Archive of Our Own

It starts at the firehouse, during some downtime, because that is when most of Buck and Eddie’s most deranged ideas come from, if they think about it long enough.

Buck hears Hen and Chim teasing Eddie about the fact that he actually enjoys telenovelas and doesn’t use them to practice Spanish with Christopher, and all but flees the kitchen (leaving a bewildered Bobby behind) to give them his opinion. 

Truthfully, he doesn’t need to give his opinion. He wants an excuse. 

He has thought about it for so long, maybe ever since Eddie and Chris settled back home and he didn’t leave, but he believes he’d sound completely insane if he just laid out his idea out of the blue, so he’s been looking for an opening to just say it without anyone pointing out how weird that is.

Buck wants to learn Spanish, and doesn’t know how to tell Eddie.

Truthfully, he worries that saying that in front of the whole team could result in merciless teasing, but he’s never been known for knowing better.

“They are right,” he says, hands planted on his hips completely mirroring Eddie’s annoyed dad stance — as he loves to call it in his mind. 

Eddie turns around so quickly that he nearly gets whiplash. “Weren’t you cooking with Cap?” 

His brows immediately furrow and Buck wants to smooth them with his fingers, or his lips.

Not the time.

Buck’s love for the man in front of him molds his features, turning them into something depressingly soft and mushy, even when gently teasing. “Had to back Hen and Chim there,” he points out, with a boyish grin that doesn’t fool anyone (except Eddie, apparently).

Eddie scrunches up his nose and his mouth does something funny which should appear mean and teasing but only ends up giving him away. At least, the mischievous grin he sends Buck’s way is a testament to how pathetically in love he is with his friend.

“I don’t love telenovelas!” He splutters, chagrined by these accusations. 

Buck grins widely at that, points at him with a finger, and ducks his head too. “Yes, you do, yesterday you spent half an hour looking for–”

“I suggest you shut up right now, Buckley.” Eddie is standing up now, in front of a satisfied, grinning Buck, and looks like he’s a moment away from shutting him up with a bruising kiss. 

Ridiculous, if you ask Hen.

“Or what?” Buck keeps teasing. Maybe he has forgotten that they are at work, that Hen and Chimney will likely talk about this lovers’ spat of theirs for days and Maddie will probably call him to tease him some more. Maybe Buck forgot that they are not together, that Eddie doesn’t love him like that. 

But he does. He does love Eddie like that. Like Eddie is dangerously shaped like the rest of his life. So he doesn’t back down, instead, he puffs up, chest upright and proud, and keeps smirking at his best friend.

“You love the drama,” he adds, watching adoringly as Eddie goes through ten thousand stages of grief, all red on his cheeks.

Then, as if someone had cut his strings, his shoulders sag and he turns to look in their friends’ direction. “I watch them with him, but I don’t understand a word, and he refuses to translate for me!” Buck explains, with a fake offended pout and acting like he’s truly pained by his best friend’s behavior.

“I don’t have the time to translate when I’m watching!” Eddie retorts without thinking about it, and that seals his fate.

Everyone immediately and too excitedly points a finger at him. “Ha! Then you like them!” Hen points out.

“You like them so much that you can’t tear your eyes away from the screen!” Chim adds, slightly singsonging, clearly enjoying this too much.

Buck, laughing happily, decides to put his plan into action. “I should just take some Spanish lessons, I suppose,” he blurts out, sighing. 

And Eddie, who feels like he has been at work for ten hours already (when it’s actually been only three), suddenly shrieks. “What? Why would you need lessons?” 

He sounds horrified, a bit hurt at the insinuation.

“Uh, to… learn Spanish?” Buck genuinely murmurs, all at once sobered up, looking sincerely confused.

Adorable.

They are so focused on each other that they don’t notice Hen and Chimney walking away, leaving them alone but still listening in, enjoying the exchange too much to give up.

“Yeah but– I can–” Eddie’s eyes are a little bit wild. “Wait. You wanna learn Spanish?”

Then, Chimney can’t resist. “Didn’t you live in Peru?” He throws in. And before Buck can even open his mouth, Eddie waves a hand in his direction and says, “he talked mostly English, doesn’t know much,” which makes Buck’s heart swell in his chest because of how much Eddie remembers about him.

Again, they don’t see their friends rolling their eyes at them.

“Yeah, I,” Buck feels self-conscious, shrugs the sudden tension off his shoulders, “I’ve been thinking about it for some time now.”

Eddie reacts before thinking. “Well, I can teach you,” he quickly offers, shrugging as if it’s not a big deal. 

To Buck, it’s everything.

It was easy, after all.

Ravi chooses that moment to come back from his chores downstairs. “Can teach what? To whom?” 

Buck rolls his eyes. Ravi unfortunately knows that Buck is in love with Eddie. Buck told the guy because he realized he was completely insufferable when Eddie was in Texas and wanted to apologize.

“Spanish!” Hen exclaims, with too much glee, for Eddie’s liking. 

Eddie barely has time to look at Ravi and then at Hen and then back at Ravi before they keep talking.

“To Buck?” Ravi asks.

Chimney pops his chewing gum, “Yeah, to Buck!” Clarifies with a suggestive glance at the two firefighters.

“Oh,” Ravi looks at Eddie for a second and then back at Buck. 

“That’s… interesting. Okay,” he shrugs and walks away.

“You serious?” Buck checks with Eddie, to see if his plan has worked.

Eddie shrugs again. It feels like the twentieth time in the last hour that Buck has seen his shoulders move. “Yeah, if you want.”

“I do.”

Buck smiles and thinks that he would be the luckiest bastard on planet Earth to say those two little words to Eddie in a completely different scenario. One where they are both wearing their best suits and there are rings to be exchanged. But he won’t dwell on the thought. At least not now. He simply goes back to helping Bobby.

Nobody is cruel enough to remind them that they could just use subtitles.

“Are you, uh, really serious about the Spanish lessons?” Eddie asks while they are driving home that night after their shift. 

Something is tugging at his heartstrings, maybe it’s the way Buck has been driving them to and from work for weeks now, like it’s a tacit agreement between the two of them. Maybe it’s the way the setting sun is warm through the windshield and hitting Buck’s face in all the right places, casting a very special hue on his eyes and his birthmark, one that makes Eddie feel like he simply can’t get enough. There’s too much Buck to look at.

Or maybe, it’s the knowledge that Buck wants to spend time and effort on learning a new language just because it’s Eddie’s first language. 

Buck’s cheeks turn a soft shade of pink and Eddie would like to bite him an embarrassing amount. “Yeah, I mean– you don’t have to but I–”

“I want to,” Eddie promptly cuts him off.

If Buck didn’t have to keep his eyes on the road, he would notice Eddie’s embarrassing heart eyes, as Christopher called them once (Eddie had to tell him about his feelings for Buck), but as he’s focusing on getting them home in one piece, Eddie is free to stare for as long as he wants. 

And he does, with his head tilted, brushing against the headrest back and forth. It’s a soothing sensation, or maybe it’s just Buck.

“Oh, hey, we are in the carro,” he blurts out at some point, almost in childlike excitement, and Buck laughs. There’s a glint in his eyes, his smile is crinkly and a bit lopsided and Eddie’s heart races like a wild horse. 

“What?” 

“Carro means car,” Eddie explains, grin staying in place, splitting his face into two. 

Buck burst into laughter. “Oh God, this is how it’s gonna be?” 

It’s half a question half a statement, and honey drips from his voice. “Carro,” he repeats, nodding, and that’s Eddie’s turn to laugh.

“Hey, what– why are you laughing at me, come on!”

Buck swats Eddie’s thigh and his stomach does a somersault thinking that he could just keep his hand there, on Eddie’s knee, squeezing from time to time, just moving it occasionally to gear up or down. 

Eddie turns in his seat, doesn’t remember the last time a car ride was this fun. He almost feels like a teenager mindlessly driving around with his crush. “Your accent– I mean, your pronunciation,” Eddie explains, trailing off with a smile.

“Fuck you,” Buck mumbles, even though he’s completely hopeless against the twinkly smile that creeps up on his face. “And,” he makes a point of lifting a hand from the steering wheel, “it’s just one word!”

“We’ve got so much to do,” Eddie dramatically sighs, shaking his head in faux despair. 

A few moments of silence pass by, before Buck speaks again. “I need a notebook,” he declares, with a look so determined that Eddie is already planning their wedding down to the smallest detail. Like, please look at him. He’s excited to learn Spanish. 

“You do?” Eddie feels his blood turn into a sugary, warm liquid. 

“Hm-hm,” Buck nods, and luckily that’s when they reach the driveway of their house, or Eddie might have done something drastic like begging Buck to keep him forever.

They keep smiling like idiots the whole evening.

Now, when Eddie agreed to be Buck’s very personal Spanish teacher, he didn’t think it would get Buck to spend all of his time glued to his side. 

It’s been two weeks since he very professionally explained the difference between pero and perro and sí and si, passing through the difference between esta and está — that is since the day Eddie started his lessons — and ever since, Buck has turned down every invitation from Maddie and the rest of the team to go out because he wants to take advantage of every opportunity he has to get new notions out of his best friend. He doesn’t dwell on how convenient having a reason to be Eddie’s shadow is, as he’s in love with the guy.

So Eddie is a bit concerned, if he’s honest. Buck is so serious about this whole Spanish thing that it’s borderline absurd, but Eddie loves him, and would gladly spend the rest of his life with him, so he happily keeps handing out grammar rules and pronunciation tips whenever Buck asks. 

That, however, doesn’t mean that things don’t get weird. But it’s them, after all. So it doesn’t really matter.

For instance, if one were to ask Eddie how Buck ends up sitting on the toilet lid while he’s having a shower, he wouldn’t know how to answer.

“Buck!” He shrieks when hearing the bathroom door open wide. They have seen each other naked on more than one occasion but this feels different, maybe on account of Eddie’s feelings, maybe because it doesn’t feel that weird, after all.

“Oh, come on,” Buck retorts undeterred, sitting on the closed toilet and clicking his pen with a nervous thumb again and again. “It’s not like I’m in the shower with you!”

Eddie scoffs, even if his cheeks heat up (he’s sure they are beet red) so he can pretend to be annoyed but he knows the truth. “'Cause that would be perfectly normal,” mutters, while he’s lathering his chest. 

Buck shuts him up with a flick of his hand, even though Eddie can’t see him. “Eddie, this is serious.” He is now tapping on the notebook, brows furrowed and eyes focused as though the future of the whole nation depends on the task at hand. 

Eddie chuckles, “What’s so serious?”

He can’t stop his mind from wandering. He wonders what would happen if he just asked Buck to step into the shower with him. Then he goes back to reality.

“There are, like, ten versions of the same verb, what the hell? How am I supposed to learn them all?” 

Buck sounds so disturbed by this thing that Eddie’s first reaction is to laugh, loudly. He’s so happy, honestly. Three months ago he was living a miserable life in Texas, his kid kind of hated him and he had to leave the only job he’s ever liked, leave the love of his life (now he knows why he missed Buck like a limb) behind. Now, said love of his life is sitting on the other side of the shower curtain and trying to learn Spanish for his sake. He wants to live like this forever, even if he can never truly have Buck.

“Don’t laugh.” Now he is sure Buck is pouting, even if he can’t see the man.

“Sorry, sorry… what’s the verb that’s bothering you, guapo?” 

It’s just a slip of the tongue, honestly. He didn’t mean to call Buck guapo. He knows he can only dream of calling Buck handsome, but something about this intimate moment, about having Buck so close all the time is messing with his lovestruck mind. He winces, closing his eyes and praying that Buck doesn’t know the word.

Buck, on his part, nearly chokes on air. Eddie just called him handsome? That’s something he immediately went looking at: pet names. Because… well, the reason behind this particular research stays between him and his Google history. He dreams of Eddie calling him baby, of him calling Eddie baby. And something else too, now in Spanish. 

However, he feigns ignorance. “The ir!” He blurts out, depressingly sagging against the tiled wall and eliciting another laugh from his best friend. 

“Okay, now you’re having too much fun, get out of there, come on!” He pouts, sitting straighter. 

“Excuse me? I have to leave my shower?” 

Eddie wants so desperately to sound serious and stern and outraged, but he is grinning like a fool and completely unable to keep the fondness out of his tone. 

Buck doesn’t rip the curtain open because he’s scared he’d definitely cross a line but God, does he want to… “You promised to help me,” instead he whines, getting up and moving to brush his teeth in the meantime. 

That means he only replies to Eddie in grunts and weird hollow sounds and Eddie would gladly rip the heart out of his chest and give it to the man who’s currently occupying his (their) bathroom.

Buck’s obsession with learning Eddie’s first language keeps Eddie’s heart warm but does not go unnoticed. 

It starts as a joke at the station. Buck would hold up something and look in Eddie’s direction and Eddie would say its name in Spanish, pretending to be annoyed or simply smiling at his best friend, but then things get… intense. 

Every free moment they have is turned into an impromptu lesson, with Buck actually running to get his notebook, much to the amusement of the whole A-shift and even some firefighters from other shifts that now know about the Buckley-Diaz Spanish classes, as they call them.

It’s become a common joke.

Whenever anyone is out of things to do, someone goes and hits them with a teasing “want me to call Diaz? I’m sure he could teach you some Spanish too,” and it becomes such an easy way to joke that Eddie and Buck are aware of it because they heard it somewhere at some time. 

“Do you think it’s weird?” Buck asks Eddie one random Friday, feet up on Eddie’s (their) coffee table.

“What?”

They have been revising irregular verbs for an hour, and Buck’s eyes are drooping if he’s honest. 

“That half station talks about our Spanish lessons?”

Eddie shrugs. “Tal vez,” he cheekily replies.

“Maybe?” Buck’s voice is shrill against the quiet of the early afternoon, and Eddie can’t help but smile.

“Who cares?” Eddie unhelpfully adds.

“Yeah, you’re right… como siempre.”

Buck’s accent makes Eddie grin like the biggest idiot on planet Earth and he is so, so euphoric every time Buck shows good progress but there’s something that explodes in his chest every time Buck spontaneously uses Spanish words in conversation, casually, as if he had no reason not to, as if Eddie’s presence granted the use of another language. It makes Eddie feel so fucking special that he would cry.

“Como siempre?” He teases, with an emotional glint in his eyes and Buck swats his shoulder and scoffs. 

“Stay humilde, Edmundo.”

The whole room roars with Eddie’s boisterous laughter, and while Buck looks at him as satisfied as ever, he thinks that Edmundo has never sounded so good before. Tia Pepa occasionally calls him Eddito, and whenever she or abuela call him Edmundo it always brings him comfort but generally, he doesn’t like Edmundo because it reminds him of his parents, their expectations, their constantly disappointed glances, of a man he isn’t, one he doesn’t want to be.

Buck, though, says his name like he does everything else: with love. 

Eddie then settles on softly snorting, desperately hoping that’ll conceal the love that is jolting him so aggressively.

Eventually, he keeps asking about the verbs Buck finds most difficult to remember for another half hour before they fall asleep on the couch. They didn’t plan to nap together, let alone on the couch with Buck’s feet in Eddie’s lap, and Eddie’s hands wrapped around Buck’s ankles. Napping together is something they’ve never done since Eddie came back and Buck slowly simply… stayed. 

They share the bed, because the second night Eddie was home, he refused to go to sleep until Buck went with him, but they don’t share these small naps, brief moments of their day, stolen from the usual frenzy of their schedules. 

It always feels like it’s something way too intimate, as though they can share a bed, share body heat, and blind touches only when blanketed by the night's darkness. 

After that one time, though, things change, and they keep falling asleep during Buck’s lessons.

It happens some weeks later, when Buck’s progress is remarkable and Eddie is so proud of him that he would kiss him so deeply it hurt. 

“Say it again, c’mon,” Eddie patiently encourages Buck who, in turn, just rolls his eyes and huffs.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me!”

“You’re annoying!”

Buck looks like a kicked puppy and Eddie has never been so close to kissing him senseless as he is right now. God, he loves loving Buck but he hates that he can’t act on it. 

He wants to put an early end to this Spanish lesson so badly and maybe talk his way into a very thorough make-out session. 

“I’m not, and you’re good, keep going,” he points out, kicking Buck’s thigh with his toes. 

“Hey!” Suddenly Buck is distracted, looking at Eddie’s feet. “These are my socks!”

Eddie sheepishly smiles, shrugs, then looks completely casual. “Well, now they’re our socks, now say that again!”

He’s been trying to get Buck to repeat a particularly difficult sentence, mostly due to its pronunciation, but Buck looks at him and instead says, “ours like… mi casa es tu casa?” 

And Eddie’s heart skips so many beats that he starts fearing for his life. 

“Mi casa has always been tu casa, and now it really is,” he tells Buck, when he recovers from the shock, and he sits upright, coming closer to Buck in the process, and is about to tell him to keep the study on when Buck yawns and drops his head on Eddie’s shoulder.

“No, ‘m not gonna say anything, wanna sleep,” he mumbles, cheeks completely red (borderline purple, if Eddie thinks about it), voice thick with sleep in a way that shouldn’t be normal for a person who was awake and teasing until thirty seconds before.

And Eddie is helpless. Completely, utterly helpless against the feeling of pure, unconditional affection that rushes through his whole body. “Okay,” he replies, as softly as possible, and can’t do anything to stop his hand from sliding into Buck’s curls.

One week later, they are heading to the station when Buck has an idea. Eddie should probably be a bit scared, judging by the mischievous smirk his friend is wearing, but he nods along.

“I think I should practice my Spanish.” 

“Practice?”

“Yeah, like, me and you, we’re gonna talk Spanish today!” Buck decides, closing his Jeep door and walking towards the engine bay with a bright grin that splits his face in two.

Eddie cackles, feeling warm all over, walking right beside the love of his life. 

Buck reaches the locker room first and calls for him, loudly and gesticulating wildly. “Dale, Eddie! Yo ya llegué!” He shouts so loud that Eddie is pretty sure the whole firehouse hears him. 

His accent is pretty much terrible but Eddie won’t ever tell him that. Instead, he finds it so endearing it’s dramatic. Cheeks red and eyes crinkly, he follows his friend, clapping his shoulder once he’s within reach. “I think they heard you from the Santa Monica pier, bud,” he tells Buck.

Buck’s face turns into a devilish, shit eating grin and Eddie immediately knows he’s onto something. “Como? No entiendes,” Buck tells him and Eddie would really say he’s better than that, say that they are at work and he should keep at least some semblance of seriousness, but he doubles over laughing, hands on his belly and all.

“No entiendo, maybe,” he wheezes, while regaining a bit of composure, under Buck’s offended pout.

Distantly, Eddie hears Nelson, a B-shift firefighter, murmur something about how weird and freaky they are and he’s about to ask what freaky even means when Ravi interrupts them.

He’s got his duffel bag on one shoulder and is walking to his locker when he spots them. 

“Do I even wanna know?” He wonders, loud enough that both of them hear him.

Buck, absolutely undeterred by the last moments' events, eagerly opens his arms. “Hola Ravi! We are practicing our Spanish today!” He says in a piercing voice. 

“You are…” Ravi looks at them expectantly, gesturing at them with a perplexed look on his face. “Eddie is practicing his Spanish too?” Finally, he lands on.

And Buck laughs at that while Eddie seems more settled. “Oh, yeah, right, he’s already good at it.”

Ravi looks around because he feels like he’s in the middle of some sort of prank. This guy can’t be serious, for Lord’s sake. But no one is there so he simply decides he wants to stay out of whatever weird mating ritual these two might have going on and nods, going to change into his uniform. “Okay, yeah, good for you then,” he mumbles.

Later, when their giggles have settled, they walk up to the loft and that’s when Eddie hears another firefighter from the B-shift who’s leaving the firehouse. “Buckley has Diaz completely–” the man says to someone on the phone.

How many people are talking about him and Buck? Should he be concerned? Does B-shift have a WhatsApp group named something like Buckley-Diaz Weirdness Compilation where they discuss their behavior? Does Buck know? Oh, Buckley-Diaz sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Yeah, he would love to be— “Eddie? Hey! You okay?” 

Oh, he had stopped on the stairs. 

Buck’s concerned eyes take him out of his daydream. However, his mind goes blissfully blank once they arrive at the table and Buck starts listing all the breakfast items in Spanish before asking him what he wants to eat in Spanish. Eddie’s heart won’t take it. He’ll die. He’s sure.

“Qué tú quieres desayuno?” Buck asks, eyes big and soft, waiting patiently for his best friend’s choice.

Eddie can’t even bring himself to tease Buck for his mistake. He feels like he’s melting, maybe turning into mush through his syrupy-like smile. “It’s,” he shakes his head, “uh, café y dos huevos,” he tells Buck. They’ll talk about grammar later. He’ll shut up now, especially since everyone at the table is looking at them and barely concealing their smirks.

Later, they’re told to clean the locker room glass by Bobby, so they find themselves staring at each other through one of the glass doors. Buck feels a little bit breathless, because Eddie is so focused on getting the glass spotless that he doesn’t bother with pushing back a loose strand of hair that has fallen on his forehead. Buck’s fingers twitch from the desperate need, want to touch, to smooth that lone brown strand back into Eddie’s perfectly gelled hair. 

Eddie looks so beautiful, so unfairly gorgeous that he can’t properly breathe when faced with the chance to observe him. His pursed lips, his focused eyes, and his easygoing appearance. He would sell his soul to spend the rest of his life just watching his best friend, and on any other occasion, he would stay quiet, pretend to do his job and instead steal glance after glance, constant glimpses of the best thing he’s ever seen, but now, there’s something about knowing another language (despite him being so far from fluent) that is liberating, that makes him feel like whatever he’ll express in Spanish will stay out of their real lives, floating in the air, around them like an invisible fog. 

“Tus ojos,” he quietly murmurs, half hoping Eddie will hear him, half hoping Eddie won’t so he will have no choice but to abandon this plan. 

And Eddie halts his movements and looks at him, one eyebrow funnily grazing his hairline. He even retorts with a “qué?” That makes Buck’s heart rate spike.

Buck gulps, twice, to find some courage. “Son muy bonitos.” He keeps nodding as though he were replying to some serious, serious question. Then, since Eddie looks like he’s seen a ghost, he adds, “Así se dice,” and averts his eyes hoping to get back to work without Eddie questioning his sanity or ordering him to leave South Bedford Street. 

Eddie studies Buck for a second or two and silently begs his heart to slow down, but then gathers all of his courage and clears his throat. 

“Estás coqueteando conmigo?” He asks. A mischievous smirk adorns his lips and Buck is suddenly feeling so stupid, because this version of Eddie, this confident, apparently carefree and content version of Eddie is making him dizzy, breathless. He couldn’t even guess what that means if his life depended on this. 

“Uh… what?” His head is tilted, resembling a confused puppy trying to follow his owner’s words. 

And now it’s Eddie’s time to gulp and feel nervous. He tries to fake a smile anyway. “Are you flirting with me or just practicing your Spanish?” He finally says.

Buck’s world comes to a violent halt when he realizes that not only did Eddie understand him, but he is… what? Flirting back? Oh God. He had not planned this far.

He stammers his way through an explanation. “I– well, you know…” he gestures around and it’s such a sight, with a spray bottle in one hand and a wet cloth in another. 

Eddie chuckles, grin so wide and happy (Buck wonders why) that Buck can see his pointy canines. “You’re…” Eddie huffs, so impossibly fond with a shake of his head, “qué tonto,” eventually murmurs, laughing softly before moving on with their task.

Buck spends the rest of the day doing breathing exercises.

Eddie has been a light sleeper for years, maybe for all his life or maybe ever since he became a father and an army sergeant. He has no way to know exactly when but he does know that since he started sharing the bed with Buck, he’s been sleeping like a rock. Every single night. If he had a sleep tracker device, it’d probably ask him what helped him improve his sleep quality and he would have to embarrassingly type something like Evan Buckley. 

That is probably why he hits the snooze button about six times. 

It’s not his fault, okay? Christopher is sleeping soundly in his room and Buck is sprawled across his body, putting almost all of his weight on Eddie and Eddie doesn’t want to wake up and leave. There’s currently everything he’s ever needed and everything he’ll ever need in this house. His right side is blocked and Buck’s puffs of air are tickling Eddie’s neck. 

He wants to go back to sleep and preferably smash his phone into a million pieces. That wish lasts approximately ten minutes though, until he realizes that the reason why his phone is the only one ringing at such an obnoxious time is that today is Buck’s day off, but not his day off. 

Buck is going to meet with Chimney to help build something for the new baby’s room (Eddie doesn’t remember what, he was too mesmerized by the cuteness when Buck told him) so Eddie was the only one who could cover Bailey from the B-shift’s twenty-four, and he had conveniently forgotten that.

“Oh fuck oh shit oh fuck,” he mutters as he scrambles out of bed. In the process, he jostles Buck so much that the man shoots upright, sitting clumsily against the headboard and rubbing the sleep off his eyes. 

“What’s wrong?” He whispers, voice hoarse and thick with sleep, at the same time as Eddie leans forward, puts one placating hand on his head and another one on his neck, and says, “shit, I’m sorry, I’m late for Bailey’s shift, I forgot, go back to sleep.” 

Buck is even more perplexed, looking completely disheveled and bewildered at Eddie’s gesture. Why did he stroke his neck and his curls while explaining what happened? What parallel universe did he wake up in? 

“E– Eddie,” he uselessly calls for his friend, but since Eddie all but runs to the shower, he decides he’ll simply go to prepare a cup of coffee, before going back to sleep later.

Eddie emerges from the bedroom about twenty minutes later, hair sticking in every direction, and his uniform shirt uneven. He’s clearly missed a button and Buck smiles so fondly at that.

Then he catches Eddie’s frown and waits for an explanation. “What?”

“You didn’t have to– I mean, it’s your day off,” Eddie unhelpfully tells him, cheeks so red that Buck can’t tell if it’s because of his coffee or because of the hectic morning. 

“It’s nothing. Here,” Buck shrugs and hands him his cup. 

Eddie stands there for a good minute. Maybe he isn’t fully awake, maybe Buck should check before letting him leave the house, but then he grabs the cup and starts moving. 

Before Buck can wrap his head around what’s going on, Eddie takes a sip of his coffee, looks around for his car keys and when it’s Buck who puts them in his open hand, he leans forward and kisses Buck’s cheek. It’s slightly off-center so it lands a little on the corner of Buck’s lips. Buck stops breathing altogether.

“Thanks, cariño, bye,” then Eddie says in a hushed tone, so soon Buck is left there, on the other side of the front door, standing stock still, shocked. So shocked that he didn’t even say bye back.

Shit, he didn’t tell Eddie about the missed button.

Oh, fuck. Eddie kissed his cheek.

Oh, fucking God. Eddie called him cariño.

Buck knows what that means, he knows on account of his Spanish pet names research that took place more than one month ago, but he double-checks anyway. Feeling quite pathetic because his fingers are slightly shaking while he types, he finds the confirmation he needs. 

Cariño can apparently be translated as: darling, sweetheart, honey, babe. 

Oh man. Someone must be sucking the air out of his lungs. 

Babe. Eddie called him babe. 

No. No. Yes. Eddie called him cariño.

Buck looks around the kitchen, and the dim lights they usually reserve for the early mornings luckily help him calm down. He needs to get a grip. At least until Chris leaves for school. Then he can freak out all he wants.

And he does. Despite Chris claiming that he’s being very, very weird, maybe more than usual, Buck simply acts innocent and offended and shoos him away. 

Then he proceeds to lie flat on the couch and look at the ceiling for an undefined amount of time. So long, actually, that he forgets about his scheduled appointment with Chimney.

The man shows up way past the arranged time and Buck is so dumbfounded that the first thing he blurts out is “What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” Chimney almost squeals, getting a low chuckle out of Buck’s throat. “Are you okay?” Then he asks.

Well, Buck is pale and looking like he has just seen a ghost. And it’s been four hours, more or less.

“Oh, oh, I’m sorry, we had to–”

“Buck, what’s going on? This is weird even for you,” Chimney asks, stepping inside and closing the front door behind him while Buck goes back to the couch. 

“Eddie called me babe,” eventually Buck tells Chimney and the man has to muster all of his inner strength to not explode into an endless fit of laughter. 

“Uh, what?” Instead, he asks. “He called you babe?”

“No!” Buck gets back up, starts pacing around, under his brother-in-law’s perplexed gaze. 

“I mean, yes, but–”

“You’re making no sense.”

“No!”

Chimney, despite being shorter and generally smaller than Buck, puts his hands on the man’s shoulders, stops him, and gently maneuvers him to sit back down. 

“It was Spanish!” Buck all but cries, before crossing his arms and then extending them as if he were stretching. 

“Ah, yeah, your Spanish thing, okay,” Chimney mindlessly whispers.

“He called me cariño,” Buck whines, drying his suddenly clammy hands on his sweatpants. He wants the floor to swallow him whole. 

Chim sits beside him. “Okay, so?” He prods.

“So? So?” The higher pitch in Buck’s voice is too funny for the other man so he starts laughing. Buck immediately slaps him, as playfully as he can in his panicked state. 

“Buck, oh my God, please. I should definitely not be saying anything–”

“No, please say it.”

Buck’s pleas keep sounding so funny to Chimney’s ears but he schools his features into something serious. “You love Eddie and he loves you!” He blurts out, feeling a thousand times lighter than ten seconds prior. 

He can’t believe he has finally said it. He should probably be at least a bit worried but years and years of experiencing firsthand whatever weird shit Buck and Eddie got going on have granted him this right, he thinks.

Buck looks like a deer caught in the headlights, face even paler than when Chimney arrived, and like he is a second away from collapsing.

“Are you gonna pass out? Make sure you hit the couch, please,” Chim tells him flatly. 

Buck glares at him, but there’s no heat in his eyes. “This is serious, Howard,” he huffs. 

“Oh, I know, Evan.”

Why are they on a first-name basis all of a sudden? Who knows. All Buck knows is that he needs answers. And maybe oxygen too.

“I gotta go,” all of a sudden he says to the other man.

“Go where?” 

Chimney has long since lost all hope of getting his brother-in-law to help him build the small bed he purchased last week but he would at least like it if said brother-in-law could stop freaking out. 

Buck literally jumps upright. “To the station, I gotta talk to Eddie.”

“While he’s on shift?” Chim’s brows graze his hairline. “Can I call Hen?”

This is happening. Really, really happening. He would love it if the whole team could join them. 

A single glare from Buck is enough to make him shut up though.

The whole B-shift is going to prank Bailey so much that she’ll want to transfer. Why? Because they are putting up with Diaz. Diaz without Buckley. Diaz who is acting extra weird. Diaz who looks like a live wire ready to cause a deadly explosion at any given moment. 

Nobody has the guts to ask him what’s wrong. They all suppose he seems weird because there’s no Buckley with him. However, when they see Buckley himself pull up to the firehouse roughly six hours into the shift, they begin wondering whether it’s Buckley’s presence to trouble Diaz.

Diaz’s breath seems to hitch as soon as he realizes that Buckley is here. He stands up so fast that there’s no way he doesn’t feel a bit dizzy because of it.

“Guys,” Buck goes upstairs and barely acknowledges the rest of the team. “He– hey, Eddie, can we talk?” 

His voice is so low that only Eddie heard him, and yet, as they move to go back downstairs, everyone slowly gets closer to the railing.

Well, they want to know. Sue them. 

“Buck, look–” Eddie sounds so nervous that Buck can’t read him, can’t guess what he’s thinking, despite being the best at this specific task. He looks like he has lost a bit of color on his cheekbones, he looks like he’s a word away from a full breakdown. And— wait, “are you shaking?”

Buck didn’t want to interrupt him, but… why would Eddie be so nervous?

“No, I mean,” Eddie looks at his left hand, “maybe? Anyway, I’m sorry.”

Buck frowns, his own anxiety and distress suddenly forgotten, because Eddie’s internal turmoil is painted all over his features and he can’t have that.

“What? Why would you–”

“For the kiss and the– uh, I know I made you uncomfortable, sorry.”

Eddie is looking everywhere but in Buck’s direction and suddenly something is making its way through Buck’s stomach, something that threatens to break through his esophagus. It feels so dangerously like hope.

“Fue un error?” He asks, emboldened by how embarrassed Eddie seems to be right now. His cheeks are red, the best shade of red Buck has ever seen. It can’t be meaning nothing. Not if Buck knows the man in front of him (and he does).

And they get even redder when Eddie catches up with what Buck said. Even the tip of his ears is red. “Buck, I don’t–” he tries to say, but he’s cut off.

Maybe it’s the biggest risk Buck has ever taken in his life.

Screw that. 

It is the biggest risk, because Eddie is the most important person in his life.

But also, it isn’t. It isn’t even a question. 

Because it’s Eddie. He is the definition of other half, if Buck has to say.

Buck ducks his head, licks his lips, and slowly, so gently leans forward and kisses Eddie. 

It’s just a tentative brush of lips, maybe not even a kiss, but there’s a bit of Buck’s saliva wetting Eddie’s upper lip and Buck thinks he’s going to pass out because of that detail. Eddie’s eyes are closed when he pulls back, both of them are standing still, so tense they are not even breathing for a beat or two. “Eddie,” he breathes out.

And his lungs expand again when Eddie opens his eyes and looks at him through his lashes. His eyelids are trembling a little, as though he didn’t want to open them and face a reality where Buck rejects him. 

But Buck’s smile, which manages to come across as both incredibly insecure and shy and annoyingly cocksure, speaks volumes. And Eddie feels more breathless than a moment before, when he had his best friend’s lips on his. 

“In the middle of the station? Really?” He rolls his eyes and decides that this is the happiest he’s ever been when Buck bursts out laughing in front of him, until his laughter dissolves into intoxicating giggles and he can’t do anything except lean forward and hug him tight, tight, tight. 

Buck nuzzles his neck once, four, five times before settling on Eddie’s shoulder and closing his eyes. His fingers are curled deep around Eddie’s hips, in an impossible attempt to bring him closer, maybe fuse them together if he tries hard enough. Eddie’s hands roam all over Buck’s torso, and then in Buck’s curls, and then settle on Buck’s neck.

Eddie wants to kiss him again, his veins are throbbing with the visceral need to place his lips on Buck’s and never let go. He can feel it in his blood, warm and happy, because he has got in his arms everything he’s ever wanted. 

Eventually one of those hands gently grips the left side of Buck’s face, to guide him back so they can lock eyes, and nothing could stop or dim the smiles that they see on each other’s faces. 

Buck steals another kiss before pulling away and placing both hands around Eddie’s face, holding him tightly, caressing his cheekbones. “Sorry, I had to…” He doesn’t add anything but somehow Eddie understands all the same. 

“No fue un error,” Eddie retorts, with a huge grin lighting him up. 

Buck feels those words like a wildfire spreading through his whole body. There’s no part of him that doesn’t feel like it’s in the middle of a burning inferno. Also, Eddie’s Spanish is so good, so hot. God.

“Your Spanish is so perfect,” he stupidly mutters, making Eddie giggle so much that it echoes through the whole engine bay. 

“Really?” Maybe Eddie rolls his eyes a little.

“Yeah,” Buck nods, sounding completely breathless. It’s exactly how he’s feeling. Then he kisses Eddie’s smile just because now he can.

“I– I think,” then he says, so shy and bashful that Eddie wants to bite him, “te amo.”

Eddie’s ears start ringing slightly. “Uh, what?”

Not so smooth, Diaz. 

Buck’s cheeks go up in flames, he’s trembling all over, afraid he suddenly went too far, afraid he was too much once again, for the umpteenth time, like a broken record playing the same track again and again.

“I read, uh, I read that te quiero is like… you know, I want you,” he stutters, his hands clammy and trembling a little. “But I– I mean, I do want you, clearly,” he chuckles a bit awkwardly, “but then I read that te amo is more like, I love love you and I want you and everything…” he’s breathless by the time he’s mumbling the last word and if he weren’t so worried and nervous, he’d probably realize that Eddie’s eyes are full of unshed tears.

“God, Evan Buckley,” Eddie wetly chokes out, shaking his head. 

It takes one second to ponder what to do but eventually he decides he’ll just kiss this goofy, brilliant man that, by some miracle, loves him back.

And it isn’t a simple, chaste kiss. Eddie throws himself at Buck like a man who’s starving, like if he tries hard enough he can get his mouth all over Buck at the same moment. He dives in Buck’s mouth and it’s all instinct and years of yearning and pure unadulterated love that bring him to open his mouth and find Buck’s tongue. 

Buck is pliant at first, but then he has to pull away. 

“Eddie, Ed–, Eds,” he chuckles while Eddie tries to still kiss him, coyly following his lips. 

It’s Buck’s hand on the side of his head that stops him and he flushes even brighter when he realizes what he was doing. 

“Oh fuck, sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“I– we’re at work!” He shrieks, horrified. And it’s so amusing that Buck can’t stop the laughter that bubbles up from his throat.

“Oh, don’t stop on our account!” Chimney shouts then, and following the voice, they see that he’s gone up to the loft, looking down together with the whole B-shift crew. 

Buck laughs again and Eddie has no choice but to follow him. And then together they groan and end up lying each on the other’s shoulder, shaking their heads and hugging each other so tight that they look like one body.

Eddie, however, is the first to sober up, and he does it in style. “I love love you too,” he tells Buck, as soon as they are both upright again, looking in each other’s eyes. 

Buck’s smile is blinding. Eddie wants to live here. “Really?”

“Buck.”

“Okay, okay– hey, ow!” He yelps when Eddie playfully pinches his side. 

“The whole firehouse is gonna tease us for… maybe forever,” he placidly says to Buck. 

“Hm… didn’t think of that,” Buck ducks his head and shrugs. Eddie wants to marry him right here.

“Oh I’m sure,” Eddie teases him lovingly.

Buck turns serious. “I just– was spiraling and–and–”

“Hey, I’m glad you’re here,” Eddie feels like this is the first time he has experienced love. Maybe it is. He didn’t believe he could feel like this, like his heart wants to jump out of his ribcage and live in another person’s. He takes Buck’s hand and drags him towards the stairs. “Wanna stay?” 

Buck simply nods in silence and follows him.

“Hey guys,” he shyly waves at the team, greeting them again, when they get to the loft.

Brown, a tall guy with a bold mustache, smirks, “Guess we get to keep Buckley too, today?” Says, and everyone laughs loudly, while Chimney suspiciously holds up his phone. 

If Buck weren’t so embarrassed, he’d probably stop him because it’s as clear as day that his brother-in-law is sending this whole scene to their group chat. 

“Can I stay?” He asks in the general direction of the other firefighters, and smiles widely when Harris winks at him before turning to Eddie and saying “You can go, we’ll just keep him.”

Eddie laughs, knows that they are all messing around, knows that, despite not being part of the A-shift, the whole 118 is a family, but he also knows that part of them probably does like Buck better than him, and he understands. He tells Buck as much, indeed.

He does a while later, when Anderson is cooking lunch and Buck is scrolling through his phone while pressed against his side, dropping his head on Eddie’s shoulder from time to time, playfully, maybe a little mindlessly. 

“You know, they do like you better than me,” Eddie murmurs in Buck’s ear.

“Nah, they don’t, come on,” the other man chuckles. 

Eddie replies by sneaking an arm around Buck’s shoulders and pressing him closer, before dropping a kiss on his birthmark. “Oh yeah, I know they do, I do too.”

Buck turns around and playfully shoves him, before following him, and “ohh, Eddie Diaz is a sap,” he whisper-shouts. 

“I’m divorcing you,” Eddie pouts.

And Buck doesn’t have the time to reply because someone shouts from the kitchen.

“Did you hear them?”

“Please stop them!”