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Buck walks into the firehouse, and Eddie is thrown immediately off-kilter.
Usually, when Buck walks into the firehouse, Eddie feels whatever the opposite of off-kilter is. On-kilter. In-kilter? Fully kiltered in Buck’s presence.
But today, Buck walks in, and something is off. He just doesn’t know what the fuck it is.
Eddie is losing it. He has to be. Because Buck is grinning like it’s any other usual, on-kilter day. He’s happily chatting about the big interview he had done that morning — some local news station doing anniversary coverage on the tsunami.
He’s trying to listen, he really is, but his brain is screaming WARNING WARNING WARNING: WE HAVE IDENTIFIED AN ANOMALY.
He just really wishes his brain would also supply what the anomaly is.
He stares at Buck as he talks.
He stares at him while they’re assigned their duties.
He stares at him while he restocks the ambulance.
He can’t put his finger on it, but he looks different. Something is off, and Eddie cannot settle until he figures out what it is. He’s, actually, deeply unsettled.
Ravi, who seems perfectly settled, passes him a med kit.
“Did Buck get a haircut?” Eddie asks.
Ravi rolls his eyes. He sighs deeply. “We need more syringes.”
“Don’t you think he looks different?”
“I think we need more syringes.”
“So you don’t think he looks different?”
Ravi bangs his head against the side of the ambulance. He reaches across Eddie and grabs more syringes.
He definitely looks different.
Buck is cooking lunch, and he does not look right while he’s doing it. He looks decidedly wrong.
Eddie doesn’t even really realize he’s frozen halfway to the kitchen, staring, until Chimney appears beside him.
“Here, we observe the hunter, watching his prey in its natural habitat,” Chimney narrates. “The freakishly large, curly-haired creature chops tomatoes. Every slice could be his last.”
Eddie glares at him.
Chimney continues.
“The prey’s only defense is vigilance. But alas, he’s too busy listening to Taylor Swift’s new album to notice the dangers lurking nearby.”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “Can you stop?”
Chimney grins. He smacks his gum. “What did tweedledum do to get tweedledee’s panties in a twist today?”
“He didn’t do anything,” Eddie sighs. “Something is different, and I’m trying to figure out what it is.”
Chimney squints at Buck. Buck wiggles along with the music playing in his AirPods, moving easily between the cutting board and the stove.
“Did you count all his freckles this morning?” Chimney asks. “Do an eyelash audit?”
Eddie does not have time for this, nor does he appreciate the lack of concern from his coworkers when it comes to the glaring, obvious, deeply mysterious problem right in front of them.
He glares harder.
“Oh! Maybe that one curl is cascading onto his forehead differently today!” Chimney grins.
Eddie offers him the finger in response.
He’s presented with the ideal conditions to examine what is wrong with Buck as they speed through the streets of LA toward their next call. Buck sits across from him, their knees slotted together.
Eddie squints. He stares.
This time, Buck notices.
He cocks his head at him, a small, curious smile on his face.
“Did you get a haircut?” Eddie asks in response.
“Oh,” Buck frowns. He runs a hand through his hair. “No, they took some photos for that interview. They messed with my hair. Does it look weird?”
“No,” Eddie sighs. He ruled out the hair an hour ago, anyway. “Just different.”
Buck continues messing with his hair, and Eddie continues to stare.
It’s a long call. They do a lot of standing around and waiting. Eddie does a lot of standing around and staring. Buck does a lot of frowning in his direction and touching of his hair.
Eventually, finally, they clamber back into the engine. They resume their positions — Eddie directly across from Buck, Ravi beside Eddie, Chimney next to Buck.
Ravi is taking a nap, his head resting against the window. Chimney is staring down at his phone, thumbs flying over the screen.
The engine is silent.
Eddie is staring.
Buck is aware that he is staring, and he’s shifting awkwardly in his seat — their knees knock every time he does.
“Do I have something on my face?” Buck asks, feeling around his face self-consciously. His fingers skate over his temple, and oh. Holy shit.
Oh, he fucking has it.
He’s cracked the case.
Eddie slaps his hand against his thigh with such force that the thwack echoes around the engine.
Ravi startles, banging his head against the window. Chimney drops his phone.
“The fuck, man?” Ravi groans.
Eddie snaps his fingers and points at Buck, accusing. “Your fucking birthmark is gone!”
Buck blinks at him, mouth agape. “What?” He frowns, hand shooting back to above his eye.
“I knew there was something,” Eddie insists, eyes wild. He feels deeply unhinged and deeply vindicated. He was fucking right. Also, of equal importance, it appears Buck’s permanent, unchangeable birthmark has inexplicably vanished from his face. “Where the fuck did it go?”
Buck pulls out his phone, flipping to the front camera and inspecting his face. “My birthmark!” He gasps, rubbing at the freakishly bare skin beside his eye. A faded splotch appears from beneath the layer of makeup. “They covered my birthmark!”
Before Eddie can ask for the name, number, and address of the person who committed this most heinous act, Chimney pipes up.
“If you’re curious,” he offers, with an obnoxious smack of his gum. “It took Doofus Number Two nine hours and 23 minutes to figure out why he was losing his mind over Doofus Number One.”
Chimney grins at him. It’s a knowing, shit-eating grin.
“You knew?” Eddie gasps.
Chimney shrugs. “I sent Maddie a photo hours ago, and she figured it out immediately.”
Eddie gapes. “And you didn’t want to share that information?”
“I was having too much fun.”
“Wait, how did you not notice your own birthmark was missing?” Ravi asks.
“I don’t look at it!” Buck says, defensively. “You guys look at it! I look at you!”
Chimney snorts. “Well, some of us look at each other more than others.”
“It was annoying me,” Eddie defends. “Something was off.”
“You’d know,” Chim says.
“I can’t believe they covered my birthmark,” Buck pouts, still scrubbing. Whatever evil, unlawful product they’ve used to cover it is doing a miraculous job of refusing to budge.
“They probably thought you’d been punched in the face,” Ravi supplies.
“Well, I haven’t,” Buck pouts. “If they’d asked, they’d know that. I always thought it was kind of cool.”
“It is cool,” Eddie agrees. “Badass. It suits you.”
Buck knocks his knee against his and smiles.
Chimney looks up from his phone and announces, “Maddie says you’re all idiots.”
“You didn’t notice, either,” Ravi points out. “He’s your brother-in-law.”
“Outsourcing is what smart people do,” Chimney insists. “I’m a leader. I delegate.”
“You cheat,” Ravi mumbles.
“What was that, probie?”
Ravi scoffs. “I have been here for five years!”
As soon as they pull into the firehouse, Eddie directs Buck toward the locker room. He pushes him down by the shoulders, takes a wet wipe, and rubs the stupid, evil makeup from his eye.
With each swipe, more and more of Buck’s perfect, exactly-as-it-should-be birthmark reappears. With each swipe, more and more of Eddie’s soul floods with relief.
He looks right, again. He looks like Buck. Like Eddie’s Buck.
For the first time all day, Eddie feels the screaming, nagging, niggling feeling of WRONG WRONG WRONG fade into quiet. He looks at Buck’s face, and he sees Buck. His Buck.
“There you are,” he whispers.
He’s close, like this. Close enough that he could count his freckles and his eyelashes, if he so pleased.
He’s close enough that there’s no way to miss the way Buck sucks in a breath. “Thanks,” he whispers, eyelashes fluttering as he blinks.
Because he wants to, because he missed it, Eddie swipes his thumb gently over the pigmented skin. It’s soft and a little tacky from the wet wipe.
“That’s better,” Eddie whispers, thumb gliding slowly back and forth.
Buck swallows. “You think so?”
“Definitely,” Eddie nods. “It’s your thing.”
“My thing?” He smiles.
“Mhm,” Eddie hums. His hand is still on Buck’s face. He’s aware that he probably shouldn’t be platonically caressing his best friend’s face, but he doesn’t really care. It’s a good face. It’s one of his favorite faces in the whole world. He’d probably kiss this face, that’s how much he likes it. He’d kiss the birthmark, definitely. And his nose, and his forehead, and his lips.
Oh.
Oh.
Yeah. Yep. Yes. Definitely his lips. Eddie wants to kiss his best friend on the lips in a very non-platonic way, very badly, very soon.
At some point mid-epiphany, Eddie’s hand has frozen mid-caress on the side of Buck’s face. As he blinks back into consciousness, he’s just kind of…holding Buck’s face, staring right at his lips.
Buck is wide-eyed and frozen — he’s not even breathing. Eddie is fairly sure he’s not breathing, either.
Buck is flushed, how he always is after calls. His hair sticks to his forehead with sweat, and a flush creeps up from his chest to his face. Eddie has always loved that when Buck gets flushed, so does his birthmark. Right now, it’s dark, and unmissable, and undeniably Buck.
Eddie wants to kiss him.
He slides his hand further back into Buck’s hair, curls his fingers into the strands, and whispers: “Can I…”
“Yes,” Buck breathes. It bursts out of him like he’s been holding it in for a lifetime.
Maybe he has.
He’s not sure who, but one of them closes the quickly-shrinking distance. There’s a gasp, or maybe two, and the WRONG WRONG WRONG that had turned to quiet screams RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT.
Wiping that fucking bullshit off Buck’s face had felt right, but this feels like something fated in the goddamn stars — like dust and gas and rocks collided billions of years ago, just for this.
Like supernovae exploded just to create the oxygen they’re gasping between them. He thinks he knows how it felt, when the stars exploded. He thinks it probably felt a bit like the inside of his chest.
When he pulls back, inevitably, in search of that oxygen, Buck’s eyes are closed. He watches as they flutter open in disbelief.
“There you are,” Eddie breathes.
He gets it, he really does. He would build universes, too. He’d wait billions of years — he’d explode stars and collide with asteroids to get the chance to look at Evan Buckley.
“Here I am,” Buck agrees, wide-eyed. “A-and there you are.”
Eddie breathes out a laugh. “Here I am.”
“And here I am!’ Chimney announces loudly. “In the doorway of our public, glass locker room in our place of work! With my working eyes!”
Eddie looks up and finds Ravi standing outside the locker room with his hands slapped over his eyes. Chimney is standing in the doorway, looking pointedly up at the ceiling.
Whoops.
The universe can make Buck from stardust, but it can’t give him a locker room with solid walls.
“Sorry,” he offers. “Noted.”
He looks back at Buck, who is still blinking at him in disbelief.
Eddie shares the sentiment.
“Wanna go makeout on the roof?” Eddie suggests.
“Yeah,” Buck grins, at the exact same time Chimney yells:
“NO.”
“In the bunks?” Buck tries.
“I’m never sleeping again,” Ravi says, striken.
“On top of the engine?”
“This is a workplace,” Chimney repeats.
“So, no to inside the ambulance?”
Ravi bangs his head on the glass wall.
“Inside your home,” Chimney begs. “Where I don’t have to see it or contractually reprimand it.”
“What about - -” Eddie tries, but Chimney cuts him off.
“I will keep concealer in my pocket,” he threatens. “I will fill a spray bottle with concealer, and I will spray it.”
Eddie gasps. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“And I’ll hide the wet wipes,” he adds, like a sociopath. He points a threatening finger at them. “You’ll never see that birthmark again.”
“Fine,” Eddie concedes, hands up in surrender. It’s far too great of a risk to take.
“Eddie!” Buck pouts.
And as much as Eddie wants to kiss that pout off his face, he doesn’t. He behaves.
He does keep staring, though. No one said anything about staring.
For the rest of their shift, he stares. He doesn’t know how he ever didn’t. Buck catches him every time — he blushes, ducks his head, and grins.
Ravi bangs his head against the nearest hard surface. Chimney sighs deeply. Eddie doesn’t care.
Because when Buck walks out of the firehouse the next morning, he’s holding Eddie’s hand in his. The world has never been more in and/or on kilter.