you're under my skin

Not what I originally planned at all, but Eddie insisted, so…

Eddie feels like he might throw up. Every mile marker they pass seems to create another knot in his stomach, and he can’t decide if he’s glad that Buck is driving because his head would still be a mess regardless or if it would have given him a welcome distraction.

Christopher is asleep in the backseat, having nodded off somewhere along the state line after the excitement of a road trip that helped him power through their early start and the first few hours of the drive finally wore down. Eddie’s fingers are tapping on his thigh as he stares out the window. His shoulder aches from sitting still for so many hours, and the tension stiffening his muscles doesn’t help.

This trip was a bad idea. What’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result despite having no reason to expect one? That’s how Eddie feels about his parents.

But. Here they are, in a car on the way to El Paso. Because he’s in therapy and he’s happy and he’s in love and yeah, he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to forgive his parents for the things they’ve done but he’s also not ready to cut them off entirely. He’s not prepared to be responsible for creating a massive rift in which his sisters and everyone else have to take sides and everything is clipped and silent and awful. So. That means trying. At least one more time.

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Nonnie, you are officially my new favorite person because you get it.

Our fandom is so busy bitching about a number of topics - Tim Minear’s non-answers // “Buck is not really Christopher’s dad!1!” // When will EddieA*a be over? What is the point? // Are we being q-worded? etc etc. - that (IMO!) we’re not taking the time to appreciate how we ended up here.

Did y'all forget Buddie was never set up to be a “will they/won’t they” relationship? Did y'all forget that the original plan was (allegedly) to have Eddie and Maddie get together? Did y'all forget that JLH asked to play Chimney’s girlfriend instead?

Something happened in the early days of filming Ryan and Oliver as Eddie and Buck. Something different. Something good. That much is clear.

We make jokes about them having the quickest enemies-to-friends-to lovers plot on television, but am I the only one who wonders if this was done on purpose? Maybe the chemistry between the two was so noticeable that the writers said “No one is gonna believe they hate each other. We might as well make them friends.”

People loooove arguing about the slow burn of Buddie (some love it, some hate it), but can we please acknowledge how quickly the writers established that these two characters are going to matter to each other for a long time?

Eddie’s FIRST EPISODE gave us this money quote:

“You can have my back any day.”
“Or, you know, you could…you could have mine.”

followed by:

- Eddie confiding in Buck about having a child (“He’s seven.” // “And super adorable. I, uh, I love kids.”)
- Buck telling Eddie when cell service was working because he knew Eddie wanted to talk to Christopher
- Buck driving Eddie to pick up Christopher and watching them happily embrace
- Eddie and Buck going to the hospital after Abuela got hurt + Pepa talking to Buck, this dude she literally just met, about her nephew’s struggles as a single parent
- Buck giving Bobby “a heads up” when they were bringing Christopher back to the station so he could clear it with the chief (without telling Eddie)
- Buck asking Carla to help Eddie get Christopher what he needs
- Eddie having Buck go with him to watch Christopher meet Santa Claus instead of, y'no, his wife…

Everything I just mentioned? THE FIRST TEN EPISODES. If the writers *didn’t* slow down the trajectory of Buddie’s relationship they’d be married with a second kid on the way, but as we now know TM is trying to take advantage of the last two “single” members of 118 by keeping them apart because if/when Buddie is canon he thinks it’ll get boring. (That’s a YOU problem, Tim! Learn how to write better scripts!)

What if the audience really did like Shannon? Where would we be? Does anyone ever think about that?

Where would we be if the writers actually cared about making EddieA*a look like a legit couple? Buck sure as hell wouldn’t be Christopher’s emergency legal guardian right now, I can tell you that much.

Don’t get so caught up in the destination that you fail to appreciate what it took to get there - especially when we were never supposed to be on this damn road in the first place.

excuse me i am LOSING IT???

No one would notice for a long time, because it’s small, and even though they change in front of each other all the time, they do it without a second thought; they don’t actively look at Buck or his body (aside from Eddie, of course).

What ends up actually giving it away is Eddie. Any time he and Buck embrace, any time they get close, any time they gravitate into each other’s space, he rests his hand against the same spot on Buck’s chest, right over his heart. Every single time, without fail, Eddie seeks out that spot with gentle fingers.

It’s sweet, Hen thinks, once she catches on. Something about it is comforting to her, the fact that Eddie loves Buck so much that he always wants to be close to his heart.

And then, one day in the locker room, she does look. Eddie rests a hand on Buck’s chest, giving him a quick peck on the lips before leaving the room, and as Buck slips out of his shirt with a fond smile lighting up his face, Hen looks.

There, right over Buck’s heart, is Eddie’s name in neat, beautiful cursive.

Hen doesn’t say anything — it’s not really her business, after all — but her own heart squeezes in her chest, impossibly endeared by her friends and the love they’ve found in each other.

And every time after, when she sees Eddie put his hand over Buck’s heart, Hen smiles to herself.