Controlled Burn

Ooh how abut number '11. toothpaste kisses' for soft prompts! Love your writing

Eddie is going to make everyone late.

Look: he really thinks most of it isn't his fault. He'd covered for somebody on B shift Tuesday, so he'd only had 24 hours off and he'd had to sleep through a good chunk of it, so laundry went a little by the wayside, leading to him tossing a frantic load into the washer at 5 am when he realized he had no clean work clothes. And, again, he’d covered that Tuesday shift after a 12 hour on Monday, so it’s reasonable that he forgot how dire the toothpaste situation was. The look Chris had given him when he said they needed to run to the store right now at bright and early 6 am would have withered a lesser soul, so at 6:04 Eddie, still in sweatpants and wearing ratty old slides is running down the block solo to grab whatever they have at the nearest corner store. He winces as he grabs the baking soda kind (Chris hates it) and books it back to the house, trying to breathe through the waves of oh god I’m a terrible father who left my kid alone and forgot about dental hygiene.

The house is considerably more crowded when he gets back to it. First, Chimney is lugging a dresser up the front stairs.

“What- hey- what-“ Eddie grabs the bottom of the thing, hastily shoving the toothpaste in his pocket. “What’s this?”

Chim tilts his head at him. “We were getting rid of it and you said you could use a new dresser, remember? I texted you I was coming to drop it off.”

Eddie’s phone is probably dinging away uselessly on his bedside table. “Right, yeah, sorry. There was a toothpaste emergency. Uh, thank you, we can just-“

Before he can come up with some way to finish that sentence, Carla opens the door. He hadn’t even seen her car, shit, he hopes there’s no calls right away when they get to work because he’s clearly not slept enough and should lay down again as soon as possible.

“Oh!” She says, surprised and cheerful. “Why don’t you bring that into the living room. I put your clothes in the dryer, Eddie, I figured if you were running the wash this early it was an emergency.”

Well thank god somebody has a plan and knows whats happening. He and Chim set the dresser next to a wall someplace as out of the way as they can get, and then Eddie points at Carla. “Thank you,” he says, trying to put as much sincerity into the words as possible, before pivoting to head down the hall to find Chris. Its not a long journey, the kid standing right around the corner. Eddie hands him the toothpaste. “There you go.”

Chris scrunches his nose. “Baking soda kind. Gross. And I don’t need it, Dad, Buck brought the good stuff.”

“Buck?”

“Hey.”

Eddie pivots again to look in the kitchen, where the man himself is leaning against the counter drinking a cup of coffee out of his current favorite mug, the one with the squiggly little drawing of a frog and a chicken dancing together. “Hi.” Eddie supposes he isn’t exactly surprised he’s here, Buck is a feature of their household as much as the mug he’s holding is, but he is a little concerned about the amount of people popping out of the woodwork without him noticing. “Anybody else here? Why’d you bring toothpaste?”

Buck grins. “I think you’ve seen everybody now. And you were running out when I was here last, you’ve been busy, figured it might be helpful.”

Eddie nods, a little… wordless, maybe, a little bowled over. “I’m gonna…” he gestures towards the bathroom and limply leaves the conversation. By the time he’s brushed his teeth (it is the good stuff, the pricier name brand arctic fresh, Eddie usually goes for generic spearmint) Chris and Carla are ready to head out the door. Eddie is glancing at the clock and nervously calculating exactly how wet the clothes he’s about to put on are going to be as he says goodbye, leaning to kiss Carla, Chris, and Chim’s cheeks. “Ok, thank you, have a great day at school, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It takes a few seconds of staring at Chimney’s trying not to laugh face, and listening to Chris’s not-trying-not-to-laugh-at-all guffaws before his brain catches up to his actions. “Oh my god.”

Chimney grins and Eddie shakes his head futilely against the oncoming barrage. "I always knew I was your favorite." He smacks a hand to his cheek and swoons, and Eddie rolls his eyes. "Everyone said it was Buck, but I knew the Han-Diaz love connection was just waiting to happen."

Buck is laughing somewhere behind him, and Eddie wants to see what look is on his face, but instead he rolls his eyes again, harder, and says "I'm going to check on the laundry," and shoos his son out the door before fleeing to the dryer.

Of course it's all still fucking damp. They're already pushing it on time though (maybe if all three of them are late they can unionize against Bobby?) so he shucks his sweats and shimmies his way into the unpleasant cool of his pants. When he emerges from his shirt, wincing, he finds Buck in the hallway with him.

“Chimney says we’re running late and if you don’t hurry up he’s leaving you for dead, no matter your new found love.”

“I know, I know, I just need to find my shoes-“

“I put ‘em by the door,” Buck smiles, and then the smile becomes a grin. “Hey, Eddie.”

“Yeah?” Eddie says with the right amount of apprehension for the situation.

“No goodbye kiss for me?” He tilts his head, grin thoroughly classifiable as shit-eating.

“We’re going to the same place, Buck. I’m probably gonna ride in your car.” He’s absolutely going to ride in his car, they both know it.

“Ah, so is Chimney, he got one.”

And Eddie could defend himself with the reasonable explanation that he just happened to be standing in a row next to the people he’d meant to press his affection onto, or the less reasonable explanation that he only gives goodbye kisses to people whose names start with a C, but instead he says “You want a kiss, Buck?”

And he’s moving before he loses nerve, and Buck is also moving, laughing at him, so again Eddie feels like it’s not entirely his fault when his kiss lands sort of on his cheek but mostly- it’s mostly on his mouth, which is soft and exhaling a little surprised sound against Eddie. They both pull back but maybe not as far as they probably should, if they weren’t them, if Eddie hadn’t spent the last few weeks or maybe years wondering how he could ask Buck to live on the shelf with all the mugs he’s cycled through as favorites. Then Buck darts his head forward, pecking another little kiss to his mouth, and Eddie chases him for a third, and Buck’s hand tangles in his shirt and he says “Oh” into Eddie’s mouth because the fabric is wet under his touch.

“Buckley, Diaz, I’m getting in my car, and I’m not going to defend you to Cap!”

Even at Chimney’s words they don’t entirely jump apart, just slide back a little, stand more firmly facing each other as the front door distantly opens and shuts.

“We’re gonna be late,” Buck says, an awed little smile pulling at his face.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, a little breathless. Maybe he can blame that on the cold clothes. “We should probably get going.”

Buck nods, and barely finishes the motion before Eddie puts his hands on his face and pulls him in for another minty kiss, firm, a promise. Buck is grinning when he backs off and Eddie is sure his face is a mirror image as he ducks around him to go find his shoes.

They’re late. But as Buck settles next to him on the couch, all pressed along his side despite the still damp clothes, Eddie thinks it was worth the wait.