Chapter Text
The day is going to shit and Eddie’s shift hasn’t even started yet. For one, he had to actually drive himself to work instead of carpool with Buck like they’d been doing a very normal amount recently—a very normal amount being basically every day. But this morning, Buck needed to pick up a prescription before their shift and Eddie needed to drop Chis off at school at the same time the pharmacy opened. So, no carpooling.
It just kept piling on from there.
He’d nearly been late dropping Chris off, the two of them still not quite back into the swing of things since getting home from Texas. He’d gotten stuck behind two over-sized semis on the highway, his Bluetooth was being funky so he had to listen to either ads on the radio or idiots honking (or his own thoughts. Hard Pass.) and to top it all off, once he finally got to work, he dropped his coffee in the parking lot. Right onto his shoes.
So now he has wet socks, a tragic lack of maple-infused coffee with a smidge of cinnamon syrup, and a dwindling will to live on this sunny Tuesday morning.
To stop himself from walking out into oncoming traffic, he sends a picture of the coffee crime scene to Buck.
Eddie : [sent an image]
Can this day be over now?
Buck : nooooooooo
soldier down
rip
Im sorry 😭
Eddie rolls his eyes at Buck’s theatrics. Despite his sour mood, a smile tugs at his lips.
Eddie : You didn’t drop my coffee Buck
Buck : I know
but its from that famcy place you like
you dont let yourself go there often
Eddie : I’ll live
He shoves his phone into his pocket and heads into the firehouse, knowing he’s going to see Buck in person soon anyway. That too, tugs a smile from his lips.
After dumping his things in his locker and quickly getting his morning chores started (laundry, thank fuck), he heads up to the loft, dread beginning to pool in his shoulders.
He hates making coffee at the station. The stupid coffee maker has too many buttons and no matter what he does he can never get it to taste right. He’s got no fucking clue how Buck manages to pull a half-decent cup out of the thing. Kitchen wizardry he picked up from Bobby, probably.
“Wow, what did the coffee maker ever do to you?” Chim asks as he leans against the counter next to Eddie. “Please don’t explode our coffee maker with your mind, we just got it.”
“Yeah, and it sucks,” Eddie whines as he tries to figure out which button turns the damn thing on.
“It’s already on,” Chim points out.
“I knew that.”
“Someone’s in a mood this morning,” Hen says as she throws her lunch in the fridge. “What crawled up your ass and died?”
“Nothing,” Eddie snaps. Okay, no, neither of them deserves to be on the receiving end of his bitchass mood. “Sorry, LA traffic. Dropped my coffee. Technology hates me.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t hate you so much if you weren’t so openly hostile towards it,” suggests Chim.
“It’s a coffee maker.”
“With the soul of an easily spooked horse, Eddie.” Chim pats the coffee maker gently. “You gotta let it know you mean no harm.”
“I don’t want to become the Coffee Maker Whisperer. I just want a damn coffee.”
“Did someone say coffee?” A cheery voice cuts through the loft, followed a couple seconds later by Buck’s broad frame bounding up the stairs. He slides into the kitchen next to Eddie, two to-go cups in a paper tray held firmly in his hand.
“Ask and you shall receive,” Hen snorts as she plops down onto the couch.
“Look who finally decided to show up,” Chim huffs.
“Hey, I’m only four minutes late!” Buck squawks as he bats Chim’s hand away from the second coffee. “No! Judgy people don’t get fancy coffee.”
“And yet here you are, giving one to Eddie.”
Eddie narrows his eyes at Chim. “What’s that supposed to mean.”
“Whatever, man.” Chim waves them off before plopping down onto the couch next to Hen, sighing dramatically. “No one appreciates me.”
Hen doesn’t look up from her phone. “It’s too early for you to be this dramatic already.”
Eddie turns his attention back to Buck. He smells clean and stands in Eddie’s space. Eddie doesn’t mind. He never minds when Buck’s close, especially not when he’s looking at Eddie with such giddy eagerness.
“What’s this?” Eddie asks, eyeing the to-go cups sporting the same logo as the one he’d dropped earlier. Which doesn’t make any sense. That coffee shop isn’t anywhere near Buck’s pharmacy.
“Coffee, duh.” Buck presses one of the warm paper cups into Eddie’s hand. “I heard yours died tragically. And you even had to drive yourself to work. Figured you could use a pick-me-up.”
Buck shrugs, like it’s no big deal, and Eddie thanks the god he’s not even sure he believes in every day that he got his shit together and dragged himself and Christopher the fuck out of Texas and back to LA. Because being miserable in Texas was one thing, but being miserable in Texas without Buck had been downright unbearable.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Eddie says, voice going soft in that way he’s aware it only really does for Buck and Chris.
“I know, but I wanted to, so-” Buck shrugs again.
Eddie takes a sip and his eyes widen. Maple-infused, with a smidge of cinnamon syrup.
“You got them to make my coffee right,” Eddie says, taking another sip. Sweat, sweat caffein.
“Light on the cinnamon syrup, I remember,” Buck laughs, and he’s so goddamn bright.
Eddie really thought today would be a shit day, but now he’s standing in the kitchen feeling all sunlight-warm, drinking his favourite coffee and struggling to remember why he’d been pissed off in the first place, all because he has the best best friend in the world.
“Better?” Buck asks, as if reading his mind.
“Yeah, Buck,” Eddie smiles, sliding his non-coffee occupied hand to rest against Buck’s lower back. “You have a knack for making everything better.”
Buck ducks his head in that way that makes something in Eddie preen.
He likes this version of Buck. He likes every version of Buck, but there’s something about this version—softer, quieter, pliant as he lets himself be pulled further into Eddie’s space—that Eddie can’t get enough of. Because this version of Buck seems to exist only for Eddie. And it’s his fucking favourite thing in the world.
Everyone gets loud, over-excited, cocksure Buck. Sassy Buck and fact-rambly Buck and baking Buck and Buck who cares with his whole fucking soul. But only Eddie gets shy Buck with cheeks dusted light pink.
It’s a version new to Eddie, too, since getting back from Texas. Since they’ve been sharing a space, not just for work or for a few nights when Buck crashes on his couch, but properly sharing a space, living with and around each other for nearly two months now. It’s been… nice. More than nice, really.
There are edges of Buck that have softened in ways Eddie finds absolutely fascinating. This is one of them.
“Thank you,” Eddie says, looking up at Buck.
“Y-yeah, no problem, a-anytime Eds,” Buck stammers, struggling to get the other coffee out of the paper tray.
He won’t meet Eddie’s eye, but he also doesn’t move away. He never moves away.
“Buck!” Bobby’s voice drifts up from the garage and Buck nearly jumps out of his skin, only just managing to catch his coffee before spilling it all over himself. “I thought you were on hose-rolling duty this morning?”
“On it, Cap!” Buck exclaims, springing away from Eddie and rushing off down the stairs towards Bobby’s voice.
He forgets his coffee.
Eddie takes a moment to pour it into the thermal mug he started keeping at the station for this exact reason—a deep blue thing decorated with schools of little fish swimming in swirls that he picked up at the aquarium a few years back, either on their third or fourth trip with Chris.
When he’s sure the lid’s on tight, he throws the paper cup away and heads to the couches where Chim and Hen are staring at him, twin looks of morbid fascination on their faces. Which he chooses to ignore.
He sits across from them, pulling out his phone. He’s poured Buck’s abandoned coffees into his thermal mug a bunch of times before, it’s hardly something to gape at him about like a couple of dead fish.
“Soooo,” Hen starts, “what was all that about?”
“All what?” Eddie asks, not really paying attention as he pulls up Sudoku. He got into it as a way to kill time between Uber rides back in Texas. He still prefers the paper booklets, but his phone is more convenient on shift.
“This is getting out of hand,” he hears Chimney mutter.
“Eddie, do you-” Hen starts, then stops. The pause is long enough for Eddie to look up. She’s watching him wearily. “You do realize you’re flirting, right?”
“Ha ha.” Eddie rolls his eyes.
“Hen, I do not, in fact, think he realizes,” Chimney says.
They’re both staring at him now, something like exasperation and… pity?... on their faces.
“What? No, you guys can’t be serious,” Eddie balks, trying to keep his voice down. “I’m not flirting with Buck. It’s Buck!” He motions helplessly and the space Buck just disappeared from, as if the shape of his absence would prove Eddie’s point somehow. “He just brought me a coffee, that’s all. He brought Chim a sandwich from that place down the street the other day! That’s just the kind of guy he is.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t hold him gently and look up at him with my big brown doe eyes like that,” Chim says.
“Like what?!” Eddie exclaims before wincing, lowering his voice again. “Wait, doe eyes??”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.” Chim jabs a finger in his direction, which, what the fuck? No, he does not know??
“Eddie, if you watched some girl bring Buck coffee at work to cheer him up,” Hen says, always trying to be the voice of reason, “and he stood right up in her space and placed his hand gently on her lower back as he thanked her, what would you think was going on?”
Scratch that. There is no reason in any part of this conversation.
“Wait, am I the girl, or am I Buck?” Eddie asks.
“You’re an idiot,” Chim grumbles.
Hen elbows him.
“What would you think he was doing?” Hen urges Eddie again.
Eddie takes a moment to consider it, builds a scene in his head, Buck leaning into some girl’s space, resting his big hands on her lower back and, oh-
His face scrunches up in distaste.
“… flirting?”
“Flirting.” Hen nods sagely. “That’s what you were just doing. With Buck.”
“But… it’s Buck,” Eddie insists.
People are saying a lot of words right now, but none of them are making a whole lot of sense.
“Trust me, we’re well aware,” Chim says.
“I’m not flirting with Buck,” Eddie insists, more urgently this time.
“You have been for weeks,” Hen says. “Since getting back from Texas.”
“Years, if you want to get into the semantics,” Chimney rolls his eyes, and, what the hell? “Judging from the look of abject horror on your face,” Chim adds, “your tiny brain isn’t ready for the semantics yet. We’ll work up to it.”
Eddie would very much like his day to go back to being sunlight and cinnamon coffee, not… whatever this is. Hell, he’d take shitty rush hour traffic and wet socks again. Anything else.
Hen sighs. “Something had to be said before you idiots put us in mortal peril.”
“I’d never do anything to jeopardize our safety on a job! You know that Hen.”
“Maybe not on purpose,” Chim chimes in, “but, see, the thing is, when you flirt with our Buck, his brain turns off. He just bluescreens.”
“You’re flustering the poor boy, Eddie,” Hen adds. “And it’s making him dumb.”
“-er,” Chim adds.
“Wha- Buck isn’t flustered.”
Eddie is flustered. His face feels hot. He takes another sip of his coffee to give his hands something do to, but that only makes him feel warmer. Shit.
Hen levels him with the most deadpan look. “Last week he walked into a stop sign after you called him ‘big boy’ on a call.”
Eddie nearly spits out his coffee.
“You’re taking that out of context!” he whisper-shouts. “We were treating this old woman and she kept calling Buck big boy! I was just teasing him about it. That’s not new, I tease him all the time!”
Chim and Hen exchange knowing looks Eddie is too afraid to decipher.
“Sure,” Hen says, “but did you have to grab his bicep and pitch your voice all low when you did?”
“I- I didn’t do that. Did I do that?!”
Hen and Chim nod solemnly in unison.
“I took over that patient after you and Buck got called away,” Hen says, “and you wanna know what she said?” Eddie shakes his head no, but Hen barrels on anyway. “She said she used to love doing that too, back when her and her husband worked in the same office. She would flirt unabashedly with him just to watch him get all flustered and blushy cause she thought it was cute.”
Eddie wheezes. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Clocked by an old woman.” Chim shakes his head as if he’s disappointed in Eddie and every life choice that brough him to this moment.
And you know what, fair. Eddie is sort of regretting his entire life right now too.
“But it’s Buck,” he reasons, voice strained.
Is everyone just out here thinking he’s openly flirting with Buck?? If Hen and Chim and random old women on calls think he’s flirting with Buck, oh my god Bobby. Does Bobby think Eddie’s been flirting on the job- oh shitfuckingchrist, does Bobby think Eddie’s been flirting with his son on the job-
Eddie’s earlier plan of walking out into traffic is looking real appealing right now, actually.
“I think he needs a moment,” he hears Hen say distantly.
“He’s so close,” says Chim.
“Why would I be subconsciously flirting with Buck?” Eddie mutters, mostly to himself, because what? And also, he’s historically bad at flirting. He doesn’t- he doesn’t make people blush and- and walk into stop signs!
Eddie stands abruptly, because he needs to leave. But then he realizes Buck is somewhere in this building and if he leaves he might run into him and if he has to look up into those fucking blue eyes right now he might jump out the nearest window.
He sits back down. He stands up. He starts pacing behind the couch. He runs his hands through his hair.
“Oh my god wait, is it actually happening?” Chim asks, a sick note of glee in his voice. “I think it might actually be happening.”
“Eddie-” Hen starts.
But Eddie isn’t listening.
Eddie is busy reviewing the data.
The data is as follows:
1. Eddie is bad at flirting (source: women)
2. Eddie doesn’t flirt with people because he is bad at flirting (source: his inner demons)
3. Buck is good at flirting (source: all of LA, at this point)
4. Buck once told Eddie that he likes flirting because he likes making people feel appreciated and that one of the best feelings in the world is making someone else blush (he then proceeded to slowly run a finger along Eddie’s jaw and say under his breath “yeah, like that,” to which Eddie remains confused about to this day) (source: one very drunk Buck at Chim’s bachelor party and Eddie’s very drunk memory, which may or may not be a reliable witness)
5. Eddie accidentally stumbled across the discovery that Buck becomes soft and stuttery if you rest your hands on his lower back or waist (source: a very interesting morning in the kitchen where Eddie was trying to make sure Buck didn’t step back into some spilled orange juice and Buck dropped his coffee when Eddie tried to pull him away from the spill by wrapping a hand around his waist)
6. Eddie likes soft and stuttery Buck (source: the confusing flutter in his chest)
7. Eddie has been purposefully doing things that make Buck soft and stuttery (source: Eddie’s twisted mind, for some reason)
8. When Buck is soft and stuttery, he also blushes (source: Buck’s face)
9. Eddie likes to make Buck blush (source: deduction)
10. Fuck
“Oh my god,” Eddie whispers. “I’ve been subconsciously flirting with Buck.” He looks up at Hen and Chim in horror. “I’ve been flirting with Buck, I’ve- what does that mean?!”
Chim claps Hen on the shoulder. “Tag, you’re it,” he says before vaulting over the couch and scurrying away down the stairs.
“Bastard,” Hen mutters under her breath.
“Hen… am I-”
“Hey guys,” Buck’s voice slices clean through Eddie’s last string of sanity.
He whirls around, feeling like some sort of wild animal, and there Buck is, smiling, looking all normal and happy like the world isn’t rewriting itself around him and fuck shit Eddie needs to find a window asap before he does something dumb like straight up ask Buck why he’s never mentioned that Eddie’s been flirting with him.
Buck looks between Eddie and Hen, a slight crease beginning to form between his brows. “All good here? I just came to see if you have any specific asks for lunch.”
“I gotta go! I have-” Eddie waves his hands around vaguely as he skedaddles the fuck away from this entire situation. He practically sprints down the stairs in a way that would definitely not be Bobby-approved.
“What’s gotten into him?” Buck asks Hen.
“He forgot he had to call Chris’s school back,” Hen says, because she’s a real one.
“Oh man, I told him,” Buck huffs, sitting in the seat Eddie just vacated. “Said I could even call, but he was all ‘no I got it Buck don’t worry’ and now we probably won’t get the time slot we wanted for Chris’s parent-teacher thing.”
“We?”
“Yeah, Eddie gets all anxious going to those, y’know? Takes like a million notes as if Chris’s life depends on it, so I usually go with,” Buck says, as if this is a totally normal occurrence for them, which, Hen has no fucking clue. Maybe it is. They’ve always been strange for each other. And judging by Eddie’s recent teleportation stunt, they’re about to get stranger. “Took Chris myself a couple times when we couldn’t get our schedules figured out. I think they’re kinda fun actually!”
“Of course you do.” Hen just manages to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Dunno, a few years maybe?”
“Years?” She really shouldn’t be surprised, yet here she is. “Who does the school think you are?”
“They all know I’m Eddie’s partner.”
“Do you ever specify work partner, Buck?”
“What do you mean?”
“If I wasn’t bald, you’d be giving me grey hairs.”
Thankfully, Hen is saved from further dumbassery by Ravi.
“Hey, uh, is Eddie okay?” he asks, looking between the two of them. “I just watched him walk into a glass door and then say “sorry man” before walking away.”
Buck picks up Eddie’s abandoned coffee and takes a sip, waving Ravi off. “He’s fine, he never watches where he’s going when he’s on the phone.”
Ravi looks appropriately confused at that. “He wasn’t on the phon-”
“I don’t remember that being your coffee,” Hen cuts Ravi off before he can inadvertently add another layer of gay complexity to Eddie’s day.
“I got us the same thing,” Buck says like it’s obvious. “He can just drink mine whenever he’s done. I’m sure he already put it in my thermal mug.”
He did. Hen watched him, as she does often. She just wasn’t aware that Buck was aware that Eddie did that on the regular.
Hen decides to shift the conversation away from Buck and Eddie’s happily-married-for-nearly-a-decade tendencies.
“How’s the apartment hunt going, Buckaroo?”
“Oh, y’know. It’s going,” he says, suddenly very interested in the plastic coffee lid.
“Mhmm.”
“The markets. They’re bad.”
“I bet they are.” Okay, maybe drawing attention to their whole… living situation thing, wasn’t the best call. “Are you two still rotating sleeping on the couch?” Hen asks, cause fuck it, she’s already in it and she’s curious.
“What else would we be doing?”
“Wait, who’s on the couch,” asks poor, sweat, oblivious Ravi. “What did you do?”
Then the bell rings, which means for the next blessed, undetermined amount of time, Hen can focus on doing her job and not on the absolute train-wreck that she may or may not have inadvertently set off.
“Ravi,” Eddie asks later when they’re all in the locker room, “do I have big brown doe eyes?”
Buck, who’d been taking a sip of water on the bench next to him, chokes.
Ravi looks between Eddie’s expectant gaze and Buck’s reddening face.
“Yeah, I’m not touching any of that,” he says before grabbing his shit and getting the fuck out of there without even getting changed.
Buck is still actively trying to cough up a lung.
“You good man?” Eddie asks, resting a hand between Buck’s shoulder blades.
“All good,” Buck wheezes. “Wrong tube.”
He gives Eddie a shaky thumbs up. Eddie rubs small circles into his back, which is not helping with Buck’s whole trying not to die at work thing.
But then Eddie’s standing suddenly and snatching his hand away from Buck’s back like it burned him.
“Oh wow would you look at the time!” Eddie exclaims, his voice doing something weird Buck would be paying more attention to if he wasn’t still focussing on not dying. “I gotta bounce, see you tomorrow, I love and appreciate you all equally, in a very normal and casual way!”
Then he dips, leaving the rest of his team to stare after him in bewilderment.
Bobby looks mildy concerned. “Since when does Eddie ‘bounce’ anywhere?”
Chim looks at Hen.
“This is you’re fault you know.”
Hen just sighs. “Yeah, I know.”