentence, he quickly adds, “That you wouldn’t do that.”

“Anyways,” Buck stresses. “Turns out ignoring something doesn’t make it go away. So, yeah, hearing aids.”

“You’re not wrong,” Eddie replies softly. Buck glances at him, but Eddie is fixated on scraping the salt off his pretzel, avoiding his eyes.

“They’re actually pretty cool,” he elaborates. “Chris showed me a couple before I went in, and they’ve got Bluetooth and different settings for different environments on an app. They’re not just for old people.” He grins, looking back at Eddie. “Or technophobes.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and huffs.

Use of the word “technophobes” triggers a side conversation about some new Hildy product they encountered on a call last week, and everyone starts talking over each other, probably complaining about the patient they had and his obsession with his technology that had caught on fire. Buck isn’t exactly sure, because the overlap of yelling cancels out any discernible words he might be able to pick out.

In the midst of the uproar, he catches Eddie shake his head and mumble something. From his vantage point, he can’t read his lips. “Eddie, c’mon, you gotta stop mumbling at me. It’s very rude!” He pouts, lips curling into a smile at the end of his sentence, and Eddie just smiles back at him. Buck does a very good job of not noticing the twinkle in his eyes, or how Eddie swivels in his chair just so he can press his knee into Buck’s.

“You seem pretty excited about them, man. I’m happy for you,” Ravi says, bringing them back to the original conversation.

“Yeah, I am.” He smiles, ducking his head. He feels Eddie’s knee press harder against his.

“So, what kind did you get?” Chim asks.

-

Buck can’t fucking sleep. In six hours he’s going to have a brand new pair of ears, and he can’t fall asleep.

The bed is hot, the pillows are too flat, and it’s just not going to happen. He kicks off the covers and rolls out, making his way towards the kitchen. When he reaches the fridge, he sees Eddie trailing behind him, stretching his arms above his head. He sneaks a glance at where Eddie’s shirt hitches up, revealing a sliver of bare skin just above his hips. He’s fixated on the way the skin rolls with every step, so much so that when Eddie comes to a stop and brings his arms down, Buck doesn’t realize Eddie’s eyes are on him. He darts his gaze away, and instantly feels the heat come to his face.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” he asks towards the fridge handle.

Eddie nods, crossing his arms and leaning into the island. “Something like that. You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just–“ He pauses. He knows it’s stupid thinking. He looks back at Eddie, whose big, brown eyes are searching his face, waiting for him to answer.

“What if I somehow faked the test,” he whispers. “And all of this was for nothing?”

“Buck,” Eddie says admonishingly, reaching for Buck’s hand, thumb resting on his pulse point. It jumps underneath Eddie’s hold. “You know you didn’t.”

“But…” Buck looks down at their hands.

“Listen, you can be stupid sometimes. Actually, you can be stupid a lot of the time, like really really stupid.” He softly rolls his head to emphasize his words, teetering on the edge of silly.

“Alright, I get it.” Buck rolls his eyes, shaking his head endearingly.

Eddie squeezes his hand. “But this is real.”

He knows Eddie is referring to the hearing of it all. But, somewhere behind his sternum, he chooses to believe in the them of it all. Because he sees it. In the station kitchen, softly lit by the overhead bay lights, he sees them, what they’re headed towards, and for a moment, he thinks Eddie sees it too. Eddie is backlit by the glow, eighteen hours into a shift and well-worn for it, and Buck loves him. In the warm August heat let in by the bay doors, he shivers.

“Eddie,” he whispers roughly. He watches as Eddie licks his lips, tugging on his top lip with his teeth like he wants to say something. He wants, achingly so. He’s wanted for six years, and now he might be selfish enough to take it. When he looks back up, Eddie’s eyes are staring into his own.

“Yeah?” Eddie asks. It’s pitched low, almost too low for Buck to hear.

When Buck opens his mouth, on the precipice of ruining their friendship, the bell fucking rings.

-

It wasn’t the first time that he cried on the way home from school. It was, however, the first time he was able to walk home by himself to let the tears fall freely. The middle school was closer to his house than the elementary school, and he wasn’t about to let himself cry on the bus where the other kids could see him. Not over something that stupid.

They look obnoxious as hell, dude.

He knew it was a joke.

Why couldn’t he take a joke?

He knew Cody didn’t mean it the way it came out. Cody, from the seventh grade, who didn’t make fun of Gaby for her funky glasses when she sat down next to them right as obnoxious left his mouth. Cody, who was gauging Evan’s reaction as everyone around them giggled, watched as his smile dimmed slowly until Cody had said “I’m just teasing you, Evan,” and promptly changed the subject.

Cody, who had just realized Evan’s fears for him without even knowing.

Fuck Cody, Evan thought anyway.

He didn’t care that the front door slammed behind him, that the thud of his backpack hitting the floor echoed throughout the entire house. He didn’t care that when he flopped onto the couch with a sob into his mother’s throw pillows, that someone might come to yell at him for it. He was acutely aware of it, actually. He was kind of banking on it.

“Oh, what’s wrong with you now, Evan?” His mother had demanded when she saw him strewn across the couch. He had ignored the exasperated edge to her voice. She had said his name like a curse, and he was grateful she still remembered it.

He could have said nothing, could have blown her off like any pent-up eleven year old would. But then again.

He missed being held. Since Maddie had left for Boston, he had been denied the little touches and physical reminders that he was loved. The fact that he had recently started to fantasize that every stinging scrape and subsequent scab was a band-aid pressed into his aching soul was probably unrelated. A reminder to himself that he knew he hurt, he told himself. Kiss it, make it better.

His mother would never see that for what it was.

He sniffled, wiping his nose as he turned around to look at her. She was so much taller than him from this angle. She towered over the arm of the couch with her arms crossed and a look on her face that he would have described as fed-up. Which, considering he hadn’t said a word to her yet, still tracked.

Evan coughed at the mucus clinging to his throat. “Cody said my ears look obnoxious.”

Her face changed, eyebrows climbing to her hairline. He had thought it might have been sympathy in the way they scrunched up as her bottom lip dropped, emotion filling into the divots of her wrinkles. He should’ve known better. He should have always known better when it came to his parents.

“Well,” Mom’s face smoothed, any hint of feeling wiped clean from it. “You finally got the attention you wanted from those things, then.”

“What?” He sat up, confused not at what his mother had said but what she was implying.

“Oh, don’t start with that, Evan,” his mother had scoffed coldly, half-heartedly pointing an accusing finger at him. “You’ve been wearing those things for, what, a year now? We tried to go along with it. We thought maybe you could pretend to pay attention to us for once, yet you’re still here acting like you want us to repeat everything for you!”

“I-” he barely got a word out before his father stomped into view, glaring at him with something like disdain. Evan was sure he had never felt so small before. They had never looked at him like this.

“You are a healthy boy!” his dad had cut in. “There are real sick people out there. Evan, have you thought about the fact that there are people out there that need these things? It is so selfish of you to do that.” He flicked his hand gesturally, indicating between Evan’s ears.

“I-I didn’t mean to be selfish. I just thought–”

“Thought what?” Mom spat. “Thought you could get away with acting like you need help at the expense of someone else? Thought you deserved it more? You… you can’t ever share with anyone, can you? Not even when–” She choked out. Her lip quivered on the end of her sentence, and Dad’s hand flew up to the small of her back. Tears formed at the red rim of her eyes, threatening to spill over.

“Margaret,” his dad said firmly, with more emotion than he’d had the entire conversation.

Evan reeled back in shock.

“I just don’t understand where this need for attention comes from,” Mom admitted after a moment. She had blinked back her tears, refusing to cheapen her words with them. The Buckleys weren’t ever keen on emotion.

Guilt pooled in his stomach, a splash of warmth that seeped into his gut. He hadn’t considered that he was stealing from people in need. He just thought that he might have been lucky enough to have something to fill in the gaps he’d missed out on. Even so, he had a hard time understanding that this was what his parents took away from the situation.

Evan was a thief, and he looked obnoxious doing it.

“You can behave just fine when it suits you. If you tried half as hard to listen as you did coercing your sister to spend all that money on you, you would be much better off by now. Those things won’t put the effort in for you.”

“I thought they would help!” Evan had defended, pleading with his parents to understand. Why won’t you understand? I just wanted to hear you better. I just wanted you to stop yelling at me. “And I didn’t even know she was gonna get them, and-and even then she was just trying to help me.”

“Well, we refuse to treat you like something you’re not, Evan, so stop pretending,” his dad said with a tone of finality. He exhaled a sharp huff of breath before turning around and walking out of the room. His mother followed.

Evan was left shaking in the frigidity of his parents’ words. Winter was a thief in the Buckley home; the ice still clung to his skin as he turned the hearing aids off, set them gently into the case, and shoved it into the deepest corner of his nightstand.

-

The waiting room is still grey. Still cold.

They should seriously do something about that, Jesus.

The call took a couple hours, so they’re low on sleep, and whatever moment almost happened was forgotten by Eddie, if the way he reverted back to normal was anything to go by. At the end of the shift, they were too tired to change into proper clothes, deciding dragging themselves into the truck in clothes they’ve worn all day would be a good idea.

When Eddie had pulled into the coffee shop two blocks from the station and gotten him an oat milk latte, he knew that his fidgeting and jitters couldn’t be pinned on the caffeine. In his internet dives about ADHD and other things he may or may not be undiagnosed with, he distinctly remembered the fact that ADHD fucks with the dopamine receptors, and thus caffeine’s effect on him.

Anyway.

He shivers in his seat, a combination of the temperature and the anxiety balling up in his nervous system. He bounces his feet in a quick, repetitive motion until he feels a hand press on his thigh to calm him down.

Reverse-osmosis.

“It’s just hearing aids, Buck.” Eddie’s thumb faintly rubs circles in its spot on Buck’s thigh.

“Yeah, I know.”

“If they don’t work then you can give them back. It’s gonna be okay.” Eddie takes a breath before continuing. “And, if they do, it’s not gonna change how any of us see you. How I see you.”

Buck snaps his eyes up from where Eddie’s hand is resting to his eyes. What with Eddie having a longer torso than him, Buck has to tilt his head to meet his gaze. Something about the warm brown of Eddie’s eyes contrasting against the cold beige of the waiting room, he thinks vaguely. “Nothing could change the way I see you.” There’s something serious in his tone, almost desperate, if he chooses to be delusional. Which he is.

“There’s…there’s nothing…me too.” Buck feels himself lean in closer, pressing his elbow into the arm of the chair. He can’t focus on building a coherent sentence when Eddie is this close, looking at him like that. He swears he can feel Eddie’s breath on his nose.

“Will you go in with me this time?” he asks.

“Yeah.” Eddie nods. He hasn’t moved away or shifted his eyes, Buck realizes. If anything, he might have leaned in closer too. He thinks back to last night, in the station loft, where he was so close to everything he’s wanted.

“Buckley?”

He tears himself away, and he knows instantly the same pink heat he’s grown familiar with this week is creeping back up to his cheeks. He turns around to see Dr. Castillo standing in the doorway, clipboard in hand. “You ready?”

Buck nods, a small, hesitant shake of his head that betrays the dull pit in his gut. He and Eddie stand at the same time, and at the wave of Dr Castillo’s hand, they walk back. Eddie’s hand gently rests on the small of his back, an anchor to the swaying he feels in his head, guiding him forward.

They come into Dr. Castillo’s office, where Buck takes the same seat he did the week before, and Eddie settles in the chair on his left, perpendicular to him. Where Buck crosses his ankles under the chair and hunches forward, Eddie has stretched out in his own seat, ankles also crossed and feet resting just under Buck’s chair. If Buck were to move his feet back just so, they would be touching. Naturally. Dr. Castillo emerges from the small closet she had disappeared into seconds ago, a small bag in her hands. “Here they are,” the end of her sentence trails, a sing-song lilt to it.

She takes the box out of the bag, opening it up to reveal a sleek dark grey case. It looks weighty and sturdy, nothing like the hollow plastic that he held close to his heart 21 years ago. Inside the case, though, is what stops the air in his throat. No catalog could have prepared him for how small the hearing aids are, nestled in their respective chargers. They look so peaceful, he thinks stupidly.

Dr. Castillo gently removes them from their case, handing one to Buck. “I already made sure they were charged this morning and added the domes for you. Do you want to put them in yourself?”

Buck wouldn’t believe he was actually holding something if it weren’t for the bright color burning into his retinas, committing his new normal to memory. He grabs the body of it, oh-so-delicately pulling the retriever cable away from the shell, and tucks it behind his ear. He takes the dome and pushes it into the canal, the sensation not unlike a wet q-tip prodding its way in. He looks up at Dr. Castillo for approval, who nods and hands him the other. He repeats the motion, adjusting the domes so that he can’t feel them in his canal. Dr. Castillo moves to sit, and Buck turns to Eddie.

Eddie, who is staring at his ears.

“You got red,” Eddie observes, probably stunned. Like he hadn’t expected to see anything other than Chestnut or Champagne or Sand Beige when Dr. Castillo had revealed them.

Buck nods. “Yeah, like-”

“Like Chris’s glasses.”

“Yeah.” He smiles softly, ducking his head and thinking back to when he decided on the color. He hadn’t considered Lava Red originally, but after that morning in Eddie’s house, it was the only color on the page he could see. And it made sense; red is harder to lose, because that happening isn’t just a matter of if but when, and the heightened visibility might catch the eye of some other kid who can make a connection between themself and Buck, a first responder with an uncommon visible disability.

“They also look more…firefightery… I guess? I know it’s stupid, but, uh, I figured kids might like them,” Buck adds quickly after Eddie doesn’t respond. He huffs, a soft laugh at his own thoughts. “And they– they make me look less…” He trails off, looking up to find Eddie's eyes.

Eddie’s eyes are still staring at the hearing aids, a soft, unreadable look frozen to his face. Was it the wrong choice?

“...old. Do they look okay?”

“What?” Eddie’s eyes pull away from his ears, widening as they come back to meet Buck’s own. His expression softens, and any hint of uncertainty vanishes from it.

Buck can’t help it. “That’s my line.”

Eddie rolls his eyes in fake annoyance, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Just making your ears don’t stick out more than normal.”

His own smile pulls wider, an intrinsic response to anything Eddie directs at him. His shoulders bob, a bark of a laugh escaping his throat as he ducks his head. “Right.”

While Buck spots Dr. Castillo in his periphery, he doesn’t see the smile across her face in response to Eddie’s teasing. She hands Buck the case, which he fidgets with – taking stock of the magnetic closing mechanism and the satisfying soft click it makes when it shuts – as she quickly types into her computer. He remembers the sticker he grabbed last Thursday and leans back into the chair to reach into his pocket.

Dr. Castillo finishes typing, turning slightly to face Buck. “Okay, so we’re gonna get started. I’m going to boot up the software, and in a minute you’re gonna hear some feedback for just a second. That sound good?”

“Yeah, yeah that’s good,” he replies, slightly distracted with angling the sticker across the case. Every position he tries is fruitless; the sticker is too square and too tall to lay flush on the hard plastic without folding in the hinges. He drops the sticker onto his lap in defeat.

He feels a tap behind the soles of his feet, and knows. He turns his head back to Eddie, who smiles a reassuring thing at him, a small thumbs-up peeking out from the crevice between his chest and arm. Buck wants to crawl into it, firm against Eddie’s chest, and safe. Not at the audiologist office, where a very loud noise is about to blast directly into his ears without warning-

Speaking of which.

The first time he set up a new pair of hearing aids, from what he remembers, just involved inserting the batteries and turning them on. No fancy settings, no computer programs, and no borderline-albeistly loud squeal concentrated into his eardrums. The sudden noise makes him jump, and he wonders for a moment if the hearing aids aren’t actually meant to take what little natural hearing he has left. Eddie jolts as well, and Buck grimaces as the squealing subsides only to be replaced with an echo of ringing in his ears.

“I’m so sorry about that,” Dr. Castillo says loudly.

“It’s fine,” he waves her off, also loudly. There’s a slight electronic buzz to his voice, he realizes.

Wait.

In the once silent office room are a million tiny sounds that reveal themselves to Buck: the low pitch of the HVAC whirring. The shuffle of his audiologist’s mouse against the mousepad. The indistinct conversation of people passing by the room.

He sits there for a moment, absorbing it all. When he turns to look at Eddie, he sees his own joy reflected back at him. He reflexively flashes a wide, toothy grin back at him, and when Eddie says oh so softly, Hi, Buck can hear the word, the sharpness of the syllable fading into a breathy exhale.

It’s the most beautiful thing he’s heard.

It brings him to tears.

The wall he had built over 21 years– every brick of denial and self-sabotage piled up in the name of selflessness, crumbled with that one word. Here, in his audiologist’s office with the love of his life, he can’t bring himself to be embarrassed for crying. When his shoulders heave with his sobs and Eddie immediately reaches over to grab his hand, he can’t find an ounce of shame within him. As Eddie stands up and leans across him to take the tissues from Dr. Castillo’s hand, he thinks of his twelve-year-old self, and laughs. He wonders how for even a moment he thought he might not keep these hearing aids. Not when he now knows how soft Eddie’s voice can be.

“I’m sorry,” Buck says anyway, dabbing the hot tears with the tissue. “I wasn’t expecting…”

“You’re fine, Buck. It’s a normal reaction.” Dr. Castillo smiles at him, eyes glancing over to Eddie, who is still hunched over Buck. He’s adjusted slightly, one arm resting on the top of his seat and his left hand clutching the chair arm. With the way he’s positioned, his mouth is just left of the hearing aid, and Buck can ever-so-barely register his breathing.

“So, obviously, we need to program them to your hearing settings…”

She goes on to explain that she could input his audiogram results into the program, and from there the software would create a personalized setting for his hearing aids. With each tweak, he can hear the shift in how the hearing aids pick up sound and deposit it in his ears. She explains that the settings she’s finalized emphasize picking up lower frequency tones and filtering out background noise.

“And there’s the app I told you about. You can customize your settings in there for work, home, whatever. Let me see if I can find a pamphlet…” She trails off, swiping papers around her desk in search of one.

“He’s already ahead of you. He downloaded it as soon as he left here last time,” Eddie fills in, smiling at Buck. He recognizes his expression as the same fond look he gives Chris when he isn’t looking. Buck feels the warmth in his cheeks return.

“Good to know.” She smiles at them. “If you want to pull it up, we can sync your hearing aids and set up the Bluetooth.”

As he’s pulling up the app, he hears her shuffle some papers and stack them together on the desk. “I’m going to give these to Mr…” She looks up at Eddie expectantly, trailing off.

Eddie shifts from beside him. “Oh, just Eddie,” he replies, taking the papers from her.

The rest of the appointment goes by in a blur. Dr. Castillo explains care techniques, trouble-shooting, and other tidbits regarding the hearing aids to them, but mainly to Eddie. It’s probably for the better as Buck is more focused on hearing rather than the actual processing, but it’s all he can do at the moment.

Stepping outside, he takes note of any sounds he might have missed before. So far, most of the sounds he registers when they get back to the truck are the same, only louder. The engine hums to life as Eddie presses the ignition button, and a gaudy Luke Bryan song softly emanates from the radio.

“Oh, god, Eddie, you gotta stop listening to this shit.” Buck shakes his head, gesturing at the radio with a splayed hand. ”I know you’re from Texas but it’s not an excuse–”

“You can hear that?” Eddie asks slowly.

“I mean, barely, but, Eddie, c’mo– oh.”

He checks the volume indicator, slides it up one. The number six appears on the radio screen.

“Oh, holy fuck,” he exhales through a laugh.

Eddie laughs too. It’s not the only thing he notices on the way out of the industrial park. He picks up on the road rumbling and the fucking wind– the wind fucking hates hearing aids apparently, bucause it screams and thrashes into the receivers and triggers feedback. The accelerator of the car, roaring with every press Eddie gives it.

He’s so caught up in exploring his new auditory environment that he almost doesn’t catch Eddie miss his turn.

“We just need to grab something real quick,” Eddie replies when he points it out.

He watches as Eddie turns the wheel, guiding them into a parking lot and stopping the car in front of a Michael’s Arts and Crafts.

“Eddie.”

Eddie shifts the gear into park. “Yeah?”

“What the fuck are we doing at a Michael’s on a Thursday morning?”

“Just… come on.” Eddie unbuckles and pushes his door open.

Buck moves to get out of the car when Eddie turns back around and adds, pointing to the bag in between Buck’s feet, “Oh, grab your case.”

They walk into the store, and Eddie makes a beeline past the Halloween decor and the new arrivals that are always 40% off for some reason. He follows Eddie’s strides into the stationery section of the store. They’ve both stopped in this store countless times, grabbing last minute staples for Chris’s projects or adding to his vast collection of art supplies– he knows exactly where Eddie is headed.

“Stickers?” he asks, stopping at the foot of the aisle.

Eddie slows to a halt, turning on his heel to face Buck.

“Uh, yeah. I saw your other sticker didn’t fit, and you’re gonna lose that thing so fast, so, I figured you might find something here to put on them.“ His face is flushing as he talks, well on its way to crimson. It’s adorable, Buck thinks. The whole thing is.

He loves Eddie so much– the man who is indulging in Buck’s desire to cover his new belongings in silly stickers even though they’re both grown men. He has half the mind to push Eddie against the shelves right then and there, tell him just that.

Instead, they spend the next several minutes thoroughly combing through the stickers, laying the potentials over the case to see how they would fit. They accumulate a stack of stars and planets, marine life, and first responder stickers. Some of them are juvenile– mostly intended for children’s scrapbooking, but there are a few realistic stickers sprinkled throughout. At one point, Buck finds himself arguing over what styles to get and whether or not they should get the puffy letters for the lid. Eddie compromises on a typewriter font style.

When Buck turns to show Eddie a pack of fish stickers, Eddie is holding a pack of pride flag stickers, deliberating over them. He's looking at them like they might hold all the secrets in the universe. Somewhere in the back of Buck’s mind, he thinks about when he first looked up bisexuality, and the closeness he felt with that flag when he saw it. He had looked at it almost the same way Eddie looks at the stickers now.

“Oh, yeah!” Eddie snaps his eyes up, then back at the stickers. “I think the bi one would be cool, and then maybe we could give the lesbian one to Hen and the pan one to Ravi? We would– Eddie, are you okay?”

Eddie does not look okay– he looks pale, the sticker pack wobbling ever so slightly in his shaky grasp. Buck drops the fish pack in his hands, reaching out to cover Eddie’s. He tilts his head down at Eddie, whose breathing pattern is slightly off kilter.

“Yeah.” Eddie nods. A swallow makes its way down his throat, Adam’s apple bobbing with the motion. “And maybe… I could find somewhere for the rainbow one,” he says, oh so softly.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of places you could put that.” Buck is about to rattle off a list of suggestions when Eddie’s words come back to him, slamming into him with full force. “Wait.” Realization dawns on his face, his mouth gaping softly at Eddie, eyes widening. Wait…

Eddie inhales a breath, holds it, and lets it out slowly. “I’m gay.”

Buck’s world stops. “Eddie?”

“I wasn’t planning on saying it in a goddamn Michael’s, but I just–I wanted to say it last night but I figured…”

Eddie’s shaking, words catching in his throat on their way out. Buck pulls him into his hold for a hug, careful not to crush the stickers. After a second, he feels arms wrap around his waist and squeeze.

“I’m so fucking proud of you,” he whispers against Eddie’s temple. “So fucking proud.”

Eddie exhales. “It took me a minute to get there, uh, to figure it out. I didn’t even know that it might be an option, you know? I wasn’t aware– I mean, I kind of was, but uh, with my history, you know, I didn’t wanna think about–”

Buck can tell where this conversation is going, and they’re holding each other in the middle of the Michael’s sticker aisle, and it’s supposed to be a positive moment for Eddie, so he derails Eddie’s train of thought.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he says, running his hands up and down Eddie’s back to soothe him. “You know now. That’s what matters. You’re here now.” He lets Eddie absolve himself of the weight of the moment, push the concentrated emotions out of himself with every squeeze and breath he takes, and Buck absorbs it from him.

He pulls back after a moment. “So. Where are you gonna put your sticker?”

Eddie laughs, a soft thing only meant for the two of them to hear. “I was thinking about it, actually. Maybe the fridge or something. It’s a two-pack.”

“Oh, so when you regret putting the sticker in the wrong spot you won’t feel bad about tearing it?”

Buck’s expecting a comeback, but Eddie just looks at him with an unreadable look on his face. Eddie shakes his head, scooping up the basket on the floor.

As they walk to the checkout, Buck grabs a pack of weather related stickers for Chris since he’s been into meteorology lately, which reminds him. “Does Chris know?” he nods his head toward the pack of flag stickers resting on top of the pile.

Eddie nods. “I told him the other day, actually, the day of your other appointment.”

Buck nearly trips on the smooth tile. “Specifically the day of my appointment?”

Eddie takes a second before answering. “Well, it came up.” He walks toward the register before Buck can ask his next question.

Buck thinks there’s more to the story with the way Eddie’s response feels just left of the truth. It’s probably just nerves– he remembers when he came out to Chris, and knows there’s no perfect moment to say it. It probably just came up, like Eddie said.

When they check out and Eddie hands him the reusable bag full of stickers and Buck just says “Thank you,” he almost prays that Eddie understands the depths of his words.

The sun casts an amber glaze into the kitchen when he and Chris are arguing over the placement of the stickers on the hearing aid case.

“Get your own hearing aids,” Buck laughs as Chris suggests, for the third time, that he should put a lightning bolt on top of the puffy fire truck sticker.

“Well, I tried that. Dad said no,” Chris grumbles. “It’s not my fault that I’m too bored in class and will get in trouble if I use my phone.”

“I didn’t even have a phone when I was your age,” Eddie supplies from the sink. The water is running from the faucet, but with the background noise adjustment, Buck can finally process the words being said over the white noise of the water.

“Yeah, and that must have been so sad.” Mock sympathy drips from Chris's voice.

“Okay, well, if you’re gonna whine about it, at least try one on.” Buck pulls a hearing aid out, handing it to Chris. He sees Eddie come up next to him in his periphery, probably eager to prove a point as well.

Chris pops the hearing aid in, and the weight of it next to the hinge of his glasses causes his ear to tip forward ever so slightly.

“So?” Eddie prompts, a little too loudly.

“Oh, absolutely not.” Chris rips it out instantly, gently tossing it back at Buck. “Enjoy your old man ears,” he says, getting up from the island and exiting the kitchen.

Buck laughs softly, going to put the hearing aid back in when Eddie puts a hand out. He looks up at Eddie, who asks, “Can I?”

“Yeah.” He stands up, his hand brushing past Eddie’s outstretched one and reaching up to his ear instead. Buck smooths back a lock of Eddie’s hair, and mentally notes a new silver strand poking out from under the dark brown he’s carding his fingers through. In the glow of the sunset, the strand is almost white. He gently slides the red hearing aid around Eddie’s ear until it rests against the mastoid. He slowly pushes the dome of it into Eddie’s ear canal, watching as Eddie slightly jolts in response to the change in pressure in his ear. It’s the most intimate thing he’s ever done– he lets out the breath lodged in his throat.

Buck jerks his hand back, hot. “So?” He teases, the word stuttering in his esophagus on its way out. His heart is beating way too fast for the occasion, and if he prayed, he might beg a god to turn Eddie’s attention away.

Eddie clicks his tongue. “I’m gonna agree with Chris on this one. Your hearing kind of sucks.”

Buck hits Eddie’s arm with the back of his hand, earning a laugh from Eddie in response. “See if I make you breakfast tomorrow,” He mutters.

Eddie shakes his head, smiling as he takes out the hearing aid slowly and gently, and plops it in Buck’s hand as he goes back to the sink.

Buck pops it in and stifles a yawn as he turns to the faucet with Eddie, never able to stand a proper distance away.. “I thought I would be more tired after that coffee this morning,” he says, nonsensical to Eddie.

“Oh, yours was decaf,” Eddie replies simply.

Buck’s confused. “Huh?”

“Caffeine makes you sleepy, right? You mentioned that as an ADHD thing once.”

Three years ago, in the middle of a call at a coffee shop. He thinks of all the other things he’s rattled off that Eddie has probably tucked away in his mind. Does he have a compartment titled “Buck” like Buck has one for Eddie?

“You remembered,” he says.

Eddie shrugs. “Yeah, well...”

Buck shouldn’t be able to hear it, what with the faucet running and the newfound buzzing of the dishwasher, but.

At the end of his response, Eddie whispers to the running water, just above Buck’s new threshold of hearing, “I love you, so.”

Buck also hears his own breath catch in response.

Oh, fuck.

He wouldn’t do that for just anybody.

Oh.

Eddie freezes.

“You…” Buck takes a steadying breath.

“You weren’t supposed to hear that yet,” Eddie says quickly. He refuses to look away from the goddamned faucet. There’s a quiver to his voice. Is he… scared?

“Did you want me to?” Buck blurts out, just loud enough for Eddie to hear.

Eddie takes another breath, but doesn’t say anything. Buck reaches for the hem of Eddie’s shirt– he only has to extend his arm halfway, the kitchen is so small, and they’re so close.

“Did you want me to?” he repeats, a little firmer. A little stronger, for the both of them.

The tip of his pinkie dips past the hem of the shirt where it’s bunched up, barely grazing the skin at Eddie’s waist. The gentlest of brushes. Eddie’s breath hitches at the contact.

“Yes.”

Buck’s ring finger slips through Eddie’s belt loop, and he tugs on it to pull him closer and closer until he’s pressed against Buck’s chest and they can feel the shiver of each other’s lungs. Eddie slides his hands up Buck’s chest and neck until they cup his jaw and his thumbs are swiping over Buck’s cheekbones. He can smell the mint scented shampoo in Eddie’s hair, and he aches.

Buck dips his head down until his nose grazes past Eddie’s own. “Good.”

There’s so many things he’s come to not understand, unable to process, but not this. He’s understood this the whole time– he just should’ve listened.

He’s leaning in so close, achingly so, and brings one hand to the back of Eddie’s head. Buck’s fingers softly card at the soft hair under them. His heart is about to break free from its cage, and he can feel Eddie’s breath hot on his bottom lip. He looks into Eddie’s eyes, and he sees his own want reflected back at him.

“Buck,” Eddie whispers. “Please.”

Buck has never been more sure of anything.

He closes the distance between them, slowly leaning in until his lips are on Eddie’s. The softest kiss.

All at once, he knows: this is it.

“I love you, too,” he says into Eddie’s lips.

With that, Eddie takes mouth into his, pulling Buck’s bottom lip between his own. He can feel echoes of moans bounce on his tongue– his or Eddie’s, he’s not sure. His hand at Eddie’s hip squeezes, pressing into hot skin, and is rewarded with a gentle bite to his lip.

He feels Eddie’s hands slide through his curls, fingers scratching at his scalp. They pull at the locks, earning a soft sound from Buck, then drag forward, coming back to his face. They run down his neck as he pulls Buck closer, trying to take as much of him as he can in the moment. His palms slide back up his jaw, trailing over his cheekbones and–

A loud, painful squeal fills Buck’s ears.

He jumps, and Eddie’s hands pull away– the squeal instantly stops. Eddie’s face is flushed pink and his lips are kiss-bitten, and Buck knows he’s not faring much better himself. They look at each other, holding each other’s gaze for a moment, and burst into a fit of giggles between heavy breaths.

In the spirit of not wanting to be interrupted again, Buck reaches up to his ears to pull them out. Eddie grabs his arm before he can fully pull them out, though, setting it on his own shoulder. Buck hooks his arm around the back of Eddie’s neck while Eddie tucks the halfway-out hearing aid back in, reaching up to kiss under Buck’s ear. The brush of Eddie’s nose against the hair behind his ear sends tiny crunchy sounds into his hearing aids, and he shivers at the sensation. Eddie keeps pressing them in, each kiss deeper than the one before it, trailing from behind his ear to down the side of his jaw, and back up to his ear lobe. He feels the sting of teeth pinching the skin there, instantly pacified by a gentle swipe of tongue.

“Are they… going to be a thing for you?” Buck manages to breathe out.

“Shut up.”

Buck doesn’t remember how they got from the kitchen to the living room without breaking anything– he is only thinking about the way he’s being held, and he only has half a mind to grab Eddie around the back as he falls backwards over the arm of the sofa. Eddie lands on top of him softly, his face landing in the crook of Buck’s neck; he presses a kiss there. Buck scratches gently down his spine, resting his cheek against Eddie’s temple. They slowly push back on the couch until Buck’s head comes to the other arm, never letting go of each other, never sacrificing an inch of distance. He intertwines his legs with Eddie’s own, locking him into place.

“Have you been saying that the whole time?” he asks, after his heart finally stops beating in his throat.

Eddie hums a question into his neck, pressing vibrations into the skin.

Buck takes a quick breath. “You said I wasn’t supposed to hear that – which, I’m gonna be honest, is kinda ableist–” Eddie pinches him in the rib on the side, eliciting a small sound of protest. “Anyways. I, uh, always see you saying something I can’t understand when there’s background noise. Have you been…saying that you love me the whole time?”

Buck feels Eddie take a deep breath, the expansion of his chest pushing into his own. He can hear the sharp whistle of air exiting as Eddie exhales. He could never get used to hearing more of Eddie, nor will he ever want to. How could he have denied himself the privilege of hearing, taking more of what he has to give him?

“Not the whole time.”

Buck stays silent, waiting for an elaboration. “It started by saying ‘I’m gay,’ because that’s what you do before you come out, right? You say it in a mirror to make the real thing less scary. So I did, then saying I love you was like coming out in my mirror– saying it made it real, and it’s just… it’s just a part of me. You’re a part of me, and saying it near you made me feel like I could have you. And now I do.”

As Buck listens, he takes stock of all the little pieces he gets to keep of Eddie now: the way his fingers twitch over Buck’s ribs as they brush over the skin there. The way Eddie’s lips are dry and cracked because he licks them repeatedly out of habit, now Buck’s to kiss. The way he’s always making little noises– the grunts and groans Buck has gotten used to knowing, and now the gentle sighs and moans Buck learned today. Like Buck, he always has something to say; he just says it more softly.

He realizes: he gets to keep this forever. All these noises, all these touches, all of Eddie– his, endlessly. He feels a stutter pick up behind his sternum.

“Knowing I love you wasn’t scary. It’s the easiest thing in the world, Buck, God,” Eddie finishes.

Buck’s heart is warm and full. “I love you, Eddie. So much.”

Eddie brushes his lips against the underside of Buck’s jaw. “Stay.”

He knows the weight of the world Eddie is offering in that word. “Really?”

Eddie responds with a hum into his pulse point, tickling the day-old stubble trailing down his neck. “Stay.”

“Yeah, of course. Anything you want, Eds.”

Buck mutters a soft “c’mere” as he pulls Eddie up for a kiss, slow, lazy, sleep-laced press of lips. Once, twice, and three times he holds Eddie’s top lip with none of the heat from before, but all of the love.

Teary blue eyes lock onto warm brown– the depths of brown not unlike the depths of the well Eddie dug himself out of years ago before signing Buck into his family forever. Here he is again, Buck thinks, climbing out of something else entirely, saving himself again. Now, he’s dug himself out of thirty years of repression, and building a family for real in the process. They’re not going anywhere, but Buck doesn’t let go anyway.

“Don’t forget to put them on the charger,” Eddie reminds him softly as he settles his head back onto Buck’s chest.

“I won’t.”

(He will.)

About three strokes of Eddie’s thumb across his collarbone from falling asleep, he barely registers the soft patter of Chris’s socked feet making their way past the living room. The patter stops, replaced by a beat of silence, then the over-dramatic groan of a thirteen year old who is absolutely staring at them from the other end of the couch.

“God.”

-

They’re sitting on the bench of the station locker room the next morning when Eddie says something indiscernible to Buck’s left. Buck, having forgotten to charge his hearing aids overnight and still fighting off sleep, misses it.

“Hold on,” He says, reaching into his duffel to pull out his hearing aid case. The case is covered in the stickers he and Chris decorated it with last night, and it makes him smile. He quickly pops the now-charged hearing aids in, and the dull hum of background noise fades out, replaced by Eddie’s huff of laughter sharpening into focus. “Okay, go ahead.”

“I figured out where I want to put my sticker,” Eddie repeats, holding up the sheet of pride flags.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Eddie peels the sticker off of the backing and smacks it right on top of a photo on the inside of his locker door. Buck recognizes the photo– he took it. It’s a selfie of him, Eddie, and Chris at the zoo, posing with a sleeping lion in the background. It’s a couple years old, and the color has faded slightly, but the look on their faces is as clear as anything.

“I’m proud of you,” Buck says between the two of them.

Eddie presses his knee into Buck’s. “You, too,” he says back, just as soft.

A repeated knock on the doorway echoes, a hollow thud emanating into the small space. “Uh, were you planning on showing up for breakfast?” Chim asks, watching them from behind. He wears an unreadable look, and Buck isn’t too interested in finding out what it means.

“Duh,” Buck jumps up, the smell of Bobby’s bacon wafting into the bay finally making itself known to him. He follows Chim out the doorway and towards the stairs when he feels an arm wrap around his wrist and tug.

“Wait,” Eddie says, and Buck turns around. Eddie reaches out, adjusting one of the hearing aids that was slipping out. He watches Eddie’s eyes as he tucks a lock of hair behind it, securing it into place. He’s still holding Buck’s wrist, and Buck never wants him to let go.

“Uh, Cap?” Chim calls, voice ringing sharp into Buck’s ears from behind him. Eddie pulls his hand away, caught.

“I know, I see it,” Bobby says, somewhere between chastising and fond. The tone is warm– he looks down at them from the landing, spatula in hand, a grin pulling at his cheeks. Louder and brighter, he says, “Come show them off, Buck!” And walks back towards the kitchen.

When Chim turns away to follow the smell of breakfast, Eddie traces Buck’s hand into his own, thumb running gently across the warm skin. “I love you,” Eddie says into his neck, just under the shell of his ear– a whisper, a silent prayer.

“I heard that,” Buck smiles.

“I know.”