cozyleclerc

Eddie wakes up, and the world is bright.

He squints and groans at the light not so much filtering as it is invading through the curtains, casting everything in a new day. For a moment, habit runs through his muscles, pushes his elbows into the mattress so he can clamber out of bed into something productive.

Then, an arm around his waist, tugging him down. The world suddenly dims, not frightening but familiar, chestnut curls allowing just the right amount of light through them as Eddie's face is pressed to the hollow of Buck's throat, his nose tickling his adam's apple.

"Buck," he says, laughter already caught in his throat, the mere presence of this impossible man sending sparks, confetti, fireworks off in his veins.

"Nope," Buck mumbles into Eddie's hair, all squished and sleep-blurred, a smile in his voice just for Eddie. "Not getting out of bed."

"It's morning."

"It's sleeping in day, Eddie. I've decided." Long arms, longer legs, Eddie is trapped. He loves it. He absolutely cannot allow Buck to know that he loves it.

"Oh, you've decided?"

A nod against his head. "I've decided," Buck says, in his snottiest of voices. Eddie, as always, matches his energy.

"There are children out there," Eddie points out, perhaps a little dramatically. "Starving. You would let our children starve, Buck?"

"Chris lives for days when he can sneak an extra bowl of Reese's cereal for breakfast without either of us complaining about the sugar content," Buck says. "And he said he'd play with Theo this morning for a bit."

Eddie narrows his eyes. He feels Buck stiffen, only a little. "...I didn't know we had Reese's in the house."

A pause. "Well, you also didn't know that I reorganized your spice cabinet until you couldn't find the paprika, so."

"Buck. Did you bribe our kid with sugar so that we can sleep in."

Eddie pushes Buck back, just a little, so he can tilt his face up to meet his eyes. And also maybe so he can touch his pecs a little, so what, that's his boyfriend.

Buck's eyes are curved at the edges, all cheer. His grin is dimpled on one side, teeth flashing in that infuriatingly handsome way that Eddie refuses to admit always works on him. His body betrays him, though, his hand shifting around Buck's jaw, knuckles brushing over the swell of his lip, the little scar at the edge, the dimple curled in his cheek.

He presses a thumb to the dimple, drags it outward to watch the way Buck's smile gets even bigger. "Don't be ridiculous, Eddie. I bribed our firstborn with sugar so that we can cuddle in bed."

Eddie bites down a helpless smile, knows it seeps out of him anyways. He can hear the thump of careless teenage footsteps, if he concentrates. "Of course you did," he says. Then: "Did you at least tell him not to feed our secondborn straight sugar?"

Wide blue eyes, a toddler's giggly shriek, a wince. Eddie memorizes the shift of muscle under his fingers, cups Buck's jaw tenderly, and cracks up into his sheepish sternum.

(2)

It is not often that Eddie makes an elaborate breakfast.

It's not a matter of skill, mostly -- after all, there was a reason Bobby started Buck on breakfast foods: they were the hardest to fuck up. It's more simple tradition, if anything. Eddie is (or is now, at least) a competent cook. Buck is a passionate cook. He takes joy in discovering recipes and meal prepping and trying new techniques in ways that Eddie just doesn't, and Eddie is more than happy to sit on the counter and be fed bites of ricotta-stuffed crepes or egg bakes or whatever flavor of french toast Buck decides for their stale bread Saturdays.

Still, Eddie finds himself balancing strawberries on top of a pile of pancakes, rearranging the eggs twice and frowning at the results, deciding between orange juice and apple juice.

"Dad," his beloved son says. "You're being neurotic."

"Where did you learn that word?"

A blank stare. "I'm sixteen."

Beside him, Theo giggles. "Eddie's neurotic," he announces, his lisp making the roast unintentionally adorable. Eddie ruffles his hair, gets a little squirm in response.

"Don't listen to Chris, Theo," he says. "He only says boring stuff."

"Chris is cool," Theo protests, and Chris grins smugly at him.

"Yeah, dad," he says. "I'm cool. I even woke up early just to make sure you didn't chicken out on this."

"I'm not-- I wouldn't--" Eddie tries to glare at Chris. He fails. Chris just tilts his head pointedly down the hall.

"I told him to wait a bit more," he says. "But I think he's actually gonna vibrate out of his skin if he has to stay in bed for any longer."

Eddie throws his head back, groans, and grabs the orange juice before taking the tray down the hall. Behind him, he can hear his traitorous children giggling to each other.

He nudges the bedroom door open with a foot and nearly forgets what he's meant to be doing when he sees Buck sitting against the headboard, half-naked, curls messy, eyes lighting up when they see Eddie.

"Eddie!" he says, happiness in every square inch of his body. It's impossible to believe, sometimes, how happy Eddie makes Buck. It's impossible not to believe, when Buck is so obvious with it, glowing and unmistakable.

"Buck," he says, the name as familiar as his own heartbeat. He walks forward. One step, then another. Buck's eyes fall to the tray in his hands.

"Breakfast in bed?" he tilts his head, curious. "What's the occasion?"

"You being in my bed," Eddie says, putting the tray down in front of him, curling a hand into the his curls to press a kiss to his brow, peppering kisses along his hairline as Buck giggles until he reaches his birthmark. He's not nervous anymore, weirdly. It's just Buck, after all. Love of his life, his best friend, his partner in crime and in life. There's no other way for this to go.

Buck's eyes scrunches as he smiles, fond even as he's still a little confused. He looks down at the tray, grabs a strawberry, begins to eat. Eddie watches him clear his plate, making sure to tell Eddie between bites how good everything is. Eddie perches on the edge of the bed, listens to Chris and Theo watch cartoons in the living room, and waits until Buck is finished.

"Wait," he says, when Buck tries to get up, tray shifting with him. "You didn't finish."

Buck tilts his head at him. "What?"

Eddie nods at the plate. "There's something else," he says, heart in his throat.

Buck looks at him, then at the plate. His brows furrow. He takes in the plate, then picks it up. Drops it.

Eddie catches it in his hands, leaving Buck's hands free to pick up the small, gleaming key.

"You have a key already, so this is more metaphorical than anything, but-- I want to see you in my bed tomorrow, too. And the day after that. For-- a long time."

A beat, then a small, wet laugh. "A long time, huh," Buck says, looking at Eddie with red-rimmed eyes. "That's-- uh, yeah, that sounds about right."

And Eddie holds his head in his hands, presses another smacking kiss on his birthmark as Buck laughs, the key gleaming gold in his hands.

(3)

Eddie likes being held by Buck.

It's not a surprise, given the whole dating thing. But he would challenge anyone not to like being held by Buck, who holds people with the exact right amount of pressure, like he's keeping you safe but also not smothering you.

Honestly, Eddie could do with a little smothering, sometimes, but he appreciates the thought.

So Eddie likes being held by Buck, the way any same person would, and he especially likes waking up in Buck's arms, sleep-tousled and morning-warm, mouth pressed to warm skin and rumbling with low snores. The two of them always start out spooning, when they go to bed, but they always end up this way: face to face, noses squished to necks and collars and hair, curled into each other like quotation marks. It's codependent, probably. It's careless, definitely. It's the best thing in Eddie's life.

Today, it goes like this: Eddie's cheek pressed into the pillow, face, turned towards sunlight, which is to say Buck. A leg curled over the dip of his waist, thrown over his hip, keeping him in place. A palm finding its way under his tank top, calloused fingertips dancing their way up his spine, a gentle rhythm that feels more deliberate than not.

"Are you playing piano on me?" Eddie murmurs, cracking one eye open a sliver. Buck looks at him, has been looking at him, from the angle his face is at, eyes bright and awake even as the rest of him remains sleep-soft in their bed.

Buck grins, ducks his head to get a morning-breath kiss before answering. "I've never played the piano, Eddie."

Eddie raises an eyebrow. "Doesn't answer the question, Buck."

He shivers, a little, when Buck just tip-taps his fingers a little quicker up his back, quicksilver moments of touch that leave goosebumps in their wake like every inch of Eddie's body feels a little forlorn when not actively being touched by Buck. Buck grins a little at him, eyes mischievous.

"I'm not playing piano on you, Eddie," Buck answers dutifully. He pushes Eddie towards him a little, tucking the both of them impossibly closer to each other. "I'm counting."

Eddie blinks, eyes opening fully. "Counting?"

"The little notches. I'm counting."

It makes Eddie laugh, a surprised huff of air that's tucked into the crook of Buck's neck now. Buck shivers, a little, and Eddie gets his revenge by nipping at the thin skin right below his ear. Buck retaliates by tightening the leg around Eddie's hip, a thick thigh pressing into him in a way that could easily get out of hand.

Eddie, a few years ago, would've rolled out of bed, insisted on getting started with the day. Eddie, today, just curls himself in even closer.

"I would imagine I have around thirty-two to thirty-five segments," he tells Buck, teasing. "You know, like most humans."

"I need an exact count, Eddie," Buck tells him, very solemnly. "What if they need that info when you're doing a checkup? They're gonna think I'm a neglectful boyfriend."

"I'm pretty sure that's not on any intake forms, mi sol," Eddie nips at Buck again, is rewarded with a press of fingers to the small of his back. "I know what you're really doing, you're not slick."

A little giggle, boyish and infectious. "What am I really doing, then?" Buck asks, sing-song.

"Feelin' me up."

Buck cracks up at that, giggling into Eddie's hair even as his hand sweeps over the breadth of Eddie's back, pressing with casual proprietary presumptuousness to each mole dotting the span of his skin, every bone that's visible beneath the shifting of his skin. These are things that Eddie does not know about himself, that Buck has told him with his mouth pressed to Eddie's skin, in the same careful way he catalogues every other detail of Eddie's existence.

It's overwhelming. Eddie wouldn't have it any other way.

"Oh, is that a crime, now?" Buck is saying, breathless with laughter. "To feel my hot boyfriend up first thing in the morning?"

Eddie feels the strength of Buck's grin seep into him, his own smile helpless in response. He tips his head back, meets Buck's eyes, watches the way that love transforms him into something not new but more wholly him, blooming in the light of the kind of love that he's always thrived in.

And Eddie feels transformed too, under that love, not any less himself but the startling, beautiful parts of him that were tucked out of sight rendered into clarity through beloved eyes. Coming together into a whole that Eddie is learning to love, simply because he is so loved in return.

"Yeah, bud, I know," Eddie says patiently.

"It was supposed to be romantic."

"Still pretty romantic, if you ask me."

"Snowed in with no heat in the middle of nowhere—"

"—we're two miles from the main lodge—"

"—and who even knows how long it'll take them to clear the roads. We might run out of wood and freeze to death before then, or, run out of food and have to resort to cannibalism, and then we'll see how chill you are, Eddie. It could happen. Donner Pass is in California, you know."

"Yeah, about three hundred miles north of here," Eddie says, grinning, and hooks a hand around Buck's arm to pull him into a kiss. Buck kisses him back, and when Eddie finally releases him, there's a smile threatening to break through his pout. Eddie rubs a thumb over his lower lip, kisses him again, and says, "The cabin is fully stocked, and there's a full cord of wood on the back porch. We don't even need to split it ourselves. We just gotta… settle in for a couple of days, find some way to entertain ourselves until they dig us out."

Buck relents, finally, ducking his head and laughing. "I guess you had some ideas?"

"Oh, you know," Eddie says, with an easy, feigned casualness. "Private room, fireplace—"

"—mattress on the floor," Buck interjects, settling his hands on his hips, allowing Eddie to kiss his lips lightly again.

"Still seems pretty romantic, if you ask me."

"I just…" Buck makes a face. "I had a plan. I wanted everything to be perfect."

They've definitely been together too long for Eddie to get butterflies at that, but he does anyway. He cups the back of Buck's head, pulls him down into another kiss, lingering about it this time. "We're firefighters, Buck. We improvise."

"Yeah, yeah," Buck relents. "C'mon. Help me get the rest of the pillows."

The fire is roaring by the time they finally have the bed made up, heat spilling out into the room. Eddie lingers by the front door, watching snow swirl in the porch lights, drifts piled against the trees along the short driveway, a clean glittering spill of white. The truck is all but buried. It'll be a pain in the ass to dig it out, but that's a problem for tomorrow. For now, Buck's arms come around him from behind, his chin hooking over Eddie's shoulder.

"It's late," he murmurs, warm breath against the shell of Eddie's ear. Eddie shivers. "Come to bed."

"It's not that late," Eddie says, just to be contrary.

Buck bites his earlobe, a sharp little nip, and laughs when Eddie inhales sharply. "Come to bed anyway?"

And—well. Eddie's not gonna refuse that.

It's warm enough now that they don't really need the blankets. Buck strips him slowly in the firelight, pausing to get his mouth all over every newly bared stretch of skin, enough that Eddie is feeling faintly unhinged by the time they're both finally naked, Buck braced above him, settled between his open thighs. He had the foresight to grab the lube out of their luggage, apparently, and stash it within reach, so that he can get himself slicked up without moving off of Eddie. Eddie lies back and watches him do it: the golden expanse of his body, the gleam of lube and precome, the quick delighted little grin on his face when he glances up and catches Eddie watching him.

"See something you like?" he asks.

Eddie rolls his eyes. "Come here already."

"Well—" Buck breaks off what was assuredly going to be an extremely terrible pun when Eddie grabs at his ass, hauling him in close. As if in revenge, he spends a couple of minutes teases the slick head of his cock against Eddie's hole, nudging at him without pushing in until Eddie is squirming beneath him, undone in the way he always fucking is in moments like this, in a way that no one other than Buck has ever gotten him. 

"Come on," he pants, grabbing at Buck's thigh, his wrist, his fingers wrapped around his cock, keeping it right there, an agonizing tease. "Come on, come on, fuck me."

"You're so bossy," Buck laughs, breathless, and finally finally stops fucking around, sinks into Eddie in a single slow thrust. Eddie arches against him, aching, eager, as his body accommodates Buck's cock, his hands on Eddie's hips pulling him up, the slow rhythm he sets, which is pretty much designed to drive Eddie out of his fucking mind.

He doesn't touch himself yet, just holds onto Buck, watching him through heavy-lidded eyes. The firelight gilds him, gleaming golden on his sweat-slick skin, his messy curls, his soft wet mouth as he gazes down at Eddie.

He's being loud, probably. He always loses his head a little bit when he's getting fucked, which is something he spent the first thirty-five years of his life not knowing, but it's worth it now, watching Buck's eyes darken, his breathing speed up with every moan and breathless curse that falls from Eddie's mouth. They're sliding together with sweat now, Buck's hands like brands on Eddie's hips, Eddie's cock kissing wetly against his stomach with every thrust as he writhes against the sheets, moaning, fuck me, fuck me, please, c'mon, Buck, please, please, as if he doesn't already have Buck's cock driving into him, harder now, like he's finally losing some of his self-control.

"God, you're so—" Buck pitches forward, finally, bracing his elbows on either side of Eddie's head so that he can kiss the moans from Eddie's mouth. He stays close, working his hand between them to cup it over Eddie's cock, give him something to rut up into. "You're fuckin' perfect, baby, I love you, I wanna, wanna keep you just like this—"

"Yeah," Eddie breathes, tilting his head up for another kiss, biting at Buck's lower lip and getting a low, liquid moan for it. He can feel Buck's cock pulse inside him, heat sparking up his spine with every thrust, so fucking close.

"Wanna fucking—live inside you," Buck babbles into his jaw, lips wet and hot against his skin, and he's close too, Eddie can tell, the rhythm of his hips starting to stutter finally. "Wanna do this forever, wanna—wanna marry you—"

Eddie jerks, a broken shout catching on his tongue as he comes over Buck's fingers, spilling between them with a force that startles him, and Buck fucks him through it, a handful of hard, jerky thrusts before he follows, burying his face in Eddie's throat as his cock pulses inside him.

He goes loose once it's over, collapsing on top of Eddie like his strings have been cut. Eddie takes his weight easily, stroking a hand up and down Buck's sweaty, heaving spine, feeling his cock soften in slow pulses, the slick mess of his come slipping down the inside of his thigh. He's grinning, he realizes, stupid and delighted.

"You didn't hear that," Buck mumbles against his shoulder, sounding sheepish, and Eddie can't help it; he starts laughing.

"Oh, you didn't just propose while your dick was in my ass?"

"Okay, well, it just sounds crude if you put it like that."

Eddie pets his hair again, kisses his temple; Buck buries his face deeper in Eddie's throat with a disgruntled sound. "You don't have a ring hidden in your luggage somewhere?"

"No comment."

"Uh huh." Eddie tugs on Buck's hair again, and finally he lifts his head to look down at him, blushing and sheepish and beautiful.

"I had a plan," he says.

"I bet."

"It was a good plan. Super romantic."