Archive of Our Own

“Buck, please. I’m trying to finish the inventory, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Eddie lowered the clipboard and stared at the man who had just climbed into the ambulance, dropped heavily onto the edge of the stretcher and planted himself directly between Eddie and the next rack he needed to check.

Buck offered no apology. He did not even look at him.

Usually that meant Eddie was about to endure a complaint about the call they had just returned from, an elaborate argument over whatever Chim had optimistically declared would count as dinner or another attempt to lure him away from work Buck had already decided was boring.

This time though, Buck sat with his shoulders folded inward and both fists twisted into the fabric of his uniform trousers.

Eddie waited for him to move or at least offer something that explained his unexpected approach.

Nothing happened.

“Buck?”

The irritation disappeared before the name had fully left his mouth.

Buck’s head remained bowed, but the little Eddie could see of his face had lost all colour. His jaw was locked so tightly that a muscle jumped beneath the skin, and every breath seemed to stop somewhere high in his chest without ever reaching his lungs.

Eddie’s stomach dropped.

“Hey.” He placed the clipboard on the stretcher next to his best friend and stepped closer. “What’s going on?”

Buck’s fingers tightened, his knuckles turning white as his skin stretched further with the motion.

He had not known where else to go after ending the call. His feet had carried him through the station while his mind remained trapped several minutes behind, still listening to Diedra explain that a woman nobody had been able to reach—not after the accident, not during the search for relatives and not even when her sister and brother-in-law were buried—had returned from abroad.

Theo’s aunt...

The family, or at least one part that was left, everybody had constantly warned him about during his first month taking care of Theo.

And now she wanted custody of him.

Every explanation Buck had attempted since then had lodged low in his throat, caught right over the pressure building there. He could not find enough air to force the words out. He was not even sure why he had come to Eddie when saying them aloud would only make the threat more real.

A hand settled against the back of his neck.

Buck flinched before he could stop himself.

Eddie immediately loosened his hold, leaving his palm there without pulling Buck any closer. “Hey, it’s me.”

Warm brown eyes searched his face when Buck finally managed to look up. Concern had drawn a line between Eddie’s brows, but he did not demand an answer or fill the silence with guesses. His thumb moved once against the side of Buck’s neck, a small stroke that was probably meant to steady him.

It nearly undid him instead.

Buck tried to breathe.

The attempt caught painfully in his chest.

Eddie’s thoughts had already begun moving through increasingly terrible possibilities. Maddie. One of Buck’s parents. Something involving Theo. Someone from the hospital or the police calling with news Buck had not been prepared to receive.

The colourless face and stunned silence looked too much like grief.

Oh God, please don’t tell me someone died...

“Buck?” His voice came out quieter than he had meant to.

Buck’s mouth opened, but nothing followed. He closed it again, swallowing hard enough that Eddie saw the strain of it. One hand remained twisted into the fabric of his trouser leg while the other worked restlessly against his thigh, fingers closing into a fist and loosening again without ever quite relaxing.

Then a broken sob tore from his throat.

Eddie stopped trying to understand.

The clipboard struck the floor when he shoved it aside, and a second later he was sitting beside Buck on the stretcher, pulling him in with both arms. There was no decision behind the movement and no time to question whether Buck wanted the contact. Buck folded against him before Eddie had fully settled, burying his face against the front of Eddie’s uniform shirt and gripping the fabric across his back with desperate strength.

Eddie tightened his hold.

Buck was six feet two inches of broad shoulders, solid muscle and trembling weight pressed against him, his breath breaking in wet, muffled gasps while Eddie braced one hand between his shoulder blades. The other slid into the neatly styled curls at the back of his head, fingers threading through them as though he could shield Buck from whatever had followed him into the ambulance.

“Hey, I’ve got you.” Eddie turned his face into Buck’s hair, his lips brushing the damp edge of his hairline. “I’ve got you, Buck.”

He looked through the open rear doors.

The bay remained quiet. Eddie could see the stairs leading up to the loft and part of the gym beyond them, but nobody came down and, unusually, no one was working out within sight. For once, the station had offered them a small pocket of privacy without being asked.

Buck held on.

So did Eddie.

Minutes might have passed. Eddie could not have said. Time narrowed to the shuddering breaths against his chest, the pull of Buck’s fingers at his back and the slow, careful movement of his own hand through soft curls.

He did not ask again.

Whatever had happened, Buck would tell him when he could.

Eventually, the force of the sobs began to ease. Buck’s grip loosened by degrees, no longer clutching at Eddie as though he were the only thing keeping him above water. His breathing remained uneven, but the sharp breaks faded into smaller tremors.

When Buck finally drew back, the loss of contact struck Eddie with unexpected force.

His hands slipped reluctantly from the places they had occupied, one lingering against Buck’s shoulder while the other fell to the narrow space between them. Buck’s eyes were red and shining, his lashes damp. His lips trembled once before he pressed them into a thin line.

Eddie needed to know.

More than that, he needed to fix whatever had put that expression on Buck’s face, even though some quiet part of him already understood that nothing capable of hurting Buck this badly would have an easy solution.

His hand rose before he could question the impulse and settled against Buck’s cheek.

The touch was gentle. Concern between friends. Nothing more complicated than that.

Buck closed his eyes and leaned into it if only slightly.

“Hey,” Eddie whispered.

Several seconds passed before Buck finally lifted his lashes, revealing blue eyes that still shone with the remnants of tears. He did not quite meet Eddie’s gaze. Instead, his attention settled somewhere near the open collar of Eddie’s shirt, as though looking directly at him would make speaking impossible.

“They’re going to take Theo.”

The words were rough and barely audible.

Eddie’s hand stilled. “What?”

Buck swallowed. “Diedra called me. They found—there’s an aunt. Kameron’s sister.”

Eddie searched his face, trying to arrange the fragments into something that made sense. “I thought they hadn’t been able to find anyone this closely related to Theo’s parents?”

“They couldn’t.” The answer emerged too quickly, something sharper beneath the grief breaking through. “Nobody could. She was overseas somewhere, and she’d stopped talking to her family before Theo was born. She didn’t know about the accident. She didn’t know they were dead until she came back.”

“She didn’t know her sister died?” The question left Eddie with a startled edge he could not quite hide.

Buck shook his head.

Without seeming to notice, he leant a little further into Eddie’s palm with the movement, his cheek settling more fully against the warmth of his hand. Realisation followed a second later, and Buck began to draw back, but Eddie did not let the contact disappear.

“She missed the funeral,” Buck continued. “They tried to find her. Diedra said there were searches and messages and they contacted everyone they could, but she was just—gone. And now she’s back, found out about Theo and called social services.”

“What does she want?” Eddie asked, not quite wanting to accept what Buck already seemed to believe.

A humourless sound caught in Buck’s throat. “What do you think?”

Eddie’s expression hardened. “I’m asking.”

“She wants custody. She’s his aunt. Theo’s actual family.” Buck finally looked at him, and the hopelessness in his face made Eddie’s chest ache. “Kameron’s sister wants to take him.”

The refusal left Eddie before he had time to temper it. “No.”

Buck blinked, briefly startled out of his despair. “Eddie—”

“No.” Sitting still had become impossible. Eddie withdrew his hand from Buck’s cheek, pushed himself off the stretcher and made it one step towards the open doors before turning back. He planted both hands on his hips, shoulders squared as though sheer determination might be enough to hold the situation in place. “She can’t appear out of nowhere and take him. That’s not how this works.”

The loss of Eddie’s hand registered almost immediately. Buck seemed to fold around the empty space it had left, shoulders drawing tight as he looked down at his lap. He understood what Eddie was trying to do, could even feel the fierce certainty behind it, but from where he was sitting there was nothing left to argue with. The important part had already happened: Theo had family, and she had come back for him.

“She’s not out of nowhere to him,” he said quietly. “She’s his mother’s sister.”

“She’s never met him.” Eddie spread one hand towards Buck, unable to understand how that fact could be treated as secondary.

“That doesn’t change who she is.” A flash of frustration broke through Buck’s grief, though it faded almost as quickly as it appeared.

Eddie lowered his voice, trying to reach him rather than win the argument. “It changes whether Theo knows her.”

Buck looked down at his hands, his attention catching on the angry red crescents his nails had left across his right palm. “They want to arrange a meeting. Diedra said nothing has been decided yet, but they have to consider her. She’s a direct relative, and I’m—”

His voice failed.

Eddie waited, already disliking whatever Buck was about to call himself.

“I’m the sperm donor.”

The words landed flatly between them.

Eddie stared at him, refusing to let his argument settle unchallenged. “You’re his foster father.”

“Temporarily.” Buck’s mouth twisted around the qualification as though he had already heard it often enough by now to believe it.

“You’re the person he lives with.” Eddie stepped closer, closing some of the distance he had created by standing.

“Because there wasn’t anyone else.” Buck’s fingers curled into his palms again, his nails biting hard enough for the sting to cut through some of the pressure building inside him. Strangely, the small, sharp discomfort helped. After another second, he forced his hands open and drew his arms across his body instead.

Eddie watched Buck’s left hand come up across his chest, fingers curling firmly around his right bicep while the other stayed tucked close against him. He remained hunched on the stretcher, his grip tightening for a moment before easing again.

“And you’re the person who takes care of him.”

Buck’s head snapped up. “That doesn’t give me the same rights as his aunt!”

His voice cracked across the ambulance, louder than anything that had come before. Buck flinched at his own volume and looked towards the open space beyond them, but nobody appeared.

Eddie stepped back into his space, drawing Buck’s attention away from the open doors. His blue eyes followed him upwards until they caught Eddie’s gaze.

“Maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know, but neither do you.”

“It’s not hard to work out.” Buck pushed himself off the stretcher too quickly. The movement sent him briefly off balance, and Eddie’s hand closed around his arm on instinct before he could sway any further.

Buck steadied beneath the touch, but only for a second. Then he shifted away, reaching for the edge of the nearest cabinet instead and holding himself there as though the argument mattered more than the weakness in his knees. “She’s his family. She has a home, apparently. A job. She can give him everything his parents would’ve wanted.”

Eddie’s expression tightened. “You don’t know what Connor and Kameron would’ve wanted. We’re talking about Kameron’s sister, Buck. She was out of their lives long enough that she didn’t even know she’d become an aunt.” He lifted a hand before Buck could cut in, frustration lending weight to the words. “Theo is four years old. Years, not months. From what you told me she’s never met him. She doesn’t know him, and he doesn’t know her. Congratulations, she has a home and a job. That’s the bare minimum. It tells us almost nothing about whether she’s the right person for Theo, let alone what Connor and Kameron would’ve wanted for him.”

“I know they didn’t want me raising him.” Buck delivered the answer with a certainty that sounded rehearsed rather than secure.

The conviction behind it stopped Eddie for a second.

Buck dropped his gaze to the floor. “They asked me to be the donor. I was the one who kept my distance after that. They invited me in at first and I kept saying no because I knew what would happen if I let myself get attached.” The next part came less easily. “And when they came back to me about Theo, it was because they needed answers I might have. I don’t know if they ever wanted me in his life beyond that. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t.” He swallowed, his voice dropping lower. “But they never chose me to raise him. I only have him because they died before they could make another plan.”

When Eddie spoke again, he chose his words more carefully. “That isn’t the only reason you have him.”

“It’s the reason it started.” Buck kept his gaze on the floor and turned slightly towards the cabinet, breaking the direct line between them.

“And everything since then means nothing?” Eddie asked, the hurt beneath the question escaping before he could conceal it.

Buck squeezed his eyes shut.

The answer was visible in the way his face crumpled, and Eddie softened his voice before continuing.

“I know why you kept your distance. We’ve talked about this, Buck. I understood it then, and I understand it now.” Eddie studied him for a second, a trace of fond disbelief finding its way through the worry in his expression. “But none of that changes what came after. Then you did what you do best. You met him and started loving him anyway. And when he lost everything, you didn’t hide behind the fact that you were only supposed to be the donor. You took him home. You learnt what he needed. You changed your whole life because he needed someone who would stay.”

For a second, Eddie saw the words reach him before Buck opened his eyes again, his gaze remaining unfocused as he drew his arms a little closer around himself. “I was the only option.”

The answer came with a deliberate finality Eddie did not believe for a second. Buck was already trying to turn the worst possible outcome into something inevitable, stripping every choice he had made from the story before anyone else could tell him those choices still mattered.

“You were an option,” Eddie corrected, taking another step towards him. “You said yes.”

Buck looked up, frustration gathering behind the lingering tears. “What else was I supposed to do?”

“Plenty of people find ways to say no. Hell, people who were already part of Theo’s family, people who were closer to him than you were, found ways to say no.” Eddie held his gaze, unwilling to let Buck retreat into the idea that his love had been nothing more than obligation. “You didn’t. You went out of your way to give Theo a home. You started raising him like he was your own.”

“That doesn’t make me his father.” The defiance held until his voice caught slightly on the last word.

“Maybe not on a piece of paper.” Eddie’s gaze dropped to where Buck’s fingers were digging into his bicep, and he resisted the impulse to reach for him again.

“That piece of paper is what matters right now,” Buck reminded him, quietly enough that the argument sounded more like fear.

“It matters,” Eddie conceded, because denying it would only make Buck feel more alone. “But it isn’t the only thing that matters. Theo knows you. He trusts you. This is his home. His routines are here. His whole life since the accident is here.”

“With us,” Buck whispered.

The word caught Eddie somewhere deep in his chest.

“Yes,” he replied. “With us.”

Buck’s eyes dropped again.

Eddie could almost see the hope appear and be crushed before it had room to settle.

The reassurance in Eddie’s reasoning failed to hold. “She’s still his aunt.”

“I know.” Eddie kept the answer gentle, because denying the connection would only confirm Buck’s fear that protecting one family required erasing another.

“What if she’s good?” Buck asked. “What if she’s everything they’re looking for? What if she meets him and loves him, and she can tell him things about Kameron that I never could? About Connor too, maybe. She could give him that whole side of his family back.”

“She might,” Eddie admitted.

The agreement startled Buck. His gaze searched Eddie’s face, wary of what might follow. “Then how am I supposed to fight her?”

“We don’t know that fighting her means making her the enemy.” Eddie moved closer again, leaving only a narrow stretch of ambulance floor between them.

“She wants to take him.” Buck’s voice frayed around the words, whatever certainty he had tried to force into them giving way to the terror underneath.

“And you want Theo to be safe and loved.” Eddie settled a hand on Buck’s shoulder, reclaiming a small point of contact between them. “Maybe she does too. That doesn’t mean handing him over without asking what it would do to him.”

Buck seemed to sag beneath the argument, exhaustion filling the space where that brittle certainty had been. “He’s four, Eddie. He doesn’t get to decide custody.”

“No,” Eddie conceded, “but what he needs still matters.”

Buck’s jaw tightened. “What if what he needs is his real family?”

The phrase struck harder than Buck seemed to realise. Eddie went still, the hurt arriving before he could push it behind reason. “Don’t do that.”

Buck’s brow furrowed, genuine confusion briefly breaking through his exhaustion. “Do what?”

“Talk about us like we’re pretending.” Eddie’s voice had sharpened despite his attempt to keep it level, his hand pressing a little more firmly against Buck’s shoulder.

Buck’s breath caught.

“You think I haven’t watched what happened here?” Eddie continued, the words gathering force now that the hurt had found its way out. “You think I don’t see him looking for you when he walks into a room? Or the way he climbs into your bed after a nightmare because he knows you’ll make space for him?”

His fingers pressed briefly into Buck’s shoulder again, his gaze never leaving him. “And in case you haven’t noticed, he looks for me too. Somewhere along the way, I stopped being your friend who happened to be around helping out. He started expecting me to be there. Because I’m part of this too.” His voice tightened around the last few words. “You think family only counts when somebody can prove the blood connection?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Buck’s answer came quickly, his expression tightening as he finally understood what Eddie had heard in the words.

“Then stop saying it.” The response emerged more harshly than Eddie intended, but he could not make himself withdraw it.

Buck turned away, one hand rising to cover his mouth. The movement carried his shoulder out from beneath Eddie’s hand, breaking the contact between them.

Eddie let him have the distance for several seconds.

When he spoke again, his voice had lost its edge. “Theo can have an aunt and still have us.”

“If she’ll allow it.” Buck remained turned away, his arms held tightly around himself as though even considering the possibility required protection.

“If a court allows it,” he amended bitterly. “If they decide the sperm donor who became an emergency foster placement deserves visitation.”

“You don’t know that’s how they’ll see you.” Eddie watched the rigid line of Buck’s shoulders, searching for some way through the certainty with which he had already condemned himself.

“I don’t know that they won’t.” Buck looked over his shoulder, pain and frustration flaring together.

“No,” Eddie admitted, refusing to offer reassurance he could not guarantee. “You don’t.”

“Then why are you acting like this is something we can just fix?” Buck demanded, though exhaustion had begun to wear the sharpness from his voice.

“I’m not.”

The quiet answer stopped him.

Eddie watched him for a moment, his expression turning warmer but no less troubled as Buck’s fear became painfully easy to read. “I’m acting like we haven’t even found out what our options are. Diedra called you today. You haven’t talked to a lawyer. You haven’t met the aunt. Nobody has assessed her home or asked what kind of contact she expects. You don’t know whether this would happen next week, next month or at all.”

“She’s family.” Buck turned far enough to face him again. He heard himself repeating it and knew how thin it was starting to sound, but it was the only certainty he had left to hold on to.

“So are you.” Eddie held his gaze, leaving no room for Buck to dismiss the statement as consolation.

Buck drew a slow breath. “That doesn’t give me more right to him than the family he was born into.”

“Then we find out whether that’s true.”

Buck’s shoulders sagged. “And if it is?”

“Then we find out what else we can ask for.” Eddie kept his voice steady, even as each possibility forced him to imagine a version of their home without Theo in it. “A transition. Contact. Visits. Whatever keeps Theo from losing another family overnight.”

The thought visibly hurt him, but Buck listened.

Eddie lowered his voice further. “Fighting for him doesn’t have to mean putting him between you and his aunt. It means making sure nobody treats him like a box they can move from one house to another because the paperwork changed.”

Buck stared at him.

“You’re allowed to ask what this does to Theo,” Eddie continued. “You’re allowed to ask whether taking him from the home he knows is actually best for him. And you’re allowed to say that losing you would hurt him.”

A tear slipped down Buck’s cheek. He wiped it away impatiently, as though even that evidence of emotion had become another thing he was failing to control. “What if keeping me hurts him more?”

Eddie’s brow furrowed. “Why would it?”

“You know why.” Buck gave him a disbelieving look.

“No.” Eddie shook his head, refusing the invitation to supply Buck’s argument for him. “I don’t.”

“My life is a mess.”

“Whose isn’t?” The response came out sharper than Eddie intended, and Buck flinched. Eddie regretted the force of it almost immediately, because he knew exactly what sat beneath the fear. He had spent enough of those first years with Chris feeling as though his own life was one badly balanced decision away from falling apart.

“I don’t have a normal job. I work twenty-four-hour shifts, and half the time our childcare plan looks like someone threw names at a calendar and hoped one would stick.”

The irony of hearing Buck say it almost hurt. “You know how familiar that sounds, right?” Eddie’s voice had lost its earlier edge. “When I got here, I had a new job, a kid who needed more from me than I knew how to organise and no idea whether I could make any of it work. Then I walked into the 118 and Bobby paired me with you.”

Buck looked ready to interrupt, but Eddie pressed on.

“And you kept showing up. You found Carla before I even knew what kind of help I was looking for. You helped Chris and me find our footing. You helped turn a bunch of names and backup plans into a life that actually worked, one Chris could rely on, and somewhere along the way you became part of it too.” Eddie watched him, hearing far too much of his own old fear in everything Buck had been saying. “And now look at Theo. We’ve built him a routine. We’ve worked the shifts, the childcare, the bad nights and the ordinary mornings into something he can count on. We’ve made it work for him too.”

“So far.” Buck’s answer came quietly, but the qualification carried all the uncertainty he had been holding since the call.

“Yeah. So far.” Eddie held his gaze. “That’s all any of us get.”

Another objection was already taking shape in Buck’s expression. Eddie gave him only a second before cutting to the part he still kept trying to reason around.

“You love him.”

Buck closed his eyes briefly. “That isn’t always enough.”

“No,” Eddie agreed. “It isn’t. That’s why you also feed him, dress him, take him to appointments, sit up with him when he’s sick and know which cup he’ll accept orange juice from when the wrong one apparently ruins his entire life.”

Despite everything, Buck’s mouth twitched.

Eddie caught the movement and pressed on. “You know when he’s overwhelmed before he has the words for it. You know when he needs help and when helping him will only make things worse. You know every song he asks for in the car even though you pretend you don’t.”

“They’re terrible songs.” A faint protest entered Buck’s voice, and for the first time since he’d stepped into the ambulance, the corner of his mouth threatened to lift.

“You still know them.” Eddie allowed the fragile trace of amusement to remain between them without pushing it too far.

Buck lowered his head, the brief movement of his mouth disappearing as his attention returned to the red marks across his right palm.

“You’re not perfect,” Eddie told him, his tone gentling with the admission. “Neither am I. Nobody who raises a kid is.”

“I’m not even sure I’m doing it right.” Buck rubbed one thumb absently across the opposite palm, avoiding Eddie’s gaze.

“You worry about that every day.” Eddie reached for his forearm, closing his hand around it with quiet certainty. “That puts you ahead of a lot of people.”

Buck released a shaky breath. “You make it sound simple.”

“It isn’t simple.” Eddie gave his forearm a brief, reassuring squeeze. “I know you’re scared. I’m scared too.”

That made Buck look up.

The admission had not been planned. Eddie had been so focused on Buck’s grief that he had not given his own enough space to form. Now that it had, the fear spread cold beneath his ribs.

Theo had become part of the rhythm between their homes. His toy cars turned up in impossible places at Eddie’s just as easily as they did at Buck’s, and his small shoes had begun appearing beside Christopher’s often enough that Eddie barely noticed anymore.

Some nights ended at one house, some at the other, but Theo’s voice had learnt to call for both of them from whichever hallway they happened to be in, his laughter threading itself through a life Eddie had already started thinking of as theirs.

The idea of those spaces without him was unbearable.

“I don’t want to lose him either,” Eddie said.

Buck’s face folded again, though the tears remained silent this time.

“I didn’t even think—” He stopped and dragged in an uneven breath. “I was so busy thinking about what this would do to me that I didn’t—”

“You’re allowed to be hurt.” Eddie tightened his fingers around Buck’s forearm before Buck could turn his guilt into another accusation against himself.

“But you and Chris—”

“Love him too,” Eddie finished, the words landing with enough weight to silence them both.

Buck looked towards the open ambulance doors, his expression distant. “Chris is going to be devastated.”

“He doesn’t need to know anything until we understand what’s happening.” Eddie followed Buck’s gaze, picturing the conversation neither of them was ready to have.

“And if he does have to go?” Buck asked without looking back.

Eddie’s hold on his arm tightened. “Then we help both of them through it. But we are not grieving something that hasn’t happened yet as though there’s nothing we can do.”

Buck shook his head. “I don’t know if I can fight this.”

“You don’t have to know today.” Eddie’s thumb moved once against his forearm, a quiet attempt to keep Buck with him.

“I’m tired, Eddie.” Whatever resistance had kept him arguing until now was gone from the confession. Buck looked as though even standing had begun to require more from him than he possessed.

“I know.” Eddie wished the words could offer more than recognition.

“I’m so tired of trying to prove I can keep people.”

The admission came out almost soundlessly. Eddie’s grip loosened, not because he wanted to let go, but because the words had struck somewhere too deep for him to respond immediately.

Buck stared at the floor between them. “Every time I think I’ve finally got something good, I start waiting for the part where someone decides I shouldn’t have it. And maybe this time they’re right.”

“They’re not.” Eddie’s answer emerged low and immediate.

Buck gave a small, exhausted shake of his head. “You can’t know that.”

“I know you.”

“That’s not the same thing.” His voice faltered despite the certainty he tried to put behind it.

“It is to me.” Eddie kept his gaze fixed on Buck. And he would do it until he finally stopped trying to escape it.

Buck’s eyes lifted.

Eddie had never seen him look so openly lost. The sight tore through every careful boundary he had been pretending still existed between them.

“You are good for Theo,” Eddie told him. “You’re good for Chris. You’re good for me.”

“Eddie—” Buck’s voice carried a warning, as though he could already feel the ground shifting beneath the conversation.

Eddie continued before either of them could retreat. “You make wherever we all end up feel like home. You make every terrible morning easier, even when you’re half the reason it’s chaotic. You’re the person Theo reaches for because he knows you’ll catch him. You’re the person Chris trusts with things he doesn’t always tell me. And somehow you still look at all of us like we’re the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“You are.” Buck answered without hesitation.

Something inside Eddie gave way.

Buck seemed to realise what he had admitted only after the words were already between them. His eyes widened, and a flush began rising beneath the tear-streaked skin of his face.

“You are,” he repeated more quietly. “All of you. I just don’t know why you keep choosing me.”

Eddie’s chest tightened.

“I don’t deserve you.” Buck’s gaze slipped away as though he could no longer bear what he might find in Eddie’s face.

“Don’t.” Eddie’s jaw clenched around the single word.

Buck shook his head. “I mean it.”

“Buck.” His name came out rougher than Eddie intended, part warning and part plea.

“I don’t deserve any of this. You, Chris, Theo—”

Eddie kissed him.

There was no plan behind it, no careful examination of the consequences and no thought beyond stopping Buck from saying one more cruel thing about himself.

Eddie kept one hand closed around Buck’s forearm while the other caught the back of his neck and pulled him the small distance forward. Their mouths met awkwardly at first, Eddie’s urgency colliding with Buck’s complete stillness, and for two startled seconds neither of them moved.

Then reality crashed back through Eddie all at once. He had kissed Buck—his best friend—in the back of an ambulance while Buck was crying and terrified that he might lose his son. Horror flooded in behind the realisation. Eddie released him almost as quickly as he had reached for him, his hand dropping from Buck’s neck while his grip vanished from his forearm, and he began to pull away before he could make any of this worse.

Buck followed him.

His hand closed around the front of Eddie’s shirt before the distance could grow, fingers bunching the fabric as he pulled Eddie back towards him and kissed him in return. The first touch had belonged to shock; this one was unmistakably a choice.

Eddie made a helpless sound against his mouth and gave himself permission to follow. One hand found Buck’s back, sliding upwards until his fingers disappeared into the curls at the base of his skull and drew him closer. Buck’s free hand found Eddie’s waist almost as instinctively, tentative for only a moment before it settled there with enough certainty to make Eddie’s heart strike hard against his ribs.

The kiss was nothing like the impulsive collision that had begun it.

It started carefully, Buck’s mouth warm against his and still faintly unsteady from tears, as though they were both giving the other time to change his mind. Neither of them did. The caution gradually gave way to something surer, Buck drawing him closer as Eddie changed the angle and followed without thinking. His hand shifted with the movement, fingers settling into the curls behind Buck’s ear while his thumb traced slowly over Buck’s cheek, brushing just beneath his eye.

When Buck kissed him more firmly, Eddie answered in kind.

It felt right.

That was the most frightening part.

Their kiss was warm and deliberate and entirely mutual, carrying a growing certainty that Buck could feel in every shift of Eddie’s mouth against his. It belonged to a reality he had never thought to make room for, and somehow, instead of feeling impossible now that he had it, it settled into place with terrifying ease.

Right.

As though something between them had been leaning towards this for so long that the final distance had never mattered. And from the way Eddie stayed with him, answering every careful shift with one of his own, Buck could only think that somehow Eddie felt it too.

The tension left the hand still caught in Eddie’s shirt, Buck’s fingers spreading across his chest instead. His other hand tightened at Eddie’s waist and drew him closer, and Eddie went willingly, his free hand finding Buck’s hip before settling lower. His fingers curved around Buck’s ass in a brief squeeze before pulling him in, drawing a soft, delighted sound from Buck against his mouth.

Their hips met with the movement, and a startled breath escaped Buck at almost the same moment a low sound caught in Eddie’s throat. Whatever caution had survived until then gave way beneath the contact. The kiss deepened almost in the same breath, Buck tilting his head to chase a better angle as Eddie followed him into it. Their tongues brushed, tentative at first, then bolder as they learnt the shape and rhythm of each other, teasing and mapping something neither of them had ever expected to be allowed to know.

Heat gathered between them with startling speed. Buck’s hand tightened at Eddie’s waist, holding him there while Eddie’s remained low, his palm tracing the firm curve beneath it in a slow, absent caress. For several increasingly dangerous seconds the ambulance, the inventory sheet and the entire rest of the station might as well have ceased to exist—until a compartment door slammed shut somewhere across the bay.

The metallic crack ricocheted through the station. Both of them froze, the kiss breaking on instinct even as neither made any attempt to put actual distance between them. They stayed pressed together, breathing hard into the narrow space between their mouths while the world they had managed to forget came rushing back in around them.

“Panikkar!” Chimney’s voice carried down from the loft. “Whatever you’re doing down there, wrap it up. Dinner in ten!”

A muffled answer came from somewhere beyond the ambulance.

There was a pause.

Then, louder, “Diaz! That includes you. Inventory does not take this long.”

Eddie closed his eyes.

Buck’s lips twitched against the corner of his mouth.

“And if Buckley’s still on that phone,” Chimney added, apparently nowhere near finished, “remind him he works in a fire station, not a call centre!”

For one suspended second, they stayed exactly where they were.

Then Buck’s forehead dropped against Eddie’s, a breath escaping him that hovered dangerously between a laugh and something still too overwhelmed to become one.

“What was that?”

The question was barely more than a breath.

Eddie had no answer ready.

His gaze dropped involuntarily to Buck’s mouth, his lips swollen and red for an entirely different reason than crying. The sight made thinking more difficult, but Buck deserved something better than another impulsive act followed by silence.

“That was…” Eddie swallowed.

A kiss was the obvious answer.

It was also nowhere near enough.

Buck waited, visibly bracing himself.

Eddie tightened his hand against the back of his neck. “That was me running out of ways to make you believe me.”

Buck stared at him.

“We’re facing this together,” Eddie continued. “Whatever Diedra says, whatever Theo’s aunt wants and whatever the law actually allows us to do. We find out. We talk to whoever we need to talk to, and we make sure Theo isn’t forgotten in the middle of it.”

“Eddie—” Buck’s fingers shifted uncertainly against his chest, caught between holding on and creating enough distance to think.

“I’m not letting you do this alone.” Eddie tightened his hand against the back of Buck’s neck before uncertainty could separate them again.

Buck’s eyes shone.

Eddie’s thumb moved gently beneath his ear. “I don’t want you facing anything alone anymore.”

The meaning of the promise widened in the space between them.

Buck glanced at Eddie’s mouth before quickly forcing his gaze higher. “You kissed me because you’re helping me with custody?”

A faint crease appeared between Eddie’s brows. “When you say it like that, it sounds strange.”

A startled laugh broke through the remaining tears. Buck covered his face with one hand, his shoulders shaking once with something that was no longer quite grief.

The sound caught Eddie by surprise, shaky and unmistakably Buck.

“You’re unbelievable,” Buck muttered through his fingers.

Relief loosened something in Eddie’s chest. The teasing was fragile, but it was the first part of Buck that sounded familiar again. “You were the one saying stupid things.”

“So you kissed me?” Buck asked from behind his hand, disbelief sharpening the question even as his shoulders began to relax.

“It worked.” Eddie attempted to make the answer sound reasonable and failed.

Buck lowered his hand and stared at him. His cheeks had turned a vivid shade of pink, but the crushing hopelessness had eased from his expression. “You know most people just tell someone to stop.”

“I tried that.” Eddie lifted one shoulder, though the movement was constrained by how closely they still stood.

“For about half a second.” Buck’s mouth twitched.

“You didn’t listen.” Any accusation in Eddie’s voice was undermined by the hand he still had resting against the back of Buck’s neck.

Buck’s gaze dipped briefly towards his mouth. “I’m not sure kissing me counts as conflict resolution.”

“It resolved the immediate conflict.” Eddie held his expression with as much seriousness as he could manage.

“It created several new ones,” Buck pointed out, the colour in his cheeks deepening.

Eddie’s hand began to slip from Buck’s neck, uncertainty finally catching up with him. Buck immediately tightened his hold on Eddie’s shirt.

The movement stopped them both.

“Don’t.” Buck’s fingers curled more firmly into the navy fabric.

Eddie looked down at his grip before raising his eyes again. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t act like you regret it.” The vulnerability beneath Buck’s demand stripped it of any real accusation.

“I don’t.” Eddie answered before fear could interfere, allowing the certainty to remain visible in his face.

Buck searched his face as though expecting to find hesitation hidden somewhere beneath it.

Eddie allowed him to look.

“I don’t know exactly what happens with this,” Eddie admitted, gesturing vaguely between them with his free hand. “I didn’t plan it.”

“That’s reassuring.” Buck’s brows lifted, although the hand gripping Eddie’s shirt still did not release him.

“But I meant it.”

“The kiss or the promise?” Buck asked, searching his expression with renewed caution.

Eddie felt a reluctant smile tug at his mouth. “Yes.”

Buck’s lips parted, the answer apparently leaving him with even more questions.

“You’re not the only one who gets to be confused,” Eddie reminded him.

“That’s incredibly inconvenient.” Buck’s complaint emerged with the faintest trace of warmth.

“I’m aware.” Eddie’s thumb shifted beneath the curls at his neck, betraying how little he minded the particular complication in front of him.

Buck’s gaze dropped again, though embarrassment rather than despair now coloured the movement. “I’ve spent a really long time convincing myself I was never going to do anything about… this.”

Eddie’s heartbeat accelerated. “This?”

“You.” Buck made the admission towards Eddie’s collar rather than his face. “Feeling things about you. Wanting things I wasn’t supposed to want because you’re my best friend and you’re straight and we have the kids and everything is already complicated enough.”

“I’m beginning to question one of those assumptions.” Eddie watched Buck process the words, almost able to see him sorting through the possibilities.

Buck looked up sharply.

“The straight one,” Eddie clarified, unable to keep a trace of nervous humour from entering his voice. “Not the best-friend part.”

“Oh.” It was possibly the smallest sound Buck had made all day.

Eddie almost laughed, more from nerves than amusement. “You have nothing to say?”

“I have too many things to say.” Buck’s attention drifted helplessly back to Eddie’s mouth. “None of them are suitable for the back of an ambulance.”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

“Most of them involve you kissing me again.” Buck appeared almost alarmed by his own honesty, but he held Eddie’s gaze and did not take it back.

Heat climbed beneath Eddie’s collar.

Eddie looked towards the open doors once more. The bay remained empty, though their luck could not continue indefinitely. Not after they got a fair warning.

When he turned back, Buck was watching him with the first flicker of fragile hope Eddie had seen since he entered the ambulance.

Eddie leant forward and kissed him again.

Gentle and deliberate, a promise made with enough care that Buck could trust it.

Eddie withdrew only far enough to see Buck’s face. A faint, disbelieving smile remained at the corner of Buck’s mouth when he opened his eyes again.

“We fight for Theo,” Eddie told him.

Buck nodded, the movement small but no longer defeated.

“We talk to Diedra,” Eddie continued, keeping his hand at Buck’s neck. “We find out what rights you have before deciding you don’t have any.”

“All right.” Buck drew in a steadier breath, some of the panic finally releasing its hold on his chest.

“And we don’t tell Theo until we know enough to answer his questions.”

Buck studied him for another second. “Together?”

“Together.”

The word no longer referred only to Theo.

Buck looked down at the hand still resting against Eddie’s chest and slowly released the fabric. He smoothed the wrinkles he had left behind, though the action only drew Eddie’s attention to the warmth of his palm.

“I still don’t deserve you,” Buck murmured, his palm remaining against Eddie’s chest even after there was nothing left to smooth.

Eddie caught his wrist before his hand could fall away. “Do I need to kiss you again?”

Buck’s smile strengthened, a spark of familiar mischief returning through the exhaustion. “I might require repeated reinforcement.”

“That sounds manipulative.” Eddie kept hold of his wrist, which weakened the accusation considerably.

“I’m emotionally vulnerable.”

“You’re impossible.” The complaint came with too much warmth to be convincing.

“And yet you’ve apparently decided you want to face everything with me.” Buck’s expression changed around the words, the humour giving way to a tentative need for confirmation.

Eddie regarded him for a moment, the fear of Theo’s uncertain future still present beneath the sudden, impossible warmth spreading through the ambulance. “Yes,” he said. “I have.”

Buck’s smile faltered into something more tender.

Eddie suspected he might kiss him a third time if he continued looking at him like that.

He shifted his weight instead, and something hard pressed against the edge of his boot.

The clipboard lying beneath the bench saved them.

Eddie looked down. Buck followed his gaze, and for several seconds neither of them moved.

Then the moment began to unravel. Eddie loosened his hold around Buck’s wrist first, and Buck’s hand slipped reluctantly from his waist in answer. His other hand lingered at the back of Buck’s neck for another second before he lowered it too, while Buck eased back far enough to give him room.

Eddie bent, retrieved the clipboard and checked the half-finished inventory sheet.

Buck stared at him. “You cannot be serious.”

“We’re still on shift.” Eddie spotted the pen beneath the edge of the stretcher, bent to retrieve it and tested it against the margin of the sheet.

“I just found out someone might take my son, had a breakdown in your arms and discovered my supposedly straight best friend, who happens to be a renter, has been harbouring a secret desire to kiss me.” Buck counted the events off against his fingers, disbelief growing with every item.

“I wouldn’t call it secret.” Eddie glanced up from the sheet. “I didn’t know about it either.”

“And now you’re going back to inventory?” Buck looked genuinely offended by the attempt to restore normality. He dropped back onto the edge of the stretcher, reclaiming almost exactly the spot he had occupied before everything went spectacularly off course.

Eddie tapped the unfinished column with the pen. “Chim still expects it finished.”

“Captain Han can wait five minutes.”

“You tell him that.” Eddie tipped the clipboard towards Buck in invitation but kept hold of it.

Buck appeared to consider the offer, then pulled a face. “Actually, no. He’ll turn it into a twenty-minute speech about accountability and then somehow blame me for the last three incomplete supply reports.”

“Exactly.” Eddie lowered the clipboard again and pointed with the pen towards the same section of rack Buck had managed to block all over again. “Move.”

Buck turned towards him on the stretcher instead, regarding him with stubborn expectation.

Eddie waited. “That isn’t moving.”

“I’m helping.” Buck gave a small, challenging shrug.

“You don’t know what I’ve already counted.”

“You can tell me.” The innocent lift of Buck’s brows convinced neither of them.

Eddie looked at the tear-streaked, newly kissed man still occupying most of his workspace. With a sigh that lacked any real irritation, he handed Buck the clipboard and placed the pen on top of the sheet. “Read the next item.”

Buck settled the clipboard across one thigh and picked up the pen with an importance entirely disproportionate to the responsibility he had just been given. When Eddie squeezed into the narrow space beside him, their shoulders brushed.

“Trauma dressings,” Buck read.

Eddie turned towards the rack and opened the corresponding compartment. “Required quantity?”

“Eight.” Buck held the pen poised above the line while Eddie counted through the packets.

“Eight,” Eddie confirmed.

Buck marked the item complete with a decisive tick. “See?” He leant back against the wall of the ambulance, his shoulder remaining firmly against Eddie’s. “We make an excellent team.”

Eddie allowed his knee to rest against Buck’s as he reached for the next compartment. “We do.”

Buck lowered his attention to the sheet again, pen ready. “Next item.”