from the ground up - marviless (2024)

Chapter Text

“Ready for take-off?”

June nods, looking very serious where she stands in front of Buck in Eddie’s kitchen, now out of Eddie’s sleep-shirt and back into her original outfit, bare feet against the tiles.

Buck makes a sound like a rocket ship taking off and picks her up by the waist, shooting her up above his head in one quick motion. “We’re exiting the atmosphere,” he says, shaking her like the rocket ship is rattling because of turbulence. She makes a sound as her head bobs with each shake.

“Asteroid-field!” he calls suddenly, and then he’s yanking her from side to side, as if to dodge the upcoming rocks.

She laughs, delighted, and her eyes crinkle with it. Buck’s biceps are straining from the exertion of her holding her up like this, but it’s worth it, to hear that sound. It’s his favorite one. With it in his ears, he always feels, just for a single second, like he might just be the best man on Earth, to have prompted a sound so beautiful.

He spins her around in a circle, and then swerves again, because there’s a big asteroid flying towards them. Maybe he’s just a little bit dizzy from the turn, or maybe he just underestimated how close they were to the counter. Either way, though, her infectious laughter is interrupted with a loud thunk —

Buck freezes as he realizes what just happened.

He slammed her head right into the wooden cabinet. Hard.

Buck’s heart pounds in his chest.

No.

He puts her down immediately. Her hand reaches up to hover over the place where she just got hit, and her face is screwing up in pain, eyes wide and watering

No, no, no, no.

“Oh my god,” he hears himself say over the ringing in his ears. “Oh my god, are you okay?”

His hands reach out, and then he pulls them away, unsure. She’s sobbing now, thick tears running down her cheeks as she makes little gasping noises from the pain. Buck—

He doesn’t know what to do.

I hurt her, he thinks. I hurt her. His hands shake where they’re hovering above her, but besides that he’s completely frozen, lips parted like they can’t decide whether or not he wants to scream.

“Eddie,” he calls finally, forcing the words out through his closed up throat. Because Eddie will know what to do. Eddie knows how to fix what Buck breaks, has been doing it for as long as they’ve known each other. “Eddie!”

Eddie is through the doorway no more than a handful of seconds later, coming to a halt in front of Buck like he just ran here from wherever he was in the house. “What’s wrong?” He asks. Then he takes in the scene in front of him, June sobbing with snot peeking out of her nose as she cups her head. He looks back to Buck with wide eyes. “What happened?”

“I—” Buck wipes the warm, sticky tears off where they’ve formed under his eyes. “We were playing, and—and,” he cries, “she hit her head on the cabinet.”

He says it like it’s some unspeakable thing, like a dog waiting to be reprimanded for biting and leaving teeth marks everywhere , to be locked in his cage and never let out again. He says it like what he’s really saying is I’ve broken her. I’ve broken it.

Eddie kneels in front of June, brown eyes searching. He brings up a hand to try to gently pry away the one she has against her forehead, fingers wrapping around her delicate wrist. When she resists his attempt, tensely pulling the hand back over her head when he manages to drag it about an inch away, Eddie commands, “Let me see.”

His eyes are full of such a caring concern, and Buck’s not certain that June can even see it through the sea of tears clouding her vision, but she lets Eddie pull her hand away anyway.

Buck sucks in a breath when he catches sight of what he’s left on June’s forehead. A big, mottled bruise, emerging out of the skin like an aggravated mountain. A bump, about the size of a button.

He did that. God, he did that.

Of f*cking course. He shouldn’t have expected anything less. Because isn’t he the same kid that rode his bike down the stairs just to get his parents to look at him and ended up crashing into the table in the entryway, watching as his mother’s favorite vase shattered on the ground in front of him, his own heart mirroring the shards it had burst into at his mother’s horrified cries? Isn’t he the same guy who looked at Maddie and told her she was finally safe, had held her in his arms, kissed her forehead, and vowed silently that he was going to love her enough that she would never have to leave again, only to find her beaten and bloody in the snow, broken along with all his promises? Isn’t he the same guy who wanted to be back to the only place where his heart felt truly held and only burned the last possible bridge he could’ve taken back in the process, watching his team’s eyes go dark and disappointed across from him as his lawyer’s scathing tongue layed out all the secrets and regrets they thought they could trust in Buck’s diseased hands?

He looks for love everywhere, and all he ever finds in return is reasons why he doesn’t deserve it. Anything he’s given crumbles in his hands. Anything he reaches for cracks open at the edges. Love is his greatest weapon he never meant to use, a double-edged sword that’s been embedded in his stomach for his entire life, cutting on anything he gets too close to.

And June is his newest victim.

She has been, Buck thinks, for a long time.

Eddie studies the bump for a long second. Then, he smiles. “Well, princess,” he says, “I think you’re going to be okay.”

June sniffs and nods, tears still streaming down her face, and Buck hears it—she’s going to be okay she’s going to be okay she’s going to be okay—except he doesn’t.

He doesn’t, because he can see it—what could’ve happened if it had been just a little bit worse. If Buck hadn’t gotten lucky. Blood on Eddie’s white counter, dripping down onto the tiles, lining the cracks. A desperate phone call and then sirens, echoing in the quiet kitchen, getting closer and closer and then further away. June, in a hospital bed for the second time this week. Two times too many.

And Buck, responsible for it all, watching as his daughter never met his eyes again.

Distantly, Buck is aware of Eddie turning to the freezer and wrapping a package of frozen peas for June to keep on her head. He hands it to her with a whisper of I think Christopher is in his room as if even Eddie knows Buck isn’t the one who should be giving June comfort right now , and of course, she goes trotting off, still sobbing as she carries her bumped head and frozen peas to Christopher’s bedroom.

Once she’s gone, Eddie looks to him, but Buck can’t meet his eyes. He’s frozen in guilt, in the ringing of his ears, in the taunting voices in his own head that point at him and say you did this. You did this. You did this.

When Buck doesn’t move, Eddie’s face shifts into a frown. “Hey,” he says, laying a careful hand on Buck’s bicep. Buck doesn’t react. “Hey,” he squeezes around the thick muscle, grounding him, “whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong.”

Buck looks up. “What?” he chokes out.

Eddie raises an eyebrow at him, knowingly. “Whatever you’re thinking right now,” he says again, “you’re wrong.”

Buck stares at him, swallows. There’s still tears in his eyes. He feels one escape from his waterline, wetting his skin.

Eddie watches it fall and softens, shoulder’s dropping.

“Eddie,” Buck tries, and it comes out rasped, like his throat is scratched, “I—”

“I know,Buck,” Eddie says, interrupting before Buck’s sentence even has a chance to stutter to a stop. He seems to consider something for a moment, eyes on Buck, and then the hand on his bicep is slipping down, sliding to wrap gently around his wrist. “Come on,” he’s whispering, and then he’s pulling Buck out the doorway.

There’s not much force among the movement, but Buck is helpless to resist, limp body trailing behind Eddie’s as he’s pulled into the living room.

Eddie sits down on the couch, and Buck only gets a single second before he’s yanking at his arm, pulling Buck down with him.

Buck lands right in his lap.

Just to make things worse, Eddie is wrapping his arms around him, pushing him firmly into his chest. He rests his chin right over Buck’s head, chin buried in his hair, and Buck doesn’t think he’s ever been held so tightly or so tenderly in his entire life.

He doesn’t really have a chance to enjoy it though, because he’s so f*cking miserable.

Because he thinks that maybe he’s been carrying this around, this fear, since he got that call six days ago—carrying it around forever, really, but especially these last six days—that he was going to f*ck it all up. That he was going to poke holes in her happiness and watch it deflate like a balloon. That he was going to find something already broken, already close to the bottom, and push it down even further, crush its butterfly wings under the toe of his boot. But somewhere along the way, he had forgotten about it. He had seen her smile and laugh and look up at him like she was somebody she could trust and had thought maybe I can be something good.

But he had forgotten that with every flower seed he plants, a thousand weeds grow too.

He was never meant to be a father. His mother, throwing out his old toys the second he outgrew them instead of keeping them to one day be hand-me-downs like a lot of his friends’ parents did, had known that. His sister, smiling sadly at him as she watched him fold up some of Jee’s baby clothes with a melancholic look on his face and saying at least you’ll always get to be Uncle Buck, had known that. Hen, laying a careful hand on his and telling him remember, it’s going to have to be donor, not dad, had known that. Hannah, six years ago deciding that her baby’s father wasn’t going to get a chance to live up to that title, had known that.

Buck, looking down at his own empty hands since he was a kid, had known that.

He just didn’t want to have to believe it.

Eddie’s lips are in his hair. His hand runs up and down Buck’s arm, and it feels like a completely different world from the one that Buck’s mind is in. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “She’s okay.”

Buck shakes his head. His skin brushes against Eddie’s shirt. “I hurt her,” he says, tortured.

“It was an accident,” Eddie says, and it sounds a little bit like a natural disaster happened, Buck.

Eddie’s been arguing with him about this kind of sh*t for five years now.

“It doesn’t matter,” Buck says. “I still hurt her.”

Buck feels Eddie’s chest expand under him as he blows out a long sigh. “Buck,” he says, long-suffering, “it’s just a bump. Stop acting like you gave her permanent brain damage.”

Buck knows he didn’t give her permanent brain damage. That’s not the problem. The problem is that Buck’s been stubbing his toe and putting his foot into his mouth and f*cking sh*t up for his entire life. The problem is that when he was ten he broke his mom’s favorite vase and when he was seventeen he got suspended from school for three days for having sex with someone in the teacher’s lounge and when he was twenty seven he got the love of his life’s kid stuck in a tsunami and when he was twenty nine he cheated on his girlfriend in a bar and when he was thirty two Christopher was leaving and Buck couldn’t stop him even though his best friend was miserable about it. The problem is Buck has never done enough and has never been good enough and screwed everything up more times than he can count, but that was supposed to end. That was supposed to be over. Because he had a daughter now, and if there was anytime—any person—to finally be enough for, it was her.

But instead, he hurt her. His hands, which were only meant to hold her up and lead her and keep her away from the darkness, pushed a bruise into her, a scar. He f*cked it up.

He should’ve known that to reach out at all, to touch, even with good intentions, was to hurt. He should’ve, for once, kept his hands to his f*cking self.

And maybe the world would be better for it.

Eddie keeps breathing under him, steady as ever. His fingers come up to thread through Buck’s hair, dull nails gently scratching through his scalp. Buck is washed in the tide of his breathing, lost, drowning somewhere where he’ll never break the surface. He feels hot, suffocating tears rise to his eyes, and he’s helpless but to let them fall, collecting in the fabric of Eddie’s shirt.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Eddie asks, gentle, fingers never stopping their movement.

Buck doesn’t know how to say that he’s made out of fears—that he’s not good enough, that he crushes everything he’s allowed to touch, that he’s overstepping always and taking a mile for every inch he’s reluctantly given, that nobody will ever love him the way he loves, that life was a stream slipping through his fingers, never truly for him. He doesn’t know how to say that seeing that bump on June’s forehead was like a domino being pushed, knocking all the rest of them down. Because if his worst fear is true—that he is something bad for her—then all the rest has to be true too.

It’s an overwhelming feeling, a tidal wave of emotion. He feels like he must be the most useless, shameful man who’s ever been allowed to touch foot on the ground. He’s not sure he’s ever felt anything worse.

He doesn’t say any of this, but maybe Eddie knows anyway, because he shakes his head and says, “This isn’t as big of a deal as you think it is, Buck. You haven’t f*cked anything up, or—I don’t know, committed some unforgivable atrocity, or whatever you’re worried about. She’s going to cry for two more minutes, maybe, and then she’s going to forget about it, because she’s a kid. She’s a kid, and,” he squeezes the back of Buck’s neck, “she loves you.”

“Yeah, well,” Buck says through tears, because maybe she does. Because two mornings ago, before Buck’s alarm had even gone off, she had ran up the stairs, taking it two steps at a time, and climbed up on the bed, practically jumping on him, begging Buck to take her to the library before school as he had peeled his eyes open. Because they had gone, and June had browsed the aisles in the nonfiction section like she was looking upon gold, eyes wide and turning back to Buck with wonder, tugging on his sleeve excitedly when she found the book about space she wanted him to read to her, even though it was like ten years above her reading level. Because he was the one she looked to when she was excited or proud or awed. Because he was the one she let follow her through every adventure, chasing down checkmarks in her list of dreams one small step at a time. And maybe, just maybe, love was as simple as that for a kid—the hand you reached for to lead you through the library or hold you after a nightmare or to show you how to smash tomatoes to make lasagna.

Maybe she did love him.

But that didn’t mean he deserved it.

“Maybe she shouldn’t,” he says.

Eddie’s hand freezes where it’s combing through his hair. “Buck,” he says, pulling it away, “c’mon. You don’t mean that.”

Except he does. He really, really does.

“Buck,” Eddie sighs, and then he’s pushing Buck away from his chest with two hands firmly grasped on his shoulders. Buck lets him, but he mourns it immediately—the feeling of Eddie’s chest firm against his cheek, the way if he really focused on it, he could hear the gentle thump thump of Eddie’s heartbeat. Eddie keeps him close, doesn’t let go of his shoulders, and looks into his eyes, shaking his head like he can’t believe they’re still having this conversation this many years later. “It’s like you’re looking for reasons to hate yourself sometimes,” he says with a shake of his head. His words are blunt, but his voice and his eyes are infinitely soft. “Everything is a sign from the universe that you’re a failure. Why won’t you let anything be a sign that you’re actually a blessing?”

Buck stares at him. “You don’t believe in signs.”

“No,” Eddie rolls his eyes, “but I believe in you.”

Buck swallows around the heart-shaped lump in his throat. Eddie’s lips are calling to him like a siren song. Like the light at the end of the tunnel he wants to run towards, bask in its warmth, in the feeling of the sun on his skin again.

“I’ve seen a thousand reasons why you’re one of the best fathers I’ve ever met,” Eddie continues. “So I’m not going to lend that much credit to the one teensy-tiny mistake that could, maybe—if we’re really stretching it—be a reason you’re not one. That’s just common sense, Buck.”

“You, uh—,” Buck wipes his tears with the back of his hand so he can stare at Eddie, “one of the best fathers you’ve ever met?”

Eddie looks at him, really looks at him. Then he smiles, the softest thing Buck has ever seen. “Yeah,” he says, his mouth curling around the world.

Eddie’s eyes drop, glazing over his nose, and then just keep dropping, until they land right on Buck’s lips. And, for a moment, Buck really thinks that he’s going to lean in and—

Eddie’s eyes dart away at the sound of soft footsteps entering the room, and the moment shatters. Eddie makes a noise in the back of his throat and pulls his hands away from Buck’s shoulders. Buck quickly tucks the hope that rose into his throat at seeing that look in his best friend’s eyes back deep inside him where it belongs and because he's still half in Eddie’s lap, both legs slung over one of Eddie’s, he shuffles a couple inches apart before turning to follow his gaze.

It’s June. Of course.

Buck hastily makes to wipe away the rest of wetness around his eyes, because as much as he doesn’t want to teach his kid that men are not allowed to cry, he really doesn’t want her to have to see him do it, especially not over this. He does his best to smile at her over the lump in his throat, but he’s sure it comes out at least a little watery. Because he has no idea how this is going to go, and if he’s honest he’s—f*cking terrified about it.

And still a little miserable, really.

“Uh, hey,” he says through a sniffle. The words come out hoarse.

She had been peeking out around the doorway a little hesitant, but she fully enters the room at that, eyes flashing between Buck and Eddie curiously. Buck does his best not to feel a little bit caught about the fact that she had probably just witnessed him sitting in Eddie’s lap. She crosses her hands in front of her and makes her way to stand in front of Buck, blinking up at him owlishly.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

She sounds genuinely concerned about him. Buck doesn’t know what to do with it. He’s probably too old to be this surprised when he finds out people actually care about his well being.

“Uh.” Buck thinks that no I’m actually spiraling because I think I might be a disease and you should stay away from me is probably not a good answer. “I don’t think we should be worrying about me right now,” he diverts because at least that’s also true. “Are you okay?”

He takes a moment to study her. The bump, covered a little bit by a few blond strands that have fallen into her face, is still there, as jarring on her temple as ever. But her eyes are dry, only their slightly puffy red rim indicating that she had even been crying at all.

She looks, for all intents and purposes, fine. Buck can’t let himself believe it.

“Yeah,” she says with a nod, looking very serious about it. She looks at Buck like she knows everything about him. It’s sort of a startling experience. “But you’re not.”

Buck sucks in a breath. “June,” he says, “I’m fine.”

He’s always been a sh*t liar.

June looks at him, assessing, for a moment longer, and then she’s—Buck is very confused about this—lifting up the hem of her shirt to reveal the soft, pale skin of her stomach. “Look,” she says, as she tilts her chin down to gaze at her own stomach, and Buck’s eyes catch on a thousand things he hasn’t seen before—her outie belly button, the mole right above the waistline of her jeans, and—

Buck loses his grip on his breath, feels it get stolen from his chest.

Because it’s a scar. About the length of June’s pinky finger, lacing diagonal over the bottom of her left rib. It’s long healed over, nothing more than a little white line against her skin, but Buck knows enough about scars to know how it must’ve looked when it first opened, bloody and gaping wide enough to need stitches.

He can’t take his eyes off of it. “What—” he shakes his head. “June, baby, what’s that from?”

She looks up at him, and then back down at it. “My mom was teaching me to ride my bike without training wheels,” she says. “And I was doing really good learning, and so she decided to stand back and let me try to get all the way down the street by myself.” Her face twists downward. “And I crashed into the mailbox.”

Buck’s breath wooshes back into his lungs. He can’t imagine being Hannah in that moment, watching the bike that held everything she loved heedlessly in its seat teeter off the sidewalk—except he can. He can imagine it, because he had stood there and watched as a wave pushed Christopher off of the ladder truck, had stood there in a field hospital with his glasses strung around his neck like a noose and thought I did this. I’m the reason he’s dead. He can imagine it, because he’s felt it, and he knows it’s the worst feeling in the world.

And it’s a lot like what he’s feeling right now.

“We had to go to the hospital and my mom didn’t stop for a red light and I heard her say a bad word for the first time.” She shakes her head like but that’s not the point. “At first,” she says, “I was mad at her, because she let me do that when I wasn’t ready. But then,” she lets go of the hem of her shirt, and it falls back over her tummy. “I forgave her, because I knew she didn’t mean to hurt me, and,” she shrugs, “learning to ride my bike was fun.”

She looks at Buck then. “Being an astronaut was fun,” she says, meaningfully.

Buck makes a choked sound. It could be a laugh—he doesn’t even know. “Yeah?”

She nods, very seriously. “It didn’t even hurt,” she says.

Buck doesn’t believe this much at all, probably because she had just been bawling her eyes out less than twenty minutes ago with how much it did hurt, but he’s not going to say anything. He’s not going to say anything, because he feels something bubble up in him, like clouds in his long dark sky ironing out to make way for the sun. It might be hope. Absolution, even. Freedom, from something he’s been chained too for almost as long as he’s been breathing.

“Well,” he says, getting all emotional again, but this time for a completely different reason, “that’s just because you were being so brave.”

Then he opens his arms, and she’s climbing up onto the couch, knees sinking into the cushion between his thighs; her arms come around him, too short to meet each other in the back as she buries her head into the crook of his neck. Buck wraps his own arms around her like he’s been gifted with something indescribably delicate, hand landing gently on the small of her back as he tucks her as close to his heart as possible. It’s where she’s meant to be, he thinks as he closes his eyes and breathes her in, the smell of the Suave Kids body wash he bought for her flowing through his nose and filtering out all the rot he’s let grow in his airway.

“I love you, Dad,” she whispers into his neck.

It’s two firsts in one, and Buck’s arms might accidentally tighten around her in shock and the pull of emotion that rises into his throat upon hearing her say those words, like a symphony of every dream he had long given up on coming true.

His eyes flutter open, wet again, and he meets Eddie’s eyes over June’s head. Eddie looks back, soft and singing with the quiet joy that sometimes looks a little bit more like sadness, and his eyes say You deserve this.

I deserve this, Buck thinks. I deserve this.

He thinks he might even believe it.

“I love you too,” he says, and lets himself sink into the feeling.

-

Buck thinks the first time he had ever stepped foot in this zoo, he had already been a little bit in love with Eddie. He just hadn’t known it yet.

He remembers that day like it was yesterday. The early morning sun rising over the zoo arches, Christopher’s backpack slung over his shoulders, a phone in his pocket with a text from Eddie saying I hope you two have a good time! Please call me if you need anything and send pictures!!!!. He just had been on the edge of a realization—not that he loved Eddie, that one wouldn’t come for many, many years later—but of how much this would grow to mean to him, how much it already had. Christopher, Eddie trusting him with Christopher, getting to take him home after their day together and spend a couple hours with his feet up on Eddie’s coffee table, beers and his boys. Eddie was a new fixture in his life back then, and as is Buck’s nature, he was waiting for him and his dad henleys and fluffy socks and the secret stash of grandma puzzles he kept in the back closet to flicker out of focus, fade out of Buck’s life just as fast as it all came. But god, Buck wanted him to stay.

He wanted to glue Eddie’s feet to the ground, saddle him to the life they had just begun laying out the foundations for and keep him there forever. More than that, he wanted Eddie to want to stay. He wanted it with a desperation he would only later learn was the just sharp edge of love.

He feels, now, nearly six years later, an echo of that same feeling, like he again is tipping on towards a realization. He just doesn’t know what it could be this time.

The alligator exhibit got moved to the left side of that park, but otherwise everything—from the way the sun is kissing the tip of Buck’s nose with the tingly feeling that usually means he’s going to end the day with a burn and the way the air smells like sunscreen and cotton candy and the millets they feed the birds—is the same. But Buck’s life now is like a splash of vibrant watercolor compared to the couple of spare strokes that it used to be, because back then, he was just planting the first seeds to this garden that has done nothing but grown and grown and grown. Now, he has Eddie next to him instead of inside his pocket, his cheap dollar store sunglasses perched on his nose and the zoo map unfurled in his left hand—because unlike Buck, he doesn’t have the entire place memorized. Now there’s a new pair of feet leading the way, light-up sketchers on the concrete. Now instead of his body echoing with emptiness, it aches from getting to carry so so much, but never quite the way he wants it.

Buck likes it this way better. It’s their first time taking June here—the first time she’s ever been here, period—but he already can’t imagine doing it without her ever again. It’s the way she runs along, always a couple of feet ahead of the rest of them, because she can’t wait to see the next thing and why are you guys so slow? It’s the way she starts complaining about her feet hurting halfway through the Aviary, so Eddie lets her sit on his shoulders, hands wrapped securely around her ankles as she looks up at the birds in the treetops. It’s the way that Christopher has suddenly decided he’s no longer too cool for the zoo and begs Eddie and Buck to take them to the World of Birds show first, because that’s his favorite part, a request Buck obstinately denies because there is an established system to going to the zoo, thankyouverymuch.

It’s not that Buck thinks there was anything missing from their little makeshift family before June was a part of it. It’s just that there’s something about her being there that makes it taste all the sweeter, just a bit of sugar added to their tomato sauce recipe. She ties them together, Buck thinks. She makes it even more perfect.

She’s back on her feet now, because Eddie’s shoulders had started to get tired, and maybe importantly, June was getting annoyed by how slow he was walking (he was walking at a very normal pace, Buck thinks, but youthful curiosity waits for no one). She and Christopher are leading the front of the group as they walk through the penguin exhibit, Christopher animatedly explaining to her how penguins actually have a gland above their eyes that filters salt out of their system. “It’s called the supraorbital gland,” he’s explaining. Buck feels something proud rise in his chest because he was the one who taught Christopher that, several years ago. “It lets them drink salt water without getting dehydrated like we would.”

Next to him, Eddie is turning the map every which way, trying to decipher it, which is funny and not at all endearing to Buck because he’s pretty sure it’s got to be the most easily understandable map he’s ever seen. Eddie’s peering at its blocks of blue and red like it might as well be written in morse code, eyebrows wrinkled above the edge of his glasses.

Buck loves him so much it’s like breathing in pure oxygen. “What are you looking for?” he asks, amused, tilting his head to peer obnoxiously at the map over Eddie’s shoulders.

“Something nearby for lunch,” Eddie grumbles as he flips the map right-side up again.

“Oh, there’s a place—”

Eddie cuts him off with a uh sound. “Let me figure it out myself,” he says, like the toddler he is.

Buck shrugs easily and pushes away from Eddie’s shoulder. His eyes immediately gravitate towards June, and he makes it just in time to see the exact moment her eyes catch on something that’s somehow more exciting than the penguins, lighting up immediately. Buck follows her gaze and knows his wallet is done in for.

The walkways between the different exhibits at the zoo are lined with vendors, selling popcorn and cotton candy and toy rings, and Buck is like eighty percent sure June is the target audience for all of the above. But the particular one she’s looking at is the worst of them all, because it’s full of stuffed animals Buck can tell are handmade, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he walked up to find the price tags all stretching beyond a hundred dollars each.

But June is already looking back at him with puppy eyes, and he never had a chance in the first place. And besides, he’s pretty sure his money exists to spend it on her.

He bumps Eddie with his shoulder, nodding towards the vendor.

Eddie looks to where he’s motioning, raises an eyebrow, and then looks back towards Buck. “You are setting a dangerous precedent right now,” he says, as if Buck hasn’t already spent six years making a habit of spoiling Christopher. As if Eddie hasn’t spent every one of those six years indulging him.

Like now, when he just shrugs and takes a step towards the vendor before Buck even does, folding up his map and sliding it into his back pocket.

“Okay,” Buck says as they step into the little shop. The woman behind the counter smiles, eager to have business. “Which one do you want?”

Buck thinks that a stuffed animal version of every animal in the entire zoo is somewhere in front of them—tigers and orangutans and flamingos and even a frog that reminds Buck a little bit of the big, bad quality one Eddie had won for him last summer at the fair they had taken Christopher. Buck had watched, drinking his too-sweet soda out of a paper cup, as Eddie had nearly blown his back out at the ring toss, wondering what the hell had gotten into him, and had nearly spit it all out five minutes later when Eddie had turned to him and placed the frog in his arms with a syrupy smile. Buck couldn’t stop looking at the creases of that smile, at the way sweat was clinging to his forehead like it too just wanted to be as close to him as possible. In retrospect, he probably should’ve realized he was in love with Eddie right then.

But he’s always been a little bit slow on the uptake. Like, six years slow.

Whatever.

June purses her lips as she surveys the options. Then she’s reaching for the dolphin one and thrusting it into Buck’s arms. “This one,” she says—commands,really.

“Do you want one, Chris?” Eddie asks his son, who’s hanging out a couple of feet away from them, looking a bit disinterested. Maybe he’s not too cool for the zoo, but he just might be for stuffed animals.

“No,” he answers predictably, “but can we get ice cream?”

June, again, completely lights up. “There’s ice cream?”

Christopher nods with growing enthusiasm. “Yeah, there’s a place right over there.” He points out to the left. “Their strawberry is the best.”

For the second time in the last five minutes, Buck is the victim of June’s puppy dog eyes. Really, whoever taught her how to do that needs to be locked up. It’s a safety hazard.

He sighs, the soft fur of the dolphin under his fingers. Eddie must take pity on him, because he smiles at him all soft and says, “You buy that; I’ll go get them ice cream.”

Distantly, he can hear the sound of June’s excited cheers and a high five being exchanged, but he’s caught in Eddie’s gaze, in the tenderness he somehow knows he would see beyond the darkened lens of his sunglasses. “Thank you,” he says softly.

Eddie nods, and then he’s shepherding both kids towards the ice cream parlor. Not that it’s a hard job—both kids are scurrying towards it as fast as they can, and Buck just makes out the sound of Eddie’s fond chuckle before he fades out of hearing distance.

Buck watches them journey over for a long moment, something flickering in his heart, before he realizes he still has something to do. He shuffles over to the counter and sets the dolphin on top. “Just this,” he says, a little distractedly, because he’s still thinking about Eddie’s smile, how his eyes were probably crinkling in the corners under his glasses.

The woman behind the counter smiles at him as she begins to ring up his order, eyes twinkling like maybe she knows something he doesn’t.

As he’s waiting for her to finish, his eyes get pulled back like a magnet to Eddie and Christopher and June, who have now made it to the ice cream stand. He watches as Christopher asks the man behind the counter for a sample and as Eddie hoists up June into the shelf of his hip so she can see all the flavors properly, pointing at something through the glass.

Buck looks away, dipping his head down into an unpreventable smile. His heart feels so light, like it might grow wings and flutter off into the pale blue sky.

“Sorry if this is weird.” The lady who’s bagging the stuffed animal voice brings him out of it, and Buck looks up instantly, caught. “But your family is just so adorable,” she gushes, cheeks pink. “And,” she tilts her head towards the ice cream stand, to where Buck knows Eddie is standing, looking like every single dream come true all in one, “your husband seems to love you very much.”

Buck’s fingers fumble around the credit card he’s holding, nearly losing his grip, because— what? He’s hit by like a ton of bricks, a sucker punch right to the stomach—a thousand emotions rushing to knock him down at once, but mostly just want, want, want. The largest f*cking wave of it he’s ever felt.

Because hearing those words out of her mouth—it just feels right. Eddie Diaz, his husband. Eddie Diaz, his.

Eddie Diaz, the one he would wake up every morning to, morning breath and fuzzy socks pressed against his bare ankles, starting a new day that they knew, no matter what, would end with them falling asleep in the same bed together.

Eddie Diaz, the one he would vow to love for a lifetime, and it would be more of a truth than a promise, because there’s no world where Evan Buckley didn’t want to know what it was like to taste his lips and touch his heart and be his forever.

Eddie Diaz, the one who would hold his hand at the library and in the zoo and on the street and in the car on the way to work and who would make everyone say, you guys are so cute together, for a lifetime.

He thinks that maybe before Eddie, he was just waiting. Stagnant; searching, but never finding. But then Eddie walked in, with his stupid abs and soft eyes and unfailingly open arms, and something had slotted in place inside Buck, organs long out of place set right in an instant. And Buck thinks that ever since then, he’s just been a ticking time bomb, barreling towards the moment where loving him was too heavy to hold inside.

And he thinks this might be it. The moment where he blows up.

“Uh yeah,” he says through the ringing in his ears, numbly reaching for the bag she holds out to him, “he’s pretty great.”

She smiles, wishes him a good rest of his day and maybe says anything else, but it all falls on deaf ears, fading into a blur because all he can think about is Eddie. All he can think about is that he’s not sure he can go on another second like this.

Because the magnitude of his want is way stronger than the depths of his fear. Because this random lady who works at a stuffed animal vendor inside the Los Angeles Zoo called Eddie Diaz his husband, and if there’s even a single f*cking chance Buck could make that real, he’s going to f*cking take it.

He’s so caught in his daze of Eddie Eddie Eddie that he thinks he must black out actually walking over towards the ice cream stand, but the next thing he knows he’s there, standing a couple feet away from where his—his family is. Eddie is leading them to a little picnic table now, one of the blue ones with all the holes, both June and Christopher holding cones with so much ice cream inside that Buck thinks it might topple out. He’s saying something to him that Buck is too mesmerized to hear while he shovels a bit of his ice cream—which he got in a cup because he’s a loser—into his mouth, and he misses a little bit, some of the cookies and cream coating his top lip.

Buck wants to lick it off. Or something. It doesn’t matter. What matters is—Buck is so in love with him, and he’s literally going to die from it if he doesn’t tell him right now.

“Eddie,” he says.

Eddie looks up, surprised, before his face melts into something soft and pleased at seeing Buck. “Hey,” he says. Then he lifts up his spoon and drags it over his tongue, licking the ice cream out as he wiggles his eyebrows. “Sorry,” he smiles evilly, “did you want some?”

Buck doesn’t want some. He doesn’t want anything right now besides Eddie. His family.

“I, uh,” he swallows, “I need to tell you something.”

Eddie frowns, tilts his head at him like he’s trying to figure him out. “Okay,” he says slowly. “You guys stay here,” he directs at the kids, who are barely paying attention, happy enough to ignore whatever is going on between Buck and Eddie to lap at their ice cream. Eddie slides out of the table, one leg at a time, and leaves his cup behind to meet Buck where he’s standing.

He grabs Buck by the bicep, pulling him behind a nearby tree and out of hearing distance of the kids. “Are you okay?” he asks, concerned. Buck swears his skin is burning everywhere Eddie is touching him. There should be a handprint, he thinks, right there on his bicep when Eddie pulls away. “You look like…you’ve seen a ghost or something.”

Buck brings a hand up to press into his own cheek, and the skin he finds there is hot to the touch. “I have something to say,” he says, “and I don’t want you to say anything until the end.”

Eddie stares at him oddly, but doesn’t argue. “Alright,” he agrees, just a touch hesitant.

He takes a deep breath and gathers up every piece of himself, hoping that somewhere he’ll find the courage. But he looks into Eddie’s eyes, trusting and loving and always waiting for him, and thinks that maybe he has all that he needs. “I, uh, I think,” he begins, and then immediately stops, all the words getting lost in his throat. Because there’s so many ways he could tell Eddie Diaz that he loves him, so many different threads he could choose to follow that would all lead back to it—because every piece of Buck does.

He tries to settle on the right one, the perfect one, but he doesn’t really know that there is one.

“Before I met you,” he tries again, “I was always waiting for everything—everyone I had in my life to leave. I thought that even if they choose to be there or to love me for now, that they would eventually change their minds, and, you know,” he searches for the right words, “see that I wasn’t worth it, I guess. And time and time again, I was proven right. But then I came to LA and got into the 118.” He looks at Eddie. “And then I met you.”

Eddie’s eyes are beginning to shine. “Buck,” he says, emotional.

Buck ignores him. “And at first, I thought you were going to be the same. I thought here’s a cool guy with a cute son, of course he’s not going to want to stick around.”He feels a lump rise in his throat at the impossibility of it all, that same feeling of what did I ever do to deserve this he’s been walking around with for so many years now. “But then you did.”

He reaches out to take Eddie’s hand then, before he can lose his nerve. Eddie lets him, and his hand is warm and pliant and soft where he’s holding it out between them, and Eddie’s looking down at their hands together like it might just be the most delicate, beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“You stuck around,” Buck continues, “and then you just kept sticking around. I got my leg crushed by a f*cking ladder truck and you were there holding my hand until we got into the hospital, and then you were at the loft door offering to drive me to all my physical therapy appointments and helping me take showers like that was a normal friend thing to do. I lost your son in a tsunami, and then you were just—” he waves his free hand, “letting me babysit him a day later, like it was nothing. And then,” he swallows, eyes welling up, “then I f*cked up. I f*cked up so bad.”

He feels Eddie squeeze his hand. “Buck.”

Buck shakes his head at him. “And you—you forgave me. You forgave me, and then like, five months later, forty f*cking feet of mud fell on top of you, and you for some reason decided to give Christopher—the thing you love more than anything in the f*cking world —to me.”

He takes a breath, feels his throat shake around it. “When I found about June,” his eyes drift over to where he can just barely see her around the trunk of the tree they’re standing behind, and he can’t help the small smile that falls onto his face, even through his tears, “I was f*cking terrified. But you—” he holds up their hands where they’re intertwined, “you were there. You were there from the very first second, and you’ve barely f*cking left since. And now,” he nudges his chin towards her, “that kid loves you just as much as she loves me.”

He looks back to Eddie, finding endless softness and anticipation in his gaze. “You’ve seen me through my best and my worst,” he whispers, painfully honest. “I’ve given you every reason to run, but you—you just act like you want to see more.

“I’ve always wanted somebody to choose me,” he says, giving Eddie a weak smile. ”I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that this happened when somebody finally did.”

Eddie looks at him, careful and knowing all at once. “This?”

Buck nods, careful. “Yeah,” he says. “This.” Falling in love with you, he means. Falling so deep that I could never climb up. I would never even want to.

Then, he swallows, because this is it. His heart jumps a beat once, twice, and then settles. For once, he feels no fear, no terror—only confidence that no matter where it leads, this is exactly the path he’s meant to be on. “And I—Eddie, I just have to tell you,” he says, then pauses, taking one last deep breath.

“I lo—”

His phone starts ringing in his back pocket.

Buck feels lifetimes die on his tongue. The moment cracks at the corners; he doesn't know what else to do but let it fall apart completely.

He fumbles for his phone, pulling his hand away from Eddie to fish it out of his pocket and slide it to his ear without checking the contact name. His heart is sinking, sinking in his chest, because for a moment it really felt like his hands were closing around the very thing he’s been reaching for for years now. He’s a little dizzy from the whiplash of it all as he says, “Hello?”

“Mr. Buckley?”

Eddie is meeting his eyes still, something Buck doesn’t have time to decipher swimming in his own. Disappoint, longing, confusion, he doesn’t quite know.

“Yeah,” Buck answers and feels something twist in his stomach, that seconds before gut feeling—

“We’re calling about our patient Hannah Foster,” the man on the other end of the line says. “We are very happy to inform you that she has just woken up.”

-

Buck stares out of the windshield—at the cars breezing past on the freeway in blurs of blue, gray, and red; at the blue sky painted in front of them, vibrant and uninterrupted; at the birds perched on the cellphone lines following the highway, undeterred by the noise—and sees none of it. There’s a ringing in his head, a numbness to his fingers, and he’s lost to it—that devastating feeling of having everything crash over your own head.

He keeps replaying it over and over on loop.

I love—

We are very happy to inform you that she has just woken up.

Eddie had told him that he needs to stop seeing everything as a sign, but this sure as hell feels like one.

Because he’s spent a lifetime with his fists locked behind his back, handcuffed against his want, but as soon as the ropes get cut away, as soon as he finally goes to reach, everything instantly comes crumbling down on top of him. What else is he supposed to see in the shattered pieces where they now surround him but you were wrong to think you could ever have this. You were wrong to ever try to.

Eddie keeps trying to meet his eyes from where he’s sat next to him. Buck doesn’t look—because he knows better—but he can feel his eyes on the side of his face, searching and concerned. If Buck had the capacity to care right now, he would tell him to keep his eyes on the road. Another driving accident is probably not what any of them need, not when that was what started this whole exercise in almost for Buck in the first place.

When they had hastened out of the zoo and into the parking lot, Buck had tried to get in the driver’s seat. But Eddie had simply taken one look at his dejected face and shaking fingers, shaken his head, and gently pried the keys out of Buck’s clenched hand. It’s for the best, maybe, except for the fact that it leaves Buck with nothing to do but to think about it. And, of course, listen to June’s questions.

In contrast to the deathly silence clinging to Buck like a cloud—to the chasms that have seemed to rip themselves through the rest of the car—June is loud, burning bright like a star you can only squint at. Nobody can blame her for it—she’s spent an entire week knowing there was a possibility she would never get to hear her mom’s voice again, and now she’s getting her back. Every kid would be excited about that.

“Is she really awake?” she asks, bouncing in the backseat with boundless energy.

“That’s what the doctors said,” Eddie answers.

“Does that mean she’s okay now?”

“Well, she might have to stay in the hospital for a little bit longer, so they can watch over the rest of her injuries. But, yes, it looks like we’re out of the woods.”

Buck steals a glance into the rearview mirror and is met with the sight of June frowning, confused. “The woods?”

“It’s, uh,” he explains, “a figure of speech. It means,” he waves a hand in a gesture, “the worst of it is over. Your mom is going to make a full recovery.”

June seems to chew on this for a moment.

Then, “So am I going to get to go back home?”

Home. A place far away from Buck. A place he had never been in the first place.

He feels something slither in his stomach, a snake of dread and heartbreak, that feeling of thinking you lost something only to find maybe you never even had it in the first place.

Looking away, he turns his face to the window so she doesn’t have to see him take a shaky breath, clenching his eyes shut around the wave of emotion. “Yeah,” he chokes out, breath fogging the glass as he tilts his forehead into it, “I think so.”

Buck is happy that Hannah is awake, he’s happy that June is going to get to see her again, that she isn’t going to have to lose everything she knew, of course he is. If you had asked him, he wouldn't have wished for any other ending than this one. But—Buck had forgotten. Wrapped up in the beauty of the little sliver of paradise he had stumbled upon, he had forgotten.

Forgotten that the little structure he had built up inside his heart, the walls made of brick and love that he and Eddie had spent the days mortaring together for her to escape the cold inside—he had forgotten that wasn’t her home. He had forgotten that her life had existed before and beyond him, that there was a whole other family who had a claim on her, one much tighter than his own. He had forgotten that the world he pulled her from could’ve been safer and stronger and more beautiful, and that when it was ready for her again, that that’s where she would want to return. Because for a moment, Buck, Eddie, Christopher, and June, it really felt like they were a home. That they were forever.

But forever is nothing but a figment Buck keeps falling for.

Buck can’t help but mourn the loss of it. Of this dream he’s spent the week cupping so gently in his hands, convinced that he could push it into the sky and watch it float like a lantern when, really, it always was going to end up shattering on the ground, its shards breaking the skin of Buck’s bare feet.

He startles, just a bit, when he feels Eddie hand reach over the console to land gently on his thigh. He looks over—a mistake, he knows—to find Eddie’s eyes meeting his, full of a soft look that mirrors his sadness and speaks of a sort of heartbroken understanding, like maybe he knows everything Buck is thinking. Buck meets his eyes, and Eddie squeezes. For one, two, three seconds. And then he’s pulling his hand away, eyes returning to the road as he makes a right into the hospital parking lot.

Buck feels his heart sink so low that he’s not sure he’s ever going to be able to pull it back.

Two minutes later, Eddie puts the car into park, and Buck feels the click of the gear shift like a stone dropping in his stomach, burying itself at the bottom and weighing him down. As they pile out of the car and make their way together to the doors, there’s a phantom pressure around his ankle, like suddenly he’s tugging around a chain ball with the weight of his despair. He’s in a daze as he approaches the receptionist, tells her Hannah’s information and sticks on his visitor pass; as he gets in the elevator, Christopher and June fighting over who gets to press the button, and walks down the long stretching hallway with all his fears following at his heels.

He comes to a halt in front of the door to Hannah’s room and watches as June runs past, throwing herself through the door like she simply couldn’t wait a second longer. Feeling his heart clench around his heartbreak, he steels himself, breathing in death and stale hospital air and exhaling his grief. There’s nothing he can do besides walk in there and let this vision of a future fall apart in reality’s harsh hands.

Because June—with her always tangled hair and Taylor Swift shower sing-alongs and the jars of nutella she liked to dig into with a spoon and eat like ice cream—is the best thing the universe has ever given him. But maybe she was like a book he hadn’t known he was merely borrowing, meant to be read for a couple days, to pour his heart into the story on the pages like it was his life, and then to return.

Because day turns into night, spring flowers die in the winter, cakes always end up eaten, and every gift Buck’s ever been given has shriveled up in his hands, ran dry with time. And June—she’s no different.

Because she had never belonged to him. He got to hold her for a week, taste what it was like to know happiness like a dear friend rather than a whisper on the horizon, got to experience her and all of her beauty for eight, beautiful, escaping days.

And now?

He has to give her back, and set the universe right again.

He’s never wanted to do anything less.

Eddie comes to stand beside him, shoulder brushing against his own, and Buck looks over, seeking something—reassurance, relief, understanding, he doesn’t know. But Eddie just gives it all to him and more. Quietly, without removing his eye’s from Buck’s face, he moves Buck’s hand, pinky brushing against his in a question.

Buck intertwines their fingers. He feels Eddie’s palm against his and thinks somehow, somehow, I’ll find a way to get through this. We will.

Eddie nods at him, a bare dip of his chin, and Buck takes one last moment to drink him in like he’s salvation—the soft gleam in his eyes, the kind slope of his nose, the mole that lives right above his lip, everything that Buck will spend the rest of his life loving. At least this—in some way—will always be his. At least there’s always Eddie, perpetually by his side, like he’s stuck there.

And with that, he takes a breath, looks away, and pushes the door open.

He makes it just in time to see June running up to the hospital bed with a screeching mom “Mom!”, throwing herself into her arms with absolutely no regard for her probably still extremely pressing injuries.

Hannah, to her credit, doesn’t even wince, wrapping her arms around June’s body like she’s done it a thousand times. She buries a desperate kiss into her daughter’s, face scrunching up as she lets her lips linger there, tears in her eyes.

She breathes June in like she wants to hold her inside her lungs forever. Buck gets the feeling. “Hey, baby,” she says, just loud enough for Buck to hear.

“I missed you,” June mumbles into her neck.

Hannah places a hand on the back of June’s neck and pulls her closer. “I missed you too,” she says. “So much. How have you been?”

June peeks her head up. “Good!” she says, and Buck’s a little surprised to hear the excitement in her voice, like she’s been dying to tell her mom what they’ve gotten up too. It makes his heart ache to even think about it—every single one of their adventures getting scribbled down on an imaginary list of things to remember to say. “Dad took me to see the big telescopes,” she says.

Hannah’s eyes drift over to the doorway where Buck’s standing at that, and Buck feels his heart trip over itself in anxiety. Is this the part where she tells him that he overstepped? That he shouldn’t have encouraged June to fall into a new life for a couple of days while this one was inhabitable? That she shouldn’t be calling him Dad, that he shouldn’t have stepped in at all?

But—inexplicably—she just smiles at him, soft. “Did he?” she asks, still looking at Buck.

There’s so much in her gaze; Buck doesn’t know how to read it.

He feels Eddie’s hand squeeze.

June nods eagerly, and Hannah shifts her eyes back to look down at her. “Yeah,” she says, “and we went to the zoo today.” She pauses, leaning back a little bit more, and her eyes sparkle as she says, “Did you know that Dad knows all about space?” with the kind of awe that makes Buck’s stomach twist on himself.

Hannah runs fingers through June’s hair and shakes her head. “It sounds like you got up to a lot of adventures,” she says. “You’ll have to tell me all about them.”

The unspoken later rings through the room.

Hannah meets his eyes again, and there’s an expectation inside, a request, that makes Buck swallow.

Eddie must see it too from where he’s standing to Buck’s right, because he’s all of the sudden clearing his throat. His hand is still intertwined with Buck’s, and Buck wonders if Eddie can feel his sweaty palm. “June,” he says, “why don’t you and I go pick out a treat from the vending machines?”

His hand is still intertwined with Buck’s, a sturdy presence at his side, and Buck wonders if he can feel his palm start sweating exponentially.

June perks up at that, but then hesitates, looking back at her mom. Hannah gives her a small smile and encouraging nod. And that’s all the permission she needs; she’s scurrying off the bed and towards Eddie before Buck can ever blink. Regretfully, Eddie untangles his hand from Buck and leaves his side to lead her out the door, shooting him one last encouraging look before he goes. Buck thinks he might hear June ask whether Eddie thinks they’ll have airheads as they disappear out the hallway.

He watches them go, a sliver of fondness rising up above everything for just a single second before it dissipates, and he looks back to Hannah. As he takes his first step towards her, he feels a little bit like he’s walking towards his death, towards the edge of the cliff, his last seconds of earth under his feet before he’s just broken bones lying in the dust at the bottom.

Seven days. That’s how long he’s known June. And yet, she’s dug herself into his heart, become an integral part of him. He’s not sure what will happen to him once she’s pulled out.

She’s still smiling that soft, barely there smile, and Buck thinks it looks a little hesitant herself as he awkwardly pads across the room and takes the seat next to her bed.

“Hi, Evan,” she smiles.

He gives her a weak smile in return. “It’s Buck now,” he says, kindly. He guesses that she wouldn’t know that.

She nods and leans her head back against the pillows she’s propped up on. “It’s been a while,” she says.

It’s been a lifetime, really, Buck thinks. She knew him at a time in his life where he was standing in wreckage and trying to make something out of it without any of the right ingredients, reaching for straws and tying them to make ends meet. She knew him when he was only just figuring out what he wanted, had no idea how to get it, and was ending every day—usually with a girl in his bed—feeling even more lost than he started. Buck thinks that if that’s the only version of him you know, then you barely even know him at all.

“Six years,” he nods.

“Yeah,” she breathes out wistfully, and maybe she’s thinking the same thing as him. Maybe knowing that version of her was barely knowing this one at all, too. Because, if looks are any indicators, she’s changed. A lot.

She used to be a spitball of a person — all sharp edges and spiky earring and pitch black hair. Buck remembers her laugh, loud and fiery and always making everyone in whatever diner they were holed up turn and stare, the way she burned everything in her path. But now, she’s softer. Her hair is a strawberry blonde that Buck thinks must be her natural color, kept cut right under her chin, and she’s let the end of her eyebrows grow back, their gentle arch softening the rest of her face. Buck thinks he can still see the fire in her, but it’s less a forest fire, rolling and unyielding, and more the type you would find in the center of a camp grounds, crackling and warm when you hold your hands up to it.

Buck wonders if being a mother specifically has molded her into this softer shape, or if this is just who she's always been, hidden behind layers of heavy contour and a facade Buck never tried hard enough to see through back then. Buck thinks that the Hannah he knew, with her pack of cigarettes on the dash and leather boots, had been looking for something too. Maybe she found it here, in June. In whatever life she’s created since hers and Buck’s diverged.

It’s silent for a long moment, uncomfortably so. Buck doesn’t know what to say.

Thankfully, Hannah breaks the silence. “So,” she says, rolling her head against the pillows to look at him, and Buck can see it a little bit in her eyes when they’re glimmering like that—the version of her who used to throw french fries across the table at him and smirk when she caught Buck checking her out and then make fun of him for it. “Him?” she asks, nudging her head through the door towards where Eddie and June just disappeared.

Buck knows exactly what she’s asking. His throat unsticks. “Uh, yeah,” he says, a bit awkwardly.

She smiles and closes her eyes, leaning her head even further back like she’s very glad to hear this for some reason. “I wondered,” she says, and Buck’s confused for about five seconds before he remembers, right, she’s still following me on social media somewhere. Buck wonders what photo of him and Eddie together put the thought in her head. All of them are possible contenders, he thinks.

She peeks an eye open at him with a small little grin. “You two married?”

“Not yet,” Buck answers before he even has time to fully process the question.

Then he blinks a couple times. Wait. What did he just say—?

Hannah looks away from him, and she falters for a moment, lips pushed forward like she’s chewing on something. Then she says, more quietly, “Me too.”

“Uh,” Buck says, because me too like you’re also in love with your extremely codependent best friend who you’ve tasted their blood and also sort of have guardianship over their son?

She must see his confusion, because her lips curl into an almost invisible hesitant smile. “I mean, like,” she shakes her head, “I realized in the past couple of years that I…sort of like girls. Like,” she tugs her lip between her teeth, “exclusively.”

She pauses, like maybe she’s waiting for him to throw stones at her because she wasn’t ever attracted to him.

But Buck just tilts his head with a smile. “So…not sort of then?”

He can’t say he’s that surprised. He doesn’t mean to be stereotypical, but—like, she used to have a septum piercing and wore her hair in a mullet with choppy bangs. He’s experienced way more shocking things.

She laughs, a surprised sound, like she almost didn’t expect it to come out of her. Buck feels a little bit proud about it. “No, not sort of,” she says, smiling, a full one this time, showing off her sharp canines. Buck remembers those teeth. He was very well acquainted.

Buck laughs too, and wonders. Yeah, she’s my girlfriend, but like in a casual way, he had told Connor at the time, because that was the only way he knew how to explain it. But looking back, Buck doesn’t think he had any real feelings for her, and everything they did that seemed to go beyond just sex—laughing their asses off at midnight in a McDonalds drive through, binging the Twilight movies in between rounds at Hannah’s sh*tty apartment, regularly scheduled sexting programs being interrupted with stupid memes—he has another word for now.

Friendship.

A superficial one, sure. Buck had watched her go, felt a single twinge of melancholia, and then never thought of her again. But there was something there in the brief time they spent together—a tug, maybe. The whisper of a connection that neither of them decided to follow, choosing to keep each other at arm's length because, as Hannah told him once, emotions make the sex worse. But now, sitting across from her seven years later Buck wonders who the two of them could’ve been if they had. If Buck had known that itch in his chest he was always trying to chase wasn’t sex, but connection.

Could they have been friends, then? Could they be friends now?

Buck doesn’t know if they’re going to have the chance.

Hannah is still smiling, tucking a piece of her hair behind her ear with her bandaged hand. “Well,” she says, “it’s nice to know we have something in common. Besides, you know,” she waves a hand to encompass it all, “the whole ass kid.”

“And getting into comas,” Buck mutters absently.

Her eyebrows go flying into her hairline.

He smiles at her apologetically. “It’s a long story,” he says, by way of an explanation.

She nods, like she gets it. Buck doesn’t know if anyone can really get it besides the people who were there, watching him dangle lifelessly from a ladder and then watching him lay lifelessly in a hospital bed, but he’ll take it anyway.

It goes a little bit silent then, because neither of them really have much to say anymore. Buck has a thousand questions he could ask her—what’s she been doing for all these years since he’s last seen her? how does she make her living now? did she take out her septum piercing?—but the only thing he really cares about is June, and she hasn’t said much at all about her yet.

A little bit of his dread had thawed through their conversation, and for a second, when he had made Hannah laugh, he had almost forgotten about the situation altogether, forgotten the reason Buck feels like his entire life is teetering on the edge. But in the silence, the full extent of it returns to him, and he is, again, waiting for it.

For the moment Hannah smiles at him, kind but final, and tells him that he can get out of their hair now. For her to shut the door completely on the world he’s been seeping into through the cracks. For her to tell him to get back to his own life, like that was even possible now.

It must be coming, Buck thinks. It has to be.

After a couple seconds of thick, crawling silence, Hannah finally speaks, her face sobering. “Aren’t you going to ask me why?” she says, looking up at the ceiling.

Buck blinks. “Why what?”

“Why I never told you about June,” she says, like it’s obvious.

“Um,” Buck says, because actually no , he wasn’t going to ask her that. Mostly because he thought he already knew the answer. She never told him about it because she thought Buck wasn’t built to be a father. She thought that if she let Buck in, he would f*ck it up.

A fair concern, Buck thinks.

“I told myself I was going to, you know,” Hannah says, eyes tracing the white, monotonous ceiling. “When I first found out that I was pregnant and that it was yours, I was already nearly two months along, and I just kept saying to myself I’ll call him when I hit three months, when I hit four months, five months, whatever.” She shakes her head, lip tucked between her teeth. “But everytime I would pull up your contact I just—I couldn’t.”

She pushes her back further into the cushioning behind her with an exhale. “And then one day—I was like two weeks away from June’s delivery date, I think—I searched you up on instagram just to see if you were even still in LA, and you had posted a picture at some sort of concert with your captain.”

“Bobby,” Buck supplies, throat dry.

She nods. “You just looked so happy, and I know I didn’t know you that well, but I had never seen you look like that. And I just thought I shouldn’t take him away from that.”

Buck stares at her side profile, at the line of her nose that slopes so similarly to June’s, and thinks— what?

“And then it just kept getting worse,” Hannah continues with a little self-deprecating shake of her head. “June was born, and I knew I should’ve called then, but every time I seriously thought about doing it, I would just go back to your instagram and see all of those pictures. You know, you with your firehouse, you with your partner and his kid. You seemed like you had found the life I knew you were looking for.”

She smiles, sad, through the wetness that’s started to clinger to her eyes. “And I just—” she bites her lip, bringing up a finger to press against her waterline, collecting some of the unfallen tears on her skin. “I didn’t want to complicate that.”

Buck is reeling, because never in a million years would he have thought that that was the reason she hadn’t involved him in June’s life. He had been sure it was because she hadn’t wanted to mess up their lives, but—it was because she hadn’t wanted to mess up his?

June couldn’t possibly do that, he wants her to know. Maybe she’s right; having a daughter would complicate his life. Being a parent is messy. Hard. Exhausting at times. But there’s no way he would ever look at it, this new agglomeration of a life, full of bubblegum toothpaste and Planet Earth 3 and inside-out t-shirts and so much sound that he would never have to worry about the quiet again, and not want it, as messy and complicated as it is.

He hopes she knows that. He hopes she knows there wasn’t a world where if she had called Buck would turn her away.

And even if June was some beautiful sort of disaster, wreaking havoc on the simplicity of Buck’s old life, he would want her anyway. More than anything.

Hannah looks at him then, her blue-green eyes shining with a thousand regrets. “But that wasn’t my choice to make,” she says, laments.“And I’m sorry, Buck. I’m so sorry.”

She sounds so f*cking guilty about it, and it surprises Buck a little—because he’s never even thought about being mad at her for keeping him away. Only at himself, because he thought he had given her a reason to.

Now, he’s not sure it matters much at all.

Sure, if he had a choice, he would’ve wanted to be there. See her first steps. Hold her hand on her first day of pre-k. Watch as she grows, an inch at a time. But Buck also understands that he can never understand all the choices Hannah’s had to make navigating being a mother for the first time, and he finds that he can’t fault her for any of them.

Even if the next one ends up being goodbye.

He lays a careful hand on top of hers where it’s clenched against her thigh and gives her a supportive smile. “I’m just glad to have been given a chance to meet her,” he says, honestly. “Thank you.”

“For what?” she asks through a teary smile. “Going comatose?”

Buck chokes. “No— no,” he panics, eyes wide, before she lets out a watery laugh and he realizes that she’s messing with him. Still, he’s serious, genuine, when he answers, “For making her who she is. She’s, uh,” he swallows over the wave of emotion, of grief rising up in his throat, “pretty awesome.”

Hannah smiles, wistful again. “She is, isn’t she?” she says, before turning her eyes onto Buck. “Thank you,” she says, turning up her hand on her thigh to squeeze at Buck’s. Her hand is frail and shaky inside his. “When I woke up and the doctors told me I had been out for a week , I didn’t know where June was and was terrified that she wasn’t being taken care of.” She smiles at Buck. “But I know you did, and I can’t thank you enough for being there for her when I couldn’t.”

It reminds Buck a little bit of something Eddie said to him when he had just woken up from the shooting, when Buck had still been sleeping on his couch and taking care of his son while he was out. He doesn’t know why his guardianship of children is always being discussed while the other parent is in a hospital bed.

“There’s nowhere else I would rather be,” Buck says in a rasp, and it sounds a little bit too honest, a little bit too broken.

She nods, a bobbing motion, and then looks back forward. A single corner of her smile curls upward. “You know, I’m secretly glad she’s going to have someone to talk to about all her space stuff, now,” she says with a little laugh. “Lord knows I can’t keep up.”

Buck’s heart stops in his chest.

He has to force his mouth to move. “Going to?” Not had; going to have. Buck’s heart picks up, thrumming like a plane getting ready to take off. “You mean—” he swallows, “I’m going to get to see her again?”

She jerks her head towards him, surprised. “Of course you are,” she says, then pauses. “I thought—I mean, I was thinking that maybe we could make this a full-time arrangement. You being involved, I mean.” She hesitates a bit, biting her lip. “If that’s something you—”

“Yes,” Buck interrupts, nodding vigorously. “God, yes, Hannah. You don’t even have to ask.”

He’s still frozen from the shock of it all, jolted upright in his seat, but he can feel hope spreading its wings somewhere inside of him. That strange feeling he’s never gotten used to—of looking down in his hands and actually seeing what he’s been chasing inside of them, of having.Buck wants to spend his whole life having.

Hannah laughs, relieved, and Buck can’t help but echo the sound, wiping the wetness out of his eyes because—god, could he actually get this? Could this actually be his to hold?

“Buck,” Hannah says with raised eyebrows, laugh still dancing on her tongue, “did you really think I was going to keep our daughter away from you, the father she clearly loves?”

Buck shakes his head, because he doesn’t know what he thought. He just thought that getting this lucky just doesn’t happen for someone like him. It never has. He might catch the pass but he always ends up dropping it before he can cross the goal line; every tick mark he makes towards dreams always gets scratched away eventually. He’s been starving his whole life, running towards the finish line that always flickers father away, and he’s used to it, being hungry.

But maybe he doesn’t have to be anymore.

“I’m not that bad of a mother, Buck,” Hannah says, pointedly. Then her voice softens, and she looks at Buck with a thousand hopes for the future in her eyes. She squeezes his hand as he says, “We’ll figure it out, okay? Custody and splitting weeks, or whatever, we’ll figure it out. I just know it would be my—and June’s—biggest privilege to have you in her life, forever.”

Buck nods and laughs, a wet sound full of an emotion and newly emerging giddiness. He’s squeezing her hand so hard that it must hurt, but he can’t bring himself to stop.

This might just be the best moment of his life.

He doesn’t get a chance to say that or to let any of the ocean of gratitude building on his tongue fall out of his lips, because, suddenly, the door is swinging open behind them with a creak, and June is running to jump back into her mom’s arm.

“Mom, look,” she says, holding up the aluminum wrapped candy, “they had airheads!”

“No way!” Hannah exclaims with her eyebrows wiggling goofily. Then she pauses and raises a single eyebrow at her daughter. “Did you get me one?”

“Yes,” June says, nodding very seriously. “And one for Dad.” She holds out the white mystery flavor to him.

Buck takes it carefully into his hands and looks down at it like he’s just been handed the world. “Thank you, June,” he says, voice thick.

His eyes find Eddie then, who’s still standing by the door watching them with something burrowing in his gaze. When he sees Buck looking, he tilts his head, a question.

Buck dips his chin down into a slight nod, eyes watering. It’s nothing but a bare motion, but he knows Eddie will understand anyways. He always does.

All at once, Eddie’s face stretches into a slow grin, crinkling the corners of his eyes.

He’s helpless but to smile back, ducking his chin so that he’s looking down into his lap as his mouth curls upwards. There’s something thrumming inside of him—a happiness that buzzes under his skin, flowing through his blood, wanting to spread and spread and spread until it knows every corner of him, every corner of this little life he’s lucky enough to get to stand inside.

He’s still looking down at his hands, twisted around June’s airhead, when he feels two familiar hands land firm on his shoulders, a warm presence melting into him from behind his chair. He wants to lean his head back into the soft cushion of Eddie’s stomach, look up at him backwards, and get to see that soft smile looking back down on him.

Instead, he feels Eddie lean forward without removing his hands from his shoulder and press a kiss right to Buck’s temple, dry but firm.

Buck’s heart bursts. What the actual f*ck —

“Think we should give June and Hannah some time alone?” Eddie asks in a low voice, his breath brushing the shell of Buck’s ear. Buck’s spine tingles with anticipation.

He nods mutely, overwhelmed, and then Eddie is grabbing his hand—the one not holding the airhead—and pulling him to his feet.

He’s led outside the hospital room and down the hallway, past where Christopher is sitting on a chair with his phone held horizontally in his hands, tapping away on some video game, and to a little corner where they’re out of sight and hearing distance, tucked away as private as possible.

Eddie drops his hand and turns to face him.

“Eddie,” Buck tries. He doesn’t know if it’s a statement or a question.

“You know, I was thinking,” Eddie says, “I might be on the market for a new house.”

Buck blinks. “What?”

“Think it might be time for an upgrade. You know, an extra bedroom, maybe.”

Buck is so f*cking confused. “Why would you and Christopher need a bigger house?”

“Not just for me and Chris, Buck,” Eddie says, giving him a knowing look. Then, softer, “June can’t sleep in Christopher’s twin bed forever.”

Buck blinks a couple times, before he freezes. “Are you—is that your way of asking me to move in with you?” he asks, incredulous.

Eddie smiles at him with teeth. Oh my god, Buck thinks. It is.

Eddie’s eyes are shining, softening pools of brown as he looks at him. It’s the same look Buck’s seen directed towards him a thousand times, but for some reason, he can’t place it now. It makes him feel warm all over, like he’s being pulled in, covered in it.

Eddie takes his hands, gently pulling them up from Buck’s side. His skin is soft, smooth. “Buck,” he says, meaningfully, and Buck feels his stomach drop with the weight put into that one word alone. “I don’t want to live a second longer with two of my favorite people in the world a whole ten minute drive away, okay? I want you in my house, and I don’t want it to just be for the night. I want to wake up to you next to me with June and Christopher just a hallway down, and I want to have to sleep past your alarm every morning because you get up freakishly early, and when I finally wake up, I want to find you in the kitchen making pancakes singing along to your terrible playlist or in the living room teaching June how to do push ups—”

“—that was for our astronaut training!” Buck interjects without thinking, because it was her idea and he feels like everyone needs to know that.

Eddie smiles at him, so f*cking soft, and continues. “I want to have to tag along to the zoo or the science museum or the arcade every weekend without fail because you can never say no to them, and I want you to go to the grocery store with the list we made together and come back with a thousand things we absolutely don’t need just because you thought June might like them, and I always always want to see your fancy shampoo on my shower rail next to the 2-in-1 I’m apparently unhygienic for using. I want you to take up half of my closet with all the old, disgusting hoodies you refuse to throw away and I want to fall asleep next to you every night even though you hog the blankets and can’t keep your cold f*cking feet to yourself. And I want to have to force you to dance with me and watch as you roll your eyes because you refuse to admit that you enjoy it, and,” he rubs his thumb over Buck’s knuckles, “I want you here right next to me—close enough to touch—every day, for the rest of my f*cking life.”

He takes a deep breath, eyes a gentle fire, and then says, “You, me, June and Christopher, forever. That’s what I want.”

Buck feels his heart in his throat. His hands are shaking where they’re clutched between Eddie’s. “Eddie,” he chokes out, because this sounds like a lot more than Eddie simply asking him to move in. “What are you saying?”

Eddie smiles, small but somehow the most blinding thing on Earth. “I’m saying I love you, you idiot.” He reaches to smooth out the fabric of Buck’s t-shirt right above his left pectoral. Buck wonders if he can feel Buck’s heart, throwing itself against his ribs over and over in effort to get as close to him as possible. “Obviously. You knew that.”

Buck stares. Swallows. Feels his entire world slot into place. “I, uh,” he says, “I didn’t, actually.”

Eddie laughs, loud and easy, practically throwing his head back with it. Then, halfway through, he freezes. “Wait,” he says, staring at Buck, “you’re serious?”

Buck nods, very slow.

Eddie is looking at him like this is the craziest thing he’s ever heard. “I told you that our family was good to me,” he throws, incredulously.

It takes a moment to place what he’s talking about, and when he does, he gapes at Eddie, disbelieving. “I—you were talking about lasagna,” Buck protests.

“I told you I loved you over Whitney Houston!”

“That was in the lyrics, how was I supposed to know you meant it like that?” His cheeks are starting to get red.

Eddie stares. “I cuddled with you on the couch!”

“I was emotionally compromised, you could’ve just been being a good friend!”

“I kissed you on the forehead!”

“That was like two minutes ago, I haven’t exactly had time to comprehend what it meant!” He’s all huffy and puffy now, because they’re arguing but they’re really not. He’s never felt so dizzy.

Eddie wracks his brain, and then: “I love you daughter like she’s my own!”

“She’s a very lovable kid!” Buck protests. Then, he sobers. “Plus, she kind of is. Your own, I mean.”

Eddie melts, a soft smile falling onto his face. He takes a step even closer to Buck, so that they’re nearly chest to chest, bringing his other hand up to land right above Buck’s heart. Instinctively, Buck’s own hands go to Eddie’s hips, thumbs sinking into the divot.

“I can’t believe you didn’t know,” Eddie says, soft this time, his words carrying like a gentle morning breeze.

Buck wants him this close always. He feels a little dizzy with it. All this time? he thinks.

“If you wanted me to,” Buck says, “you should’ve told me. Outright,” he adds, “and not through a metaphor involving Italian food.”

Eddie snorts. “It was a very clear metaphor,” he protests without any bite. “You’re like the smartest person I know; I don’t know how you didn’t get it.”

Buck wants to tell him that sometimes it’s not that he doesn’t get it, just that he refuses to let himself. That he’s so scared of being wrong that sometimes he lets himself ignore all the signs, lets himself see all the gaps instead of the places where the foundation is firm, solid. Nothing has ever been so sure that Buck can’t find a way to doubt it. But maybe, just maybe, that could change, starting with this.

Because Eddie? He’s always been a sure thing.

Instead of saying all that, he just beams and tilts his head, preening just a little bit. “The smartest person you know, huh?”

“Well,” Eddie says, smiling, “you’re also the biggest idiot, so don’t let it get to your head.”

That’s fair, Buck thinks. Very fair.

He must be the biggest idiot in the world, if this could’ve always been his but he just never opened his eyes enough to see it.

Can I have it? Buck had spent a lifetime asking, and the answer he had never let himself hear had been yes. Then, When can I have it? The answer: Always. Now. Whenever you’re ready.

Buck finally is. He’s ready. He wants to taste the surety of Eddie in his hands, and for once, he doesn’t want to try to poke holes into it, doesn’t want to spread his fingers and see if it will slip out. For once, he just wants to put it to his mouth, trust it to last, and drink it in for a lifetime.

“So,” Eddie says after a moment, rubbing his hands up and down over Buck’s shoulders like he can’t get enough of touching him. “What do you say?”

“To what? Forever?” He can’t stop grinning. He’s giddy with it, with the feeling of Eddie in front of him, eyes shining with a look that might just say mine.

“I mean, I meant more about the whole moving-in thing, but yeah, forev—”

The rest of Eddie’s sentence dies, but a thousand other things are born with the press of Buck’s lips against his. Buck never really thought he would have a chance to lean in like this—at least not a chance that he would ever feel brave enough to take. He always thought he would only get to know the taste of Eddie’s lips in his dreams, soft and barely felt—never real, never lasting long enough, always ended by the light breaking through the window.

But now, Eddie’s lips are real, tingling under his own, and they taste like a thousand, beautiful things—the cookies and cream ice cream from the zoo, Eddie’s listerine mouthwash he uses every morning, the mints he sometimes likes to suck on in the car. And forever, Buck thinks. They taste like the start of forever.

Eddie makes a sound under his lips, a surprised mmph that Buck laps up greedily, but he quickly gets with the program, pressing in, hands moving to slide over Buck’s back, running fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck.

Buck wants to live, die, and come back to life in the space between when their lips first touch and when they break apart a minute later with a pop.

“Yes,” Buck says, bringing his hands up to cup Eddie’s cheek. He leans his forehead against his to catch his breath only to find that Eddie’s eyes are even more beautiful from this close. He wants to spend lifetimes looking into them. “Yes to all of it. I love you. I’m in love with you, Eddie.”

Eddie grabs one of Buck’s hands and brings it up to his mouth. “Good,” he says, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “Because there’s no chance in hell I’m ever letting you go.”

Buck, embarrassingly, feels genuine tears rush to his eyes, soaking his waterline, because Eddie wants him. Eddie wants him, and he has wanted him. And he wants him forever, without grievance, like wanting him is beautiful and getting to have him is even better. And Buck, who’s spent his entire life feeling like loving him is a burden that eventually everyone would choose not to carry, doesn’t know what to do with that, besides cry a little bit about it.

Eddie sees the first tear fall and opens his mouth, like he’s going to say something. But he doesn’t have a chance, because suddenly June is rounding the corner, and Eddie looks to her with a smile before taking a step back from Buck. He doesn’t go very far, still close enough that Buck could reach out and retake his hands if he wanted to. Buck ridiculously wants Eddie to never stand out of his reach again.

“Dad!” June is saying, and Buck wipes away his tears before turning to her.

“Hey, June,” he smiles.

She bounds over to stand behind him, and instantly knowing what she wants, Buck crouches down and lets her climb up onto his back, arms looping under the bend of her knee.

“The doctors said that Mom can probably go home tonight!” She nestles her cheek into Buck’s neck.

“Wow, did they really?” Buck says. “That’s awesome.” He really means it, too. He can’t imagine what would’ve happened if Hannah hadn’t woken up. He’s unendingly glad that not only are her eyes firmly opened but she also seems to be doing really, really well in every other way too.

She nods, eagerly. Then says, a little bit more carefully, “I think I’m going to go home with her.”

It doesn’t hurt. Not even the slightest bit. “Alright kiddo,” he says, easily.

She peeks her head over his shoulder then, peering at Eddie curiously. Buck can’t make out much of her face from this angle, but even he can sense the sh*t-eating grin on her face. “Are you going to go home with Eddie, Dad?” she asks slyly.

Buck looks at Eddie, and Edde looks back at him with the most untamed grin he’s ever seen. Buck can’t help but laugh, uncontained, as he reaches for Eddie’s hand, holding it between them like it’s a promise.

“I think Buck’s going to be coming home with me from now on, princess,” Eddie says, answering June’s unspoken question.

June squeals, and then she’s scrambling to lower herself from Buck’s back. “I knew you guys were married!” she exclaims.

“That’s…not how it works,” Buck tries, but she’s already off, running down the hallway squeaking something about how she has to tell Christopher right now.

Buck leans his head on Eddie and laughs into his shoulder. He feels so happy that he’s not sure he can hold it all inside of him, but he guesses he doesn’t have to anymore. He has Eddie, and they can hold it all between them—the love, the fear, the hurt, the boundless joy Buck didn’t even know was possible before today. Ours, ours, ours, Buck thinks, it’s all ours.

Eddie’s joining chuckle reverberates through Buck’s body as his—boyfriend? partner? love of his life? all of the above?—runs his hands through his curls.

“Do you?” he asks.

“Do I what?” Buck asks, the words muffled by Eddie’s t-shirt.

“Want to go home?”

Buck pulls his head back up to meet Eddie’s eyes and then presses their lips together for a quick kiss before he says, “Yeah. I do.”

Home has never been a place for Evan Buckley. It wasn’t the loft, it sure as hell was never the Buckley house in Hershey, it wasn’t even the firehouse. For Buck, home had always been a person.

Or, now, more accurately—a people.

He thinks of the forever he always wanted and never thought he would get to have, the life he’s holding in his hands like a newborn bird that’s already been learning to fly for much longer than he realized it. He’s had this since he met Eddie, maybe, but he has it more than ever now, and it’s everything. And he could do anything with it.

And standing there in a hospital hallway with the taste of the love of his life still on his lips, he sees it, what it could be. And sure, it’s not all figured out—who knows how working out custody will go, how often he’ll end up with June, if Eddie really wants to upgrade his house—but as long as Eddie, Christopher, and June are sure things, for the first time in his life, Buck quite likes the sound of maybe.

Because maybe he and Eddie will find a realtor and go house shopping, tour every three-bedroom house up for sale near the station until they find one that seems like it’s sturdy enough to hold up all of their love, and try to pretend like they don’t want to cry a little bit when the realtor shows them the mortgage price. Maybe they’ll move there, boxes and boxes of things from the Diaz house and maybe even a few things that were worth keeping from the loft, and make it a home—Eddie’s puzzles in the closet and fancy tea in the pantry, all of Christopher’s hand-me-down toys lining the walls in June’s bedroom, a backyard big enough to run around in when the weather was nice, and a bed big enough to share for a lifetime.

Maybe Buck will finally take June to meet the rest of the family—because god knows Buck’s heard enough complaining over text from Maddie about how she had a niece she hadn’t met yet to last a lifetime—and maybe during every barbecue at Bobby’s house, Buck and Eddie will sit in lawn chairs pushed to closely together, watching with Eddie’s hand warm against his thighs as Christopher and Denny show June their favorite spot to dig for rolly-pollies. Maybe from now on life will be a montage of messy dinners and lasagna stains and library visits; never quiet, never simple, but always beautiful.

Maybe they’ll plant love like a seed and grow a garden in the backyard, a plot of flowers and ferns and tomatoes he can let June pick to make their tomato sauce. Maybe they’ll build a home for themselves from the ground up, brick by brick together, and they’ll never stop building—a lifetime of adding stones and slabs of wood and the arts and crafts projects June brings home from school that really look like nothing but mean everything anyways to the foundations.

Or maybe there’s already home enough for all of them in the walls of Buck’s heart, and none of the rest of it really matters, as long as Buck has love in his chest and Eddie, Christopher, and June at his fingers.

And, hey.

Maybe June will even be the first woman on Mars.