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Eddie has learned to be suspicious of a quiet house.
The first time he was ever really alone, Christopher was fourteen and in Texas. Before that, he leapt from his parents’ house to the one he shared with Shannon and from there to a barracks and back again; from a house filled with the muffled static of a crying baby over the monitor to the one in LA filled with the sound of Christopher’s crutches against the floor in a steady background rhythm. Texas was a nightmare, and then they came home. And there was Chris, and there was Buck, and Eddie breathed in the sounds of a house filled with love and light.
And then, of course, there was Lucas: a cooing, happy baby who had grown into a chatty toddler who became a bright, energetic kid. Eddie learned to differentiate the sounds of his footsteps from the tiptoes of something mischievous; the lull in his play from the tension of the quiet when he was doing something he shouldn’t; the hush of his muffled giggling overlapping with Buck’s when they inevitably conspired together in the other room. The soundtrack of their lives together, interspersed with older laughter when Chris was home and brightened always by Buck’s presence. Eddie loves nothing more than being able to go quiet and listen for them in other rooms, relaxing into the reassurance of their presence just around the corner.
And so now, even as Lucas gets older, there’s something unsettling about a silent house. He’s ten now, and more than capable of entertaining himself. It’s just that he usually doesn’t. Lucas is a social butterfly to say the least— it’s rare for him to go very long without coming to find one or the other of them, excited to tell them whatever thought has come to mind or all about whatever book he’s been reading for school. Not that either of them are complaining in the slightest.
But today, Eddie is halfway through folding a basket of laundry when he realizes suddenly that it’s been almost an hour since Lucas last came in for a snack. It’s a perfect, easy Saturday— Buck is at Maddie’s helping her with a project for Jee’s upcoming birthday, and Eddie is catching up on chores at home while Lucas drifts in and out of the house, alternating between the backyard and his bedroom with intermissions to chatter at Eddie. Later, they’re all planning on going out for tacos— a joint activity between the Diazes and the Hans slated for after Jee-Yun’s art class.
Eddie pauses between t-shirts to listen, but the house is quiet— there’s no rustling from Lucas’ room or creak of the backdoor that he always forgets to close behind him. There’s just himself and Apple, who’s curled up on the floor by his feet, her tail thumping lazily against the floor.
“Hm,” Eddie says, looking at her. She cocks her golden head attentively and he smiles a little. “What do you think?” he asks. “Is your boy getting himself into trouble?”
Apple looks back, her warm eyes unmoving.
“Okay,” Eddie sighs, reaching out to stroke her floppy, silken ear. “Let’s go see.”
Apple leaps up and follows him as he moves down the hall, bypassing the room he still thinks of as Christopher’s even though it serves more like a guest room now in favor of checking down the hall in Lucas’ room. He peeks in around the doorframe, taking in the familiar sight— yellow walls; unmade bed with rumpled blue sheets; a forgotten book on the floor and one of Apple’s tug toys lying haphazardly across the doorway. Lucas’ desk is a mess adorned with an overflowing pencil cup and a candy wrapper that Eddie has told him a hundred times not to leave lying around; his backpack hangs open on the chair precariously; his sneakers are tossed to the side and his closet door is wide open for reasons unknown. But the room is empty, a still life with no Lucas.
Eddie moves on to his own bedroom then, and looks in from the doorway to find his son.
He and Buck have always kept an open-door policy— and so had Eddie when it was just him and Chris was younger. Neither of them ever wanted the boys to feel like they couldn’t come into their parents’ room, or to feel like there was some part of their own home that was off-limits to them. Even so, it’s unusual for Lucas to wander in on his own; there’s not much in Buck and Eddie’s bedroom that can hold his attention, particularly when he has his own treasure trove of endless entertainment in his own bedroom.
But today, he’s lying on his stomach on the carpet, his chin resting in his hands as the sun from the window reaches long rays over him, warming the soft dark blue of the t-shirt on his back. He looks tiny like this, his socked feet crossed behind him, boyish limbs everywhere and blonde curls wild as ever.
Eddie can’t help but soften at the sight of him— and then he catches a glimpse of what Lucas is gazing at and his heart skips a beat against the cavern of his chest.
“Hey, bud,” Eddie says, his voice soft and deliberately even as he moves a little closer— taking in the open closet and the box with its lid flipped over onto the carpet. Inside, there’s an amalgamation of things belonging to him and to Buck— photos and postcards, that broken magnet from the zoo that’s missing a giraffe now but that Buck didn’t want to throw away.
Lucas looks up. It’s a source of pride for Eddie that he doesn’t startle or look caught or guilty— that he knows he’s welcome in this space, that Eddie would never be angry with him for being curious. But as he settles down on the carpet next to him, his back against the foot of the bed, he looks at the object between them and still sort of wishes it were anything else, that he’d taken more care to put this particular thing somewhere a little more shadowed.
The box is yawning open on its hinges. The silver star inside catches the light and glints invitingly. And Eddie’s son looks up at him with big, soft blue eyes full of innocent curiosity. There’s a prickle of discomfort beneath Eddie’s skin, the same thing that had been there before when Chris had held the medal in his own little hands— something that feels wrong about their sweetness sharing space with the physical reminder of the worst moments of Eddie’s life.
“Hi, Dad,” Lucas says.
His fingers are on the edge of the box, holding it open. Eddie fights the urge to reach out and take it from him, snap it shut and lock it all away. He reminds himself actively that he isn’t that kind of parent, that he won’t be.
“Hi,” he says instead, smiling softly. “What are you doing in here?”
Lucas shrugs. “I was bored,” he says.
Eddie smiles a little bigger at that, a little more natural. “You were, huh?” he asks, nudging Lucas with his foot lightly. “Daddy not here to entertain you? Me and Apple weren’t enough?”
The dog in question has jumped up onto the bed and curled her big body into a warm sunlit circle, and doesn’t even lift her head at the sound of her name.
Lucas rolls his eyes in a way that’s very reminiscent of Buck.
“You were doing laundry,” Lucas says. “That’s boring.”
Eddie can’t really contest that. “Okay,” he relents. “So what have you been getting into?”
Lucas shrugs again, shifting his focus back to the box in front of him. “I found this,” he says, glancing back at Eddie. “What is it?”
Eddie breathes in.
It’s not an easy question, as simple as it sounds coming out of Lucas’ mouth. But he’s older now. He’s steadier. He can do this.
“It’s a medal,” he answers. “It’s called a silver star.”
Lucas looks at it again, and then at Eddie. “Is it yours?” he asks. “From firefighting?”
It occurs to Eddie then, not exactly for the first time, that Lucas lives in a different reality than his big brother. Lucas has only ever known his parents to be firefighters. He lives in a world in which they are both heroes, of a simple and equal kind, people who protect their community and rescue cats from trees and don’t hold guns.
The thought of shattering this illusion that Lucas has of him hits Eddie all at once, swift and brutal.
But he won’t lie to him. He can’t.
“It is mine,” he says gently. “But it’s not from firefighting.”
Lucas has seen those medals before— Eddie remembers watching Buck hang one around his neck, his own and his husband’s indistinguishable with their red bands. That was simpler, easier. Eddie no more believes he deserves that medal than this one, but there’s less to think about. They did a brave thing. Someone thought they should be rewarded. Nobody’s blood was on their hands. And Buck was next to him.
This is a different story.
Lucas frowns. “It’s not?”
“No,” Eddie answers, taking a breath. “Did you know that I used to be in the Army?”
Lucas’ blue eyes widen. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Eddie tells him, wishing he didn’t have to but pushing onward anyway. “A long time ago.”
Lucas thinks about it for a second. He tilts his head, looking a little bit like Apple. “Before Chris was born?”
“Not quite,” Eddie smiles. “When he was a baby, though.”
“Oh,” Lucas says, looking back at the medal for a moment. Eddie knows what the next question is going to be and braces for it before Lucas ever opens his mouth. It still slices through him though, when Lucas says: “How did you get it?”
Eddie thinks back reluctantly, and then quickly shuts down the visions of dark skies and chopper blades; the sting of the sand against his cheeks and the searing pain of a bullet.
“Well,” he says, breath catching as he clears his throat. “You know how soldiers are sometimes sent to war?”
Lucas hesitates. “I heard Ravi say that the military is useless,” he admits.
This startles a half-laugh out of Eddie, and something loosens in his chest at the levity. “Yeah,” he laughs, “honestly, a lot of the things they do are useless. It’s pretty complicated.”
Lucas seems to consider that. “Then why did you go to the Army?” he asks innocently.
It’s a fair question. One that Eddie thinks he deserves a fair answer to.
“We’ve told you before how Chris had a mom who died,” he says, and Lucas nods. “And how Chris is a lot older than you because me and her were really young when he was born?”
“Yeah.”
Eddie thinks briefly of Shannon, and of holding Chris when he was less than one week old, the last time he would see him for months afterward. His chest aches, even now.
“Sometimes,” he says carefully, “when people are very young, they do things that they aren’t ready for. I joined the Army because I wanted to help people, and because I wanted to take care of Chris and his mom.”
Lucas— thankfully a thoughtful, empathetic kid— nods his head like he understands this. He’s so little that Eddie knows he doesn’t— not really— but he’s grateful anyway.
“So then,” Lucas says. “You went to a war?”
Eddie nods. “I did,” he says.
Lucas runs his little fingers over the sharp edge of the star, from center to point.
“Did you do something very brave to get this?” he asks. “Like your firefighter medal?”
Eddie’s instinct is to bristle. He wants to say no— that what he did in Afghanistan wasn’t brave at all. But Lucas is only ten: he’s still so little, and he looks at Eddie and sees a hero, and the thought of offering up his baby to the shattered image of the man he’d been all those years ago grates on every part of him.
“I did something very hard,” he says eventually.
Lucas looks up at him— all blue eyed and small and soft, a precious thing that Eddie would shield from everything forever if he could. Himself included, where it counts.
“What happened?” Lucas asks.
Eddie has told this story to ten-year-olds before. It’s different, he finds, when they have his husband’s face and a decade of memories of being Eddie’s. He hadn’t had to do that with Christopher, who had lived it alongside him. With Lucas, it’s different.
He reminds himself again that he won’t lie to him.
“In the Army,” he says, “you have a team.”
Lucas’ eyes brighten. “Like the 118!”
Eddie smiles, wistful. “Yeah,” he nods. “A lot like that. Your job is to protect each other, to keep your team safe, just like we do at the 118.”
Lucas nods, and Eddie swallows against the way his throat closes up.
“But,” he continues, “in the Army, it was a lot more dangerous than what your dad and I do at work now. And so it was harder to protect each other. And sometimes something went wrong, and it was even harder.”
“Is that what happened to you?” Lucas asks him.
Eddie nods slowly. “Yeah,” he says. “Me and some of my team were in a helicopter and there was an accident. It crashed, and a lot of people were hurt, and it was very dangerous. But we did our best to protect each other, and I got this medal because I helped a lot of my team get to safety that night.”
“Did you get hurt, too?” Lucas asks.
Eddie breathes.
“I did,” he admits.
For a long moment, Lucas is very quiet. It stretches between them, and Eddie looks to his face but can’t see it because he’s looking down at the silver star where it sits innocuously on the carpet.
It’s just an object, Eddie reminds himself as he looks too. Just a piece of metal and a strip of fabric that holds nothing over him unless he allows it to. That holds nothing over this room, or his child, or his life.
But Lucas is so quiet, for so long, that Eddie feels the creeping sense of anxious dread begin to climb up his spine. He starts to worry that he’s said too much, that he’s pushed too far, that he’s scaring him. That he’s doing this wrong.
And then Lucas looks up at him, and there’s a look on his face that is the picture of Buck— a creased, soft, concerned expression that takes the breath out of Eddie’s throat.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Eddie asks softly, watching his son’s face.
Lucas frowns, his eyebrows pulling together. “You must have been really sad and scared,” he offers eventually.
Eddie stops breathing.
Just for a moment— because in all his quick thinking, in the moments he’s sat on this floor pushing himself through a story he’d like to forget, he’d overlooked something.
Lucas.
The child who had been three days old when Buck proclaimed him obviously empathetic, which had proven to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The child who would rescue any bug and throw a fit if someone tried to kill it. The child who begged for a dog and actually did want to be the one to brush her and feed her. The child who once came home from school in tears because someone else had fallen on the playground at the end of the day.
Eddie had been so caught up in bracing himself for the usual reaction— all the awe that he’s never really learned to be comfortable with— that he’d failed to consider the heart of the person he’s talking to.
Lucas, who is now looking up at him with an anxious, sad kind of trepidation that makes Eddie’s chest go tight for all kinds of new reasons.
“Oh,” he breathes. “Hey, come here.”
Lucas scrambles to get to him, and Eddie scoops him up so that they’re an awkward tangle on the floor— the older Lucas gets, the more space he takes up, and he’s already tall for his age. But he melts into Eddie just the same way he had when he was smaller, letting Eddie wrap him up in a tight hug.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Lucas says, his voice soft and muffled against Eddie’s neck, blonde curls tickling his jaw and his ear with the scent of coconut.
“Thank you, mi sol,” Eddie whispers back, stroking his hand over Lucas’ spine as his chest comes unraveled. “That’s so sweet of you.”
“It sounds so sad,” Lucas says, still muffled.
Eddie nods, tilting his head so that he can press his cheek to Lucas’ head and closing his eyes.
He half-expects to be met with visions of desert. But the space behind his eyelids is calm and empty, weighed down by the familiar heaviness of his baby in his lap, still not quite too big to be held.
“It was sad,” he admits. “But it’s okay now.”
Lucas pulls back, looking him in the face. “Because you don’t have to do that anymore?” he asks.
Eddie shakes his head.
“Mostly,” he says, squeezing him lightly and finding that he means it, “because I’m home safe with you.”
Lucas smiles a little at that, his dimple etched deep in his cheek.
“You okay?” Eddie checks, brushing his fingers over Lucas’ forehead and pushing back a wayward curl as Lucas nods his head.
“Yeah,” he says, and then there’s a flicker of hesitation— there and gone— before he throws his arms around Eddie with abandon, squeezing him in a big hug that leaves no room for Eddie to feel anything but deeply loved.
“I’m glad you’re home with us, Dad,” he whispers.
Eddie swallows hard and holds him tight. “Me too, sweetheart.”
Buck really couldn’t have asked for a better Saturday.
Breakfast with his boys, spending the day at his sister’s house, meeting up with Eddie and Lucas for what had become a long evening of tacos and chatter and laughing. There’s little he loves more than a day like this one, with almost everyone he loves most in the world. Christopher had been notably absent, but they have plans with him next weekend. And to top it all off, he’s ending the day at home with Lucas already in bed and Eddie waiting for him to change so that they can watch the latest episode of their current favorite cooking show. Buck is pretty sure his least favorite contestant is going to get voted off, and he is intending to relish the victory.
“I’ll be right back,” he says, leaning in to kiss the top of Eddie’s head as he passes through the living room after letting Apple outside for the last time this evening. Eddie hums in acknowledgement and Apple follows Buck down the hall, nosing Lucas’ cracked bedroom door open and disappearing into the darkness to sleep next to him like she does most nights.
In the meantime, Buck steps into his and Eddie’s room, and then pauses in his tracks as he reaches for the dresser in search of sweatpants.
Open on the surface is Eddie’s silver star.
It’s been a long time since Buck saw it. It still tugs at him a little, and he finds himself reaching out to touch it, brushing his fingertips over the cool metal. He doesn’t have it in him, even now, to not feel a flutter of awe at the sight of it and the thought of what it means.
In hindsight, Buck can admit that he was enamored with Eddie long before either of them realized it. He can think back to the first time he saw this medal, the pride he’d felt and the impression it left on him— the romantic image of Eddie as a tried and true hero.
Buck knows now that his husband is all of those things— heroic and brave and endless. But he also knows what this medal means to Eddie— the man who is much more than a hero, but a devoted dad and a romantic at heart; someone who is sweet and sensitive and loves chocolate and who was way too young to be out there in the desert by himself.
That’s the prevailing thought, now that Buck is older and loves Eddie more deeply, more intimately. There’s a flash of concern that covers up the rest at the sight of it sitting here in the open like this, looking sort of out of place in their home all these years later.
He’s still frowning at it, lost in thought, when Eddie pokes his head in around the doorframe.
“You good?” he asks, and then his roaming brown eyes settle on the silver star and understanding washes over his face.
“That’s what I wanted to ask you,” Buck answers, nodding at it and searching Eddie’s features. “What’s this about, are you okay?”
“No, yeah,” Eddie says, waving him off as he moves deeper into the room and perches on the edge of the bed to look up at Buck. “I’m fine. Lucas found it.”
Buck surveys him— he can’t help it. Eddie says he’s fine, and Buck trusts him, but it’s in his nature to make sure.
And Eddie looks fine, too. He’s sitting with his ankles crossed, leaned slightly back with his arms holding him up; his posture is soft and he looks warm and relaxed with his hair flopping over his forehead and the threadworn fabric of his t-shirt draped loosely over his chest. He looks up at Buck and there’s nothing haunted behind his eyes.
In fact, he looks— extraordinarily settled.
Buck had thought as much at dinner earlier, too, watching how easily Eddie was laughing with Jee at the end of the table. Not that Eddie isn’t generally calm and relaxed these days— it’s been a long time since Buck saw him much of anything else. It’s just that tonight, he’d seemed particularly so, sort of sparkling with it.
It shimmers back at him now, too, in the sanctity of their room.
“He did?” Buck asks carefully, looking back at the medal and remembering a long time ago, an occasion on which Eddie had been very reticent to acknowledge it with his older son.
“Mhm,” Eddie hums.
Buck eyes him, curious. “You seem…” he starts.
Eddie smiles. “Weird?”
“No,” Buck huffs, moving across the room and sitting next to him, Eddie’s warmth pressing into him as he settles with their shoulders touching. “Calm.”
Eddie nods, then reaches out for the medal that Buck is still holding. It’s open, like it had been this afternoon, and Buck watches him touch it lightly.
“I am calm,” he admits.
He looks up at Buck, and his face tells the same story. Buck’s chest glows warm, like it always does when he gets a good look at Eddie’s dark eyes and soft lashes.
“What happened?” he asks.
Eddie smiles. “He asked me about it. I told him the story.”
But there has to be more to it than that, Buck thinks.
“What did he say?”
Eddie smiles again. This time, Buck catches how warm and easy it is, with just a flicker of a wistfulness that makes him want to wrap Eddie up in his arms just for the warmth of it.
“He said that it sounded sad,” Eddie answers. “And that I must have been scared.”
Buck feels his own lungs still.
“Oh,” he whispers.
It settles between them— Buck turns the information over in his head and finds that he has half a mind to go into Lucas’ room and wake him just so he can hug him tight.
Because it all makes sense suddenly— that Lucas might have had a reaction that nobody else did, that he was exactly what Eddie needed when neither Buck nor Chris had been able to give him that.
Eddie smiles again, and shuts the lid on the medal, setting it aside and leaning back until his back is pressed against their mattress. Buck follows— like always— until they’re lying side-by-side. When he turns his head, Eddie is already watching him: his cheeks pink, his face soft.
“I’m sorry,” Buck says eventually, and Eddie frowns.
“For what?”
Buck searches himself for the answer. “I don’t think I’ve ever…”
Eddie shakes his head, cutting in before Buck can find the words for the rest.
“Buck,” Eddie says, so gently and tenderly that it sounds more like baby when it comes out of his mouth, honeyed and sweet. His hand finds Buck’s, fumbling between them until their fingers are clasped as Eddie turns open features further toward him, smushing his cheek to the bed.
Buck loves him so much that he feels it in every inch of his body, a humming breathing alive thing.
“I needed both,” Eddie admits softly.
Buck searches his face. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Eddie’s smile tugs at his lips. “Did a lot for my ego to have you fawning all over me.”
“It did not,” Buck groans, unable to stop himself from following when Eddie laughs.
“No,” Eddie laughs, squeezing his hand. “But I do love that you’re proud of me.”
This part comes out painfully sincere, so much that there’s no space for Buck to doubt it as he turns back toward him, their faces inches apart.
“I’m always proud of you, Eds,” he murmurs.
Eddie nods. “I know.”
It’s quiet for a long moment, the hum of the house and the distant sounds of their neighborhood the only sound around them.
“He’s such a perfect kid,” Eddie sighs eventually, and Buck nods.
“I’m glad he said that to you,” he admits, his voice soft as he looks at his husband.
Eddie smiles, and Buck can see on his face that it doesn’t come with reservations. “Will you put this away for me?” he asks, holding out the box that contains the silver star.
Buck leans in close, pressing the brush of a kiss over Eddie’s mouth. It’s soft but sweet and he breathes in deep to catch the lingering scent of the cologne Eddie had worn to dinner and the faint kiss of chocolate from the piece he’d snagged out of the cabinet after they got home. All the pieces of Eddie.
Buck taps him twice on his chest.
“I will,” he says, soft and close.
Buck gets up and turns to the closet, safely stowing the medal back into its box and away into the corner in its neat stack.
And on their bed with their baby asleep in the other room, Eddie stretches his body out long and languid, and just keeps smiling.