I don’t have kids

I don’t spend money on nicotine

I don’t gamble my money away on sports

I’m not reliant on a chat bot for all my life functions

Hen: Feeling intimated by the Aquaman antics?

Buck: Please, I swam in a tsunami, I'm fine with his superhero routine. I just wanted to know he was gonna do it so I could have his back.

Eddie: I've said I'm sorry a million times already.

Buck: And I forgive you, but I'm still angry.

Chim: But he's literally sitting on your lap and you're hugging him?

buck, slamming his hands on the table: okay! fine! you got us! in our defense, we were really pent up from the last 12 hours—

hen: i was going to say i heard a mouse, what the hell are you saying? wait, wait, wait, what do you mean WE?

eddie: oh, this is not how we wanted ya’ll to find out.

buck: WE MADE OUT NEAR A MOUSE?

chimney: YOU AND EDDIE WERE MAKING OUT?

bobby: great, now i have to figure out mouse traps and file more paperwork. thanks a lot, boys.

maddie: not this again.

buck: eddie and i were fighting over who was going to pay the bill at our date. i wanted to pay for it, but so did he. he ended up paying for it, but i felt like i should have paid because i planned it.

maddie: i’m… i’m sorry, you were fighting over what?

buck: our date.

maddie: can we go back to who it was with?

buck: yeah, okay? i was… i was on a date with eddie. again, not—not really the point.

maddie: oh my god, you have no idea how much i prayed you were talking about eddie the first time.

buck: what?

It hadn’t taken Buck long to notice, not when he’d woken up in the hospital and the first thing he’d noticed was the gentle hand on his arm, featherlight but steady. Eddie had been terrified to hurt him then. No, scratch that- he’d just been terrified, full stop. Terrified enough that Buck hadn’t dreamed of pushing him away, not when Eddie looked about ready to spiral into a panic attack every time Buck so much as winced. Besides, it's not like Buck would ever have pushed him away anyway, not when he craved Eddie’s touch like water in a desert, but it had at least made sense then why Eddie couldn’t seem to go five minutes without touching him. Lord knows Buck would be handling the whole situation far worse if it had been Eddie who’s been struck by lightning instead of him. 

What didn’t make sense was that Eddie hadn’t stopped touching him. Sure, Eddie had always been tactile, but not like this. Before he was no stranger to a fistbump here and there, and the occasional pat on the back, but these days it was like Eddie couldn’t go five minutes without pressing their shoulders together on the couch, ruffling his hair as he passed by the kitchen, or pulling him somewhere with a hand around his wrist. 

The wrist thing is new, Eddie’s warm fingers wrapped tight around the thin skin just over his palm, so tantalisingly close to holding hands that Buck feels like he’s going crazy trying to resist sliding his hand up just a bit and lacing their fingers together. 

Its constant is the thing. Sometimes Eddie lingers, will grab his wrist and pull him into the kitchen to get a snack and he’ll stay like that, with his fingers on Buck’s skin for long minutes as if he’s simply forgotten to let go. Other times it’s faster, a quick clasp before they hop out of the rig at a particularly difficult call, a squeeze of thanks when he spots him at the gym, but always, slways there, to the point he's come to expect it. Buck swears he was dead longer than Eddie lets him go between touches these days. 

And it’s fine really, it doesn’t bother him. He welcomes it in fact. It’s just a bit...odd is the thing. He’s not used to be touched without being wanted, desired, without any demand, and he certainly isn’t used to being touched so frequently, especially not by Eddie, to say nothing of the strangeness of the touches themselves. They aren’t inappropriate, but they’re not typical. Innocuous enough for someone to brush off sure, but not the kind of touches that are entirely natural. 

It doesn’t make sense.

Until it does. Until they’re at a scene where a victim’s head is stuck under rubble. Until Chim reaches for the patient’s wrist to check for a radial pulse and the realisation slams into him like a freight train. All this time he’d thought Eddie was just hanging on to him but Eddie-

Eddie has been checking his pulse. Not just here and there either, but constantly, almost obsessively.

Buck died for three minutes and seventeen seconds, and now Eddie can’t go more than twenty minutes without checking his pulse. 

Buck kind of wants to cry. 

He manages to make it through the rest of the call, concentrating on hauling rubble and calming the the teenage girl and her little sister he’d hauled out from behind a collapsed wall, but the second they’re back in the rig  and Eddie is reaching for his wrist it all comes flooding back. 

“I’m okay Eddie.” 

“W-what?” Eddie twitches, caught, but his hands wrap around Buck wrist anyway. Now that he knows what he’s doing, it’s easy to feel the way Eddie's’ pointer and middle fingers press ever so slightly against the spot where his veins meet. 

“Eddie,” Buck pries his fingers off gently, so gently, but Eddie still flinches, panic flooding his eyes, “I know what you’re doing. I’m okay.”

“Buck,” Eddie’s eyes are glossy with unshed tears. He look absolutely heartbroken, “You died. Your- I heard- you flatlined. I heard your heart stop beating, I had to keep it going for you, I did CPR, I-I broke you ribs, I can’t- I need-“

He pulls weakly in Buck’s grasp, twisting to try and get a hand around Buck’s wrist again, but Buck holds firm, trapping Eddie’s trembling hands in his one of his own. 

Carefully, he reaches up to tug down his collar, guiding Eddie’s hand up to rest on his bare skin, just above his heart. 

“Feel that?” He whispers, the feel of Eddie’s hand on his chest and the fear still in his eyes too much for this moment to feel anything but sacred, “My heart is beating, Eddie, and it’s going to stay that way. You know why?”

Eddie shakes his head, breath hitching, gaze locked on where Buck’s heartbeat is thudding steadily under his palm. 

“It’s because you got it started again. You did. I’m not leaving you Eddie. Not today and not tomorrow and not ten years from now if you still want me around by then. Okay?”

“Okay,” Eddie finally agrees, exhaling shakily, and then he’s bawling, huge heaving sobs tearing from his throat. 

“It’s okay,” Buck promises, wrapping him in a hug, “I’m okay, it’s okay.”

“You died Buck.”

“I’m okay.”

“You- you can’t leave me and Chris, you can’t-“

“I’m okay,” Buck assures him, over and over, “I’m not going anywhere, I’m okay.”

Eventually Eddie’s sobs turn to whimpers and then peter out altogether, but he doesn’t let go of Buck, keeps his head where it’s resting on Buck’s chest, right over his heart. 

“It beats for you Eddie,” he whispers, pressing a kiss against the man’s dark hair, “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”