Archive of Our Own ^beta

Eddie’s shoulder stretches as he spins, and the days-old bruise there pulls unpleasantly with the twist of the muscle beneath the battered vessels.

The world turns with him. He’s starting to get used to it, after weeks on end of feeling off-balance. That’s why he’s here, at least partially. Fighting keeps his mind off of everything else that’s haunting him.

He knows it’s the wrong thing to do. He knows he’s hurting himself. That’s the point, even if he tries not to think about it outside of this dim, dirty room. The sharp scent of sweat feels overwhelming, suddenly, so vicious that it’s in his mouth. He swallows hard against it and tries to focus, to quiet his mind.

There had been a moment. What could have been the worst day of his life, if one thing had been different, slipping into a velvet night with Buck pressed against him. Eddie had dropped his mouth against Buck’s collarbone, nipped against the skin with his teeth and then soothed the sting with litanies of delirious whispered thank yous pressed into Buck’s bone and flesh. Christopher was asleep down the hall, safe and breathing. Eddie had never been so grateful to any person in his life than to Buck, who’d fought through lingering agony and blood to get his baby back to him.

Afterward, Eddie had felt briefly at peace.

He throws his fist, just muscle memory; then feels the scrape against his knuckles and the impact that radiates up to his elbow with a dull shock of pain left behind in the ligaments. Eddie tries to get lost in it, but he keeps finding himself back in his bedroom in the shadow of night with Buck’s skin up against his, the scent of soap and sweat and Buck on his sheets.

It feels like since then, every touch has hurt one way or another. Nothing as soft as the way Buck had carried Christopher into the house; the way he’d held Eddie’s face afterward.

The other guy in the ring, against the fence, is nameless; faceless. It doesn’t matter. None of it does. Eddie’s keeping the money in folded stacks and he knows that he’s supposed to feel something about it, but he doesn’t. He could keep winning stacks of money for the rest of his life and he doesn’t think it would ever offset the loss.

He knows he should be thankful, even now, for everything that he does have. Shannon had drifted in and out of their lives, and she was gone, but Christopher was safe and healing. He’d survived losing his mom; survived a tsunami; survived and was still laughing and sweet. He’s Eddie’s. That’s what matters.

But Eddie just keeps drifting. Thinking of Buck. He alternates between desperately wanting to be close to him and being so angry at him, so betrayed, that he can’t see straight. There’s a part of him that aches to hold his face in his hands and tell him that he doesn’t need to do this, that he’s still wanted, that he’s wrong about all of it. There’s another part of him that wants to shake him, wants to scream at him, wants to make him understand how much damage he’s doing; that he’s hurting Christopher too, who asks about him every other day.

There’s also a third, worse part of Eddie. This part feels like none of it would matter. Like that night will always be nothing. Like Buck is too far out of reach for things to ever be what they had been before.

It had taken that night in the street, holding Buck’s hand as he screamed and cried through unimaginable pain, for Eddie to realize what it was he was feeling about Buck. It had taken Buck showing up on crutches at Eddie’s ceremony, still scratched up, for him to know that it was real; a true and unfleeting feeling that reflected shine back on Eddie and lit up every bit of his life in a new light. It had taken the tsunami for Eddie to do anything about it.

It had taken Buck one day, one wrong move, to throw it all aside anyway.

The morning after he had fallen asleep with Buck, Eddie had started a run of shifts. They texted lightly; Buck got Chris off with Pepa who had agreed to take him for a few days so Buck could rest. Eddie got caught up at work, and ended up staying late and taking an extra shift to help with cleanup following the tsunami. The whole department was overwhelmed with it. He was home only briefly and had to focus on Christopher, who had caught a sniffle somewhere along the way. Insisting that Buck couldn’t afford to get sick on top of anything else, Eddie had made him stay away until Chris was feeling better. Then, another shift. They would talk about it, Eddie had been sure of that. He remembers now that it had not worried him; it was Buck, after all. They had plenty of time.

He’d been foolish to think so.

By the time he had a free day, Buck had filed a lawsuit. Eddie was informed by a lawyer that it prohibited him from having contact with Buck at all, and then there were any number of private things being hurled across the table at him and Buck wouldn’t even look up. And that had been that. The end of something that hadn’t really begun.

Lately, Eddie has been waking up sick almost every morning and bruising himself in the ring every chance he gets and barely sleeping in between Christopher’s nightmares.

For a moment about a week ago, he’d thought about calling Buck. He’d been lying in bed, moments after waking up in the watery light of pre-dawn, and a wave of intense, blinding nausea washed over him. He didn’t need to look in the mirror to know he was pale and exhausted. The night before, he’d been slammed into the floor and his back was so stiff he was questioning whether he would be able to move.

And just down the hall, Christopher’s alarm was a few minutes from going off. He would need breakfast and the usual hugs and kisses and homework checks. He would need Eddie to make sure his shoes were tied tight enough and his glasses were clean even though they’d be smudged again by the time he got home in the afternoon. He’d need Eddie to get his lunch and listen to him chatter and take him to school, in the car, which had been making Eddie more nauseous about three out of five mornings recently.

It all just felt like too much. All the things he loved to do for his son were suddenly overwhelming. He could smell the laundry detergent on his pillow and it was making him more nauseous, anxiety climbing up and over him like an invasive vine. And for a moment, he thought of calling Buck.

He thought of Buck showing up for them the way he used to. How happy Christopher would be to see him. How Buck would smile softly in Eddie’s direction. How he’d look concerned and insist that Eddie rest and come back with some kind of tea that Eddie wouldn’t like and which probably wouldn’t help anyway, but it would be nice that he was trying.

But he couldn’t. He wasn’t allowed to call Buck and even if he did, Buck wouldn’t answer. He didn’t think he could stomach it. Nothing was the same anymore.

Eddie got out of bed and threw up twice before Christopher called for him down the hall.

Now, he loses himself in the awful feeling of someone hitting him. He lets it happen; punches back; wins matches without feeling anything good at all. He’s not even angry. Mostly, what he’s feeling as he fights is the thick, unbearable knot of guilt. It follows him like a shadow on the mat, against the chainlink.

He’s a good fighter. Strong, quick on his feet, instinctive. But tonight, he’s dizzy. He’s exhausted. He shouldn’t be here. When it happens, it’s fast. He misses; slips; turns wrong and twists. A wayward fist collides with his side, the tender flesh beneath his ribs giving way beneath the force as he hits the mat. It’s all over in a matter of seconds, but as he struggles for breath on the floor, something feels wrong.

It chases over his spine as he lays there, panting, and he puts his hand over the place that the fist had made contact with his skin as everything spins. Something is wrong. He turns his head, spits blood for what feels like the thousandth time from the inside of his raw cheek where his teeth had torn flesh, and pries himself up off of the mat by himself.

There’s nobody here to do it for him.

Later, Eddie won’t really remember the drive to the emergency room. It passes in a blur of late night lights; stoplights and taillights blending into streaks of red; windows lit up; his pulse hammering in his wrists and behind his ribs as his body echoes with pain. He’s nauseous and dizzy and—

And scared.

The hit hadn’t been that hard, but there was something about it that hurt, badly, and even as he parked the truck in an area that he wasn’t sure was the right lot he was still struggling to catch his breath. Pain bloomed like the first of spring, an old familiar friend made new again.

Eddie isn’t one to be quick to panic, especially not about something like this. He can cope with pain. He’s familiar with it, tolerant of it. He’d learned a long time ago how to take it. There’s just something else on this particular night that thrums through him, something that drives him to the emergency room before he can stop to second-guess it, because he just knows, somewhere much deeper than skin, that something isn’t right.

The front desk attendant is in pale blue scrubs and eyes him warily, but settles when he speaks. He’s in pain and he feels moments away from collapse, but he’s polite; calm. Later, it’ll all be a haze. He’s barely in his body at all. The forms he fills out could be all wrong, down to Edmundo Diaz on the name line. He doesn’t know.

What he does know, as he waits for his name to be called, can be listed in just a few lines. He knows that he’s freezing; the waiting room is cold and he’s still wearing shorts and there are goosebumps prickling over his body as layers of sweat cool and leave him itchy and shivery.

He knows that his whole body hurts.

He knows that he’s barely eaten today and there’s a gnawing emptiness that lives alongside the pain in the bruises and the anxiety that lights up his nerves.

He knows that he could burst into tears if he allowed himself to blink.

He knows that he wants to go home and see Christopher. That he wants to crawl into bed with his baby and stay there where nothing outside of that cramped twin bed exists. He wants to hold Christopher and look up at the solar system above them and imagine that they’re the only people in it at all.

He knows that he wants Buck. This one, he tries hard to bury deep. Buck is no longer a thing Eddie is allowed to want, if he ever really was at all.

“Edmundo Diaz?”

Eddie glances up. Getting out of the waiting room chair is harder than it should be, his whole body heavy with exhaustion. He goes, anyway. That’s what Eddie does— whatever anyone expects of him, no matter the cost, no matter where he ends up when nobody else is looking.

He sits quietly in a clinical triage room and lets them take his vitals. He doesn’t shy away from telling them what happened. He looks at his picked-apart cuticles and doesn’t bother glancing up to see the reaction, the inevitable judgement. He doesn’t really mind. It’s not like he thinks it was a good idea, either.

They draw blood. They ask him more questions. He tells them what he’s feeling— that it still hurts, that he’s worried about internal bleeding, that he’s dizzy. Was he dizzy before, they ask. Eddie can’t really remember. Is he experiencing any other symptoms? He shakes his head and then thinks about all the nausea and still doesn’t say anything. He knows what that’s from. The pervasive gnawing anxiety has nothing to do with being knocked to the mat too hard.

They lead him down a hallway and sit him in a little cubicle with a curtain over it. He shivers. It’s cold here, too. He glances at his phone. There’s a text back from Carla, who’s with Chris, confirming that she’s okay to stay until Eddie can get home, even though he’ll be hours late. She’s a saint; his life doesn’t turn at all without her.

He wanders into thinking about Buck. It hurts enough that he tries hard to stop, but thinking about Buck is like a bruise. There, even if he’s not poking at it.

He isn’t sure how much time passes as he sits there. He wants to lie down but stops himself and couldn’t explain why he feels he’s not allowed that. The sterile walls and ticking clock do little to warm him or make him feel any less on edge as he waits.

Eventually, a nurse comes in, and she has a kind face and an IV bag in her hand.

“Edmundo?” she asks.

“Eddie,” he corrects without thinking.

Her smile is sweet. She’s wearing a wedding ring. They’re probably about the same age. For a moment, Eddie pictures a life for her— a spouse, maybe a toddler, a pretty house, people who wait for her to come home. For a fraction of a second, he feels bitterly sad about it all, and then he thinks about climbing into bed with Christopher and it washes over him with balmy relief. Even if the rest of his life is in shambles, at the end of the day there’s Christopher.

“Eddie,” she repeats. “Well, the doctor will be in to talk with you in a few minutes but we’re running some basic fluids for you in the meantime. You’re a little dehydrated and your blood sugar is on the low side.”

Eddie nods numbly. That’s all his fault, he thinks as he watches without feeling as she busies herself with hanging the bag and talks him absently through the prick of a needle that he barely feels in the back of his hand. She opens the line and he feels the fluid enter his veins, a cold, unpleasant flush crawling up his arm.

He must wince without realizing it, because she pats his arm in a caring way and says, “Sorry about that. It’ll warm up.”

“Thanks,” Eddie croaks, and then he’s all alone again.

The clock ticks. Eddie shifts uncomfortably, resting his hand against the bruise on his side even though it does nothing to change the pain.

That sense of wrongness keeps humming through him, just below the surface of his skin, beneath the bruises. He thinks about the nights he sometimes wakes up even before Christopher calls for him, feeling that same crawling sense of unease that’s proven right by the sound of his frantic, scared little voice down the hall. Sometimes, Eddie just knows.

The rings on the curtain skitter as a doctor— a woman in a white coat with a stethoscope around her neck and a less sweet but still kind face— steps into the room with him. She’s looking at the screen of a tablet in her hand, and her expression is mostly impassive but there’s a small furrow between her eyebrows as she offers him a perfunctory, tight smile.

“Mr. Diaz,” she says, lilting up, a question. “How are we feeling?”

It’s a question that Eddie has no answer for. He’s feeling awful. Everything from cold to scared to in pain. But everyone here feels awful. This doctor hears awful day in and day out, probably so much that the word means nothing to her.

“Been better,” Eddie offers. She barely blinks. She probably hears that just as much. He’s one in a long line of people who’ve been better.

Suddenly, he feels small and stupid. He wishes he’d just gone home and tried to sleep it off, no matter how wrong he felt. Then he imagines Christopher having to see it if something actually is wrong, and is glad he’s here. All of it passes through his mind in ten seconds or less.

“Um,” he says. “It’s Eddie.”

She smiles a little, still tense. “Eddie,” she repeats, taking a seat on the rolling stool. The wheels squeak as she rolls it closer to him. “We are going to do a couple more tests, but I wanted to talk to you about your blood test results first.”

For the first time, Eddie has the wherewithal to consider that his feeling that something is wrong might actually mean that something is wrong. That she might be about to tell him something serious. He shivers lightly, and she doesn’t seem to notice.

“Okay,” he answers, for sheer lack of anything else to say. He’s entirely at her mercy, and that of the numbers in front of her.

“So, I think my nurse told you that your blood sugar is low,” she starts, glancing at the page on her screen. “But there’s something else here that you didn’t mention, and I have to assume that’s because you’re unaware.”

Eddie’s heart, betraying him entirely, races in his chest.

“Um,” he says. “I— unaware of what?”

Her face softens a little bit. His throat, he realizes suddenly, is scraped raw and dry. She flips the tablet over and gives him her full attention.

“Your hCG levels are elevated,” she says gently. “You’re pregnant, Eddie.”

All at once, Eddie’s world tilts.

“No,” he hears himself say, as if he’s somewhere else entirely. “No, that’s—”

She frowns slightly, though her voice remains unbearably gentle. “At this level, I would say you’re looking at about six weeks.”

Six weeks. Eddie’s thoughts tumble to a halt as his breath catches in his chest and the pieces click horribly into place. Six-ish weeks ago, he’d fallen into bed with Buck after one of the scariest days of both of their lives; after Buck had made sure that Eddie didn’t lose his baby.

And now—

Now, because of Eddie, they both might lose another one.

The thought slams into him with all the force of his back to the mat, so many times over these six weeks that Eddie has lost count. He feels suddenly, viciously sick— not in the way that he’s been off and on recently, but in a way that’s much worse. He’s been running himself into the ground and unknowingly taking a second life— a baby— with him.

His baby. Buck’s baby.

Eddie’s fingertips skim his waist, his hand still where he’d placed it over the undoubtedly wicked bruise beneath. And beneath that, there’s—

He tries desperately to catch his breath, his eyes squeezed shut. That night, he and Buck had been so careless. Eddie hadn’t even stopped to think, not even once. Buck had been deliriously exhausted after the day he’d had. They had barely paused long enough to breathe each other in.

The doctor puts her hand on Eddie’s knee.

“I know this must be a lot to take in,” she says.

Eddie takes a shuddering breath. “Is— I—”

Miraculously she seems to understand what he’s asking. He’s reminded again that she does this day in and day out. He will leave her with his world entirely changed, and she will forget about him entirely. His life, as it fits into hers, is unremarkable. His baby is just another medical chart.

His baby.

“As I said,” she replies calmly, “we’ll have to do some more tests. From what I understand of your initial exam, you suffered some pretty extensive bruising tonight that could have impacted the pregnancy. Once we know where we’re at, we can have a chat about your options.”

The words echo soundlessly in Eddie’s mind, cleared of any other thought but this. He notices for the first time that his head is pounding.

“Okay,” he whispers, nodding.

He feels entirely detached. She tells him that they’ll be back in a little while to do an ultrasound, and he barely processes it at all. He’s sitting on the edge of a hospital table, staring at an empty dispenser attached to the wall as an IV rehydrates him and all he can think about is that he might be the reason that a life ended tonight, before it even began.

A life that is— or was— half him and half Buck. A life he was supposed to protect. A life he had not even noticed was beginning to form inside him.

Shannon had been six weeks pregnant when they found out about Christopher. Eddie remembers this because it, too, had changed his life. He remembers that Shannon had told him the baby was the size of a sweet pea. A sweet pea, he thinks now, feeling distant and hysterical. Smaller than the tip of his finger, with a heartbeat that he was responsible for and he didn’t even know.

He presses his palm over his stomach, warm skin against warm skin, and thinks about the long list of ways that he’s already failed. He’s barely eating. Barely sleeping. He hasn’t been drinking, but only because he hasn’t been able to stomach it. He’s been nauseous almost daily and didn’t even think about the possibility that he might be pregnant.

He’s been running into fires; overexerting in the gym; spending his evenings getting hurt on purpose, allowing himself to get slammed to the ground over and over again. Every hit replays in his mind and the memory of it now hurts more than the touch ever did.

He takes a slow breath.

And then there’s Buck.

Buck, who had not hesitated to risk his life for Eddie’s child. Buck, who always shows up. Buck, who— if this goes the way that Eddie thinks it will— might never even know that he could have been a dad, because he’s not speaking to any of them.

Eddie wonders if he would even care, and then immediately feels wrong for thinking it. He’s angry, but he knows that Buck would care. Buck would be devastated. It would be yet another fracture in their broken friendship, the kind that couldn’t be fixed.

Anything else they might ever have been would be gone in the space between heartbeats; between breaths on the floor of the fighting ring.

“— to see him, you don’t understand.”

Eddie looks up. The voice, though distant, is unmistakable and familiar. High with frantic panic, but he’d know any shade of it anywhere. Somewhere beyond the curtain that separates him from the rest of the emergency room, Buck is there.

His heart leaps into his throat.

“Sir, I really—”

“Please,” he hears Buck say. “My—my partner, I got a call that he was hurt. So, you called me, and y-you asked me to come here, and—”

“I think there may have been a mistake.”

“No!” Buck insists. “Because I-I got a call saying he was hurt and now I’m here and I just need to see him, okay? Eddie Diaz— uh, Edmundo. Edmundo Diaz. Please.”

Eddie had switched his emergency contact for Buck shortly after they met. His Abuela had broken her hip and on their drive back to the firehouse, Eddie had voiced out loud that he would need to take her off the forms. Before he could mention that Pepa probably wouldn’t mind, Buck had grinned over at him from the driver’s seat, lit by the sun, and said, “You can put me if you want.”

Eddie had thought at first that he was kidding, but he hadn’t known Buck well enough yet to know that he would never, not about that. He meant it with his whole self, like most everything else. Eddie had felt a little unhinged, but he’d done it, and he’d forgotten all about it in the meantime.

He’s trying to decide what to do, unable to hear them anymore because of a commotion in the hall, when the rings on his curtain skitter again and then without much warning, Buck is standing in front of him.

His hair is curly and frizzy, a little damp like he’d just showered before he came here. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and a hoodie that’s decidedly inside-out, the fuzzy interior on the outside, and his blue eyes are wild with unmistakable fear.

Eddie loves him, all at once. It twists painfully in his chest, stronger than whatever anger he feels but sliced in half with the sharp edge of guilt. He loves him, and Buck doesn’t care. He loves him, and Buck is about to lose a baby he hadn’t known he had.

“Eddie,” Buck gasps, moving closer to him without question. His gaze roams over Eddie from head to toe, searching for visible injuries that he won’t find and landing on the IV in his hand before jumping back to his face. “What happened?”

The words stick in Eddie’s throat. At the curtain, an exasperated nurse pauses. “Mr. Diaz,” she says. “We’re so sorry, we think that your emergency contact was called by mistake. He was very insistent on coming in and we didn’t get a chance to check with you.”

“That’s okay,” Eddie manages, though every nerve screams in protest. Life just keeps turning, no matter how Eddie feels. “Thank you.”

She nods, glares at Buck, and leaves them alone. Anxiety skates over the raw ends of all of Eddie’s nerves at being left alone with Buck.

There’s no space amongst all the fear and rage and guilt and pain for him to be logical. All he can think about is that Buck is going to hate him for this. No matter what, Buck is going to hate him.

“I didn’t—” he starts, clearing his throat and avoiding Buck’s gaze. “I should have changed the contact. I know you’re not supposed to be here.”

Buck shakes his head. Eddie isn’t looking, but every movement Buck makes is big and takes up space; he doesn’t have to see it to know it's happening.

Eddie glances over at the space between the curtain and the wall. His stomach twists. Any minute now, the doctor could come through that door with an ultrasound machine, ready to tell him if the baby he’d only known about for a matter of minutes is safe or not, and if Buck is here—

He tries, and largely fails, to steady his breath.

Suddenly, he’s angry. He and Buck were together for one singular, beautiful, tragic night. Eddie had fallen asleep thinking that everything would be better now. Now that Chris was safe; now that Buck was healing; now that they’d kissed, breaking tension he hadn’t known was there.

He’d never gotten a chance to tell Buck what it did for him. The way it broke him open. How he’d spent the next week realizing new pieces of himself and putting names to them; the relief that came from that, how thankful he was that it had been Buck who showed him.

Eddie is gay. He’d never even gotten the chance to tell his best friend about it.

And he’s angry about that. He’s angry about all of it— about what Buck has taken from them with this pointless lawsuit; about the fact that it didn’t mean as much to Buck as it did to him; about the fact that he’s been pregnant and sick for six weeks and Buck wasn’t there.

About the fact that now, he might not be pregnant at all.

“Why are you here?” he asks flatly.

Buck goes still. “They called me,” he answers, his voice threatening to break.

“That’s not what I asked you, Buck,” Eddie says, gritting his teeth.

“Eddie,” Buck says helplessly. “I— I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you. You have to know that I only did this because I—”

“Because your job was more important to you than me and Chris,” Eddie says, cutting. “Yeah. I do know that.”

Buck stares at him, visibly aghast. “No,” he whispers. “That’s not— Eddie.”

But it is, isn’t it? That’s the thing that Eddie has been trying not to think about for all these weeks. A brutal truth he’d been reluctant to face, because it meant that losing Buck this way had been inevitable and that it would be lasting.

Suddenly, he’s not angry anymore. It dissipates as quickly as it had set in, and leaves him feeling deeply hollow and sad, scraped out and left empty.

He suppresses a shiver, holding himself deliberately very still.

Buck hesitates, then steps forward and puts his hand on Eddie’s elbow, his fingers brushing the soft inner skin, and asks, with unbearable softness, “Are you cold?”

It’s these words that break Eddie: their unexpected tenderness, the way that Buck knows him, the way he sees something that everyone else has been missing since he got here, even when Eddie was trying to hide it from him. No one else has ever known him like this.

A sob wrenches out of him as he folds in on himself, a fierce, awful sound that tears out of his lungs as his eyes sting with tears. He presses his palms against his eyes so hard that he sees stars, and bursts into tears right in front of Buck.

“Okay, hey,” he hears Buck whisper, moving closer, crowding into Eddie’s space like he wants to be there. “Eddie.”

His hands flit over him, skimming his wrists and elbows like Buck can’t decide what to do or where to touch before they land on his bare upper arms. Buck is the one that’s usually cold between them, but he has warm hands: they curl around Eddie’s biceps now like an anchor and he rubs gently up and down, tethering them and warming Eddie’s skin.

Eddie has been on the verge of breaking into pieces for weeks. He did not imagine Buck would be there to witness it when it happened. He did not imagine that he’d be in an emergency room cubicle, in pain and bracing to lose a baby he hadn’t known he wanted until it might be too late.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs, knowing it makes no sense but unable to stop himself. “Buck. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Woah, woah, hey,” Buck says softly. “You’re okay. You don’t need to be sorry. It’s okay; I-I’m sorry, okay? It’s—”

“No,” Eddie gasps. The tears won’t stop; his head hurts and his chest is tight and he just keeps crying, curling his fist around the fabric of his shirt over his stomach and wanting to reach for Buck but stopping himself. “You don’t— I— Buck.”

“I’m here,” Buck whispers. “Are you hurt?”

Eddie shakes his head helplessly. He doesn’t know how he’s ever going to explain, but he’s not— not in the way that Buck means it.

“Okay, come here,” Buck murmurs, and then all at once he’s being drawn into a tight, familiar hug. He knows he should resist— he’s angry at Buck, and Buck is angry at him, and they’re not whatever this is anymore— but he just doesn’t have it in him right now. He melts into Buck’s chest and lets himself be held, and decides he’ll hate himself for it later, when this is over and Buck inevitably wants nothing to do with him again.

“I’ve got you,” Buck whispers, his voice soft in Eddie’s hair as he tries to breathe through sobbing, his head pressed against Buck’s shoulder. “I got you. It’s gonna be okay.”

But it very well might not be okay at all. Buck doesn’t know it as he rubs Eddie’s back soothingly, but there’s a heartbeat tucked in between their bodies that may be still now. The not knowing hangs over Eddie’s head like a guillotine, sharp and lethal.

“It’s not,” he cries, knowing he’s not making sense.

Buck pauses, and they’re so close that Eddie can feel him swallow hard. He’s scaring him, he knows he is, but he doesn’t know how to stop.

“Are you— is this— they said you got hurt,” Buck says, sounding lost. “I’m sorry you didn’t feel like you could call me, that was stupid. It was all stupid, okay? I-I don’t know what I was thinking, but—”

Eddie can’t let him go on. He can’t. The breath catches in his lungs so spectacularly that it hurts, a flash of sharp pain amongst the dull ache that spreads over his body. But he can’t let Buck keep talking like this, saying all the things he’s been wishing he would say, when it’s all going to fall apart in a few more minutes.

Besides, Buck should hear it from him.

Eddie pulls himself back from Buck’s arms, even though it hurts to do it. It hurts just as much to look at Buck’s face, the concern on all his features, the contrite and genuine look in his eyes.

“What happened?” Buck asks gently. “Are you—” he casts a confused glance around the room like he might find some clue there. “Are you sick? Or—”

“No,” Eddie croaks, trying to stop crying enough to get the words out. “I’m—”

He pauses. Is he pregnant? Or was it all past tense before he even knew to think about it?

Buck frowns, watching his face. “Eddie?”

There’s so much he doesn’t know, all this context around the whole thing. Eddie feels like he’s drowning.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Buck tries, a valiant effort.

Eddie shakes his head. “I do,” he chokes. “It’s— I—”

Buck hesitates. “Here,” he says, and draws the hoodie he’s wearing up over his head. In the process of getting it off, he turns it right-side out. Underneath, he’s only wearing an undershirt, but he still holds the skinwarmed fabric out to Eddie.

Eddie’s eyes sting with tears. “Buck.”

“Here, you’re freezing,” Buck insists. Before Eddie can argue, Buck is involving himself, fiddling with the IV and detaching it even though he knows he isn’t supposed to, so that Eddie can quickly shrug himself into the soft blue fabric of Buck’s hoodie. In a matter of seconds, Buck has fixed the IV back the way it was, as if nothing ever happened, and Eddie is breathing in the scent of Buck’s fabric softener and the faint lingering notes of his deodorant where they cling to the fabric.

“Better?” Buck asks gently.

“Thank you,” Eddie whispers, nodding.

He wants to explain to Buck that he doesn’t think he deserves this, the warmth, the comfort. He wants to scream at Buck, because maybe if he’d stayed and talked that morning they would be together now. Maybe Eddie would have known he was pregnant and none of this would have ever happened.

Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Maybe he’d be right here anyway. It’s his fault, when it comes down to it, not Buck’s.

Buck reaches out and rubs his shoulder lightly. Eddie can’t bear to look at him. He looks down at the linoleum instead and traces the lines with his eyes until they blur with tears that he can’t hold back.

“I was at a fight club,” he whispers. “Don’t ask questions. Just let me—”

Buck takes in a sharp, audible breath. “Okay.”

“I got hit. I felt…I don’t know, wrong. It wasn’t that hard but it hurt. I came here and they- they—” He twists his features, trying desperately to hold back tears as he takes a breath in and forces the words out. “They told me I was pregnant.”

The room goes very still. On the wall, the clock ticks.

“Oh,” Buck breathes. “You’re…okay.”

Eddie forces his gaze up. Buck’s face betrays an expression of carefully guarded hope and slivers of joy and it makes Eddie wish he could disappear entirely.

“Is it—” Buck ventures.

“Yours,” Eddie answers hollowly. “Yes.”

Buck’s breath catches so fiercely that Eddie sees it as it shifts the broad wall of his chest.

“Eddie, I—”

“Buck,” Eddie interrupts. It comes out soft and pained. He looks away again, finding it unbearable to look at Buck’s face. “I got hit,” he repeats.

The air in the room shifts again, like being out in the ocean during a storm. Eddie thinks relentlessly about the tsunami, about Christopher out there in the water, about Buck bloody and determined. How could he ever be only angry, when Buck is the reason that Christopher is still breathing? It will never again be that simple.

“Is—” Buck starts. His voice trembles. He’s already afraid. He’s known for a matter of seconds, and he’s already scared.

“I don’t know,” Eddie admits thinly. “They’re coming back in to do an ultrasound. I—”

He chokes, swallows hard, and looks up at Buck.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, meeting his eyes. “I didn’t know. I—”

“Oh,” Buck whispers, moving closer. “No, no, no, hey. It’s not your fault, Eds. You hear me? This is not your fault.”

Eddie looks up, a soft sound breaking in the back of his throat as he meets Buck’s eyes. “It is,” he croaks. “I should never have been there. I’ve been sick and exhausted and I didn’t even notice, I—”

Something passes over Buck’s face, a heartbreak there and gone just as quickly. He shakes his head. “Hey,” he interrupts. “It’s not your fault. It’s— there might not even be anything wrong, right? And—” He pauses, looking like he’s just realized something, and then visibly gathers himself, squaring his shoulders as he looks back at Eddie again. “And whatever you want to do, I’ll— I’ll support you. If anybody’s at fault here, it’s me. I should have asked if you were on-on birth control or—”

Eddie processes his words slowly, as if through a filter. The doctor’s phrasing also comes back to him, all of it dawning on him at once.

“I want to keep the baby,” he says. It feels dangerous to even voice it and he surprises even himself with how fiercely he means it as Buck goes quiet. “If— if there is a baby,” he adds thickly. “But you can do whatever you want, you can…”

Buck reaches out then, and squeezes Eddie’s hand so tightly that it hurts. It hits him then— whatever they were before the tsunami, they will never be that again. This thing that’s changing them was set in motion that night, and it continues to change them. Eddie isn’t sure who he’s going to be when he walks out of this hospital tonight. But when Buck squeezes his fingers like that, he’s suddenly very sure that he wants it to be with Buck. It feels tremulous and impossible as they hang in the balance of uncertainty, but Eddie feels it nonetheless.

“No,” Buck says, surprisingly steady, so much so that Eddie can’t help looking up. When he does, Buck’s face is set with a familiar determination. Something swells in Eddie’s chest at the sight of it— the way he looks when he really, sincerely wants something. “I’m dropping the lawsuit. Either way. I— this was—” Buck shakes his head and squeezes Eddie’s hand again. “Whatever happens, I want to do it together.”

Eddie knows that it can’t really be that simple. They’ll have to talk about it, and Eddie isn’t the only person Buck has hurt. But for tonight— while there are so many more important things to occupy them— maybe it can be enough.

He lets out a breath and it shudders. Buck’s eyes go soft as he leans into Eddie’s space. It’s all strange and new and different— an intimacy lent by their one night together, but held back by everything that had come after, settling them in a kind of limbo.

Even so, Buck holds him in place, his hands on his shoulders, his blue eyes blazing.

“Are you okay?” he asks, a note of anxiety pitching his voice faintly breathless as he looks Eddie over. “Are you in pain? You said you got hit.”

Eddie blinks hard. “I’m—” he starts, shrugging helplessly. “I don’t know. Everything hurts. I—”

“Okay,” Buck soothes, rubbing his shoulder gently. He manages to miss the bruises that he can’t even see, like he’s cataloging pieces of Eddie that Eddie hadn’t even noticed he was making clear. “What can I do? The doctor is coming back right?”

“Yeah, just… just sit,” Eddie says, swiping at the residual wetness on his cheeks.

Buck looks reluctant to do that. Instead, he circles Eddie’s cramped little bed and offers him a hand. “Here,” he says. “Lay down, at least.”

It’s funny, how Buck can sweep into a room and take hold of all the things Eddie had been unwilling to do for himself. After weeks of deprivation, it feels like the first long evening of summer; when the light lasts longer than you think it will.

Eddie shifts, winces, and then leans back. Buck keeps a hand at his shoulder, and then all at once he’s not holding himself up anymore. He sighs and lets his eyes close, exhaustion creeping over him but being held firmly at bay by the sick, churning fear that dominates every other feeling.

What does this mean, he wonders, as Buck takes his hand and sweeps his thumb tenderly over the knuckles that Eddie knows are battered from fighting. What does it mean that Buck wants this too? What does it mean for them if it’s already gone before they can even get their hands on it?

Buck, of course, already looks all in. He has that look on his face, like he’s ready to walk into fire. Eddie isn’t sure he’ll be able to handle it, in practice. He’ll want to— that much, Eddie knows. But right this moment, Buck is existing in a world where a child that is his exists. Eddie isn’t sure how he’ll feel if that child is nothing but silent, still cells inside Eddie’s body and nothing more. He’s not sure how Buck is going to be able to look at him the same after that.

So they exist in quiet limbo for a few more minutes. Eddie closes his eyes and lets Buck hold his hand, and Buck is uncharacteristically quiet, and they wait for their world to shift again for better or for worse.

Eddie thinks about Christopher. In all the worst, scariest moments of his life he’d thought about his son and this one would be no exception. He had bled out in a desert on another continent and every thought had been about getting back home to hold his baby. Every hard and scary thing he’s ever survived, he’s breathed through it for Christopher. Sometimes he thinks he was doing that even before Christopher existed— though Eddie doesn’t believe in much beyond the mortal world, he’d loved him so instantly that it’s hard to imagine there’s nothing that tethers them.

Fleetingly, he wonders if he might ever feel that way about any other baby. He shoves the thought immediately into the shadowed corner of his mind. It’s too dangerous to consider.

The rings on the curtain startle Eddie this time around. He jumps, and Buck squeezes his hand reassuringly, and the doctor blinks at the sight of them, accompanied by a portable ultrasound on wheels.

Eddie feels himself pale. Whatever peace Buck’s presence had brought him drains out of him instantly, as his heart starts to race.

“I didn’t know we had company in here,” she says, regarding Eddie cautiously.

“He’s—” Eddie says, swallowing hard and remembering what he’d heard Buck call him in the hallway when he arrived. “My partner.”

What a strange term, he thinks aimlessly. Something that could mean so much or so little, everything in between. He’s not sure he knows which way Buck had meant it, or even which way he does.

Maybe right now, it doesn’t matter.

“Let’s see what we’re dealing with here,” the doctor says, all business. Eddie’s grateful. In a matter of a few blurry moments, he’s lifting up his shirt at her indication, and she’s squeezing cold gel onto his skin. He flinches, and Buck’s hand hovers over his arm.

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut and lifts his hand, holding it out to Buck. There’s a shuffle as Buck shifts closer, then a warm hand tightly in his, and Eddie remembers that he’s not alone. When he opens his eyes, Buck is already looking at him.

He looks painfully young, and Eddie feels much the same way. But they’re holding hands. Buck is here. Eddie is not alone on his bathroom floor anymore, wishing he could call his best friend. It’s not everything— especially not now— but it’s not nothing, either.

He squeezes tight.

“Alright, Eddie, little bit of pressure,” the doctor announces.

The room holds its breath as she presses the ultrasound wand firmly to his belly, smearing the gel around as a black and white image appears on the screen. Outside the curtain, there’s the same hum that’s been there all night— squeaking wheels and skittering curtain rings and the incessant chatter of a busy emergency room.

But in Eddie’s cubicle, it feels dead silent suddenly. Eddie swallows hard. He’s looking at the screen, but he has no idea what he’s looking for in a sea of gray that he can’t get a good angle on. His heart thrums to the same beat of the pulsating headache that echoes in his temples.

“Buck,” he breathes, barely a sound.

“I’m here,” Buck whispers.

The doctor graciously ignores them, her eyes on the screen.

And then, with a subtle twist of the wand against Eddie’s belly, there’s a new sound that floods the room with a hummingbird-fast, unmistakable, steady thud. Eddie’s heart drops and Buck squeezes his hand so tightly that it hurts.

“Is that—” Eddie asks.

The doctor smiles, genuinely this time. “That,” she says, angling the monitor toward them slightly, “is your baby’s heartbeat.”

“Oh, god,” Eddie breathes, squeezing his eyes shut against an onslaught of tears. “Oh, my god. Buck.”

Suddenly, he can’t stop crying. It’s worse than before, the kind of crying that shakes him. The doctor withdraws the wand, the sound of the heartbeat going silent, and Eddie cries harder, reaching for Buck without thinking.

Before he knows it, he’s wrapped in Buck’s arms. The angle is awkward and they have an audience, which would normally be deeply humiliating, but Eddie doesn’t have it in him to care. He lets Buck wrap him up in a tight, warm hug and kiss the side of his head.

“I got you, I got you,” Buck whispers, and Eddie can hear that he’s crying, too. “You’re okay. You’re both okay.”

Eddie pulls back, suddenly desperate, and turns to the doctor through his tears. “Is— are they? Okay?” he asks, his voice small.

She smiles again. “Baby is looking very good, Eddie,” she tells him. “I think that what you were feeling was a small bleed. It’s fairly commonplace, and ones like yours are very likely to resolve on their own. When we discharge you, we’ll give you signs to look out for just in case and you’ll have a couple of extra checkups, but given that baby’s heartbeat is strong and by the looks of things, I’m not worried.” She looks them both over and adds, “Congratulations.”

At this, Eddie turns wordlessly back to Buck, who gathers him up again without hesitation.

“Thank you,” he says to the doctor.

“Of course.” She drops a paper towel on the bed next to Eddie, who had forgotten about the gel on his skin entirely, and nods at them. “A nurse will be in shortly to go over everything with you,” she adds, and pats Eddie lightly on his knee. “You two take care.”

Eddie doesn’t even have it in him to look up, relief leaving him weak and shaking as Buck moves closer to hold him.

For a long moment, there’s nothing else. Eventually, Eddie pulls back and Buck reaches out through his own tears, gently smoothing back Eddie’s short hair where the dirty strands are brushing the top of his forehead. When he does, his fingers are shaking.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers earnestly. “God, Eddie— I got that call and I thought—”

Eddie’s chest constricts. “Buck.”

Buck shakes his head, his blue eyes still wide and glassy on Eddie’s face. “I hate that I wasn’t here for you. I hate that you’ve been sick and-and I didn’t know. I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I—”

Suddenly, the thought of having this conversation is so overwhelming that it washes over Eddie, encompassing.

“Okay,” he interrupts, reaching out and squeezing Buck’s arm. “Let’s— can we just—” He pauses, shaking his head and biting his lip lightly. His thoughts are hazy and scattered, but there’s only one thing he really needs to know now, one thing that can’t wait.

He looks at Buck and rips the Band-Aid off. “Do you want to do this?”

“Yes,” Buck answers, whole-hearted, not a trace of hesitation.

Eddie could cry all over again. “Okay,” he whispers. “Me, too. So— let’s just talk about it tomorrow, okay? Is that—”

Buck nods quickly. “Anything you want,” he says.

Eddie lets out a hysterical breath of a laugh. “What I really want,” he says, “is to go home and hug my kid.”

Buck’s face flickers through several shades of halted half-expressions, and Eddie plays it back and realizes how he sounded. He softens, turning tender, and reaches out to take Buck’s hand.

“I want us both to go hug him,” he clarifies. “We can talk tomorrow, but— I’m exhausted and my head hurts and—”

He pauses, hesitating.

“What?” Buck asks.

Eddie plays back the last six weeks. Every moment that he’d wanted Buck, all the things that outweigh the stuff he’s still mad about. All the mornings when he woke up and wanted Buck to be there. All the times he’d imagined what they might have talked about, if things were different.

He imagines tomorrow morning. Buck, next to him. Christopher safe down the hall. Buck there to get him ready while Eddie inevitably throws up in the bathroom, except that now—

Now, everything is different. He thinks of sweet peas, small and green and bright with new life.

He reaches for the cloth, wipes the gel off of his warm skin, and puts his hand on his belly, flat and unchanged. He takes in a slow breath, then raises his head to meet Buck’s eyes, knowing that his own are red and tired and shining with tears.

“We’re having a baby,” he whispers. “I— I’m pregnant.”

Buck blinks, his lashes fluttering, and then his breath catches. “Y-you’re pregnant,” he whispers. “We— yeah. Wow.”

In spite of himself, despite the fact that guilt laps relentlessly at him and everything hurts and he’s tired to the bone, Eddie feels a smile creeping over his face. He feels somewhat divorced from himself, exhausted and taken apart. But—

“You’re smiling,” Buck says.

His voice is very soft.

“Yeah,” Eddie whispers. “Give me your hand.”

Buck does, and Eddie takes him by the wrist and presses his palm to his bare skin. Buck’s fingers, which had still been shaking, go still.

There’s nothing to feel yet, but it feels monumental anyway. They look at each other, and Buck starts to smile, too.

“See?” Eddie whispers.

Buck nods. “Yeah. Oh, my god, Eddie.”

Eddie laughs, faint and hysterical but real. “What the hell are we doing?” he asks, breathless with exhaustion and relief.

Buck grins back at him, looking every bit the best friend that Eddie loves more than he’d been willing to admit to himself. He looks ridiculous, still wearing just his undershirt so that Eddie won’t be cold, but he’s smiling and bright and Eddie thinks that if his life is going to turn upside down, there’s nobody else he would rather do it with.

“We’re having a baby,” Buck whispers.

Eddie nods. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Don’t be,” Buck answers, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, too.”

Eddie nods. “Okay. Come home with me?”

Buck smoothes his thumb over Eddie’s skin, just above his belly button, and Eddie suppresses a shiver. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Later, Eddie won’t remember leaving the hospital much more than he remembers arriving to it. He lays down and lets Buck listen to his discharge instructions, accepting something that he’s offered for his head and the residual ache all over his body and still sort of reeling about the fact that they’re talking about him when they assure him it’s pregnancy-safe.

He leaves his truck for now, showing Buck where it’s parked and confirming that it is, in fact, in the right lot.

Then he climbs into the passenger seat of Buck’s Jeep and is asleep before they’re out of the parking structure. When he wakes, it’s to a gentle shaking at his shoulder and Buck’s face in front of him, his expression soft.

“Hey,” he murmurs. Behind him, the windows of Eddie’s house are glowing. At a glance, he can see that Christopher’s bedroom light is on, even though it’s late now. “I thought about carrying you but I didn’t think you’d like it.”

Eddie snorts lightly, blinking hard to bring himself to consciousness. “I’m not sure I would have noticed,” he admits.

“Offer stands,” Buck smiles.

Eddie stretches and gets out of the car on his own, and they use Buck’s key to get into the house. Carla looks up from the couch, first concerned and then immediately appeased at the sight of Buck. Honestly, Eddie gets the sentiment.

“Hey, Carla,” he says. “Sorry about this. Thank you for staying.”

“Of course,” she answers, but none of them get any further because Christopher appears in his pajamas, curls wild, around the corner of the hallway. Eddie could weep again just at the sight of him, and feels a flutter of butterflies when he looks at his face and realizes, very suddenly, that he’s going to be a big brother.

He spots Buck and his eyes light up. If Eddie had any doubts about what he’s doing, this would have erased them.

“Buck!” Chris cheers, almost immediately throwing himself into Buck’s arms. Eddie blinks hard at the sight of them together, a glimpse into something he’s still unsure he deserves but which has landed at his feet anyway.

“Hi, buddy!” Buck says, wrapping Chris up tightly with both arms and lifting him clear off of his feet.

“I thought you were never going to come back here,” Chris says with that tone he gets when he’s being dramatic, his voice muffled by Buck’s shoulder.

Eddie tenses, but Buck just squeezes him tighter. “And miss hanging out with my boys? Come on,” he says lightly, and Chris laughs.

Eddie knows he can’t pick Chris up right now— not until his checkup, at least— so he drops to one knee instead as Buck sets his son back on his feet.

“Hey, c’mere,” he says, and Chris obediently and enthusiastically drops himself into Eddie’s arms. It’s not the same as the way he’d thrown himself into Buck: that had been all excitement and new, childlike joy. When he folds himself into Eddie, it’s softer; a comfort. Eddie blinks rapidly and puts one hand on the back of Christopher’s head, threading through his soft curls as he pats gently at his hip with his other palm.

“I missed you,” Chris says softly, and Eddie’s heart twists.

“I missed you, too, bud,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry I was late tonight.”

“It’s okay,” Christopher says, pulling back. His blue eyes are shifting and soft; without his glasses, he looks tiny. Eddie’s heart twists with the memory of when he was tiny, small enough for Eddie to cradle in his hands. “Will you tuck me in now?”

Eddie smiles at him, a tender thing. “Of course.”

Soon enough, Chris is settled and asleep. Buck had carried him to bed and then left Eddie to tuck him into his covers. Eddie had leaned over him and kissed him all over his face and felt better for it by miles.

Now, Carla is being quietly filled in by Buck— barring some information— so Eddie drags himself into the shower. After a quick wash that leaves him feeling marginally better, he stands in front of the steamed up mirror and wipes some of the condensation off, revealing a slightly blurry view of himself.

He’s only wearing underwear, and it’s his first real moment alone since Buck had found his way into the hospital. His first moment alone with his baby.

His throat tightens.

It’s not even really a baby yet. Cardiac tissue that pulses, more than a heart. Cells that clump together. The fledgling beginning of what will be a life. But it’s a baby to Eddie, or at least it’s the promise of one. He doesn’t know how to feel any differently. The minute he’d known that it was safe and viable in there, these bits and pieces of himself and of Buck, he’d managed to fall in love.

He thinks back, remembering that it had been the same when he learned that Christopher existed. Regardless of whose body had held each of them, Eddie had known immediately that he was their dad. Even through uncertainty and exhaustion and guilt, he knows it, somewhere deeper than thought.

Six weeks. Fragile green vines as delicate as cells.

“Hi, sweet pea,” he whispers, so quiet that he almost can’t hear it himself. The baby has no ears yet, not even close, but Eddie touches his belly lightly anyway and finds himself blinking back tears again. He’s so tired that he could collapse, but something about this moment feels important.

He turns in the mirror and his eyes scrape over the bruises littering his body; the tide of guilt finds him again, sweeping into the backs of his knees like the faceless fighters on the mat that had sent him falling. He flinches now at the memory, shed in new light.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, flattening his palm over his stomach, down low against the waistband of his underwear as his vision blurs. “I love you,” he breathes tremulously. “I promise didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.”

He thinks he could crumble if he looks at the bruises too long. But then Buck appears in the doorway, his eyes soft.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “Carla said goodnight.” He roams over Eddie, his eyes hesitating on his flat stomach and turning warmer right before Eddie’s eyes. “You two okay?” he asks.

Like he sees this as a baby already, too. Like they’re all in it together. And that’s enough, Eddie finds, to hold the rest at bay for now. “Yeah,” he manages, with a small smile. “We’re okay.”

Then, he’s climbing into bed feeling very slightly more like a person.

Buck hesitates in the doorway, his presence demanding.

“Buckley,” Eddie sighs, with his eyes closed and his head against the pillow. “If you say one word about the couch, I will find the strength to murder you.”

Buck lets out a breath, and Eddie doesn’t have to look to picture the kind of smile that’s on his face. A moment later, the bed dips and Buck’s weight joins him.

Eddie opens his eyes and looks over at him, feeling suddenly vulnerable as his cheek smushes into the pillow.

“You okay?” Buck asks softly, tenderly.

Eddie hesitates, worrying his lip between his teeth. “Are you mad at me?”

Something sharp crosses Buck’s face. “What?” he asks gently. “No. No, Eddie, of course not.”

Eddie nods, appeased. He reaches for Buck’s hand and takes it. “I’m mad at you,” he offers, and Buck lets out a half-laugh.

“Yeah, well,” he says. “I’m mad at me, too.”

Eddie tilts his head. “I’ll be mad at you tomorrow,” he says.

“Okay,” Buck whispers. “What about tonight?”

In response, Eddie settles firmly against him, his head on Buck’s shoulder. Buck presses a kiss to the top of his head and Eddie turns his jaw to press his own to the dip of skin exposed by Buck’s collarbone: wordlessly, they settle, a new form of the touch they might share to each other’s shoulders at a scene or their knees pressed together in the rig.

Beneath the blankets, Eddie presses his fingers to his own slim waist and closes his eyes.

For tonight, this is all that matters. Eddie closes his eyes, is asleep within minutes, and doesn’t dream at all.

Pain chases Eddie to the surface of consciousness.

It wraps around him like ribbons and ties him in place. For a moment when his brain comes online, it’s the only thing he’s aware of at all. It thrums through him; lighting up in his joints and along all the patches of bruised skin that litter his body both old and new. They tug and pull differently— some sharp and fresh and violet, others yellowed and tiredly achy. His overexerted muscles are equally painful— spreading a hot pulse of deep ache over his whole body.

And just below his ribs on his right side, along the side of his stomach, there’s the sharpest glint of pain out of them all— Eddie registers it, within a moment of waking, and the rest slams immediately into him.

Panic climbs up his chest with thorns embedded into the walls of his ribcage as soon as the memory of the night before bursts to life behind his still-closed eyes. He’s in bed, at home, but last night he’d been panting and sweaty on the ground and he’d known that something wasn’t right. Last night, he’d been in the emergency room. Last night, he’d almost lost a baby and then gained it all at once.

And—

He takes in a breath, and in that space of time he becomes aware that Buck is still here, next to him. In that sliver of a moment, it’s a comfort. He would know Buck anywhere by the way he snores when he’s asleep, even the way he breathes. Eddie has only known him for a year and some change, but it feels like forever. He’s never known another person quite in the same way he knows Buck, and if he’s being honest he’d have to admit that very few people have even come remotely close.

One of them is in a grave not far away.

It’s this thought that shatters the surface of Eddie’s ice-thin, temporary relief. It breaks into a million pieces and suddenly Eddie knows that he’s going to throw up, and very soon.

He drags himself out of bed the same way he’s been doing every morning recently, leaving Buck asleep. The only difference now is that he knows why he’s caught in the grasp of relentless nausea. He’s heard the faint whooshing heartbeat of the baby he’s carrying; there’s no going back after that, no pretending that he’s just anxious.

The house is quiet; Eddie had not taken the time to look at the clock but the light in the hallway is lilac grey, so he knows it must be still be early. He barely registers anything and doesn’t manage to get the door shut behind him before he’s on his knees on the bathroom floor.

His stomach twists painfully, and he’s reminded of how little he actually has in his system. There’s a flash of guilt, this reminder that he’s been doing a shit job of nourishing himself in general lately and in turn he’s been doing a shit job of nourishing the actual baby inside him, too.

He coughs, the acidic emptiness scraping the back of his throat, and drops his head against his forearm over the toilet, his head swimming. It’s all just so much, all of a sudden. He’s in so much pain and the room is spinning and on top of that he’s thinking about the fact that there’s really just one person alive in the world who really gets him, and their relationship is never going to be the same again.

Buck is sleeping in his bed, but really— it’s just Eddie.

He closes his eyes and tries to breathe through a wave of nausea, but ends up dry-heaving anyway as the backs of his eyes sting with tears.

“Fuck,” he whispers, haring the way his voice shakes even in the empty, semidark bathroom. He takes a shuddering breath, but it does little for the painful emptiness in his stomach or the deep ache of the bruise on his hip that’s currently pressed to the tile on the floor beneath him. He shivers— freezing, again, even though he usually runs hot.

He registers the sound of Buck stepping into the room and feels himself go tense all over. It’s the last thing he needs right now— Buck seeing him even more vulnerable or trying to be sweet to him when one tender word is liable to send him over the edge.

But Buck comes in anyway, and then his warm hand is on the back of Eddie’s neck. “Hey,” he murmurs. “Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?” Eddie rasps.

Buck squeezes tenderly, his thumb brushing over the fine hair on Eddie’s neck, and he squeezes his eyes shut tight.

He wants to do whatever he can to send Buck away, but running through his options comes up with little. When he’d sat in this very spot and wished he could call Buck, he’d imagined that Buck would go and help Christopher— but it’s early, barely daybreak, and Christopher’s alarm clock hasn’t gone off at all yet. There’s not really much else for Buck to do, besides be here.

“Can you just— go away?” he asks.

He’s trying hard to be mean, but his voice comes out weak and scratchy.

“I don’t want to,” Buck offers, whispering and sweet.

“Well, I didn’t ask,” Eddie huffs. “I don’t want—”

“Eddie,” Buck murmurs, too, too soft. He lowers himself very carefully to the floor next to him, then, and Eddie hears him take in a sharp breath.

Not so long ago, Buck had been incapacitated entirely. Eddie had spent half the summer going over to Buck’s place and finding excuses to do stuff around his house that he knew Buck shouldn’t be doing, but which he’d be too proud to ask anybody to do for him. He always made it seem like he was just there to hang out and keep Buck company in various stages of his healing, but he never left without doing something— Buck’s dishes; his laundry; his vacuuming. That one, Buck had really rolled his eyes at, but he’d let Eddie do it.

It’s how they operate, like a team. At least, it’s how they did.

Maybe that’s why it’s hard for Eddie now, to let Buck do the same thing for him. He can’t let himself imagine, not even a little bit, that it’s going to be the same as it was. Not now, not when everything is different.

But he also thinks that if he does much more than lift his head he might collapse, which would be more embarrassing even than this, so they’re at an impasse.

“Your leg,” he objects, but Buck just shakes his head.

“I’m okay,” he insists, as if Eddie can’t see the way it had hurt him to twist into this position.

They make quite a pair, he guesses. This brings a fresh rush of overwhelm— because this is the state they’re in, and in less than eight months they will be parents to a newborn. It’s a thought that he quickly shoves into a box in the back of his mind, trying very hard to jam its lid on tight.

They’re quiet for a moment as Eddie fights back nausea and tries not to think about the pounding in his head that has returned since last night, in the wake of whatever they gave him at the hospital apparently wearing off.

“Has it been like this every day?” Buck asks eventually, his voice quiet.

“Pretty much,” Eddie manages. “Last couple of weeks.”

Buck doesn’t answer, but he drops his hand from Eddie’s neck and places it gently on his back instead, rubbing lightly back and forth over Eddie’s spine. Eddie tries hard not to even breathe— he’s pretty sure if he does, he’ll burst into tears again, and it’s the last thing he wants right now.

He’s not sure how long they sit there like that, before the nausea lets up a little and gives way to a gnawing, painful empty feeling that Eddie is sure is a kind of revenge for the fact that he hasn’t eaten in so long.

He gets up, wincing with every turn of his body and steadfastly ignoring the way Buck’s concerned eyes follow him, and leans over the sink to wash out his mouth. When he looks up, he catches Buck’s eyes in the mirror.

Eddie had liked Buck immediately, though he hadn’t trusted him until they’d looked at each other over a live grenade and Eddie had seen the shining, fierce, steady determination in his blue eyes. He’s looking at Eddie much the same way now.

Eddie looks away, and Buck takes in a breath like he’s gathering his courage to say something.

Then, down the hall, Christopher’s alarm clock blares. They listen in the quiet, and there’s a shuffling and an unnecessary bang as Christopher slams the button to turn it off.

“Could you—” Eddie starts, his voice wearing.

Buck doesn’t even let him finish. “I got him,” he assures him. His hand brushes over Eddie’s shoulder as he moves past him to the hallway, the touch familiar. He’s touched Eddie’s shoulder like that a hundred times, two hundred. Eddie shivers lightly beneath it now, and then listens as Buck moves down the hallway into his son’s room.

“Buck!” Christopher cheers, the sound audible through the walls. Eddie’s heart twists in his chest as Buck replies, too quiet for Eddie to make out beyond the rumble of his voice pitched into something cheerful for Chris.

He looks back at the mirror— at the right angle, he can see the smeared smudge where he’d brushed his hand through the condensation the night before, and beyond that there’s his reflection. He meets his own dark eyes in the glass, looking at the papery violet bruises swiped in half-circles underneath; at the redness around his lashes and the stubble dusting over his cheeks.

He has to do better than this, he thinks. He has more than himself to think about in this body now.

When he’s collected himself, he makes his way into the kitchen. Christopher and Buck are still in Chris’ bedroom, and Eddie can hear them laughing as the light in the house slowly turns to gold with the brightening of morning. For a second, standing at the counter, it feels like a flash of a life that could be within his reach— him, this baby, a weekday morning lit with autumn sun, Christopher and Buck chattering through the walls.

The version of it that springs to mind is idyllic and unfraught, the kind of thing he might have imagined for himself if he’d ever dared to think he could have whatever he wanted. It feels impossible, even now, like a cruel mirage that will evaporate as soon as he reaches for it.

He tries to focus and gets halfway through the motions of brewing coffee before he stops in his tracks, staring down at the grounds and the filter on the old coffee pot that he knows he should replace but never does.

He’s still staring down at them, puzzled, when Buck steps into the room. He’s moving cautiously, like he isn’t sure which version of Eddie he’s about to encounter. Eddie can’t entirely blame him for that. He’s not sure which version of Eddie he is right now, either.

“Chris is just making his bed,” Buck offers, and Eddie glances back, eyebrows raised in a question. “Yeah,” Buck huffs. “I promised him the cereal he wanted in exchange.”

Eddie smiles a little at that, and Buck nods down at the coffee in his hands. “What are you doing there?” he asks, curious and a little too gentle for Eddie’s liking.

“Uh,” he answers, frowning, then glancing past Buck to be sure Chris is still out of earshot. “Trying to figure out if pregnant people can have coffee.”

Buck brightens. “Oh!” he says. “Yeah. One cup a day.”

Eddie frowns at him. “How do you know that?” he asks, glancing between the coffee grounds and Buck.

Buck turns faintly pink. “You were really out last night,” he says. “But I couldn’t sleep so I was researching. I figured most things you could ask when you see your doctor but— you know, coffee’s first thing in the morning, so. I looked into it in case you were feeling up to having it.”

Eddie swallows hard. “Oh,” he says. “Well, I’m not feeling up to having anything, actually, but at least this way I won’t have a caffeine headache, too.” He pauses, looking back over at Buck. “You’re sure, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Buck assures him, nodding. “I checked a bunch of sources. As long as your one cup isn’t, like, giant or something. You’re good.”

Eddie nods and then turns back to the coffee maker; he finishes scooping the grounds, then adds more than his usual when he remembers that he’s making coffee for Buck, too.

“What else were you looking up?” he asks, before he can stop himself.

“Mostly, uh, foods that are good for morning sickness,” Buck admits. “I didn’t want to make something that would make you sick, but it said it differs a lot from person to person so I kinda gave up on that. Thought I would just ask you what you want.”

It’s at once stifling and tender; Eddie feels vaguely caged, but can’t help leaning into it a little bit. It’s sort of dizzying: all the new, life-changing information on top of the pain he’s in and Buck’s sudden presence in his life after weeks apart.

Christopher interrupts them then, coming around the corner into the kitchen with a smile on his face as he braces himself on the doorframe.

“Cereal!” he announces gleefully, and it breaks the tension between Buck and Eddie.

“You’re an easy mark,” Eddie says, nodding toward the top of the refrigerator where the cereal boxes are as Buck follows his eyeline. He turns to his son, reaching a hand out to help Chris into his chair out of nothing but habit, formed by the repetition of their shared routine day after day. “Good morning to you, too,” he adds.

“Good morning,” Chris giggles as he readjusts himself into his chair. Eddie pushes it in closer to the table and winces at the movement.

“Hey, sit down,” Buck says, his voice low as he moves around Eddie to Chris with a bowl of Lucky Charms.

Eddie wants to snap; it’s right there on the tip of his tongue. But isn’t this exactly what he’d wanted during those weeks apart? Isn’t Buck doing exactly what Eddie had been sure he would do? And doesn’t it feel good, in spite of everything else?

Also, Eddie feels like shit and he would rather not pass out in front of Christopher, who’s currently digging into his glorified dessert and none the wiser to the fact that his dad is on the verge of collapse. So, he bites his tongue and sinks into a kitchen chair.

Buck hesitates, then touches his shoulder lightly. “Toast?” he offers.

Nothing sounds good. Eddie feels like he could never eat another meal again. But toast is, he guesses, the least of the evils.

“Okay,” he agrees.

He tries to focus on Christopher, but mostly just lets him chatter, about school and the spelling test he’s taking today and about how he beat Carla at Go Fish the night before. The coffee brews steadily, and Eddie takes it as a win that the smell alone doesn’t make him nauseous. Buck moves around the kitchen like a shadow. He’s at home in their space, but uncharacteristically quiet; it serves as a reminder that there’s so much in front of them, that these stolen moments of calm are mostly a performance for Christopher.

Eddie is trying not to think about it, at least long enough to get his toast down.

Buck puts it in front of him with a cup of coffee and some water, the latter of which comes with a pointed look that tells him he’s pretty much going to be forced into drinking it. He takes a sip, then a nibble of toast followed by coffee. His body seems unrevolted by this, at least for the time being.

“Dad?” Christopher asks, his head tilted as he looks at Eddie’s plate.

“Yeah, bud,” Eddie answers.

“Why are you eating dry toast?”

Eddie hesitates. “Uh,” he answers. “You know how sometimes if you’re not feeling good, you have to eat plain foods?”

Christopher looks up at that. “Are you sick?”

“Mm,” Eddie hums. “Only a little. I’m okay.”

Chris glances around the room, his eyes on Buck. “Is that why Buck stayed over? To take care of you?”

Eddie has known he’s pregnant for less than twelve hours. He’s also not sure how he ever didn’t know, if only by the way that everything makes him want to cry.

“Yeah,” Buck interjects, smiling easily at Chris as he leans over and ruffles his hair. “That’s also why I’m dropping you off at school today. Go brush your teeth if you’re done eating.”

Eddie turns his head in Buck’s direction, waiting for Christopher to disappear into the hallway. “You’re taking him to school?” he asks, bristling more than he means to.

Buck just nods, turning away from Eddie and rinsing out Chris’ cereal bowl at the sink.

Eddie studies his back, the curve of his broad shoulders. It’s far from the first time he’s been here, just like this, and Eddie doesn’t exactly mind if Buck takes over some of the tasks around Christopher. It’s not the first time for that either. It’s just that there’s a current of tension between them, inevitably. Eddie hates it, maybe even more than the silence of the last six weeks. At least then, he knew what he was dealing with.

Buck glances back when Eddie doesn’t say anything, hesitating, a flash of vulnerability on his face. “Is that okay?” he asks. “You just still don’t look like you’re feeling up for it.”

Eddie feels himself relenting, and slumps back in his chair. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s fine.” He looks down into the coffee cup and discovers that the sight of it is not even a little appealing anymore. He takes a sip of the water instead and sets about finishing his toast while the coffee gets cold in the cup.

A few minutes later, he’s distracted and caught up in the rush of getting Christopher out the door. He checks his bag for his homework from the night before; assures that he’s got his jacket while Buck cleans his glasses; then wraps him in a tight hug and presses three quick kisses in a row to the top of his head. The apple scent of his shampoo is surprisingly pleasant, and Eddie breathes in deep.

“Feel better, Dad,” Chris says, and Eddie swallows hard as he runs his hand over the back of his head and his neck.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he says softly. “I love you, have a good day at school and one of us will pick you up okay?”

“Okay!” Chris chirps, and then he’s already halfway out of the kitchen. “Come on, Buck,” he calls. “I want to pick the music.”

Buck laughs lightly. “I’m coming, Chris,” he answers. He glances back at Eddie. “You good here?”

“Fine,” Eddie agrees.

He wants to thank him, but it gets stuck in his throat and then he’s too late. The front door clicks behind them and then the rush of the morning descends into pressing silence.

Eddie sort of drifts in their absence. He’s on edge and still hurting all over, but he stays where he is and lets the kitchen light up around him, spilling sunshine onto the table and the countertops and his still-mostly full cup of coffee.

He works his way through the rest of the toast, then leans back in the chair and drops his head back on the hinge of his neck, closing his eyes as the sun touches the top of his head. Even in deep autumn, it’s bright and warm through the glass, one of few things that feels any kind of good right now.

Alone again for the first time since the night before, he drops a tentative hand to his stomach. He’s not nauseous anymore— despite his reluctance, the toast had sort of helped— and he knows that it borders on a little bit ridiculous to consider the little circle of tissue inside him as a baby at all. But there’s something about it, about imagining it in his palm as layers of t-shirt cotton and warm skin separate them.

There’s so much to think about it, all of it overwhelming. But this is the one thing he’s singularly responsible for, this thing that’s happening in his body. When it comes to everything on the outside, there’s Buck to consider and finances and looming doctor’s appointments and a conversation with Bobby that Eddie’s dreading, and his parents, and the list is endless. But regardless of any of that, this part is all Eddie’s. Nobody can do it for him. Nobody can disappoint him or hurt him around it. It’s a lot of pressure, but it’s his alone.

He wonders idly if Shannon had felt that way, as a teenage girl with an unplanned pregnancy and a whirlwind of people making decisions for her about getting married and enlisting and having a quiet wedding and on and on. If she’d also sat like this, imagining Christopher as nothing more than a sweetpea-sized bundle of tissue and feeling like it was just the two of them.

His chest aches at the thought of it. The grief over losing her is still so fresh, and the thought of bringing new life into a world without her makes him want to rage. She’s missing so much— for him, for their son. He didn’t even get to tell her the truth about why he’d been unable to love her the way she deserved. She’d missed it by a matter of months.

It’s all so complicated— raising a little piece of his first-ever best friend and seeing flickers of her in Christopher; while now, apparently, growing a piece of his second-ever best friend inside his body. Knowing that Buck is still here and Eddie doesn’t have the option of hiding from him because Christopher is also attached to him and they’re having a baby together, an echo of where he’d found himself less than ten years ago. Knowing that he’d managed to ruin both of them; knowing that in the same way he and Shannon had never been the same again, he and Buck won’t be either.

He already loves the idea of the baby that this could be. The person that it could be. He’d never trade Christopher for anything, and he knows that he’s going to feel the same way about this baby, but it doesn’t come free. There’s always a cost, and as guilty as he feels for it, Eddie hates that it has to cost him Buck.

Time drifts around him and he’s not sure how long it is before he hears the familiar scrape of Buck’s key in the lock and then the click as the door opens. He tenses automatically, knowing that they’re about to be really out of options here. They’re going to have to talk about it. His stomach twists, and he can’t tell if it’s real nausea again or just the deep anxiety of facing everything he’s been pushing down for weeks.

Buck steps back into the kitchen holding a grocery bag, and his eyes find Eddie’s hand— still on his stomach— immediately. Eddie watches his eyes soften and gets self-conscious instantly, pulling it away and in the same instant missing the warmth of it. He straightens up a little and decidedly doesn’t look at Buck’s face, intentionally missing what he’s sure is disappointment.

“Chris get to school okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, yeah,” Buck assures him. There’s a smile in his voice, and Eddie is reminded of how much he adores Christopher. It makes him angry all over again— that he can love Chris so much, so clearly, and still have done what he did. The pieces of it are still littering the floor between them like sparkling, broken glass. “Uh,” Buck continues, the bag rustling as he unpacks it. “I also swung by the store on the way back and got you a couple of things.”

He says it like a question, like he’s the one unsure of his place. Eddie guesses they both are.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Okay, so, like I said,” Buck starts, “I was looking up foods that would be good. I just got a few things. If they don’t work, you know, whatever. But there’s ginger tea, I know you like that fruit tea Bobby keeps at the station so I thought maybe that. And these ginger candies, I read about those. Applesauce and bananas, because apparently the-the bland taste is supposed to be good for you? I don’t know, the thought of eating bananas when you want to throw up sounds kind of awful to me. But I’ve never been…”

He trails off, and Eddie offers a wry, humorless smile. “Pregnant,” he offers.

“Yeah,” Buck replies.

He glances over at the table, his eyes on Eddie’s unfinished coffee. “Do you want to try the tea?” he asks. “It’s warm, at least.”

Eddie shrugs. “Yeah, okay.”

Buck thrives on having something to do with himself, and Eddie selfishly wants to put off talking. So he lets Buck bustle around the kitchen making tea and tries to breathe, flipping over the package of ginger candies that Buck had put on the table in front of him. He’s not even sure if he really likes ginger or not, but then again he guesses he’s going to have to learn a lot about himself and quick.

“For you,” Buck says softly, dropping a steaming mug in front of him. Along the side of it, it says World’s Greatest Dad. His chest goes tight at the sight of it, the meaning reaching so much deeper suddenly than it had just yesterday morning when he’d put it away in the cabinet.

“Thanks,” he says anyway, and leans in cautiously to take a small sniff of the tea. It’s surprisingly gentle and nice, a little sharp in a good way. His stomach doesn’t turn at the scent, which is probably a good sign.

Steam billows out of the cup in soft thin clouds that dissipate into the air. Eddie watches them as Buck sits down in the chair diagonal to him. They’ve spent so much time here, just like this— evenings after Chris was in bed; afternoons spent half chatting and half watching over homework sheets; moments while they wait for something to finish in the oven. Now, the silence between them feels like a wall.

“So,” Buck says, his voice cautious. “Do you want to talk?”

A wall that is crumbling, Eddie guesses. He exhales hard; it moves through the steam, disrupting a spiraling cloud and scattering it. “Not really,” he admits. “But yeah, okay.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Buck frets. “If not, we can always—”

“No,” Eddie interrupts, firmer and stronger than he feels. “I’m— it doesn’t get much better than this. We should get it over with.”

Buck frowns; Eddie can see it in his peripheral vision, the drawing together of his features. “That sounds…” he starts. “Negative.”

A flash of irritation catches in Eddie’s chest. “Well,” he bites dryly. “Everything is except the pregnancy test.”

Buck’s expression flickers. Eddie doesn’t really have in him to feel bad, at least not when they’re in the thick of it.

“Eddie,” Buck starts. “I’m— I really am sorry, about everything.”

The thing is, Eddie knows that. He’s never doubted that Buck was sorry. It’s what makes it all harder— the fact that he has already forgiven Buck, that he could never have done anything else.

“I know,” he says softly. He bites back the rest: It’s not about that.

What it’s really about is that night— those moments in Eddie’s bed down the hall where they’d both slept just last night. It’s about Buck’s mouth on his and the fireworks that erupted in him, a feeling so new that it took his breath away as pieces of him clicked into place. It’s about the next morning and all the things Eddie wishes he’d said when he had the chance. It’s about the baby they’d unknowingly conceived.

Buck leans in, earnest as ever. “I promise,” he says, “I’m going to—to be here for you. You and the baby, and Christopher. I don’t want you to think that I don’t want them.”

Them, Eddie thinks. Not him. His heart thumps hollowly in his chest and his throat scratches as he nods.

“I don’t think that,” he admits.

He turns it over in his head. Everything feels muddled, as if it all exists in one of the clouds of steam that have slowed nearly to a stop over his cup of ginger tea. He reaches for it and brings it to his mouth, lets a sip of it flood over his tongue and his molars. It’s shockingly perfect, a flavor that coats the insides of his cheeks and soothes his raw throat.

He looks up and Buck is watching him closely. “It’s good,” he admits, and sort of hates how relieved and proud Buck looks in response.

Eddie sighs.

“Like I said,” he starts quietly, the cup clunking back down onto the table. “I’m not going to dictate what you want to do around the baby.” The words still feel foreign coming out of his mouth. “You can be as involved as you want.”

Buck furrows his eyebrows at him. “With the baby,” he says slowly, like he’s trying to understand some deeper meaning.

“Yeah,” Eddie answers.

“What— what about you and Chris?” Buck asks.

Eddie shrugs his shoulders. The question doesn’t entirely make sense to him. “Well,” he falters. “We’ll be there. The baby is inside my body for the next thirty-four weeks or so.”

Buck huffs, that way that he gets when he’s frustrated. Eddie usually understands it, but at the moment he can’t imagine what Buck’s issue is. Eddie is giving him every out he could want.

“What?” he asks, hearing the way his anger creeps into his voice and hating the way it takes him back to the mat, the ring, the bruise on his ribs.

“What about us?” Buck asks, like the words are hard for him to get out.

Eddie stares at him. “What?” he asks. “What do you mean?”

Unbelievably, Buck huffs and fidgets in his seat like Eddie is being the ridiculous one. “We slept together,” he says, gesturing unnecessarily to Eddie like he’s unaware, somehow. “You don’t want to talk about that?”

Eddie scoffs. “Seriously?” he asks. “Buck, you’re the one who didn’t want to talk about it.”

Buck blinks. “That’s not true,” he argues. “I— I wanted to talk about it. But you avoided me for a week.”

“I avoided you?” Eddie asks.

“Yes!” Buck insists.

“That’s not—” Eddie falters, thinking back. What he remembers about that week is being caught up in himself. He remembers how freeing it had felt, how equally scary it had been to rewrite everything he’d ever known about himself. He remembers how much he wanted to tell Buck about it, and how important it had been to him to do it in person.

Had that looked different to Buck? Suddenly, Eddie isn’t sure about anything anymore. His chest seizes up and all of a sudden, he wants to put his head down on the table and cry. It makes him even more furious, in turn.

“You’re the one who didn’t talk to me!” Eddie insists. “You— you didn’t even give me a chance before you filed a lawsuit and some lawyer is the one who told me I wasn’t even allowed to talk to you anymore. Do you have any idea how much Christopher missed you?” He doesn’t pause for Buck to answer; now that he’s started, it’s like the words just keep coming, spinning out of his control. “Did you even stop to think about what it would do to us?” he demands. “Especially after that night. I had to sit there and listen to that lawyer rip my life apart and just be grateful you left out the part where you fucked me and left. Christopher’s been having nightmares for weeks; I’ve been sick and running myself into the ground at the fight club. I couldn’t even call you to bail me out of jail!”

Buck blinks, taken aback, and Eddie realizes what he’s just said.

“Jail?” Buck repeats, his voice doing that thing it does when he gets panicked, carved out and pitched up.

Eddie is so anxious that it has wound its way back to a sketch of calm; inside, his heart races like hooves against soft racetrack dirt, while none of his body moves at all. He barely breathes, just sits there and lets Buck look at him.

“Eddie?” Buck’s voice is soft, pulling at him. “What do you mean?”

Eddie doesn’t want to get into it. The fight club, why he did it, how he poured his love for Buck into violence. It fills him with shame, a dangerously liquid feeling like hot tears behind his eyes.

“I punched a guy,” he says flatly. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

Buck watches him carefully, and Eddie is suddenly painfully aware of all the space between them; how far away Buck’s knee is from his own and how impossible it is to press one joint into the other. Buck’s, worse for wear after this year but still reliably pressing back. He wants it desperately all of a sudden, for them to be side by side in the truck again.

He scrunches his face and taps his fingers lightly against the table, waiting for Buck to say something.

“I’m sorry,” he replies eventually, painfully soft and tender. “I really am. I want you to always be able to call me.”

The question that comes out of Eddie’s mouth was probably inevitable.

“Why?” he asks, raising his head and hating the way his voice comes out worn thin. “Why did you do that, Buck? Why didn’t you talk to me?”

Buck looks down, his nose twitching like he’s trying not to cry. Eddie digs his heels in.

“I found out that Bobby was blocking me from coming back to work,” Buck says. “I thought that I could get my job back this way, my home back, my family. And-and I wanted to talk to you. But I thought that you didn’t want me around, Eddie. I thought that night had— had ruined everything.”

Eddie stares at him as he picks at his cuticle, pulling a layer of the skin raw around his thumbnail.

“How?” Eddie asks. “I never told you that I didn’t want to talk to you—”

“But you were pushing me away!” Buck insists, a kind of desperation creeping into his voice that hits Eddie square in the chest. “I-I wanted to come over when Chris was sick. I made soup and everything. You told me not to, and what else was I supposed to think, Eddie?” He shakes his head, his blue eyes wide and glassy. “We slept together and then you wouldn’t let me see you. You barely texted me back. I wanted to see Christopher so badly, after the tsunami, and—”

The wall that had separated them is in crumbling ruins on the floor now. Eddie feels sick and out of control entirely, spinning and spiraling and lost in the dark.

Buck sits in front of him, bright in the light and pink in the nose from trying not to cry, his eyes wet. The light casts over him through the window, gold and bright. Eddie remembers what he’d looked like in the warm darkness of his bedroom, scraped and bloody and still whispering devotions into the skin all over Eddie’s body.

“You wanted to see Christopher,” Eddie whispers. “But not—”

“No,” Buck insists. His hand moves toward Eddie’s on the table and then draws back in an aborted half-reach that looks hard to restrain. “I wanted to see you both. I thought—”

“I wanted to talk to you in person,” Eddie says. “I wanted to— I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter.”

Buck seems to be ignited by that, like Eddie is saying something wild and offensive. He looks angry, suddenly.

“It doesn’t matter?” he repeats. “Eddie. You’re pregnant with my baby! Of course it matters, it all matters.”

The burn of tears in Eddie’s eyes this time is more frustration than anything else. No matter how much his body aches, it simmers too forcefully over him. He has to move, can’t stand to sit with it anymore.

He pushes off of the table and gets up, the sharpness of the motion catching up to his battered muscles and searing through him. He braces both hands on the edge of the counter, digging his palms into the edge as he turns his back to Buck.

“What would you have said?” he asks, his voice echoing like a hollow drum against the backsplash tiles.

“W-what?”

“What would you have said?” Eddie repeats. “If I had let you come over. If you hadn’t filed the lawsuit.”

After that night. It hangs unspoken between them like smoke, residual and stubborn. Eddie hears Buck’s breath shudder.

“I would have said that I— I felt different with you,” he admits in a small voice. “I don’t know what it means for me, like, what the word is. I’ve only been with women before, but I wanted to tell you that it felt right with you. I thought— I wanted to kiss you again. I wanted to know if you would let me kiss you again.”

Eddie closes his eyes.

Buck must interpret his silence for something that it’s not, because he pushes onward.

“But—but I also just wanted to know what you were thinking,” he insists. “Because I didn’t want to think about it so much until I was sure. Because you’re my best friend, a-and I wouldn’t give that up. Not for anything. And I know you’re straight and I thought I was, too, but—”

“I’m not,” Eddie interrupts.

He can’t help it. He hasn’t told anyone else, because he just wanted to be telling Buck. And now here Buck is, and everything is wrong, but Eddie still can’t help it.

The kitchen goes still.

“You’re not?” Buck asks, his voice trembling.

“No,” Eddie breathes. “I’m gay. I-I realized I’m gay. I was so mad at you because I wanted to tell you and… you weren’t there to tell.” He takes a shuddering breath, trying very hard to twist his features back into something resembling control over himself and failing spectacularly.

All of a sudden, Buck is in his space.

His hands settle on Eddie’s shoulders, warm and familiar, his thumbs brushing lightly over Eddie’s bone through his tshirt. Eddie has never considered himself weak: he’s never been afforded the luxury of it, not even as far back as he can remember.

But today, he is. There’s a baby nestled deep in his body, and every single thing about the landscape of his life is changing, and he’s in pain and exhausted and Buck is here, touching him. Buck is telling him that all the things he’d thought were impossible are in front of him. So he’s weak.

He takes a breath and the exhale comes out like a sob.

Buck pulls him into his arms and Eddie lets it happen, turns into Buck’s shoulder and lets himself be hugged tight.

“I’m sorry,” Buck whispers. “I’m so proud of you.”

It’s ridiculous, and it’s infuriating, and it’s also exactly what Eddie wants, what he needs. What he’d wanted Buck to say, or at least half of it.

“I wanted to tell you,” he whispers.

“I know,” Buck answers, sounding genuinely pained by it all. “I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell you, too.”

“Tell me what?” Eddie asks, his voice muffled in Buck’s shoulder.

Buck’s breath catches, and Eddie can feel it when he forces it out slowly. “That I-I’m in love with you,” he admits.

Eddie spins to a stop.

“What?” he asks, pulling back to look at Buck’s face. “You— what?”

But Buck is looking so earnestly back at him, looking like a future Eddie hadn’t known he could have. A life he’d never dared to dream for himself. A life he still can’t quite imagine, at least not fully formed.

But it’s the one he’s being offered. All he has to do is tell the truth, this one little thing he’s not allowed himself to think about, and then it could be his. The fantasy of mornings in the kitchen; Buck’s hand on the back of his neck; Buck, in a matter of months, with their child in his hands.

A partner. Someone to do this with. Someone Christopher loves. Eddie’s chest aches at the knowledge that their friendship as he’d known it doesn’t exist anymore, but that has been true all along. This is something else, something that he and Shannon had never been afforded. Eddie could never have loved her like he loves Buck, no matter how much he wanted to.

It feels impossibly big, taking up all the leftover space in his body and seeping into his bones. It’s life-altering. But then again, all the rest of it is, too. Eddie’s life is changing, either way. It can be with Buck, or without, but it’s happening.

And today, Eddie is weaker than he’s ever been. But Buck is, too. Buck wears weakness like a Silver Star; vulnerability something that is intertwined with him, like a dog on its back with its belly exposed.

There’s bravery in that. Eddie has never been able to understand it on himself, but maybe with Buck in front of him he can try.

“I’m in love with you, too,” he admits, his eyes teary, his sinuses sharp; his body aching and his head entirely clear.

It turns out to be worth it— all of it— when Buck lights up in front of him. It’s like the words have turned a lamp on; the kitchen floods with warmth and Eddie couldn’t hide in the shadows if he tried. There aren’t any left— at least not right now.

For a moment, Eddie looks at Buck and it’s not about the baby he’s carrying or the pressures of impending parenthood or the fight they’re having or these painful, awful six weeks. It’s just about them— the same way it had been on their first shift, when Eddie’s focus narrowed down to the task at hand and all he could hear was Buck’s breath next to him. The same way it had been the night of the tsunami, when Buck had smothered Eddie in kisses and presence and what he sees now was unmistakably love.

All the relief of their baby’s safety; all the turmoil; all the pain; all the uncertainty. Everything melts away for a moment, until they’re just Eddie and Buck, chest to chest in Eddie’s little kitchen, in a home that kind of feels already like it belongs to both of them.

“Are you sure?” Buck asks, his voice soft and tender.

Eddie nods his head. “Are you?”

“So sure,” Buck promises. He puts his hands on Eddie’s cheeks, like it’s all he’s wanted to do for hours or days or weeks. Eddie aches, knowing that to be true. “It’s not about the baby,” he says, the way the words are shaped enough proof that he means them entirely. “It’s you, Eddie, I— I want you to know that it’s—”

In an act that Eddie will later consider to be his bravest, he leans up and presses his mouth to Buck’s. He tastes like mint, clean and biting. He tastes like Buck, something Eddie has been thinking about for six long weeks. He tastes like a promise.

And he melts into Eddie like he means every word he’s said. He kisses back with unbridled, set-free enthusiasm.

I love you, I love you, Eddie thinks. The rest is an uphill battle that waits in the form of so many questions he doesn’t have the answers to, an endless list of complications.

But for a moment, in the morning, it’s just this. Buck, his hand on Eddie’s waist; his mouth warm; his jaw scratching Eddie softly. It’s just their baby, nestled safely in between them, and the endless, open, uncertain future that they’re quietly agreeing to face together. It’s you could have my back any day, and their knees pressed together and their shoulders knocking and Buck fighting earth and water to keep his son safe, and the way Eddie had heard Buck around the corner in this very room telling his sister that he’s not really a guest here.

For a moment, in the morning, Eddie’s life begins to change.