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Despite being on testosterone for just over a decade, Buck still gets his period every couple of years.
It started to taper off sometime around back when he was a probie, and he’s only gotten it twice since.
The last time was after the lightning strike. But Buck figured that one was sort of justified, his body's way of recalibrating after dying. Maybe menstruation is another reaction in the fight or flight response.
The time before that, everyone was living out of Buck’s loft during covid. Which led to a slightly awkward, panicked, and rushed coming out to Eddie when they woke up covered in Buck’s blood. It also led to Buck having to buy new sheets—and sweatpants for Eddie, because he felt bad about ruining them—and also left him with an uncleanable bloodstain on his mattress.
But it's been a while since Buck has had to worry about getting his period. So, when he starts having cramps at the beginning of the week, Buck doesn’t even consider the possibility of it, and assumes the cramps are food poisoning from miscellaneous meat he got at a dirty food truck.
Even the steady back ache and increasingly dramatic mood swings weren’t prominent enough for Buck to notice them. Besides, he’s a busy man with a full time job and two kids to wrangle, he doesn’t have time to worry about why accidentally bumping into the table made him want to throw himself down the stairs, or why his chest has been sort of tender against every single shirt he owns.
There might be the teeniest, tiniest chance that Buck has just been ignoring all the signs. But, in his defense, tonight is date night, and he really doesn’t want to ruin it. Buck already ruined last date night, in fact, when he picked out a new, albeit sketchy, restaurant, that gave both him and Eddie actual food poisoning for a day and a half.
But there’s nothing Buck’s better at than ignoring a problem until it blows up in his face.
Eddie, Christopher, and Theo leave the house in a whirlwind of last minute snacks, forgotten socks and shoes, and hurried kisses pressed to cheeks. Eddie is almost always the one to take the kids to the Wilson’s for the night, because Buck has to go through his ten-step hair routine, and he usually ends up changing his outfit at least three times before he’s ready to go.
All Eddie has to do is switch into his nicer clothes—no offense to Theo, but he does tend to have mysteriously sticky hands, and has zero qualms about touching everything he can—and tousle his hair once or twice until it looks nice. His gel got taken out of the equation months ago when Buck finally threw it out.
Buck’s only on outfit change one when he heads to the bathroom to start doing his hair. It doesn’t come as a complete shock when he goes to pee and finds a large blood stain spreading across the inside of his boxers.
“Shit,” Buck groans. He balls up toilet paper and starts rubbing at the blood. When the action proves to be useless, Buck drops the toilet paper into the toilet with another groan.
He shimmies his pants completely off and throws them over the towel rack, only slightly relieved to see that the blood didn’t stain through. Buck stands and pulls his boxers back up, grimacing at the dampness in his crotch. He makes quick work of rushing down the hallway to gather clean ones.
Back in the safety of the bathroom, Buck bundles up his ruined pair of boxers and shoves them into the laundry basket. He pauses for a moment, then reaches into the basket and pulls a shirt over them.
Buck cleans the dry and tacky blood off the inside of his thighs with wet wipes and what feels like half of the toilet paper roll. His only saving grace is the old box of pads and tampons stuffed in the back of the cabinet. They moved with Buck out of the frat house, to his loft, to Eddie’s house, and finally to here, where they will hopefully never be needed again after this. The box had a thick layer of dust over the top of it when Buck first rediscovered them.
Once he’s done cleaning up, Buck washes his hands, dries them off, and pulls his new boxers and pants on. He’s just about to start in on his hair, which will now have to be a rush job, when his cramps suddenly get worse, like they’re sentient and seeking the opportunity to torture him now that he knows the origins of their being.
Buck’s cramps have usually been pretty bad, especially when he was younger, and he figures that they’re making up for lost time. Sometimes in high school he would have to lie in the nurses office until they eased up, and when he got older he would occasionally have to call out of work and grit his teeth through the pain in the back of the jeep.
Buck drops his spray bottle onto the counter, frowning when it falls into the sink but makes no effort to pick it up. The cramps have him gritting his teeth as he shuffles down the hallway. He wraps his arms around his stomach and flops facedown onto the bed.
As he lies there, he continuously reminds himself that he has to get up and ready to go, but every time he so much as thinks of moving, a thousand needles stab themselves through his uterus. Buck’s not entirely sure how much time has passed when he hears the front door open and Eddie making his way down the hallway.
“Buck?” he calls out.
Buck grumbles into the bed as a response. Eddie’s footsteps pause momentarily in the doorway, then they continue forward and come to a stop by the end of the bed.
“You okay?”
“Yep,” Buck grinds out into the sheets. “Got my period.”
“Ah,” Eddie says. The bed dips as he sits next to him, his big, warm hand settling on Buck’s lower back. He absolutely refuses to melt under the comfort his touch brings. “Want me to get anything?”
“No. I’ll get up soon. ‘S just bad cramps.”
Eddie’s thumb rubs back and forth soothingly, which has Buck’s eyes getting teary and breath hitching momentarily. There’s a rustling as Eddie digs around in his pocket. “Hi, I’d like to cancel my reservation, it’s under Diaz…Thank you, have a good night.”
“Eddie,” Buck whines, flipping his face to the side, “I was gonna get up in a minute.”
Another date night ruined. How many in a row can Buck go for? Maybe next time he can choke on the bread five minutes in. Oh, wait, he already did that.
“Uh-huh.” Eddie looks down at him with evilly kind eyes. “Does it hurt anywhere else?”
“No, just my back,” Buck says. But, now that he thinks about it, there was more than just cramps that made him think he had food poisoning. “I am a little nauseous though, and constipated. But also having diarrhea?”
Too Much Information flew out the window a long time ago for them.
“Mmm,” Eddie hums, unbothered, without missing a beat. “Not so bad then.”
Buck blindly swats at his shoulder. Eddie catches his hand and laces their fingers together, squeezing twice. Buck squeezes back.
“You want pizza?”
"I'm already bloated," Buck mumbles miserably. "Can't we have a jar of peanut butter for dinner?"
“No,” Eddie says instantly. “Hawaiian?”
Buck shifts so his cheek is pressed into Eddie’s upper thigh. Eddie pats the side of his head with his free hand. “...Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t baby me,” Buck grumbles.
“I’m not babying you,” Eddie says in his babying voice. He types something into his phone and holds it back to his ear. “Hi, can I get a medium Hawaiian pizza?”
“Large,” Buck whispers. They probably won’t eat the whole thing, but whatever's left Buck can have for breakfast tomorrow.
“Make that a large, actually…Alright, thank you.” Eddie hangs up the phone and tosses it across the bed. “Fifteen minutes.”
“‘Kay.”
“How about you get changed while I set up the tv? What do you wanna watch?”
Buck runs his hand over the fabric of Eddie’s jeans while he thinks. He doesn’t want to watch anything overly sad, and end up an absolute sobbing mess by the end of it. Which eliminates any animal-based movies and most romance/drama films.
He has been wanting to rewatch The Notebook for a while, but Buck’s pretty sure he would kill both himself and Eddie by the end of it.
"Mamma Mia!” he guesses. Buck might tear up during ‘Our Last Summer’ and ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ and ‘The Winner Takes It All’, but other than that he’ll be fine. Probably. Maybe it isn’t the best choice.
"Alright, Mamma Mia! coming right up."
Eddie gets up, taking all his warmth with him. He makes his way to the dresser. Buck flips onto his back and watches him pull out sweatpants, a t-shirt, and a hoodie. He dumps the clothes on the bed then changes into his own sweatpants.
Buck makes a half-hearted wolfwhistle. Eddie shakes his head with a smile, then digs into a drawer and throws a pair of fuzzy socks towards him.
“Owww,” Buck cries out dramatically as the socks land a good foot above his head.
Eddie scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Oh, stop it. That didn’t even hit you.”
Buck reaches up to grab the socks, turning them over in his hands. “It could’ve.”
Eddie grumbles something unintelligible as he walks out of their bedroom and down the hallway.
Buck sits up and kicks his pants off, leaving them in a pile on the floor. He pulls his fuzzy socks on and his sweatpants. His dress shirt soon joins his pants, where they’ll stay until they’re eventually put in the wash despite Buck only having worn them for a maximum half hour.
He lets his t-shirt catch on his nose for a second, so he can breathe in Eddie’s scent. Buck likes to stuff his comfort clothes in between Eddie’s so they end up smelling like him—despite the fact that they use the same detergent, Buck is certain that there’s a difference. His hoodie smells about the same, and Buck pulls his hood tight around his head so he can look as miserable as he feels.
He trudges down the hallway and flops down onto the couch. Eddie comes around a moment later, holding out a glass of water and two painkillers.
“Nooo,” Buck whines, throwing a hand over his eyes, like the Tylenol will somehow make his cramps worsen.
Eddie shoves the glass into his hands. “Yesss.”
“I don’t wanna.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Do I have to hide it in cheese like you’re a dog?”
Buck perks up. “Do we have cheese?”
“No.”
Buck groans and grabs the pills. He swallows them with a sip of water then pointedly opens his mouth and sticks his tongue up. Eddie’s hand inches forward, ready to flick him in the forehead, when there’s a knock on the door.
“You got lucky,” he says as he heads towards the hallway.
Buck sits up straight as Eddie settles the pizza box on the coffee table. He reaches forward for it when Eddie slaps his hand away. Buck gasps and cradles his arm to his chest like it ends in nothing but a stump now.
“We need plates, heathen.”
Buck sends him a glare then pulls the box into his lap. “The top of the box is the plate, heathen.”
Eddie frowns, eyes darting between the box and the kitchen. Then he sighs and sits down on the couch. “Fine. Don’t come crying to me when you stain the couch.”
Buck opens the pizza box and pulls a slice free, waiting until Eddie has his own—pulling the pineapple off with a bitchy face—to close the top. He almost ‘drops’ his slice on the couch, just to spite Eddie, but he’s pretty sure he would actually start crying if he got the cushions dirty.
Eddie presses play on the remote then settles back, throwing his arm over the back of the couch. Buck leans into his side as he watches the opening minutes of Mamma Mia! and eats four slices of pizza to Eddie’s two. His carbo loading, sue him. But Buck’s on his period which, by law, means he gets to eat whatever he wants.
Eddie puts the pizza box away in the fridge once they’re done. Buck doesn’t bother pausing the movie, would probably throw the remote at Eddie if he even suggested such a thing.
The Tylenol has kicked in by now, but it’s really only brought Buck’s pain from a ten down to a seven. The heat from the pizza against his lower stomach had helped.
Eddie pulls him close once he’s sat back down, closer than they were before now that the pizza box is out of their way. Buck gasps in surprise when a hershey’s kiss is suddenly held before him.
“Really? I get some?” he asks, already having ripped open the foil and shoved the chocolate in his mouth. He pulls the paper tail out of his mouth—which is actually called a nigglywiggly, if you didn’t know.
Eddie frowns. “I share my chocolate with you all the time.”
Buck snorts. He’s pretty sure Eddie threatened to move out the last time Buck found, and ate half of, his hidden stockpile of chocolates and various candies. “No, you don’t.”
“Uh, yeah-huh.”
“Not-uh.”
Eddie shoves another hershey’s kiss in his hands to get him to shut up. Buck happily eats the chocolate without another comment.
As Donna, Tanya, and Rosie sing their way through ‘Super Trouper’—Buck actually made it through ‘Our Last Summer’ without tearing up, but he’s pretty sure that's because he was too busy sucking pineapple and sauce off of his hoodie—Eddie lies down on the couch, pulling Buck until he’s laying on top of him.
Buck’s cheek squishes against Eddie’s collar bone. His fingers work their way through Buck’s curls, and his other hand gets tucked against the waistband of Buck’s boxers at a slightly awkward angle, providing a warm pressure that eases his cramps. Buck is melting like butter sitting in a burning-hot pan under his touch.
He fiddles with his hoodie strings, chewing on the ends when his eyes begin to get heavy with unshed tears. “I’m sorry for ruining date night.”
Eddie’s fingers only pause momentarily so he can brush the hair away from Buck’s forehead and press a kiss to his birthmark. “You didn’t ruin anything. We’re still having date night, it’s just on the couch instead of some stupid, overpriced restaurant.”
“I wanted to go to that stupid, overpriced restaurant.”
“We can go next weekend.”
“You’re so good to me,” Buck says, voice dangerously wet.
“How could I not be?” Eddie whispers with sincerity. His hand moves down until it’s settled on the side of Buck’s face, his thumb rubbing back and forth across his cheek bones softly.
His chest suddenly feels tight. Buck takes a deep, trembling breath that hitches at the end. He presses his freezing-cold nose into Eddie’s throat, who, to his credit, doesn’t so much as flinch.
Buck’s sobbing his eyes out by the time the opening notes of ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ starts playing.