Work Text:
Christopher Diaz had always prided himself on being a good kid.
He liked school, got good grades, and stayed mostly out of trouble.
That was until Jamie had come along.
Trouble seemed to follow Jamie like a bloodhound tracking a missing person.
Not loud trouble, not the kind that got you hauled into the principal’s office on day one. Jamie’s trouble was quieter. Sneakier. The kind that started with a question, or a grin, or a hey, don’t you wanna see what happens?
Christopher always did.
That was probably the problem.
So lately trouble was finding Christopher too.
The first time had been behind the gym, when Jamie had spotted the maintenance door propped open and said, “Do you think they keep all the confiscated stuff in there?”
Christopher had known the answer to that question didn’t matter. Jamie had already started walking toward it.
“We’re not supposed to be back here,” Christopher had hissed, even as he followed.
Jamie had looked back over his shoulder, grin already in place. “That’s what makes it interesting.”
It had turned out to be mostly mops, cleaning supplies, and three dented basketballs. Completely boring. A waste of time, really.
Except Jamie had held up an ancient traffic cone like treasure and whispered, “Worth it.”
Christopher had laughed. He hadn’t meant to. It had just slipped out.
That had been the thing about Jamie. Christopher always felt half a second behind around him, just enough time to know something was maybe a bad idea, but not enough to stop himself from going along with it.
After that there was the time Jamie convinced him to take the long way back from lunch because “someone said there’s a mural hidden behind the portable classrooms,” and the time they’d stayed out during break trying to figure out if the weird buzzing noise near the back fence was a broken light or a trapped bee colony.
It had never been anything huge. Nothing serious. Nothing that felt, at the time, like the sort of thing that could grow teeth.
Christopher should have known better.
His dad would’ve said that, probably. Not mean. Just tired in that specific way parents got when they were disappointed and trying not to make it worse.
Buck would’ve raised his eyebrows and gone, “Buddy,” in that tone that somehow managed to mean I love you and what were you thinking? at the same time.
Christopher tried not to think about either of them as Jamie nudged his shoulder and tilted his head toward the gate at the side of the community pool.
It was a Saturday afternoon, warm enough that the concrete shimmered and the chain-link fence around the pool buzzed faintly in the sun. Swim practice had ended an hour ago. The place was closed up, locked, empty.
Or it was supposed to be.
One of the side gates hadn’t latched properly.
Jamie noticed immediately.
Christopher should’ve known that was a bad sign.
“I dare you,” Jamie said.
Christopher rolled his eyes. “That only works on little kids.”
Jamie grinned. “Okay. I double dare you.”
“That’s still little kid stuff.”
“Then prove you’re too mature for it and come look.”
Christopher looked through the gap in the gate. Lounge chairs, stacked kickboards, sunlight flashing off the flat blue surface of the water. Nothing interesting.
“Look at what?”
Jamie lowered his voice dramatically. “The office window’s open.”
Christopher stared at him. “And?”
“And what if they left snacks in there?”
Christopher snorted before he could stop himself. “You think the community pool office has secret snacks?”
“I think adults hide snacks everywhere. It’s one of the only perks of being an adult.”
“That’s not true.”
“That is one hundred percent true. Your dad definitely has snacks hidden somewhere.”
Christopher thought about the jar of peanut butter cups Buck kept on the lowest shelf in the kitchen, which Buck seemed convinced was a genius hiding spot despite the fact that Christopher checked it first every time.
Jamie saw the flicker in his face and pointed. “See? Evidence.”
Christopher should have walked away then.
Instead he said, “You are not breaking into a pool office for chips.”
Jamie held up both hands. “We are not breaking in. The window is already open. That’s practically an invitation.”
“That is not what invitation means.”
“Wow,” Jamie said solemnly, “you should be a lawyer.”
Christopher huffed out a laugh, and that was the problem too. Jamie made everything feel smaller than it was. Lighter. Harmless.
They slipped through the gate first.
Christopher hesitated for maybe three seconds before following.
That was his second mistake.
The first had been letting Jamie convince him to meet there in the first place.
The office was tucked around the side, a squat little room with a service window and faded flyers taped inside the glass. Up close, Christopher could see that the window really was cracked open a few inches.
Jamie leaned in, peering through the gap. “I’m telling you, there are absolutely snacks in there.”
“There are absolutely not.”
“Only one way to find out.”
“Jamie—”
But Jamie had already reached an arm through the gap, fingers scrabbling for the latch.
It clicked.
“Jamie.”
Jamie turned back, triumphant. “See?”
Christopher opened his mouth to say this is a terrible idea, but he didn’t get the chance.
An alarm started screaming.
It was so loud Christopher actually jumped. Jamie swore and nearly banged his head on the window frame scrambling back.
“Oh my God,” Christopher said.
“Okay,” Jamie said, too quickly, eyes wide now. “Okay, we can fix this.”
“That doesn’t sound true!”
“Run?”
“That definitely sounds less true!”
The alarm kept wailing.
Panic came over Christopher in a rush—hot, fast, instant. He could already picture it: security cameras, someone calling his dad, his dad’s face when he found out, Buck’s face after that. He swallowed hard.
“We have to go,” Jamie said.
They turned for the gate.
A security truck swung into the lot before they’d made it three steps.
Christopher stopped short.
There was a moment—a tiny, stupid, suspended moment—where Christopher still thought maybe this could somehow turn into something funny. A story. A close call.
It did not turn into a story.
It turned into police.
Which turned into sitting on a hard plastic chair in a bland little office off the lobby while a police officer with kind eyes and a coffee stain on his sleeve asked for their names, their parents’ numbers, their home addresses.
Jamie bounced one knee and kept insisting they “hadn’t even gone inside.”
Christopher stared at the floor.
The officer turned to him.
“What’s your home address, Christopher?”
Christopher looked up.
And froze.
Because suddenly the answer wasn’t simple.
His home address was his dad’s house. Obviously. That was where he lived. That was where his room was, where everything felt familiar, where his dad kept emergency granola bars in the kitchen drawer and pretended not to notice when Christopher stole them before dinner.
But the officer hadn’t asked where he lived.
He’d asked where to take him.
And those felt, at that moment, like two different questions.
His dad would be scared. Then angry. Then disappointed.
Buck would understand the shape of it, maybe. The way one bad choice could slide into another before you even realised what you were doing. The way you could know something was dumb and still do it anyway because someone was looking at you like come on.
Buck would still tell him off. Christopher knew that. But Buck would go easy.
Wouldn’t he?
Christopher swallowed.
And gave the officer Buck’s address.
Christopher stared at the edge of the desk and tried not to think too hard about what he’d just done.
*
Buck opened the door, one hand still holding a dish towel.
He took in the scene in a single sweep. The police officer. Christopher. Christopher’s face.
Every easy line in his body vanished.
“Is he okay?”
The officer nodded. “He’s fine. Bit of a scare. We just needed to bring him home to a guardian.”
Buck’s eyes cut immediately back to Christopher. “You hurt anywhere?”
Christopher shook his head.
Something in Buck’s shoulders loosened, but only slightly. “Okay.”
The officer gave the brief version. Community pool. Alarm triggered. No damage beyond the opened window. No charges, just a warning and a very clear suggestion that maybe these two kids had had enough excitement for one day.
Buck thanked him. Signed something. Listened carefully.
Christopher kept waiting for Buck to glance over and give him that seriously? look.
Instead Buck stayed calm all the way until the officer left.
Then he closed the door. And leaned against it.
When he finally spoke, his voice was steady. Not angry. Which was somehow worse.
“Okay,” he said. “You wanna tell me what happened?”
Christopher shrugged, because that was easier than words.
“Christopher.”
That made him look up.
Buck wasn’t glaring. He wasn’t pacing. He just looked… serious. Hurt, maybe. Concerned in a way that made Christopher’s stomach twist.
“It was dumb,” Christopher muttered.
“Yeah,” Buck said. “It was.” “I’m glad you’re okay. I need you to know that comes first. Always.” He exhaled slowly. “But buddy, what were you thinking?”
Christopher picked at the seam of his shorts. “We weren’t gonna do anything.”
“Jamie said the window was open,” he mumbled. “And maybe there were snacks.”
Buck stared at him.
Christopher winced. “I know how that sounds.”
“It sounds,” Buck said carefully, “like the world’s worst heist.”
That got a tiny laugh out of Christopher before he could stop it.
Buck’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t smile all the way. “I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Christopher’s face went hot.
“You gave them my address.”
Christopher’s gaze dropped immediately.
“Why?”
That was the question, wasn’t it.
Christopher swallowed hard. “Because I thought you’d be less mad.” “Not because Dad’s mean. He’s not. I know that. I just—” He stopped, frustrated. “I just thought—”
“You thought I’d go easy on you.”
Christopher didn’t answer.
Buck nodded once. “Okay.”
He sounded so calm about it that Christopher finally looked up.
Buck rubbed one hand over the back of his neck. “I’m really glad you felt like you could come here.”
“But,” Buck said, and there it was, firm and unmistakable, “I need you to understand something. Safe and easy are not the same thing.”
Christopher stared at him.
“You can come to me. Always. Anytime. For anything.” Buck’s voice didn’t waver. “If you’re scared, if you’re in trouble, if you’ve made a mess you don’t know how to fix—you call me. You come to me. That is never gonna be a problem.”
The tightness in Christopher’s chest shifted, softened, hurt in a different way.
Buck went on. “But I am not gonna help you by pretending bad choices aren’t bad choices.”
“You don’t follow somebody just because they make it sound fun,” Buck said. “You don’t keep saying yes to stuff you know feels wrong just because you don’t wanna look uncool or boring or whatever.”
“I wasn’t..."
Buck tilted his head. “No?”
Christopher slumped. “Maybe a little.”
Buck nodded like he appreciated the honesty. “Yeah. I figured.”
“Jamie makes everything feel like not a big deal.”
Buck was quiet for a moment. “Some people do.”
It was such an adult-sounding answer that Christopher glanced up again.
Buck’s face had gone gentler somehow, but sadder too.
“That’s kind of what makes them dangerous,” Buck said.
“Jamie’s not bad.”
“I didn’t say he was."
"But you think he is."
“No.” Buck shook his head. “I think he might be a kid who makes bad choices. Which is different. And I think right now you’re making some with him."
Christopher stared at the carpet.
“You’re a good kid,” Buck said.
Something hot and awful burned behind Christopher’s eyes.
“Hey.” Buck leaned slightly closer. “You are. This doesn’t change that.”
Christopher scrubbed at his face with the heel of his hand. “Then why do I keep doing stupid stuff?”
Buck’s expression softened completely at that. “Because you’re a kid."
"I'm fifteen."
Buck made a face. “Right. Ancient. Sorry.”
Christopher huffed a laugh.
Buck bumped his shoulder lightly. “And because sometimes being a good kid makes you curious what happens if you aren’t one for five minutes.”
That made Christopher look at him sharply.
Buck gave him a tiny, crooked smile. “You think I don’t know that feeling?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” Buck sobered again. “But buddy, there are people in this world who will hand you the match and step back to see what burns. You gotta be careful who you let close enough to do that.”
“Okay. I’m calling your dad.”
Christopher groaned. “Buck—”
Buck’s eyebrows went up. “Nope.”
“You already did the whole speech.”
“Yes,” Buck said. “And now comes consequences.”
Christopher stared at him. “You are literally the worst.”
Buck snorted. “That’s fair. Come on.”
*
Eddie answered on the second ring.
“Hey, Buck.”
Buck didn’t bother easing into it. “Don’t panic—Christopher’s okay.”
Silence.
Then, immediately, “What happened?”
“There was a thing at the community pool,” Buck said. “Alarm got triggered. Police got involved. He’s okay. No one’s hurt. No charges.”
“Why is he with you?”
Buck glanced down. “Because when they asked where to take him, he gave them my address.”
The silence on the other end this time was different. Larger.
Buck closed his eyes briefly.
“Eddie?”
“I’m on my way,” Eddie said.
Then he hung up.
Buck stood there for a second with the dead phone in his hand.
From the couch, Christopher said very quietly, “Is he really mad?”
Buck looked over. “He’s scared.”
Christopher curled in on himself.
Buck crossed back into the room and crouched in front of him. “Hey. I’m not gonna let this turn into everybody yelling at you, okay?”
Christopher looked unconvinced.
“You screwed up,” Buck said, softer. “But you’re not alone in it.”
By the time Eddie knocked, the rain had started.
Not a storm exactly. Just one of those steady LA rains that felt like the sky had changed its mind halfway through the day.
Buck opened the door.
Eddie came in all intensity and wet denim and barely-contained panic. His eyes found Christopher instantly.
“Hey,” Eddie said, and the single word held too much.
Christopher shrank back into the couch corner.
“He’s okay,” Buck said. “Sit down.”
Eddie looked at him like he’d forgotten other people got to issue instructions about his son.
Buck crossed the room and kept his voice level. “I’ve spoken to him.”
Eddie frowned. “Buck—”
“I know.” Buck kept going before Eddie could gather steam. “I know it’s not my job.”
Eddie went still.
Buck glanced at Christopher, then back to Eddie. “But I want him to know he can come to me.” “I also don’t want him thinking that means I’ll go easy on him.”
The room changed.
It was subtle. Quiet. But Buck felt it.
Eddie’s expression shifted—not softer, exactly. More like something inside him had just been pulled sharply into focus.
Christopher, apparently sensing that the worst of the incoming storm had somehow been diverted, muttered, “Can I be excused?"
Eddie nodded once, distracted.
The house fell quiet except for the rain ticking at the windows.
“You okay?” Buck asked.
Eddie laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “No, yeah. Sure.”
Buck leaned against the arm of the couch. “You wanna do the whole ‘mad parent’ thing now, or…”
Eddie shook his head slowly.
Buck frowned.
Eddie looked at him then, properly. His eyes were strange. Wide, almost. Not panicked. Not exactly.
Just wrecked.
“Buck,” he said.
Buck straightened. “What?”
“I should take him home.”
Buck blinked. “Okay.”
Eddie nodded once, clipped and abrupt. “Okay.”
That was weird, but Buck didn’t push. He helped Christopher gather his things, listened while Eddie did a gentler, quieter version of the parenting talk Buck knew Christopher had already half-absorbed, and stood in the doorway while the two of them left.
Christopher gave him one last miserable little wave from the passenger seat.
Buck cleaned the mug Christopher had abandoned on the coffee table. Wiped down a counter that didn’t need wiping. Checked his phone more than once.
Long enough for Eddie to get Christopher home.
Long enough for the night to settle into something quieter.
Buck told himself Eddie was fine.
He told himself whatever that look had been, he’d probably imagined most of it.
He was halfway to convincing himself when the knock came.
Buck frowned and crossed to the door.
When he opened it, Eddie was standing there again in the rain, soaked through this time, like he hadn’t bothered to wait under the building overhang.
“Eddie?”
Eddie looked at him with an expression Buck couldn’t read.
Then he said, “You’re Christopher’s other dad.”
Buck stared.
Rain pattered in the silence between them.
“What?”
“You’re Christopher’s other dad,” Eddie said again, firmer this time, like Buck being confused was somehow the unreasonable part here.
Eddie stepped closer under the weak porch light. His hair was dripping. His jacket was dark with rain. “He didn’t give them my address.”
Buck frowned. “Eddie—”
“He gave them yours.”
Something in Buck’s chest shifted.
“That wasn’t because he thought you’d let him get away with it,” Eddie said. “Not really.” “It’s because when things went bad, when he was scared, when he needed home—he thought of you.”
Buck had no idea what to do with the look on Eddie’s face.
"Eddie..."
“You are his other dad,” Eddie said again, softer now, but somehow more intense. “You show up like one. You love him like one. You protect him like one.” His throat worked. “And I think maybe I’ve known that for longer than I knew what to call it.”
Buck’s brain snagged somewhere around love him and never recovered.
He just stared.
Eddie laughed once under his breath, shaky and disbelieving at himself. “See, this is exactly why I should’ve rehearsed this.”
Buck, still lost, said, “Rehearsed what?”
And Eddie—God, Eddie—looked at him like he was the most terrifying thing Buck had ever survived.
“This,” Eddie said. “This part.”
Buck’s mouth went dry.
“When Christopher was little, I used to think all the time about who I could trust with him,” Eddie said quietly. “Who I could leave him with. Who would treat him right. Who would stay.”
Eddie’s eyes never left his. “And then there was you.”
Buck’s heart stuttered hard enough to hurt.
“You just…” Eddie gave a helpless little shake of his head. “You kept showing up. For him. For me. For all of it. And tonight, hearing you say you wanted him to know he could come to you—but that you wouldn’t go easy on him—”
His voice cracked off there.
Buck didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
Eddie swallowed. “That’s not babysitting, Buck.”
The world narrowed to the porch, the rain, Eddie’s face.
“That’s parenting,” Eddie said. “That’s love.”
Buck blue-screened, fully and completely.
Because this was Eddie. Eddie, standing on his doorstep in the rain, looking like he’d cracked something open in himself and couldn’t put it back.
Eddie, saying love like it was terrifying.
Buck tried for words.
Got none.
Eddie noticed, because of course he did, and some tiny, pained smile touched his mouth. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I know. This is a lot.”
Buck found one thought. Clung to it.
“Eddie.” “What are you saying?”
Eddie stared at him for half a heartbeat like he couldn’t believe he still had to say it plainly.
Then he did.
“I’m saying I’m in love with you.”
Buck actually felt the floor tilt.
Eddie kept going, maybe because now that he’d started, stopping wasn’t possible anymore.
“I think I have been for a while,” he said. “Maybe a long while. I just kept calling it something else because that was easier. Because you were Buck, and we were us, and Christopher loved you, and I loved you, and I—” He broke off, exhaled hard. “I didn’t know what to do with that.”
Buck’s eyes went wide.
Eddie laughed once, breathless and wrecked. “Still don’t, honestly.”
Buck’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
Nothing.
Eddie nodded like that tracked. “Right. Okay. Good talk.”
He actually started to step back.
That snapped Buck’s brain back online just enough to lunge verbally, if not physically.
“Wait.”
Buck stared at him, rain-silvered and beautiful and impossible.
“You can’t just—” Buck broke off, dragged both hands through his hair. “You can’t just say that and then leave.”
Eddie’s expression did something achingly vulnerable. “I wasn’t gonna leave leave. I just thought maybe your face meant I’d ruined your life.”
Buck barked out a laugh, half-hysterical. “My face means I’m trying to have a thought.”
That pulled a real, startled laugh out of Eddie.
Buck pointed at him. “Don’t laugh. I’m in crisis.”
“Buck—”
“No, because—” He stopped, pressed a hand to his chest like that might settle the riot under his ribs. “You said love and other dad and parenting and then I am in love with you like you weren’t trying to kill me on my own doorstep.”
Eddie stared.
Buck stared back.
Then Eddie’s face softened into something almost unbearably tender.
“Oh,” he said quietly.
Buck blinked. “What oh?”
“That doesn’t sound like a no.”
Buck’s heart did something stupid.
Because it wasn’t a no. It wasn’t even close.
He looked at Eddie and realised with a dizzying rush that somewhere along the line, without ceremony or permission, Eddie had become stitched into every part of his life that mattered. Christopher. Dinner at the Diaz house. Grocery lists and movie nights and bad days and good ones and all the empty spaces in between.
Eddie had become home so slowly Buck had never noticed the walls going up around him.
“Oh,” Buck said faintly.
Eddie’s mouth twitched. “Yeah.”
“Oh my God.”
“Buck.”
“You’re in love with me.”
Eddie took a cautious step closer. “Yeah.”
Buck looked at him, really looked, and something inside him gave way all at once.
“Eddie,” he said, and heard the answer in his own voice before he’d even found the words. “I’m—”
He didn’t get to finish.
Eddie closed the last inch of space and kissed him.
It wasn’t tentative.
It wasn’t a question.
It was Eddie’s hand sliding wet and warm around the back of Buck’s neck, Eddie’s mouth against his with all the certainty he’d been trying to drag into words and failing, Eddie stepping into him like he already knew Buck was going to catch him.
Buck did.
Of course he did.
His hands landed at Eddie’s waist, then climbed, one into the damp fabric at his shoulder, the other into his hair, and then Buck was kissing him back like the last five minutes hadn’t shattered him in the best possible way.
Rain cooled the air around them.
Eddie’s mouth was warm.
Buck made a helpless sound into the kiss and Eddie answered by deepening it, by tilting Buck’s face up just enough to make Buck feel dizzy with it.
When they finally broke apart, both of them breathing too hard, Buck kept his forehead pressed to Eddie’s.
Rain slid down Eddie’s cheek. Buck had no idea if it was all rain.
“Wow,” Buck said.
Eddie laughed softly, a little wrecked around the edges. “Yeah.”
Buck’s hands stayed where they were.
“You kissed me in the rain,” he said, because apparently that was the thought his brain had promoted to top priority.
Eddie’s smile widened, small and helpless and so fond Buck almost died of it. “Seemed right.”
"You are unbelievable.”
Eddie’s hand, still at the back of Buck’s neck, softened. “You okay?”
Buck looked at him.
Really looked.
At the rain in his lashes. The fear still lingering under the relief. The hope, bright and almost disbelieving.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think maybe I am.”
Eddie’s eyes searched his face. “Yeah?”
Buck nodded.
Then, because Eddie had started this whole impossible, beautiful thing with the truth, Buck gave him one back.
“I love him too,” he said quietly. “Christopher.”
Eddie’s face changed completely.
Not surprise. Not exactly.
Recognition.
“I know,” Eddie whispered.
Buck swallowed around the thickness in his throat. “I love you too.”
Eddie closed his eyes for a second like the words had hit him somewhere tender. When he opened them again, Buck kissed him first this time.
Softer. Slower. Certain.
By the time they came up for air again, both of them were smiling in that startled, private way people did when the world had just changed and they were the only two who knew it yet.
Eddie brushed his thumb once, gently, over Buck’s cheekbone.
Buck leaned into it without thinking.
Then he huffed a little laugh. “So.”
“So,” Eddie echoed.
“Christopher accidentally commits minor crime,” Buck said. “And somehow you end up kissing me on my doorstep.”
Eddie’s mouth twitched. “That does sound bad when you phrase it like that.”
Buck grinned. “I’m just making sure we have the story straight.”
Eddie shook his head, smiling now in full. “You are impossible.”
“Says the man who came back in the rain to confess his love.”
“That was deeply brave, actually.”
“That was deeply insane.”
Eddie leaned in, close enough that Buck could feel his smile. “Worked, though.”
Buck’s grin softened.
“Yeah,” he said.
And somewhere across the city, Christopher was probably lying awake in bed, mortified beyond recovery, no doubt convinced he’d ruined at least three lives and possibly his own future.
Buck was going to have to text him in the morning.
Something reassuring. Not too reassuring.
Maybe just: Still grounded. Still love you.
Eddie seemed to follow the same line of thought, because he exhaled and said, “He’s gonna be so embarrassed when he finds out this somehow led to…”
He gestured between them.
Buck snorted. “We are absolutely not telling him that.”
Eddie laughed. “No, definitely not.”
Buck bumped his forehead lightly to Eddie’s. “At least not until he’s thirty.”
Eddie smiled into the space between them.
Then Buck drew him inside, out of the rain.
And this time, when the door shut behind them, it felt a little bit like coming home.