Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Subject: House Swap Inquiry 🇺🇸↔🇬🇧
From: Evan Buckley [email protected]
To: Adriana Diaz [email protected]
Date: November 18, 9:42 PM PST

Hi Adriana,

I saw your cottage listing on the swap site — the one with the ivy climbing over the brick and that absolutely illegal-looking fireplace? It looks like something out of a movie.

I’m Evan, but everyone calls me Buck. I live in LA, in a bungalow that’s mostly filled with camera equipment and too many baking tools. I’m looking for somewhere quiet for a few weeks — no palm trees, no production schedules, no one saying “just one more take.”

Your listing said you were after sunshine and chaos. I can promise both. My place is in Silver Lake, near coffee shops that all insist they invented oat milk.

If you’re still interested, I’d love to discuss dates!

Best,
Buck

Subject: Re: House Swap Inquiry 🇺🇸↔🇬🇧
From: Adriana Diaz
To: Evan Buckley
Date: November 19, 7:13 AM GMT

Hi Buck,

Illegal fireplaces and oat milk pretension sound like a fair trade to me.

Your timing’s perfect — I’ve been dying to spend Christmas somewhere I don’t know every cobblestone. My brother keeps insisting I can’t survive LA without supervision. He’s very British that way.

Let’s compare calendars? I’m thinking mid-December through early January. I’ll send photos of the house.

Warmly,
Adriana

Subject: Re: House Swap Inquiry 🇺🇸↔🇬🇧
From: Evan Buckley
To: Adriana Diaz
Date: November 19, 9:02 PM PST

Adriana,

Supervision optional, though my sister would probably side with your brother.

Mid-Dec to Jan works great. My only requirements are:

1. Somewhere to bake (even a questionable oven is fine).

2. A decent grocery store.

3. Reliable Wi-Fi so I can tell my producer I’m “working remotely.”

Attached are pics of my place — the kitchen’s the only room that looks like an adult lives there. You’ll find a note on the counter when you arrive.

Also — Be honest. Do you all own chunky sweaters and oversized scarfs?

Cheers (trying that out),
Buck

Subject: Re: House Swap Confirmed
From: Adriana Diaz
To: Evan Buckley
Date: November 21, 6:05 PM GMT

Buck,

Confirmed. Flights booked. Get your sweaters ready (you will actually need them, it is freezing!)

You’ll find the key under the third flowerpot to the left of the door — the one that looks slightly drunk. Please feed the sourdough starter on the counter; his name is Arthur.

Also, my brother Eddie might pop by. Don’t let him talk you into anything. He’s allergic to fun.

Good luck with Gerald. I can't wait to call LA home, even just for a couple of weeks.

– A

The suitcase is winning.

That’s the first thought Buck has at six a.m. on a Monday that is pretending very hard to be festive, light slanting through the blinds. His living room is a total disaster—piles of sweaters, baking utensils, one rogue stand mixer attachment that somehow snuck in even though it weighs as much as a small toddler.

Buck sighs and glances at the clock. Four hours until he needs to leave for LAX, and he’s only packed… let’s see, three pairs of jeans, one beanie, six sweaters (because layers, right?), and roughly eighty-seven varieties of anxiety.

It’s fine. Totally fine. He’s a grown man. He hosts a hit children’s baking show called Sunny Bites, for god’s sake. He has his life together. Very together, some would say.

He picks up a T-shirt, hesitates, and sniffs it. “Clean enough,” he decides out loud, because talking to himself counts as self-care now.

The bungalow smells faintly of cinnamon and existential dread. There’s still flour on the counter from last night’s “one last bake,” which had turned into multiple loaves of sourdough which he now had to find homes for.

He stuffs another sweater into the suitcase and immediately regrets it. It’s a lost cause—the zipper is straining, screaming. He unzips it again, pulls out a hoodie, tosses it across the room, then picks it up and adds it back. Maybe it’s cold there. Maybe it’s really cold. Maybe I’ll die if I don’t bring the hoodie. Better safe than hypothermic.

Buck stops to text May—but deletes it before sending. She doesn’t know. No one knows except Maddie.

He loves May. She’s brilliant and organized and once made an Excel sheet of his moods color-coded by pastry type, but she would absolutely talk him out of this. She’d give him that kind, managerial smile and say something terrifying like, Let’s optimize your rest period, and before he knew it, he’d be doing a mindfulness retreat in Topanga Canyon instead of escaping to a snow-covered English village where nobody expects him to rhyme “sunny” with “honey” on camera ever again.

So: secret. Just two weeks. A quiet cottage, a fireplace that may or may not violate several safety codes, and the vague promise of… stillness.

He tries to zip the suitcase again. It relents halfway, then refuses. He sits on it, muttering, “You’re coming with me, dammit,” and when it finally closes, he yells, “Victory!” at nobody.

From the doorway, Maddie appears, “You know, most people pack for a trip instead of going to war with their luggage.”

Buck flinches. “You could knock.”

“I did,” she says. “Three times. You were arguing with a suitcase.”

He sighs and slumps to the floor. “It started it.”

Maddie steps over the chaos and sits beside him, her presence immediately softening the edges of his panic. She looks effortlessly composed, which he finds personally offensive. “Are you sure about this?” she asks gently.

He nods. “It’s two weeks. I need—” He gestures vaguely, like the answer might be floating in the air somewhere above the TV remote. “—a break. From… everything.”

Maddie hums. “You mean from your literal dream career where you bake cakes and teach children life lessons about patience and friendship?”

“When you put it like that, it sounds ungrateful.”

“Buck.”

He looks at her, and for a second the humor slips. “I’m tired, Mads. Not of the work. Just of being on all the time. Of people wanting things from me. Of being the guy who smiles and says it’s all sunshine and sprinkles when he can’t remember the last time he slept through the night.”

Her face softens. “Then go,” she says quietly. “Take your weird secret trip. Just text me when you land.”

He exhales, grateful. “You’re not gonna tell May?”

“Only if you don’t bring me back a souvenir.”

Buck grins. “What about Merlin?”

“I am not parenting your yeast baby.”

He snorts, zipping the suitcase shut one last time. “Fair enough.”

Two hours later, he’s in Maddie and Chimney’s driveway, loading the suitcase into the back of their car because Maddie insisted on driving him to the airport—“you’ll get distracted by a billboard and miss your terminal,” she’d said, which was rude but true.

Jee is bouncing on the porch steps, wearing a Santa hat twice her size. “Uncle Buck! Are you going to England?!”

“I am,” he says solemnly. “Someone has to teach them proper cookie frosting technique.”

She gasps. “Do they not know?”

“Tragically, no.”

Chimney emerges with travel mugs for everyone, smelling faintly of coffee and chaos. “You packed snacks, right?”

Buck holds up a Ziploc full of cookies. “Twelve of these and half a banana.”

Chimney shakes his head. “Half?”

“It was going brown.”

“Remind me never to let you meal-prep for my kid.”

Maddie slides behind the wheel, and the car fills with that familiar sibling energy—bickering, overlapping voices, love disguised as sarcasm. Jee sings along to a Christmas playlist in the back, Chimney critiques Buck’s cookie ratios, and Maddie keeps glancing at him in the rearview mirror like she’s trying to memorize him before he goes.

Halfway to the airport, Jee leans forward. “Can you bring me snow?”

Buck smiles. “You got it, kiddo. I’ll pack a snowball in my carry-on.”

Chimney groans. “We’re gonna get flagged by TSA for actual snow.”

Maddie laughs, but there’s a tremor in it. “Promise me you’ll text when you land,” she says again, quieter now.

“I promise.”

“And you’ll call if you need—”

“Maddie.” He reaches forward, rests a hand on her shoulder. “It’s two weeks. I’ll be fine.”

He means it, mostly.

But when they pull up to the terminal and the goodbye hugs start, his throat goes tight. Jee’s arms wrap around his waist like a tiny vise. “Don’t forget about me,” she whispers.

“Never,” he says, voice catching. “You’re unforgettable.”

Chimney claps him on the back. “Try not to get detained for smuggling butter.”

“No promises.”

And then Maddie hugs him last, fierce and lingering, and says, “Find something good there. Even if it’s just sleep.”

He nods into her hair, holds on one extra heartbeat before forcing himself to let go.

Airports are emotional liminal spaces designed by demons. Buck is convinced of this as he shuffles through security barefoot, holding his belt in one hand and his dignity in the other. His carry-on feels heavier every step.

By the time he finds his gate, his anxiety has graduated from background hum to full symphony. The flight to London is eleven hours, which his brain helpfully translates to eleven hours in a metal tube hurtling through the sky at death speed.

He sits down, texts Maddie: Boarding now. Love you guys. Then adds: Tell Jee I’ll bring snow.

When they call his group, he stands, heart in his throat. His hands are clammy. His internal monologue is screaming, This is fine, you’re fine, millions of people do this every day and only a statistically insignificant number plummet to fiery doom.

He gets to his seat—a window, because he’d once read somewhere that it’s better to see the horizon (whoever wrote that was a liar). There’s a woman already in the aisle seat knitting something red and serene, and she smiles at him like he’s not on the verge of spontaneous combustion.

“First time flying?” she asks.

He laughs nervously. “No, just… not good at it. I prefer my feet to be where gravity intended.”

She pats his arm kindly. “We’ll be fine, dear.”

We’ll be fine, he repeats in his head like a prayer, strapping himself in so tightly he might fuse with the seat.

He texts Maddie before they take off:
If I don’t survive, tell Chim he still owes me twenty bucks and keep my stand mixer safe.

She replies almost instantly:
You’re being dramatic.

He is. He knows it. He’s built an entire career on it. You don’t become not only an incredibly successful baker but also the host of Sunny Bites—the number one children’s baking show in the country—without having a flair for the theatrical. Kids don’t tune in to watch someone calmly explain the crumb structure of sponge cake; they want gasps, wide eyes, and a man who reacts to a deflated soufflé like he’s just witnessed a national tragedy.

Maybe his palms are a little sweaty as the plane doors seal shut with a final, echoing thunk that sounds way too much like doom. But he’d argue that being dramatic is what keeps life interesting. It’s how you turn terror into entertainment. It’s how you survive fourteen hours in a pressurized tin can with a stranger’s toddler using your seat as a percussion instrument.

So yeah, he’s dramatic. He just prefers to keep his drama grounded—literally. Because even after years of flying all over the States for shoots and festivals, he’s never once liked it. Domestic flights are bad enough. Fourteen hours over an ocean? That’s not “flying.” That’s tempting fate.

Buck takes a deep breath through his nose, the way therapists and flight attendants both recommend, and forces his shoulders to relax against the seatback. He can do this. It’s just physics. Perfectly safe, totally routine physics. Airplanes are, statistically, the safest form of travel—something he’s said out loud at least three times since boarding, which probably isn’t reassuring anyone seated nearby.

Still, every time he hears a mechanical whir or a soft ding, his stomach tightens like he’s about to face turbulence at thirty thousand feet—or worse, someone recognizing him mid-panic attack. He can practically see the headline: ‘Celebrity Baker Loses Cool Mid-Flight, Caught Crying Into Complimentary Pretzels.’

He squeezes his eyes shut as the engines roar to life, gripping the armrests like they might suddenly detach from the plane. “It’s fine,” he mutters to himself. “This is fine. Air is just… sky water. And planes float.”

Hours stretch. He half-watches a movie, picks at airplane pasta and journals in his Notes app: Reasons I Might Not Be Totally Losing It
1. Jet lag isn’t a personality flaw,
2. Maybe the cottage has cozy blankets,
3. Snow equals serotonin.*

Somewhere over the Atlantic, he dozes. Dreams flicker—flour dust, applause, a camera light flashing on, then off.

When he wakes, the cabin lights are dim and the captain’s voice says something about descent. Buck’s stomach flips. Clouds streak past the window like brushed silver. The woman beside him murmurs, “Almost there.”

He grips the armrest again, breath shallow. Almost there.

The landing is rougher than he’d like; the wheels hit tarmac with a shudder that rattles his bones. But then—silence. Applause from a few relieved passengers. Buck laughs, shaky and giddy.

He’s alive.

He’s in England.

As he walks through Heathrow, exhaustion presses on him like a weighted blanket. Customs, baggage claim, all a blur of accents and fluorescent light. He steps through the sliding doors into the cold morning air—gray sky, soft flakes of snow spiraling down.

The air smells different here—wet stone and woodsmoke and something sweet he can’t name. He stands there for a long moment, suitcase handle in hand, mouth parted in something close to awe.

He did it. He actually left.

The taxi line glitters with frost. Someone nearby laughs, and the sound feels impossibly far from the studio lights and deadlines he left behind.

Buck grins, breath visible in the cold. “Okay, England,” he whispers.

He pulls out his phone, opens the note app again, and types: Reason #4: Maybe running away isn’t always running away.

Snow freckles the taxi’s windshield like powdered sugar, and Buck keeps having to stop himself from saying that out loud because the driver feels like the kind of man who has heard enough comparisons to frosting from American tourists in his lifetime.

They’ve left the motorway and traded it for increasingly narrow roads, the kind that look like they were designed for a single horse in 1742 and then politely asked cars to make themselves very small. Hedgerows rise up on either side, bristling with frozen berries and an attitude. Every few bends, Buck catches a postcard view: drystone walls like cake layers, fields tucked under a duvet of white, a church spire with just enough drama to make him think, unhelpfully, about ghost stories. The sky is the softer kind of gray that looks expensive. The kind paint companies name “Earl Winterbourne’s Waistcoat.”

“This is you,” the driver says eventually, turning onto a lane so narrow Buck is pretty sure it’s actually a very long driveway. Tire tracks thread down the middle; snow gathers on either side like polite spectators. They pull to a stop beside a wooden sign that reads, hand-painted and earnest: FOXGLOVE LANE. Underneath, someone has drawn a fox wearing a scarf. Buck wants to hug whoever did it. He wants to knit the fox a hat.

The driver gestures ahead. “Can’t take the car down there. It’s all ice and… well.” He shrugs like the rest of the sentence is “and I don’t want to die today.”

“No problem,” Buck says brightly, as if he is not a man who just barely survived a plane by bargaining with physics. “I’ve got legs.” His legs are currently a rumor below mid-thigh; he hasn’t felt his toes since customs.

He pays, adds way too much tip because he’s grateful and slightly feral from no sleep, and then he’s out in the cold with his suitcase and carry-on. The taxi pulls away, taillights fading. The world gets very quiet very fast. The kind of quiet that has texture to it—snow hush, distant sheep doing a low, disgruntled baa, a far-off crow complaining about something in Old Norse.

The cottage is—somewhere down there. He can see the suggestion of rooftops through the trees, smoke lifting like a slow exhale. The lane itself is a glossy ribbon of packed snow and ice with a thin layer of conscience on top. He tests a foot. Skates a little. Does not fall. He nods, solemn. “I respect you,” he tells the lane.

He starts walking. The suitcase’s wheels do that thing where they pretend to be round but are actually squares. Every third rotation, the bag jolts and makes a sound like a small animal in distress.

Two minutes in, a gate appears—old wood, lichen freckles, a latch that clearly predates penicillin. There’s a sign ducked in the slats: PLEASE SHUT ME. He fiddles with the latch. It sticks. He tries left, right, up, down. He tries asking nicely. He tries channeling the spirit of a man who knows how to do things with latches. Finally, with a shudder and a squeal, it lifts. He slips through, dragging the suitcase like a reluctant mule, then carefully closes it behind him because he doesn’t want to be the reason a herd of belligerent sheep takes over the village.

The lane dips, curls around a holly tree dusted in snow like confectioners’ sugar (stop it, brain), and then—there it is.

The cottage is smaller than he expected and also exactly what he hoped for: honey-colored stone walls, a roof that seems to have been placed there by a whimsical storybook engineer, and windows that glow a soft amber behind diamond panes. Ivy, properly festive and not the choking kind, clambers around the doorway, shaking off little tiaras of ice in the breeze. There’s a stack of wood under the eaves, neatly arranged like it might be in an instructional diagram titled HOW TO BE COZY. A crooked path of flagstones leads to the front step, where three terra-cotta pots sit like slightly tipsy cousins at a wedding.

He stops and stares, throat tight in an entirely different way than it was at thirty thousand feet. The warmth that spreads through him is immediate and ridiculous and a little embarrassing, like the first sip of hot chocolate that’s just the right temperature. “Oh,” he says, out loud to the snow and the foxes and possibly a passing ghost. “You’re perfect.” He did not know stone could look smug, but the cottage somehow manages it.

The key is under the third flowerpot to the left of the door, Adriana had written “The one that looks slightly drunk.” Buck squints at the lineup like he’s about to do a police interrogation. Pot One: respectable, upright, sober. Pot Two: earnest, trying its best. Pot Three: tilted at an angle that screams I had mulled wine for breakfast.

He crouches, fingers already numb, and lifts Pot Three. The key winks up at him like a conspirator. “Hello, you.” He immediately drops the pot on his toe, says several words that would get bleeped on Sunny Bites, and then laughs at himself so loudly a robin nearby heckles him for his tone.

Key in the lock, door pushes open with a little winter-stiff protest. The smell hits him first—wood smoke and citrus and something faintly yeasty, like Gerald’s English cousin left a trace behind. The entry is small and sloped and wildly charming in a way that would make LA realtors throw up their hands and shout about “natural light” while this doorway just whispers, we have soul. He steps in and the house groans contentedly, which is absolutely the floorboards but feels like a greeting.

He closes the door behind him and the quiet becomes a hug. He stands for a long second with his forehead against the wood, breathing the careful cold out and the house-smell in. His anxiety, which has been pacing at the edges of his vision like a wolf in a bad fairy tale, sits down. Not tamed. But considering.

The entry opens into a front room that is—yes—illegal fireplace territory. The hearth is big enough to cook a hobbit in (he files that away as a joke he will never make to a British person) and already laid with kindling and a couple of stout logs like someone expected him hours ago and wanted the fire to have a meet-cute. A worn sofa in a green that could be called Moss or Possibly ‘Pea if You Squint’ faces the hearth; a wool throw is flung over one arm with the studied carelessness of people who are good at living. There’s a low coffee table made from an old door, scored with knife marks that make Buck’s palms itch with the urge to restore and oil it, and a bookshelf full of actual books, spines cracked, with titles that include things like The Parish Pump and Stir-Up Sunday. He gravitates there like metal to a magnet. Three cookbooks he recognizes from his grandmother’s shelf sit shoulder to shoulder like old friends at a reunion. He runs a finger along them. Smiles.

On the little kitchen side—the cottage is basically one long, cozy inhale—there’s an Aga. He knows about Agas the way he knows about the mating habits of penguins: in theory, via documentary. It’s a glossy cream beast humming like an expensive cat, with oven doors like portholes to Narnia. On the counter: a note under a teacup paperweight.

Welcome, Buck! (Adriana’s handwriting: looping, purposeful.)
Fire is laid—matches in tin. Boiler’s temperamental; tell it it’s handsome and set to 18C. Kettle’s quick. My sourdough starter lives in the jar on the far left; his name is Arthur, which is a terrible name for a sourdough starter, I’m aware. Help yourself to anything. If my brother Eddie appears, don’t let him be weird.
– A

He laughs, a little deliriously.

He moves through the ritual of arrival with a kind of reverence disguised as chaos. Coat off (it’s more of a California “cold” coat than a British “actually cold” coat; he will adapt), boots on the mat, suitcase abandoned exactly where he’ll trip over it later. He finds the thermostat (small, circular, Britishly inscrutable), whispers, “You’re stunning,” and cranks it until it makes a decisive click. The radiators cough to life like old men waking from a nap to complain cheerfully about the draft.

Kettle on. Because obviously the first thing you do in England is boil water. He has read books. He has absorbed culture. He is ready to become a person who has Opinions about kettle speed.

While it rumbles, he crosses to the hearth. The matches are in a tin that used to hold biscuits; a spaniel with a bow tie beams from the lid. Of course. He kneels on the hearthstone, strikes a match, and touches it to the kindling. Fire licks, considers, catches. The room shifts an inch closer to alive. He sits back on his heels and watches flames begin their slow choreography around the logs. The part of him that’s always doing three things at once goes very still.

He is going to cry. This is unacceptable. He blinks upward at the ceiling beams, which are low enough he could probably bench-press them. “Don’t,” he tells himself mildly. “We are not crying at a fireplace fifteen minutes after arrival, we are not that man.” He is exactly that man. It’s fine. He sniffles once in a way that could be attributed to “British air.”

The kettle clicks itself righteous. He makes tea the way he remembers from a set consultant on Sunny Bites who’d corrected him when he called it “steeping”: tea bag in, water on, wait. He adds a healthy glug of honey because his soul needs it and because he’s not ready to milk-and-two-sugars this early in the relationship. Mug warming his hands, he prowls the cottage like a cat in a new apartment, mapping the corners.

Bedroom: sloped ceiling, duvet like a cloud that just won awards, a tiny dormer window with a seat that looks out over the lane and a hedgerow wearing snow like a fascinator. Bathroom: a clawfoot tub and a shower with a dial that offers options from ARCTIC POND to SCALD THE SIN AWAY. He files that under “later, when he can feel his toes again.” Back door: a lean-to that probably used to house gardening tools and now houses dreams of him chopping wood with competence. He immediately puts the axe back down because he values all of his current fingers.

Back to the kitchen. He opens the fridge. It’s small and deeply British: butter, eggs stamped with a little lion, jam with a gingham lid, a jar of Branston Pickle that looks like it knows secrets, and a mysterious unlabeled container that—he decides swiftly—is chutney until proven otherwise. There’s also milk, actual full-fat milk that tastes like old-fashioned childhood, and a bag of carrots that look like they were grown by elves with a sense of humor. He finds flour in a tin labeled FLOUR (thank you, Adriana), salt in a jar labeled SALT (bless you), and an old, well-loved scale that weighs in grams (he can do grams, he’s cosmopolitan). His hands start doing the dance they always do, even when he’s exhausted: measuring by muscle memory, feeling normal in the small act of making.

No baking, he tells himself firmly. Sleep. Tea. Fire. Looking.

He takes his tea to the window by the front door and presses his nose to the cold glass like a kid peeking at toys. The lane below is quiet, the snow falling in a fine, steady curtain that blurs the edges of the world. Across the hedge, a shape looms—sheep, yes, actual sheep—and then the shape turns and regards him. They briefly make eye contact. Buck nods, respectful. The sheep looks unimpressed and returns to their meditative chewing. Somewhere, a bell rings the hour—slow, sonorous, a noise that makes him think of mince pies and people going to things like “carols.” His chest goes warm again, entirely unrelated to the tea.

There’s a thud outside. Not ominous; more “nature doing a thing.” Buck tells himself he is not in a horror movie and peeks out. A ginger cat is on the step, looking up at the door with the calm entitlement of a creature who has inherited England. It meows, imperious.

“Oh my god,” Buck breathes. “Sir.” He opens the door an inch. The cat walks in without checking ID, does a loop, shakes snow off with a satisfaction that rivals tax relief, and parks itself by the hearth like it pays the mortgage. It looks at Buck as if to say, Finally, the staff has arrived.

“Right,” Buck says. He checks the note again for a mention of a cat, finds none, considers texting Adriana A cat has adopted me please advise, does not because he can handle one cat. He can handle his life. He can.

The cat’s collar says SPROUT. Of course it does. “Sprout,” Buck says, solemn, and the cat blinks like, Your accent is offensive but accepted.

Buck finishes his tea, makes another. He shrugs off the travel-grime by washing his face at the kitchen sink—cold water that’s so cold it feels evangelical, then warm, then the kind of clean that makes you look at a mirror and go, oh right, I have a face. He debates a shower but decides the tub would seduce him into sleeping in it like a shipwrecked sailor, and the list of ways to die embarrassingly has already been too long this week.

Instead, he hauls his suitcase into the bedroom and starts the gentle unpack: socks in drawer, jeans in a little stack that wants to be aspirational, sweaters folded with a neatness his producer would weep to see. He finds a tiny lavender sachet in the drawer and briefly considers becoming a person who says sachet with confidence. He places the sachet on top of his T-shirts like he’s blessing them into adulthood.

People belong to this place. People stand in front of this house and have faces softened by knowing where they are. He wants that, and the wanting is a small, sharp thing—easy to cover with jokes on a plane, but here, with the fire murmuring and Sprout loafed on the rug in a manner that defies physics, it glows brighter. He is here to rest, yes. But also to see what happens when he stops performing long enough to hear himself think.

His phone buzzes. A message from Maddie: Did you land? Are you eating? Are you warm? Then, Send photo or I call Interpol with three detective emojis and a croissant.

He angles himself by the hearth and takes a photo—the fire, the mug, his socked feet, Sprout’s judgmental profile. He sends it. Alive. Cozy. House is a fairytale. Fireplace is definitely illegal. I’m already a better person.

Three dots. Bring me a fox in a scarf.

Done, he replies. If I can’t find one I will knit it myself.

He stares at the screen, then opens his email, thumb hovering over May’s name. His heart shivers. He could tell her he’s on a “creative sabbatical.” He could lie about a network thing. He could ask her to water his snake plant, which he does not own. He closes the app. Not yet. He will tell her. He will. After he has slept and not cried at a fireplace twice in one day.

His body begins to realize that it is, in fact, in a different country and has been awake for approximately nine hundred years. Jet lag comes over him like a benevolent avalanche. He fights the urge to lie down right there and nap crooked on the sofa. He knows the rules about trying to stay up until local evening. He knows the rules and already knows he will break them.

“Okay,” he tells the cottage, which is also himself. “A short nap. Like… twenty minutes.” He sets an alarm. He sets three alarms.

He crawls under the duvet that smells faintly of laundry and something green, tucks himself against pillows that have seen the faces of people who sleep well, and lets his eyes lower. The last thing he hears is the soft, self-satisfied crackle of the fire and the delicate sound of snow tapping the window, precisely like a polite neighbor who brought over a casserole.

He wakes up three hours later in the full dark, convinced for thirty seconds that he is inside a snow globe held by a giant who has just given it a mild shake. The room is deep blue; the fire in the other room has gone to embers. Panic flares, a small wild animal—Did he miss something? Did he sleep through Christmas? Did he ruin his circadian rhythm so badly he will never see daylight again?—and then another sound threads through it: voices outside. Not ghost voices. Actual living voices. They’re cheerful, winter-muffled, young and old layered together, and then a sudden swell of song that resolves into—oh god—carolers.

Buck bolts upright, hair electrocuted, heart already laughing at itself. He considers leaping to the window to peer like a Victorian orphan. He goes for it. He cracks the dormer and cold air pours in, crisp as bitten apples. Down in the lane, a cluster of people in puffer jackets and knit hats cluster under a lamplight that glows like a halo. One of them has a lantern. Of course they do. A kid in a red coat kicks at snow while the adults harmonize to “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” like they mean it.

Buck bites down on a ridiculous smile. Okay. He will watch strangers sing outside his temporary house and feel the odd, medicinal click of loneliness aligning with something warm. He will believe this lane might be the narrow-walled hallway between one version of himself and another.

He scampers for the kitchen, throws the kettle on, digs for cookies he did not bake but will pretend he did when offering them to carolers, and then pauses because: boundary issues? Does one fling open the door and hand biscuits to singing villagers? He has seen films.

He compromises by cracking the door and standing there with a mug, the cat gliding by like a redheaded apparition to sit on the threshold with its tail curled neatly around its paws. Cold air hands him its cheek to kiss. He sips and listens, chin tucked in the collar of his sweater, as the last chord fades and the group explodes into laughter and chatter. Someone mentions the pub, someone else mentions their gran’s pudding. A tall figure at the edge has his hands in his pockets and a laugh that starts low and ends in a surprised bright sound—Buck catches it like you catch a spark.

He realizes, belatedly, that he is smiling directly at this stranger like an open window. The man glances up, as if he felt the gaze. For a heartbeat, their eyes meet across the lane—only a flash, shadow and lanternlight and the vague outline of a jaw that could solve crimes. Buck raises his mug in a small, awkward salute. The man tilts his head, an almost-smile like the ghost of one, then turns as someone claps him on the shoulder and the whole group begins to drift.

Buck closes the door softly, heart doing a dumb little skip that he fully intends to blame on caffeine and heat contrast. 

He tends the fire, easy now, like he’s done it forever, and finds himself humming “rest ye merry” even though merriness has never been a thing he trusts to stick. Sprout blinks judgment from the hearth rug. “Don’t start,” Buck tells the cat. “It’s day one.”

The fatigue comes in gently, not like an avalanche but like the tide. He stacks wood for later, pours the remainder of his tea down the sink and starts making a plan for tomorrow that involves: going to the shop to buy eggs, walking until his brain stops narrating his walking, finding the pub, and branching out from tea to a pork pie because he has read novels and is committed to the bit.

Sleep doesn't come easily and Buck finds himself in the tiny kitchen again He pours himself a glass of red wine and gets to work.

By the time he is on his third glass of wine—the first bang shakes the cottage. Then another. Then a third, accompanied by a muffled, deeply offended voice outside yelling something that sounds like “Open up!” and “bloody hell.”

Buck freezes, hands still covered in flour. Checks the clock. Midnight again. Why is it always midnight when his life takes a turn for the weird?

The fire flickers. Sprout the cat bolts for the bedroom like he’s seen this movie before.

Another BANG BANG BANG.

“Okay okay okay,” Buck mutters to the dough.

He wipes his hands on a towel, grabs the nearest blunt object (a rolling pin, naturally), and cracks the door open—

—and is immediately greeted by a man swaying gently on the step, snow dusting his dark hair and shoulders like decorative guilt. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, and wearing the expression of someone who’s lost both his keys and his faith in humanity somewhere between the pub and here.

His coat’s unzipped, scarf askew, cheeks flushed from whiskey and wind. His eyes, when they find Buck, are sharp but a little unfocused, like they’re trying very hard to stay in a straight line.

“Where’s my sister?” he demands, accent thick and voice gravelly from the cold.

Buck blinks. “Probably in Los Angeles?”

The guy just stares at him for a full five seconds.

Then he squints, sways a little, and mutters, “That’s… that’s not where she lives.”

“Normally, sure,” Buck says carefully, lowering the rolling pin. “But we, uh, swapped houses. For the holidays. She’s in LA, I’m here, making bread.”

The man frowns. “She mentioned that. Said she was thinking about it. Didn’t say she’d done it.”

There’s something adorably betrayed about the way he says it — like Adriana ran off with his favorite mug.

Buck leans against the doorframe. “Guess she didn’t want you trying to talk her out of it.”

“Because it’s insane,” the guy insists, with the self-righteous confidence of the very drunk. “Who swaps houses with a stranger across the world? What if you were a murderer?”

Buck gestures to his flour-covered chest. “Well, spoiler alert: murderers don’t usually wear aprons that say Whisk Taker.”

The man squints harder, as if he’s trying to decide if that’s evidence for or against Buck’s point.

Buck sighs. “Okay, look, you’re freezing and about thirty percent whisky right now. Come in before you fall over. I promise I’m not going to kill you”

The man hesitates for a grand total of half a second before stepping inside. “I’m Eddie,” he says, as though this explains everything.

“Buck,” he replies, nudging the door shut behind him. “And before you ask, yes, that’s my real name, and no, I didn’t choose it for the show.”

Eddie stops mid-stumble. “Show?”

Buck winces. “Yeah, I host a kids’ baking show. Sunny Bites. It’s—look, never mind. Long story. You want tea?”

Eddie blinks like Buck just offered him a map to Narnia. “You have whiskey?”

“I have… wine?”

Eddie collapses onto the couch anyway, snow still melting in his hair, eyes darting around the cottage like he’s trying to decide if it’s real. “She really left.”

“Yup.”

“For two weeks.”

“Yup.”

“With you.”

“Hey,” Buck says, mock-offended. “I’m very good house-swap material. I bake, I clean, I don’t do ritual sacrifices unless it’s for a good sourdough rise.”

That earns a laugh. A low, wrecked thing that sounds like it’s been buried under too many long days. It spills out of Eddie before he can stop it, and for a second, Buck forgets to breathe.

“God,” Eddie mutters, rubbing his face. “She’s going to kill me when she finds out I came here.”

Buck grins. “Oh, absolutely. But on the bright side, she’ll have to come back from LA to do it.”

That earns another reluctant laugh, this one looser, realer. Eddie leans back, boots half-off, head tipping toward the cushions. The firelight paints him gold and soft, and for someone who just pounded on the door like a debt collector, he suddenly looks exhausted.

Buck studies him, his brain already inventing a dozen terrible explanations for the universe’s sense of humor. “So what’s your plan now?”

Buck is looking at Eddie on the couch, minute he’s slumped on the couch like someone unplugged him mid-sentence. The next, he sits upright with the wild, startled energy of a man who suddenly remembered he was supposed to be somewhere.

He squints at Buck with slow suspicion.
Then—like he arrives at a conclusion that Buck is Not A Threat—his face melts into a crooked grin.

“Oh good,” he announces, pointing vaguely at Buck with the enthusiasm of someone discovering gravity. “Still here. Thought maybe I hallucinated you.”

Buck blinks. “Nope. Very real. Unfortunately.”

Eddie considers this, then nods approvingly. “Real is good.” He stands. Or—tries to. It’s more of a wobble, a sway, then both hands braced on the counter like he’s docking a ship.

Buck instinctively steps forward. “Hey—careful.”

Eddie grins wider. “Aw. He’s helpful.”

“He,” Buck says, deadpan, “is making sure you don’t face-plant into the tile.”

Eddie gasps like he’s offended on principle. “I would never face-plant in front of a guest.”

Buck laughs quietly. “Technically you’re the guest.”

Eddie ignores that. He reaches out and—without warning—pokes flour off the tip of Buck’s nose with one single, decisive finger.

Then stares at the smudge like he just touched a miracle.

“Ohhh,” he murmurs, delighted. “You’re soft.”

Buck stops breathing.

Eddie leans in, eyes half-lidded, voice dropping like he’s sharing a cosmic truth:

“Flour suits you. Very…” His head tilts. “Bready.”

Buck chokes on air. “Bready?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, confident now, gesturing like he’s describing abstract art. “Soft on the outside. Probably warm on the inside.”

Then, after a beat: “But not too warm. Just like—perfect bread temperature.”

Buck cannot believe this is happening.

“You’re—drunk,” he manages.

Eddie beams. “And you’re handsome.”

Buck short-circuits.

Eddie watches him with the smug satisfaction of a man who thinks he just won a game nobody else knew they were playing. Then he steps closer, swaying slightly, and Buck’s heart does something embarrassing.

“So,” Eddie says. “In the interest of international relations—”

Buck blinks. “What?”

Eddie pats his shoulder like he’s announcing terms of a treaty.

“Since you are handsome—” Buck makes a sound that is definitely not sane. “—and you fed my sister emotions and bread—"

“I didn’t feed her emo—”

“Shhh.” Eddie presses a finger to Buck’s lips. “Diplomatic moment.”

Buck stands perfectly still. Mainly because he has no idea what to do with his body anymore.

Eddie leans in—slow but certain—and kisses him.

It’s not neat or practiced. It’s soft and slightly off-center and tastes faintly like whiskey and something citrusy. But it’s warm. And real. And full of chaos.

Eddie pulls back only enough to say, with the seriousness of a man giving a sworn oath:

“Don’t make it weird.”

Buck, dazed, breathless: “...You kissed me.”

Eddie nods like that proves his point.
“Exactly.”

And then—then—he turns around, walks back to the couch, lies down, and is asleep in under seven seconds.

Like nothing happened.

Buck stands frozen, pulse somewhere near the stratosphere.

Chapter Text

When Eddie wakes up, his first thought is that his skull has been replaced with a church bell.

The second is that the church bell is inside his skull, being rung enthusiastically by a sadist.

He groans, which only makes the bell louder, and tries to burrow deeper into the cushion under his cheek. The cushion smells faintly of woodsmoke and somebody else’s fabric softener. Not his.

Not home.

His eyes snap open.

The ceiling above him is not his ceiling. It’s low and white with a crack that runs from the corner like a tiny river. There’s a beam, dark and old, cutting across his vision. Beyond that: the soft hiss of a gas kettle, the low burble of a radio tuned too quietly to hear the words, he is at Adriana's and—

“Morning.”

The voice comes with the smell of coffee and something warm and yeasty and illegal-level nice.

Eddie jolts upright so fast his vision whites out. The church bell inside his skull rings a full peal, then settles into an offended tolling.

He blinks against the light. It’s a grey, watery winter morning sort of light, smeared through the cottage windows and filtering across the room. He’s on Adriana’s battered old couch in her sitting room, one arm still in his coat sleeve, scarf half-strangled round his neck. The fire is down to embers, casting a sulky orange glow.

Sprout sits on the hearth, tail curled neatly around ginger paws, watching him with the smug judgment of someone who definitely saw everything.

And in the doorway to the tiny kitchen stands the American, holding out a mug.

The American. Right. Right, okay, yes. Telly baker. Flour. Wine. Pub. Midnight. Eddie’s brain offers up a highlight reel all at once, like a particularly cruel trailer.

—“In the interest of international relations—”

—A surprised laugh, a hand on the front of a flour-dusted jumper.

—The American’s mouth, soft and warm and shocked under his.

Eddie’s stomach does a complicated, deeply unhelpful swoop.

He squints instead at the mug. “If that’s not coffee I might cry.”

“It is absolutely coffee,” the American says, sounding amused and a bit hoarse. “I was warned about British tea being a sacred hangover cure, but this felt like a safer bet.”

He steps closer, holds the mug out again. Up close, Eddie can see that his hair’s still a bit of a mess from sleep, sticking up at the back like it’s trying to escape gravity. He’s changed into a soft-looking sweatshirt and joggers, both in shades of grey that probably have names like “cloud” and “storm” on American websites. There’s flour on the sleeve again, because apparently that’s just his natural state.

Do not think about his mouth, Eddie tells himself, taking the mug. Do not look at his mouth. It meant nothing. You were drunk and he was… there, and bready, and—

His gaze darts traitorously to the American’s lips. Just for a second.

His head throbs in reprimand.

“Thanks,” Eddie manages, voice rough. He takes a sip and makes an embarrassing noise because the coffee is actually good, rich and strong and not instant at all. The American’s mouth curves, and Eddie pretends that’s not a problem either.

“You, uh,” the American says, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. “You crashed pretty hard. I didn’t think you’d make it all the way back to yours in that state, so…” He gestures awkwardly at the couch. “Hope it’s okay you stayed. Sprout didn’t seem to mind.”

Sprout blinks slowly, the furry equivalent of I absolutely minded, and Eddie has to look away before he laughs hysterically.

“Yes, well,” he says, clearing his throat. “Sprout and I have always had a complicated relationship.”

The American huffs a soft laugh. Eddie’s stomach lurches again.

“It was very diplomatic of you,” Eddie adds, because words are happening and he cannot seem to stop them. “International incident avoided. My sister would have murdered you if I’d slipped on the lane and died on the way home. Bad Yelp review. Zero stars. American baker lured local man to death via carbs.”

The American’s eyebrows shoot up, then he laughs properly, head tipping back for a second. The sound does something awful and fizzy to Eddie’s chest.

“Wow,” he says. “That’s—graphic. And oddly specific.”

“Hangovers make me melodramatic,” Eddie says. “Sorry you had to witness that.”

“Oh, that wasn’t the most dramatic part of the evening,” he says, and then his eyes go very wide, like the words have escaped without permission.

Eddie’s heart stops.

There’s a half-second of frozen silence, broken only by the crackle of the embers and the distant, muffled tolling of the actual church bells up in the village. Fog-wet light presses against the windows. Sprout’s tail flicks once.

The American’s gaze skitters away, towards the kitchen, towards literally anywhere else. A flush creeps over his cheekbones, pink blooming under all that Californian sunshine or whatever he’s made of.

Oh God. Oh no. Eddie’s stomach drops through the floor.

Because there it is: not just the memory, sharp and hot and horrifyingly clear, but the confirmation that it was not, in fact, a hallucination conjured by cheap lager and the way the American’s laughter had felt like a dare.

He kissed him. In his sister’s cottage. At midnight.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. A terrible, brilliant mistake.

“I—” The American starts, then lets out a breath. “Sorry. That was… I mean, you’d had a lot to drink. And I’d had—some wine.” His hand flutters vaguely, like the two glasses of wine is a state secret. “We can just… not talk about it. If you want.”

It meant nothing, Eddie tells himself, so fiercely he can almost hear it echo. Nothing. A stupid drunken impulse, and the American’s just being nice about it because he’s American and therefore constitutionally incapable of rudeness.

His skin feels too tight. His mouth is dry despite the coffee.

“That’s probably for the best,” he says lightly, studying the surface of his drink as though it holds the secrets of the universe. “I make a policy of not remembering anything that happens after my third pint. It keeps me young.”

The American’s laugh this time is smaller, but still warm. “Okay,” he says. “Policy respected.”

Policy respected. As if Eddie has any policies beyond “don’t emotionally self-destruct in front of strangers” and he’s already failed that one spectacularly.

He takes another sip of coffee. It settles warm and solid in his stomach, a tiny anchor against the swirling embarrassment.

“Did I, uh…” He clears his throat. “Say anything deeply stupid? Beyond the usual.”

The American’s expression shifts, a flicker of something fond crossing it before he schools it away.

“You called me ‘bready’ at one point,” he says.

Eddie groans into his mug.

“And ‘handsome,’” the American adds, a little quieter.

Eddie chokes on the coffee.

“Right,” he wheezes, when he can breathe again. “Well. On the bright side, at least I’m consistent.”

“Consistently drunk?” the American offers, lips twitching.

“Consistently mortified,” Eddie corrects. “But sure, let’s blame the alcohol.”

He can feel the heat rising up his neck. It’s fine. It’s just shame. Shame is a familiar friend. He can live with shame. He cannot live with the way the memory keeps replaying in the corner of his mind: the American’s surprised inhale against his mouth, the way his own fingers had curled into the front of that jumper like a teenager. The warmth. The softness.

It meant nothing, he insists. It was a stupid, impulsive thing. He hasn’t kissed anyone since… well. Since ages. That’s all. A lapse. Not a thing.

The fact that his heart is still beating too fast, sitting on his sister’s couch in front of this man, is clearly just a cardiovascular issue.

“I should—” Eddie breaks off, gestures vaguely in the direction of the door and, beyond it, the village. “Sophia’s got…” He stops himself.

“Right, yeah. Of course. I, uh…” He rubs his neck again. “I made bread. Obviously.” His mouth quirks. “If you want to take some. For Sophia? As a bribe.”

Eddie’s eyes flick towards the kitchen. There, on the counter, sits a golden-brown loaf, cracked artfully along the top, the crust dusted with flour. It looks like something off the telly, which, in fairness, is exactly what it is.

God, his sisters are going to lose their minds when they find out their house swap came with a live-in children’s TV baker.

They must never find out anything else.

“That’s…” Eddie swallows. His mouth has gone oddly dry again. “Very kind.”

“It’s, like, the least I can do for commandeering your sister’s cottage and… enabling your hangover?” the American says. “And for the record, you didn’t… you weren’t awful. Last night. You were—funny.”

Eddie stares at him. “That’s even worse.”

This earns him a laugh, soft and startled. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, the good news,” Eddie says briskly, setting his empty mug down on the coffee table with more force than strictly necessary, “is that you’ll never have to experience it again. I am going to be sober and dignified and non-bready around you from now on.”

The American’s eyes do that little crinkling thing at the corners that Eddie is absolutely not cataloguing.

“Non-bready,” he repeats.

“Dry toast,” Eddie clarifies. “Emotionally.”

“That sounds… appetising,” the American says, which is definitely a lie but a gracious one.

Eddie pushes to his feet before his brain can sabotage him further. The room tilts briefly, then rights itself. He shrugs properly into his coat, unwinds the scarf from where it’s half-hanging off his ear, and pretends not to see Sprout’s unimpressed stare.

“Thank you,” he says, and means it more than he wants to. “For the sofa. And the coffee. And the… diplomatic amnesia.”

The smile in return is small but genuine. “Anytime.”

No. Not anytime. Never again. That is the plan.

The American pulls a tea towel off the loaf, wraps it with a practised ease, and hands it over. Eddie takes it carefully, as though it might explode.

“Careful,” he says. “It’s still warm.”

Of course it is. Of course the bread is warm. Of course his fingers brush Eddie’s as he passes it over, a tiny spark of contact that shouldn’t matter at all and yet somehow lands like a live wire under Eddie’s skin.

Absolutely nothing, Eddie tells himself savagely, as his heart does something very much like a swoop. It was nothing. This is nothing. He is taking bread to his sister, that is all.

“Right,” he says, retreating towards the door. “Well. Welcome to Foxglove Lane. Watch yourself on the ice. The village council are apparently allergic to grit.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. He’s standing there in the little hallway now, one hand braced against the doorframe, Sprout weaving between his ankles like he owns him already. Light from the overcast sky behind Eddie makes a halo out of his hair.

Eddie absolutely does not think about kissing him again. He doesn’t. Not at all. Except for the split second where he does, vividly, the memory slamming into him: the warmth of the American’s breath, the surprise turning into something that might have been—

Stop.

“Goodbye,” Eddie says, before his own face betrays him.

“Bye,” he replies softly.

The cold hits Eddie as soon as the door shuts behind him, crisp and damp and full of fog. The lane is a narrow ribbon of slick cobblestones, the cottage crouched against it like something out of a postcard. The high street bells are still chiming, somewhere up the hill. The air smells of wet stone and chimney smoke and, faintly, of the bread cooling in his hands.

He doesn’t look back. That would imply there’s something to look back at.

There isn’t.

It meant nothing.

By the time he reaches Sophia’s, his ears hurt from the cold and from the echo of his own thoughts.

The walk up through the village should have cleared his head. It usually does. The pubs are shuttered this early on a winter morning, their signs creaking gently in the breeze. The butcher is dragging crates in from a van, nodding at Eddie as he passes. Somewhere, a dog barks with enthusiastic futility at a flock of indifferent pigeons.

Everything is ordinary. Familiar. Safe.

His mind, uncooperative bastard that it is, chooses this moment to replay the kiss in slow motion.

The American’s face, lips parted in a little surprised “oh” just before impact. The way he’d tasted faintly of wine and yeast and something citrus. The brief, electric moment when Eddie had felt the slightest hint of response before he’d panicked and pulled away, muttering something idiotic about diplomacy while his heart tried to punch its way out of his chest.

It had been nothing. It had to be nothing. He’d been drunk. The American had been tipsy and kind and very far from home. Eddie is not—he is not that person anymore, just kissing strangers in kitchens because they smile at him.

Except he very obviously is, given the evidence.

He tightens his grip on the warm loaf, as though it’s responsible.

Sophia’s cottage is larger than Adri’s, cheerfully chaotic, with a wooden gate that sticks in winter. Eddie shoulders it open, the hinges protesting. The front door flies open before he can knock.

“Daddy!”

Chris barrels into him, all gangly limbs and sleepy enthusiasm, pyjamas tucked into woolly socks. Eddie’s hangover recedes a bit as he crouches to scoop him up, bread wedged awkwardly between them.

“Hey, mijo,” he says into his son’s hair, breathing in the familiar mix of shampoo and biscuit crumbs. “You been terrorising your aunt?”

Chris pulls back with a grin. “We watched the baking man,” he announces proudly.

Eddie freezes. “The… what?”

“The baking man!” Chris repeats. “On telly.”

Sophia appears in the doorway behind him, mug of tea in hand, hair stuffed into a messy bun that’s losing the fight. She’s wearing one of Adri’s old jumpers and pyjama bottoms decorated with tiny penguins.

“We watched Sunny Bites. Again.”

Of course they did.

Sophia’s eyes flick to the loaf in his hand, then back up to his face. One eyebrow arches, deadly.

“Well, speak of the devil and he shall provide carbs,” she says. “Is that from Adriana'a American?”

“He’s not Adriana's American,” Eddie says automatically.

Sophia’s grin sharpens. “Oh? Is he yours?”

“Absolutely not,” Eddie says, too quickly. “He’s nobody’s. He’s just—here. Temporarily. Baking. Being… unnecessarily cheerful.”

Sophia sips her tea, still smirking. “Uh-huh. And did you go over last night like you said you might, or did you decide to spare the poor man?”

Eddie considers lying. He truly does. But Chris is looking at him with big interested eyes, and he has a loaf of suspiciously professional-looking bread in his hands like a smoking gun.

“I—may have stopped by,” he admits, carefully neutral.

Sophia’s gaze flicks to the bread again, then to his face. Her eyes narrow. “And came away with produce. That was fast.”

“It’s just bread,” Eddie mutters. “He offered. As a bribe.”

“For what?”

“For… existing in his kitchen,” Eddie says. “Look, can we not do this right now? My head hurts and I’m fairly sure my liver has resigned in protest.”

Sophia leans against the doorframe, taking him in properly now. “You look like death warmed up,” she says, not unkindly. “Pub?”

“Pub,” he agrees. “There was a quiz. Liam decided we needed to stay until the bitter end to prove our intellectual dominance. The only thing we dominated was the jukebox.”

“And then you went to terrorise the American,” she concludes.

“I did not—” he starts, then aborts. “I may have been… mildly obnoxious.”

“Mildly?” she echoes.

He remembers poking flour off the man’s nose, calling him “bready” and “handsome” like that’s just a normal thing to do with strangers. He remembers kissing him.

Mild is not the word.

“He’s very tolerant,” Eddie hedges.

Sophia’s smirk softens. “Well, he’s from L.A., isn’t he? They probably have seminars about dealing with eccentric British locals.”

“Dear God, I hope not,” Eddie says.

“You fancy him, then?” she asks, the way she might ask if he fancies a biscuit. Casual. Lethal.

“No,” Eddie says, instantly. “Obviously not.”

Sophia tilts her head. “You said that very quickly.”

“I’m hungover,” he snaps, then immediately feels bad. “Sorry. I just—he’s some telly baking person on holiday or whatever. It’s not—” He waves his hand. “I have Chris. I have work. I am not in the market for… anything.”

Sophia’s expression shifts, the teasing receding to let something softer through. “I know,” she says. “I’m not saying you have to be. I’m just saying.” She nudges his arm with her mug. “You’re allowed to find people fit, you know. It’s not a crime. Yet.”

“He’s not—” Eddie starts, then stops, because that path leads only to self-incrimination. “He’s very… American.”

“I hear that’s a selling point for some,” she says.

He rolls his eyes.

Chris tugs at his coat sleeve. “Can I have bread?” he asks, eyeing the loaf with laser focus.

“Yes,” Eddie says, relieved at the change of subject. “This is special bread. International bread.”

“Does it speak Spanish?” Chris asks, deadly serious.

“Probably better than your dad does this morning,” Sophia says dryly.

Eddie sticks his tongue out at her behind Chris’s back. She meets his eye over their nephew’s head, the corners of her mouth curling.

“Stay for breakfast,” she says. “We’ll interrogate you gently in exchange for coffee.”

He hesitates. The idea of sitting at Sophia’s tiny kitchen table, eating the American’s bread while she pries into his feelings, is… fraught.

On the other hand, he’s starving and the thought of going straight home and being alone with his thoughts is almost worse.

“Fine,” he sighs. “But no interrogation.”

“No promises,” she singsongs, stepping aside to let him in.

The bread, infuriatingly, is delicious.

Sophia slices it thick, steam rising from the soft crumb as she spreads butter that melts almost instantly. They eat it with scrambled eggs and a level of reverence that Eddie would be embarrassed by if he weren’t simultaneously hungover and in something close to religious awe.

“Right,” Sophia says around a mouthful, “you win. Adriana is never allowed to swap houses with anyone less talented than this ever again.”

“It’s not a competition,” Eddie says.

“It’s absolutely a competition,” she counters. “And so far, American Baker is winning. What did you say his name was again?”

“I didn’t,” Eddie says, perhaps a little too quickly. “And I don’t remember.”

He does. Of course he does. The name had slotted into his brain last night with ridiculous ease, along with the facts that he hosts a children’s baking show and that he smiles with his whole face like an idiot.

But names are dangerous. Names make people real. Easier to keep him as “the American.” Easier to file the kiss under “isolated incident with an anonymous tourist” and move on.

“You don’t remember,” Sophia repeats, sceptical. “You went round there drunk, collected bread and, judging by the way you’re dodging this conversation, probably humiliation, and you didn’t even get his name?”

Eddie shoves another bite of egg into his mouth. “Maybe I’m protecting his privacy,” he says once he’s swallowed. “Maybe I’m being noble.”

“You’re being weird,” she says. “Even for you, his name is Buck.”

Chris swings his legs under the table, humming the theme tune to Sunny Bites as he demolishes his toast. “The baking man’s name is funny,” he informs them. “It makes him sound like a superhero.”

“See?” Eddie seizes on that. “He’s a superhero. Superheroes don’t have real names. They have alter egos. It’s in the rules.”

Sophia gives him a long, knowing look. “You’re deflecting,” she says.

“That is a baseless accusation,” he replies.

It’s not. He is, in fact, deflecting with the skill of a man who has spent years perfecting the art. Away from parents who never wanted to hear the truth. Away from feelings that always show up at inconvenient times. Away from the way his chest had felt last night, full and sharp all at once when the American had looked at him like he was something interesting instead of something broken.

It meant nothing, he tells himself again, chasing a crumb around his plate with his fork. Absolutely nothing.

“Anyway,” he says, changing tack with all the subtlety of a lorry on ice, “how was Chris? Did he sleep all right?”

Sophia lets him pivot, because she’s kind like that. “He was good as gold,” she says, ruffling Chris’s hair. “We built a fort and watched three episodes of baking man. He ate his body weight in popcorn and only asked for you a couple of times.”

Chris leans against Eddie’s arm. “I missed you,” he says, muffled.

Eddie’s heart squeezes. “I missed you too, buddy,” he says, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “Next time you can come to the pub and heckle Liam’s quiz answers.”

Sophia snorts. “Please don’t teach my nephew to shout ‘that’s not a real river, you muppet’ at strangers.”

“I would never,” Eddie says piously. “He’d say ‘idiot,’ not ‘muppet’.”

Chris giggles. Sophia throws a piece of crust at him. For a moment, everything is so comfortably normal that Eddie could almost believe last night really was just some strange, vivid dream.

Except there is still the taste of good coffee on his tongue, and the memory of the American’s soft “Anytime,” and the knowledge that somewhere, just down the hill and along Foxglove Lane, the man exists. In his sister’s cottage. In Eddie’s village. In his orbit.

Temporary, he reminds himself. Like the fog. Here for a bit, then gone. Not worth reshaping your life over.

He will not think about him again. That’s that.

He thinks about him again approximately twenty-seven minutes later.

The fog has lifted a little by the time Eddie and Chris leave Sophia’s. The weak winter sun is doing its best, turning the wet cobblestones into streaks of dull silver. The church bells ring out the hour, echoing down the narrow streets. Someone’s burning something in a nearby fireplace that smells suspiciously like whatever the council banned last year.

Eddie zips Chris’s coat up to his chin and pulls his hat down over his ears. “You warm enough?” he asks.

Chris nods solemnly. “Toasty.”

“Good,” Eddie says, adjusting his grip on the tote bag Sophia pressed on him, now loaded with leftover bread, a Tupperware of pasta bake, and Chris’s favourite plush dinosaur. “Let’s get home. You can show me your fort-building skills.”

They set off up the lane towards the high street. Eddie knows, in the quiet, sensible part of his brain, that the quickest way home is to cut across by the church and down past the Co-op.

He also knows that if he turns left at the butcher and cuts behind the old post office, he’ll end up at the top of Foxglove Lane.

He absolutely, categorically, is not going to do that.

“You okay, Dad?” Chris asks, peering up at him.

“Course,” Eddie says. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’re doing your thinking eyebrows,” Chris says.

“Am I?” Eddie reaches up, smoothing his forehead with his free hand, as though that might help. “Well. Tell them to behave.”

“What are you thinking?” He asks innocently.

“Just… village council and their ongoing war with grit.”

It’s not a complete lie. The lane had been treacherous this morning. The American could have easily gone sprawling on his first day here. Eddie has lived here long enough to know which paving stones wobble, which corners collect ice. The American doesn’t. Presumably in Los Angeles the closest they get to this level of slipperiness is a rogue avocado.

He frowns at the ground, imagining those too-big trainers on slick stone.

He does not care. He doesn’t. It’s just basic human concern for a guest. In his sister’s house. In his village.

“Dad,” Chris says, tugging his hand. “You’re doing it again.”

“Traitor,” Eddie mutters without heat.

They reach the butcher’s. The normal route home lies straight ahead: up past the grocer, right at the church, down towards the estate.

To the left, the alley snakes between two old stone buildings, damp and narrow and familiar.

He stops at the corner, Eddie is pushing Chris along in his wheelchair because it is easier to navigate the cobblestone.

“We’re going this way,” he tells himself firmly. Straight. Sensible. The grown-up thing.

He turns left.

Oh, for—

He realises what he’s done three steps in, when the alley narrows and the sound of the high street fades behind them.

Great. Brilliant. Truly, his self-control is a marvel of modern psychology.

The alley spits them out at the top of Foxglove Lane. Below, the little row of cottages huddle against the slope, their roofs damp with mist, chimneys puffing. Adri’s is halfway down, the ivy-draped one with the blue door and the slightly skewed window boxes. From here, Eddie can just make out the glint of its brass knocker and the crooked line of the curtain in the front room.

He tells himself he’s just… checking. Making sure everything looks okay. That the American hasn’t somehow set the place on fire in the last two hours.

“Shortcut?” Chris asks.

“Mm,” Eddie says, which could mean anything.

The lane shines with a thin sheen of moisture, treacherous as ever. Eddie keeps a tight grip on the wheelchair as they pick their way down. His heart is hammering like he’s about to storm a battlefield rather than walk past his sister’s house.

He absolutely does not slow down as they approach it. He absolutely does not let his eyes linger on the windows, or on the faint outline of movement inside. That would imply he cares whether the American is there, and he doesn’t.

Sprout, treacherous beast that he is, appears in the front window as they pass, planting his paws on the sill. He stares at Eddie with narrow, knowing eyes.

Eddie narrows his own eyes right back. “Not a word,” he mutters under his breath.

“Who are you talking to?” Chris asks.

“No one,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”

From inside the cottage, there’s the faintest sound of laughter—muffled by stone walls and double glazing, but there. His imagination supplies the image easily: the American in the kitchen, sleeves pushed up, hands in dough, talking to the radio or the cat or himself. Sunlight from nowhere filtering in around him because that’s just his energy.

Eddie’s chest tightens, sharp and inexplicable.

He keeps walking.

“Dad,” Chris says once they’re at the bottom of the lane, “can we have bread with soup for dinner?”

“We can absolutely have bread with soup for dinner,” Eddie says, voice a little rough.

“Can we make soup?” Chris persists.

“Sure,” Eddie says. “We’ll make the world’s best soup. Better than any Sunny Bites soup.”

“There wasn’t soup,” Chris says, scandalised. “Only cakes.”

“Exactly,” Eddie says, grateful for the distraction. “We’ll revolutionise the baking show industry with our savoury innovations.”

He does not look back. Not when they reach the corner, not when they turn off the lane, not when they’re almost home and the cottage is out of sight.

The American is out of sight, and that is good. Out of sight, out of mind. That’s how it works.

He ignores the way his brain quietly supplies the image of a flour-dusted smile anyway.

By evening, the day has settled into something like normality.

He and Chris make soup—if throwing vegetables and various spices into a pot and hoping for the best counts—and eat it with the last of the bread, which Chris declares “better than school dinners but not as good as the baking man’s bread.” They build a fort in the living room out of chairs and blankets. Eddie is ambushed by a dinosaur three times and stabbed in the leg with a Lego once.

By the time Chris is in bed, snuffling softly, Eddie’s hangover has dulled to a background hum.

He should go to sleep too. Instead, he ends up at the kitchen table with his laptop, ostensibly to check work emails and instead staring at Adrianna’s name in his inbox.

There’s a message from her from earlier in the day.

From: Adrianna Diaz

To: Eddie Diaz

Subject: How’s my favourite grumpy brother + my house??

Eddie! Hello!!

Checking in from the land of eternal sunshine and suspiciously enthusiastic customer service.

1. How are you?
2. How is Chris?
3. How is my cottage?
4. Have you met my house swap yet?? 👀

Buck sent me a pic this morning of Sprout sitting on the counter like he owns the place. Which, tbf, he does. Buck looked Very Cute in the background holding a mixing bowl, just saying.

Pls confirm:

No one has died on Foxglove Lane
You are eating something other than pub crisps
You have not scared off my guest with your “I am a man of few words and all of them are sarcastic” routine

Love you,
A x

He stares at the words “Very Cute” for a moment longer than is reasonable.

Trust Adri to make friends with strangers across continents and immediately decide they’re cute.

He starts a reply, deletes it, starts again.

From: Eddie Diaz

To: Adrianna Diaz

Subject: Re: How’s my favourite grumpy brother + my house??

Hola, traitor,

1. I am fine. Slightly headachy, but that is Liam’s fault and not relevant to your enquiry.
2. Chris is good. Currently obsessed with the “baking man” on telly (guess who). Thanks for that.
3. Your cottage is still standing. No obvious fires, structural collapses, or hauntings. Sprout remains a menace.
4. I have… briefly encountered the American.

He pauses. Fingers hovering over the keys, he feels again the press of the American’s mouth against his, sharp as if it just happened.

Ran into him last night after the pub. You know what the lane is like in winter – figured it was safer to make sure your guest hadn’t broken his neck on the ice.

He seems… fine. Polite. Very into bread, as advertised. Tall.

You do not need to worry. I was on my best behaviour.

Re your checklist:

No one has died on Foxglove Lane (yet).

I am eating proper food. Chris and I made soup.

I did not scare him off. He is still there this morning. Also he made bread and sent it with me to Sophia’s as “a bribe,” so clearly his survival instincts are questionable.

How’s LA? Have you met any celebrities? Are you a celebrity now? Has anyone filmed you crossing a street in slow motion yet?

E x

He hits send before he can overthink it. The little whoosh of the outgoing mail feels momentous for reasons he refuses to examine.

He makes tea. He pretends to read the news. He refreshes his inbox three times, because apparently he is now a person who waits for emails like a teenager.

Adri’s reply pings in quicker than he deserves.

From: Adriana Diaz
To: Eddie Diaz
Subject: Re: Re: How’s my favourite grumpy brother + my house??

Excuse you, I am already a celebrity in my own mind.

Re: American Encounter (!!):

“He seems fine.” Translation: you liked him.

“Polite.” Translation: he laughed at your terrible jokes.

“Very into bread.” Translation: you are already imagining free carbs for life.

“Tall.” Translation: your type.

Also, you “ran into him after the pub”? Explain, Edmundo. Were you:

a) Loitering on Foxglove Lane like a raccoon
b) Showing off your advanced hazard perception skills
c) Drunk and curious

I am delighted he is feeding you and Sophia. He sent me a pic of the loaf this morning and I nearly cried into my iced coffee.

PS: Chris calling him “the baking man” is the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. Pls record audio next time.

PPS: You absolutely did not answer whether you scared him off with your sarcasm. Did you pull “the face”?

Love,
A x

Eddie scowls affectionately at the screen. This is the problem with siblings; they come pre-installed with a translation key for your nonsense.

He types back.

From: Eddie Diaz
To: Adriana Diaz
Subject: Re: Re: Re: How’s my favourite grumpy brother + my house??

First of all, “Edmundo” is a hate crime.

Second, your translations are inaccurate and slanderous.

“He seems fine” = he seems fine. As in, not likely to burn your cottage down.

“Polite” = he did not immediately close the door in my face, which frankly he would have been within his rights to do.

“Very into bread” = he owns a sourdough starter. You two will be insufferable together.

“Tall” = many people are taller than me, I am not short, you are just a gremlin.

Answer to your multiple choice: c) is technically closest, but please phrase it as “concerned citizen doing welfare check” in future.

I may have been… overly friendly. Blame the pub. It’s fine. He didn’t seem traumatised. We have both agreed to pretend I am a dignified human being and move on with our lives.

There was no “face.” There is never a face. You have invented the face.

Chris can give you a full review of the baking man’s oeuvre next time you video call. He is currently asleep and dreaming of cakes, probably.

Stop reading so much into this. He’s here for, what, two weeks? Three? Then he goes back to LA and his lizards and I go back to work and school runs and the usual. Ships in the night.

E x

He pictures, briefly, whatever expression must have been on his own stupid face right before he’d kissed the American. Heat creeps up his neck. He forces his fingers back to the keyboard.

He sends it. Almost immediately, another reply.

From: Adriana Diaz
To: Eddie Diaz
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: How’s my favourite grumpy brother + my house??

OH MY GOD YOU LIKE HIM.

“Overly friendly” + “blame the pub” + “agreed to pretend I am dignified” = you did something embarrassing and you care what he thinks.

Also, did you just say “ships in the night”? Who are you?

Listen. I know you. You don’t do “overly friendly” with strangers unless:

a) They’re incredibly kind
b) They’re incredibly hot
c) Both

And even then, you usually just stare from across the room and then overthink it for six months.

I am not saying you have to do anything. I know things are complicated. I know you have Chris and work and all the normal life stuff, and he has his own life over there. I’m just saying:

You are allowed to feel things.

You are allowed to enjoy someone’s company just because it makes you happy.

You are allowed to kiss people who bake bread in my kitchen if you want to.*

*Consent pending, obviously. I will haunt you if you’re a dick.

If it’s nothing, it’s nothing. If it’s something, you’ll figure it out. Either way, you don’t have to pretend around me.

Love you,
A x

His whole body goes very still at the line about kissing.

It’s ridiculous, really, how quickly his mind supplies the image: the kitchen light, dim and warm; the American’s lips under his; Sprout’s tail flicking in the corner of his vision like punctuation.

He scrubs a hand over his face, mortified at the idea of Adri, across the world, intuiting his stupidity from a few lines of email.

It meant nothing, he types, fingers jabbing at the keys harder than necessary.

From: Eddie Diaz
To: Adriana Diaz
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How’s my favourite grumpy brother + my house??

It. Meant. Nothing.

There. Official statement.

I was drunk, he was baking, there was flour in the air and carbs on the counter and I have been single for longer than is medically advisable. Momentary lapse. That’s all.

Please do not put “you are allowed to kiss people who bake bread in my kitchen” on a cushion. Or do, you’re in LA, you’ll probably make millions.

I appreciate the pep talk. Really. But I’m fine. This is not a Big Thing. I do not have the bandwidth for a Big Thing, especially not with a man who lives on another continent and is being televised making cupcakes with children or whatever.

My life is here. With Chris. With you and Sophia and this ridiculous village and its deathtrap lanes.

So: I am drawing a line under it. He can enjoy your illegally cosy fireplace and your starter and your cat. I will keep to my side of the hill and focus on not tripping over my own feet.

We will probably not even see each other again. It’s a small village but not that small.

Now, tell me more about LA. Has anyone tried to put kale in your coffee yet?

E x

He reads it back. It sounds… convincing, if you don’t know him. Fortunately, Adri knows him.

Her reply takes a little longer this time. When it arrives, it’s gentler.

From: Adriana Diaz
To: Eddie Diaz
Subject: Re: I know that tone

Okay, okay. No cushions. (Yet.)

If you say it meant nothing, I believe you. (I don’t, but that’s fine, you can catch up later.)

I’m not trying to push you into a Big Thing. I know things have been… heavy. For a long time. With Mum and Dad, with work, with everything. You’ve been in survival mode for so long that anything that looks like joy probably feels suspicious.

So consider this your official permission slip:

You are allowed small things. Small joys. Stupid crushes. Warm bread. Someone being nice to you because they want to be, not because they have to.

If the American ends up just being a funny story you tell in ten years about “that time I got drunk and harassed a children’s TV baker in my sister’s kitchen,” that’s okay. If he ends up being a footnote, also okay. If he’s more, also okay.

Whatever happens, you are not alone in it.

(Also, you are 100% going to see him again. The village is tiny. Try not to fall on your face when you do.)

Love you,
A x

 

His throat feels tight by the time he reaches the line about survival mode.

Trust Adri to cut right through his carefully constructed wall of jokes and denial and poke at the soft bits underneath.

He stares at the blinking cursor in the reply box for a long time.

He wants to type something honest. Something about how the kiss had felt like stepping off a ledge and finding, for one startling moment, that there was something there to catch him. About how terrifying and stupid that is, how unfair. How he doesn’t know what to do with wanting things that don’t fit neatly into school runs and shift rotations and the shape of the life he’s carved out for himself.

Instead, he types:

From: Eddie Diaz
To: Adriana Diaz
Subject: Re: Re: I know that tone

You’ve been in LA five minutes and you’re already a therapist?

Thank you. For the permission slip. I will frame it and put it next to Chris’s artwork on the fridge.

For now, I am going to exercise my small joy allowance on:

Chris’s terrible soup

Not having to listen to Mum criticise said soup

The fact that you are on another continent and therefore cannot physically force me to talk about my feelings

The American can enjoy your cottage. I am very happy for him and his bread. I will see him, at most, in passing when I am late for something and look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards. That is the law of this village.

I am not falling on my face. I am not seeing him again. Problem solved.

Love you.
E x

He hovers over the send button, then clicks it before he can second-guess himself.

The laptop screen reflects his face back at him faintly: tired, a little drawn, eyes shadowed. He looks like someone who is absolutely not contemplating the curve of a stranger’s smile or the feel of his mouth.

Good.

He closes the laptop. The house is quiet, the only sounds the occasional creak of old pipes and the wind worrying at the front door. Somewhere up the hill, the church bells start to chime again, counting out the passing of another grey December day.

Eddie leans back in his chair, exhales, and makes a decision.

He is not going to think about the American anymore. He is not going to walk past Foxglove Lane unnecessarily. He is not going to entertain the idea of… anything. Not for two weeks, not for two days, not for two seconds.

He has Chris. He has work. He has enough complicated things in his life without adding “ill-advised attraction to temporary neighbour” to the list.

He will not see the American again.

Of course, the village—and life, and terrible brilliant mistakes—have absolutely no intention of making that easy.

Chapter Text

The latch clicks behind him, and just like that, the cottage is too quiet.

Buck stands in the little hallway for a moment, holding onto the loaf tin like it’s a flotation device and not, technically, bread. Outside, the fog-swollen air swallows Eddie’s retreating footsteps almost immediately. Inside, the only sounds are the ticking of the ancient clock on the mantel and Sprout’s unimpressed thump as he jumps down from the arm of the sofa.

“Okay,” Buck tells the door, because that feels like the safest place to start. “Cool. Great talk. Very normal.”

The door, predictably, has no notes.

Sprout pads into the hall, sits directly on Buck’s foot, and looks up at him with the flat, unblinking stare of someone who witnessed every second of last night and would very much like a word with management.

“What?” Buck asks, voice coming out a little wild around the edges. “We signed a treaty. Diplomatic amnesia. It’s fine.”

It is not fine.

The memory keeps strobing in and out of focus, too bright around the edges. Eddie in last night’s light, leaning in the doorway and saying, “In the interest of international relations—” with that crooked little smile, and then the warm, shocked press of his mouth. The way his fingers had curled into Buck’s jumper like he needed the anchor. The micro-second—Buck is sure of it, absolutely sure—where Buck had kissed Eddie back.

And then this morning: Eddie perched on the edge of Adriana’s couch, eyes bloodshot, hands wrapped around a mug like it was the only thing tethering him to this plane of existence. Eddie’s voice, painfully polite, as he suggested that they “probably best just… not talk about it.” Eddie’s shoulders loosening just a fraction when Buck agreed.

Buck had smiled, said something breezy and stupid about blackout policies after three drinks, made it easy so Eddie wouldn’t have to.

Now the echo of it is bouncing around the tiny cottage like a trapped bird.

Sprout digs his claws in just enough to make a point.

“Yeah, I know,” Buck mutters, shifting his foot. “I’m doing the thing. The spiral thing.”

He peels himself away from the hallway and carries the now-Eddie-contaminated loaf tin back into the kitchen, sets it on the counter like planting a flag. The couch still has Eddie’s shape in one cushion, an indented ghost, and Buck does not look at it. The scarf Eddie had been half-suffocated by is folded over the arm now, thrown there in a hurry. Buck does not look at that either.

He takes a breath. Then another.

Buck wakes slowly the next morning, the way he always does in unfamiliar beds—surface first, then deeper, like surfacing through layers of warm, blurry water. Light filters through the cottage curtains in gentle English stripes, and for one blissful second he forgets where he is, why his shoulders feel loose, why his mouth feels… kissed. He is still thinking about that kiss. It all rushes back, bright and fizzy and a little terrifying, and he groans into the pillow before rolling out of bed.

The cottage is chilly in that charming, old-house way that suggests insulation is more of a suggestion than a promise. Buck pads into the kitchen in his socks, rubbing at his eyes, hair a disaster, heart already ahead of him like it woke up earlier and started catastrophizing without him.

New plan: if he can’t stop thinking, he can at least give his brain something to do while it ruins his life.

“Right,” he says, more to the countertop than to Sprout. “We bake.”

Sprout hops up onto one of the kitchen chairs with the energy of a tiny foreman clocking in for a shift.

Arthur, Adriana’s starter, sits on the counter in his jar, patient and bubbly, faint tang curling into the room when Buck cracks the lid. This, at least, makes sense. Flour, water, time. Ratios he can control, processes he knows so well he could do them half-asleep on live TV with a seven-year-old waving a whisk in his face.

He weighs out flour and salt, pours water, stirs in the starter. The dough sticks and then comes together under his hands, rough at first and then smoother, more itself. He turns it, folds it, presses the heel of his palm in, over and over, until his shoulders loosen and his brain starts to sync to the rhythm.

“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” he tells Sprout, who is watching the proceedings with narrowed eyes. “I’m allowed one catastrophic midnight decision per foreign holiday. Two at most.”

Sprout blinks slowly.

Kneading helps. It gives his hands something to do that isn’t reaching out to grab Eddie by the lapels and say, “Was that nothing for you, too, or am I losing my mind?”

He is not going to do that. Obviously. They agreed.

Still. His mind does not care about treaties. It replays Eddie’s surprised little inhale, the way Buck had felt him go very still and then very, very alive under his hands, the soft sound Eddie made into his mouth. The absolute freefall of it.

It had been, on paper, the stupidest possible move he could make less than twenty-four hours into a house swap meant to be about rest and solitude. He should be horrified.

He is horrified.

He is also, unhelpfully, a little thrilled.

“Stop it,” he tells Sprout, because Sprout is safe and available. “He regrets it. You saw his face. You heard him. ‘Probably best.’ That’s Brit-speak for ‘never mention this again or I will walk into the sea.’”

He gathers the dough into a ball, tucks the edges under, sets it gently into the proving basket. Same shape as last night’s loaf, same little sunburst slash across the top when he turns it out, because some habits are bone deep. Here, in this kitchen that isn’t his, with this starter that isn’t his, he can still be the version of himself who knows what comes next.

Unlike, say, kissing your temporary neighbour and then pretending to forget it.

He rinses flour from his fingers under cold water until they sting, then leans his hip against the counter and looks around the room like it might give him answers. The illegal-looking fireplace in the sitting room glares back. The crooked shelves of mismatched mugs offer nothing except a cheerful pattern of tiny lemons on the one Eddie used.

It’s objectively ridiculous that a mug is now emotionally compromised.

Sprout hops down and trots over to the front door, tail high, then pauses and looks back at Buck, as if to say, So, what now, genius?

“Now,” Buck says, “we do something that isn’t thinking about this.”

He pushes off the counter, restless fizz under his skin. He could clean. He could read one of Adriana’s many crime novels and learn sixteen new ways a body can be hidden under snow. He could finally answer the alarming stack of emails from the network.

None of those options come with a human voice attached, though. None of them are May’s dry sarcasm or Hen’s calm or Chim’s chaos. None of them sound like home.

He needs a voice that isn’t his own and doesn’t have an accent that makes his stomach swoop.

His laptop sits on the low table, half-buried under a pile of Adrianna’s travel brochures. Buck opens it and winces at the flood of unread emails from the network. He scrolls past them until he sees a subject line in all caps:

ARE YOU ALIVE OR DID THE SCONES GET YOU

He snorts and clicks.

From: May Grant

To: Evan Buckley

Subject: ARE YOU ALIVE OR DID THE SCONES GET YOU

Excuse me, Mister “I Need To Get Away And Rest But Am Not Going To Tell My Personal Assistant,” it has been SEVENTY-TWO HOURS since your last life update. SEVENTY. TWO.

Status check:

1. Did the plane crash? (If yes, rude of you not to tell me.)
2. Have you joined a quaint village cult centred around scones?
3. Are you currently living in a shed with twelve goats and a man called Colin?

ALSO, I MET YOUR HOUSE SWAP WHO TOLD ME ALL ABOUT YOU LEAVING.

I stopped by your house because I hadn't heard from you (😡) and she was there and made me a very delicious dinner so I regret to inform you she is my new favorite.

She also mentioned “my brother” and “a drunk kiss.”

EMAIL. ME. BACK.

Love,
May

Sprout looks over as Buck groans and lets his head thunk back against the sofa.

“Yeah,” Buck tells him. “This is what having people means.”

He drags his laptop onto his lap and types.

From: Evan Buckley
To: May Grant
Subject: Re: ARE YOU ALIVE OR DID THE SCONES GET YOU

1. Plane did not crash. Turbulence tried its best but I survived.
2. No scone cult yet, but it’s not off the table. These people take baked goods VERY seriously. Which is good for me, I guess.
3. No goats. There is a cat who owns this cottage and maybe my soul. His name is Sprout.

Re: Adriana – obviously she’s your new favorite, she named her sourdough starter Arthur, I cannot compete.

As for “my brother” and “a drunk kiss”… it wasn’t a big thing.

He turned up from the pub, there was bread, we had a brief cultural exchange of mouths at midnight.

Then he passed out on the couch, I panicked internally for about six hours, and this morning we both signed the Diplomatic Amnesia Treaty.

It’s fine. He’s… very British and sarcastic and beautiful and probably regrets the whole thing.

How are you? Are they running my re-runs so hard people think I’ve become a cartoon?

Love,
B

He hovers, then hits send before he can soften anything else. The truth feels safer when wrapped in jokes.

He barely has time to sip coffee before he gets the reply notification.

From: May Grant
To: Evan Buckley
Subject: Re: Re: ARE YOU ALIVE OR DID THE SCONES GET YOU

I WILL NOT BE DISTRACTED BY GOATS OR CATS.

“Brief cultural exchange of mouths”?

I hate you.

You flew to England and IMMEDIATELY made out with a handsome local and you were just going to, what, casually tell me about the cat and never mention this?? Rude.

For the record, Adriana’s version was: “My brother kissed him, but he’s in denial, you know how it is.”

Translation: this man has older-sibling energy and knows your soul.

So. Questions:
A) Do you like him?
B) Do you like-like him?
C) Are you hiding behind bread?

Also, three kids asked where “Sunny Guy” was at the market and I nearly cried in public, so thanks for that.

Love,
May

Buck stares at the A/B/C line and feels his face go hot, even alone in an English cottage with only a cat for company.

Do you like him?

He could say no. Should say no. The sensible answer is no. He is here to rest, not to fall into something complicated with a guy who lives an ocean away and has a life that does not involve television cameras and children shouting BAKE THE THING, BUCK.

He thinks of Eddie’s eyes when he’d asked, “You okay?” in the square of the cottage that morning, like the answer mattered. Thinks of the warmth of Eddie’s hand when he took the bread. Thinks of that ridiculous, perfect kiss.

He types.

From: Evan Buckley
To: May Grant
Subject: Re: Re: Re: ARE YOU ALIVE OR DID THE SCONES GET YOU

A) On a purely objective scale, yes, he is… likable. In an “I insult you and somehow that makes you feel seen” way.

B) I am on BREAK, May. I am here to put my brain in rice. I refuse to like-like anyone. Illegal. Not allowed. No.

C) Of course I’m hiding behind bread, don’t be ridiculous. When am I not hiding behind bread?

Please do not ever repeat the phrase “thinking about his mouth” to anyone, especially not Adriana.

We agreed not to talk about it. He has a life here. I have my weird baking TV show there. In two weeks this will be a funny story I tell with hand gestures.

I do miss you, though. And the station. And, bizarrely, LA traffic.

Tell the kids Sunny Guy is on a secret mission for the King to bring back new recipes.

Love,
B

P.S. Adriana gossiping about me is a treaty violation, please issue a formal complaint.

He sends it and feels something unknot in his chest.

The oven beeps. Reality calls.

By late morning the cottage is warm with heat and smell. Bread cooling on the rack, a dark golden oval crackling softly; coffee mellowing in the pot; the faint citrus tang of clementine peel on the radiator. Sprout occupies the window ledge like a furry gargoyle, breath fogging the glass.

Buck stands in the middle of the room, feeling the edges of his restlessness. Baking helps, talking to May helps, but his body still hums with leftover adrenaline and jet lag and the strange, fizzy awareness of Eddie’s existence across the village.

He could stay in. Couch, blanket, some aggressively gentle British baking show where everyone apologises for winning. He could answer the network emails, but the thought makes his shoulders creep up.

He came here to get out of his life. Maybe he should, radical thought, go outside.

“Hold the fort,” he tells Sprout, tugging on his coat. “No wild parties. No letting strange men kiss you in kitchens.”

Sprout flicks one ear without turning around.

Outside, cold air rushes him, damp and sharp, smell of wet stone and woodsmoke and something green underneath winter. The lane glistens dark, cobblestones slick but not icy. Fairy lights still drape along the cottage eaves, stubbornly festive against the grey.

Buck shoves his hands into his pockets and walks.

Up Foxglove Lane past the little row of houses, turning onto the main street that curves up towards the market square. Everything here feels like a movie set, or a snow globe he hasn’t quite shaken yet. Low stone buildings. Painted shopfronts. A sign for THE HAWTHORN ARMS pub hanging crooked and charming.

The square itself is a slightly widened knot of streets, made lively by the stubborn presence of a few market stalls despite the cold. A woman in a red hat sells eggs from a crate, shells speckled and pretty. A man in three sweaters and a jacket that has seen wars tends a pile of root vegetables like they’re priceless jewels. Knitwear hangs in colourful rows, scarves and hats and something that might be a jumper or might be a very adventurous tea cosy.

And then there’s the gingerbread.

The stall is small, table draped in a tartan cloth, steam rising from a thermos of something that smells like apple and spice. Hanging from little ribbons across the front are gingerbread shapes: stars and bells and small lopsided men… and sheep. Gingerbread sheep. Round, icing-curled bodies, tiny legs, eyes like dots of melted chocolate.

Buck actually stops moving.

“Oh no,” he says under his breath, hand pressing to his chest. “They’re sheep.”

“Sharp observation,” the woman behind the stall says, amused. She’s in her sixties, face pink from the cold, grey hair tucked under a knitted hat. Her apron reads BAA HUMBUG.

“You’re Maureen?” Buck guesses. Adri had mentioned her in an email. So had, confusingly, May, which implies high-level gossip networks.

“Depends,” she says. “Are you the TV baker?”

Heat rushes to Buck’s face. He thought he might get a few days before anyone connected dots.

“I—uh,” he starts. “Maybe.”

“Adriana said you’d be modest,” Maureen says, with zero patience. “You’re the Sunny Bites one. My granddaughter nearly combusted when she heard. She wanted an autograph; I told her we value your dignity more than a signed napkin. Regretting that now.”

Buck laughs, breath puffing white. “You made these?” he nods at the flock.

“Course,” Maureen says. “Family recipe. You can have one. Welcome to the village tax.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—” he starts.

She has already plucked a sheep from the line, wrapped it in a napkin, and shoved it into his cold hands. “You could. You will. You’ll have to tell me if they’re good enough for telly.”

He takes a bite. It’s perfect. Crisp edges, soft centre, ginger and cinnamon and something citrusy that zings against his tongue.

“Wow,” he says. “Maureen, I’m going to steal this recipe and pretend it’s mine.”

“You do and I’ll come after you with a rolling pin,” she says cheerfully. “Enjoy, sunshine.”

He wanders away, nibbling the sheep’s ear, heart oddly full. The butcher’s window next door is a display of geese and pheasants, feathers neat, prices handwritten on little cards, the kind of thing he has only ever seen in period dramas.

LA feels impossibly far away. In LA there are no gingerbread sheep, no Maureens who threaten violence over recipes, no stone churches leaning over tiny squares.

He is busy picturing May meeting Adriana and forming some kind of unstoppable coalition when a voice cuts through the soft market noise.

“American.”

He turns.

Eddie stands a few feet away, hands shoved into his coat pockets, scarf wrapped high around his neck. His hair is even more disheveled than usual, like he has been fighting both the weather and his own existence. His expression is complicated in the way Buck is slowly learning means he’s feeling at least three things and showing none.

Buck’s stomach does something embarrassing.

“Local,” Buck says, because his brain has no other setting.

Eddie’s mouth twitches, like he’s trying not to laugh. “No drunk political speeches from me today,” he says. “Promising start.”

He lifts the half-eaten sheep. “I’m pacing myself with baked goods.”

Eddie glances at the biscuit and then at Buck’s face, like he’s checking for actual harm. “Maureen’s flock,” he says. “She got you.”

“In the best way,” Buck says. “Do you… want some?”

He holds out the gingerbread sheep. Eddie hesitates, then takes it, fingers brushing Buck’s. Stupidly small contact, ridiculous little spark in Buck’s chest.

“You’re sharing your first sheep,” Eddie says gravely. “That’s practically a marriage proposal round here.”

“No takesies-backsies,” Buck says. “It’s in the scone cult bylaws.”

Eddie huffs a quiet laugh and bites off the other ear of the sheep. “So,” he says, after a crumb-chomping beat, “how’s… life in my sister’s cottage? Cat still alive? Fireplace still illegal?”

“Sprout’s thriving,” Buck says. “Fireplace hasn’t murdered me yet. I made bread and it didn’t explode, so I think the house likes me.”

“Don’t let the village hear you say that,” Eddie says. “They’ll start a petition to keep you.”

Buck’s heart stutters in a way that is objectively disproportionate to a throwaway joke.

He looks at Eddie, at the familiar lines of his face now that Buck has stared at them at too-close range in a kitchen and memorised the exact curve of his mouth. “What about you?” he asks. “Day off? Or are you just out here menacing gingerbread stalls?”

“Day off,” Eddie says. “Was on my way to…” He flicks his wrist vaguely. “A thing.”

“Right,” Buck says. “Very informative.”

“It’s a small village,” Eddie says. “If I tell you exactly where I’m going, you’ll figure out all my secrets in thirty seconds.”

“Like what brand of tea you drink and where you buy your socks?” Buck asks.

“Exactly.”

There’s a pause. It’s not comfortable, exactly, but it’s not awkward in the way he’s been dreading either. It feels balanced on the edge of something.

Buck blunders right over the edge. “So, hypothetically,” he says, “if someone wanted, say, the full picturesque village experience, is there a place they should go? For views? That don’t involve dead geese?”

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “You don’t like our festive butcher display?”

“I’m just saying, if this were a movie, there’d be a hill with a view,” Buck says. “Possibly a bench. Somewhere for the melodramatic city boy to stare into the middle distance and question his life choices.”

Eddie’s lips twitch. “We do actually have a hill,” he admits. “No bench, sadly. Just a low stone wall and a risk of hypothermia.”

“Sold,” Buck says too quickly.

Eddie looks at him for a long second, like he’s weighing something. “It’s on my way,” he says finally. “I can show you. If you want.”

If you want. The words sit there, tentative and hopeful and stupidly dangerous.

Buck’s first instinct is to say yes. His second is to say absolutely not, because at the top of that hill is probably another terrible brilliant mistake waiting to happen, and he has just barely got his lungs back from the first one.

“Are you sure?” he asks instead. “You’ve got your… thing.”

Eddie opens his mouth, closes it again, glances up the street. “Chris is at—” he stops, the name catching like he’s pulled the leash tight. “It can wait,” he says. “Paperwork. Boring things. The hill is more fun.”

There’s a flash of something sheepish there, quickly buried. Buck nods, like this is normal.

“Okay,” he says. “Lead on, local representative.”

They fall into step, heading up the road. Houses lean in close on either side, windowsills cluttered with plants and mugs and what might be porcelain ducks. The church tower nudges into view, square and ancient against the pale sky.

Every few steps their arms brush, coats swishing. Buck is hyper-aware of it, of the space between their bodies. In LA, he walks fast, eyes on the next thing. Here, his stride slows to match Eddie’s without him thinking about it.

“You get recognised a lot?” Eddie asks suddenly, as they pass a woman wrestling a pram over the cobbles. The woman nods at Eddie like they’re on nodding terms. Her gaze flickers over Buck, curious but not staring.

“Back home? Sometimes,” Buck says. “Kids more than adults. They yell at me about cupcakes in grocery stores.”

“Occupational hazard,” Eddie says.

“There was this one four-year-old who tried to fight me because I eliminated his favourite contestant in the semi-final,” Buck says. “He threw a carrot at my head.”

Eddie snorts. “Perfect use of vegetables.”

“I apologised on national television,” Buck says. “I am haunted by his tiny betrayed face.”

Eddie glances at him, something like fondness colouring his features. “You’re good at it,” he says. “The TV thing.”

The words land somewhere tender.

“Maybe,” Buck says, shrugging one shoulder. “Sometimes it feels like I’m… I don’t know. A mascot. If I stop smiling, the world ends.”

“That sounds exhausting,” Eddie says, no judgment, just recognition.

“It is,” Buck admits quietly. “Hence the house swap. Adriana did a very convincing sales pitch about stone cottages and fog and sheep-shaped baked goods.”

“She oversold the sheep,” Eddie says. “They’re relatively new.”

“Still effective,” Buck says.

They reach the churchyard. The stone building squats on the hill like it’s been there since the beginning of time, which, given how this country works, is probably true. Behind it, the ground slopes away.

The view hits him.

Fields roll out in dizzying patchwork—green and brown and silver where frost clings to furrows. Hedgerows scribble dark lines between them. A river snakes through, catching the faintest glimmer of light. The village huddles behind them, chimneys puffing little threads of smoke into the flat sky.

“Wow,” Buck says softly.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, leaning his elbows on the low stone wall. “It’s not terrible.”

They stand side by side, shoulders almost touching, breath frosting in the air. The wind is sharp up here, slicing through Buck’s coat, stealing at his fingers, but he barely feels it.

He feels Eddie. The line of his body, the warmth that radiates through wool and air. The way his jaw flexes as he looks out over the fields, like he is seeing something Buck can’t.

“Have you ever thought about leaving?” Buck asks, half to fill the quiet, half because he genuinely wants to know.

Eddie lets out a small huff. “Sometimes,” he says. “Then I look at my bank account and think, ‘Actually, no, I like roofs.’”

Buck laughs. Eddie’s smile flickers, then settles, softer.

“What about you?” Eddie asks. “Do you ever think about… not doing what you do?”

“All the time,” Buck says, the honesty surprising him. “I love it. The kids, the baking. But sometimes I feel like I’m standing under a spotlight that never turns off. So I came here. To see what happens when no one expects anything.”

Eddie turns his head, studying him. “And what is happening?” he asks, gentle.

Buck swallows. “So far? A cat has claimed me, your sister’s starter likes me, I’ve eaten my weight in carbs, and I… kissed somebody I wasn’t supposed to.”

He hadn’t meant to say that last part aloud. It hangs between them like a bell note.

Eddie’s fingers tighten on the stone. “You weren’t… not supposed to,” he says, voice low.

Buck looks at him. Eddie looks back, eyes dark, pupils blown wide in the grey light.

The world shrinks to three things: the roughness of the stone under Buck’s gloved hands, the sound of distant bells, and Eddie’s mouth, which is right. there.

He could lean in. It would be so easy. No wine this time, no plausible deniability. Just this sharp, clear moment.

“Eddie,” he says, breathless.

“Yeah?” Eddie’s voice is barely above a whisper.

Buck shifts closer. Their shoulders brush. Eddie doesn’t move away. His gaze drops, quick as a heartbeat, to Buck’s lips.

That’s all it takes. Buck leans in, slow, giving him time to pull back. The air crackles.

And then Eddie’s coat starts buzzing.

The sharp, jarring sound of a ringtone explodes in the quiet. Eddie flinches, curse under his breath, and stumbles back half a step, breaking whatever invisible thing was stretching between them.

“Sorry,” he mutters, already digging in his pocket. “I—just a sec.”

He glances at the screen, and everything in his face rearranges. The open, soft expression slams shut, replaced by tension, worry, something heavier.

“Hey,” he says into the phone, turning slightly away. “What’s going on?”

Buck leans back against the wall and stares out at the fields, trying to get his pulse under control while pretending he is not hearing the rise and fall of Eddie’s voice.

He catches fragments anyway.

“No, it’s okay, I can come… Is he all right?…”

The wind snatches most of it, but the tone is clear, threaded with concern. Whoever’s on the other end matters.

Buck stares at a patch of field where a tractor moves like a small toy. His brain, unhelpfully, starts constructing scenarios. Eddie had been on his way to a thing. He’d said Chris. Now there’s a he who might not be all right, and someone on the other end of the phone who Eddie is reassuring.

He hears a name when Eddie turns, voice lifting.

“Sophia, breathe,” Eddie says. “It's okay.”

Sophia.

Buck knows almost nothing about Eddie’s life. He knows Eddie has sisters in theory—Adriana mentioned being “one of three.” He knows there is a Christopher-shaped shadow in Eddie’s sentences, almost named and then swallowed. He knows nothing about Sophia.

Except that she has a soft, worried place in Eddie’s voice. Except that Eddie had been on his way to see someone. Except that this is exactly the moment in every stupid holiday movie where the locals’ existing lives come crashing in and remind the visiting idiot that he is just that: visiting.

His stomach swoops.

Of course, Buck thinks numbly. Of course he has a girlfriend. Or a partner. Or someone. Someone with a messy situation and maybe a kid and paperwork, who calls him in a panic and expects him to fix it.

Of course Buck nearly leaned in to kiss a man on a hill in a postcard village whose actual life is happening ten minutes away.

He presses gloved fingers to his mouth, as if he can shove the almost-kiss back in.

Eddie’s voice drops again, steadier now. “Okay, okay. I’m coming. Fifteen minutes, tops. Just… tell him I’ll be there, all right?”

There’s a pause. Eddie closes his eyes for half a second.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, slipping the phone back into his pocket. His shoulders are tighter now, jaw set. “I have to go. Something… family stuff. I should’ve been there earlier.”

“Of course,” Buck says, a beat too fast. His voice sounds annoyingly bright in his own ears. “Yeah, no problem. I should, uh, go check on my dough. Make sure Sprout is okay.”

The corner of Eddie’s mouth twitches, but it doesn’t quite become a smile. Whatever’s waiting for him down the hill is louder than Buck’s jokes.

“Rain check on the village tour,” Eddie says. “Assuming you haven’t been kidnapped by Maureen and forced into gingerbread servitude by then.”

Buck nods. “I’ll try to avoid cult initiation.”

For a moment, they just look at each other. There is still something humming between them, but it’s buried under the new layer of urgency in Eddie’s eyes.

“See you around, American,” Eddie says quietly.

“See you,” Buck manages.

He watches Eddie stride back down the path, head ducked against the wind, phone already in his hand again as he picks up the conversation where he left off. He doesn’t look back.

The cold finds Buck properly then, fingers burning, ears stinging. He leans his elbows on the stone wall and lets out a breath he feels like he’s been holding since last night.

So. Information gathered:

Eddie has a Sophia, who gets his soft voice and his automatic I’ll be there. Eddie has a he who apparently needs help. Eddie has a whole life coiled just out of Buck’s sightline, complicated and noisy and important.

Buck has a cat, a loaf of bread, and a very vivid sense memory of a kiss that he is now fairly certain he’s not supposed to want again.

Good job, Buckley. Fly across the world, develop a crush on somebody else’s complicated, emotionally unavailable, probably-taken local.

The wind carries his thoughts away over the fields. Fairy lights begin to flicker on in the village below, tiny dots of gold in the grey afternoon, stubbornly hopeful.

He pushes off the wall and turns back towards the path, boots slipping slightly on the damp stone. As he heads down towards Foxglove Lane, the taste of ginger and almost-kiss still sharp on his tongue, one thought wedges itself in his brain and refuses to budge.

Who exactly is Sophia to Eddie?

Chapter Text

He dreams about it.

Not the whole thing—his brain is at least kind enough not to run the moment on a loop like a public humiliation show—but fragments. A hand, his own, curling into a wool coat at the lapel. The slice of cold wind across the lookout. The American’s breath fogging in the space between them, the way it had felt like there was something inevitable in the way they swayed closer.

Then his ringtone had blared in his pocket like a fire alarm, and the inevitable scattered like startled birds.

Eddie wakes with the memory lodged under his ribs.

For a blissful half-second he doesn’t know why his chest hurts. Then the almost-kiss pulls into focus and his stomach does a slow, traitorous roll.

Oh. Right. That.

He stares at the ceiling. It adds nothing to the situation except the revelation that there is, in fact, a cobweb in the corner he’s been meaning to deal with. Excellent. Another failure to add to the growing collection.

It’s too early—he knows that by the watery light pressing weakly through the curtains and the distant sound of the church bells doing their best impression of a hangover. He rolls onto his side, pulls the duvet up over his face, and tries not to think about the American’s mouth.

He fails almost immediately.

It hadn’t even been an actual kiss, which his body refuses to accept. There’d been intent, that slow lean in where the rest of the world quieted, his heart crawling up his throat. The American’s eyes had gone wide then soft, like he’d braced for impact and then decided he wanted it. Eddie had felt his own hand move, like it belonged to somebody braver, fingertips finding the rough wool at the American’s shoulder.

If the phone hadn’t rung—

He groans into the pillow.

If the phone hadn’t rung, he’d have kissed him properly. Sober. On purpose. No international relations excuse this time, no wine to hide behind. Just because he wanted to.

Which is worse.

Regret prickles under his skin, not because he’d almost kissed him, but because he hadn’t. Because now the moment sits there, half-finished and humming, refusing to go away. Because ever since they’d stood there on the edge of town with the village spread out below them, and the American’s laugh caught in his chest, Eddie’s mind has been doing something he swore he’d stopped doing years ago.

It’s been circling someone.

Thinking about them when he boils the kettle, when he crosses the street, when he hears a particular song on the radio. Filling in the gaps of a day with the idea of somebody, of what they’d say, what face they’d make if they were there.

It’s stupid. Ridiculous. Utterly inconvenient.

And he can’t seem to stop.

He rolls onto his back again with a sigh and squints at the clock on his bedside table. Half eight. He doesn't necessarily need to work today; there’s no reason he can’t wallow for another hour.

Except there’s Christopher, and Sophia will text if he’s late, and also there’s the whole problem of eventually having to go outside where the air is full of things like responsibility and feelings and the American with his stupid easy smile and piercing blue eyes.

Eddie flings the duvet back and swings his legs to the floor, shivering as his feet hit cold wood. The December light leaking into his bedroom is that particular British winter sort—thin as paper, tired before it’s even begun.

“Right,” he mutters. “New plan. Don’t be an idiot.”

He stands, stretches, and winces at the way his back cracks. Thirty-whatever and already sounding like an old man. Very attractive. Very sexy.

Except the American had looked at him like—

He marches to the bathroom just to shut his own brain up.

By the time he’s showered, made tea, and burnt two slices of toast because he was busy staring at nothing in particular (read: the memory of a pair of blue eyes in low lamplight), the village is awake.

He can hear it through the window—car doors, a distant dog, Maureen from the post office shouting cheery threats at someone over the hedge. Somewhere up the hill, someone’s hanging bells; he can hear the occasional clang as they test them.

Eddie should be thinking about his list for the day. He’s got to pick up Christopher’s new shoes from the shop, sort through the present drawer, answer a couple of emails he’s been ignoring. Instead his brain insists on playing an unhelpful game called Where Would He Be?

Would the American be in the cottage kitchen, sleeves pushed up, leaning over that ridiculous Aga like he’s in a Christmas advert? Would he be wandering the high street in that coat, the one that makes his shoulders look—Eddie refuses to finish that thought—and stopping to pet every dog? Would he be talking to Maureen, nodding earnestly as she offers him mince pies and unsolicited life advice?

Eddie feels stupidly sure he could walk out his front door right now and find him in exactly one of three places: bakery, pub, or Foxglove Lane.

Which is ridiculous. The man is a grown adult with an entire personality, not a Pokémon.

Still, as Eddie pulls on his boots, he can see him in his mind’s eye, as clear as if he were standing in the hall: flour smudged on his cheek, crinkled grin, eyes bright with that curious, open interest in everything.

He shakes his head like he can dislodge the image.

Sophia is right. He’s soft in the head.

Or at least, that’s what she tells him an hour later.

He drops Christopher at Sophia’s on his way to work, the morning still grey and half-asleep around them.

Sophia’s kitchen is already awake, of course—warm light, radio low in the corner, the smell of toast and jam doing its best to make up for the hour. Christopher yawns hugely as Eddie helps him out of his coat, curls soft and mussed, clutching his schoolbag like it might decide to run off without him.

“You sure you’ve got him?” Eddie asks, even though this is routine, even though she always does.

Sophia snorts, taking the bag and shoving it onto a chair. “Go edit someone’s terrible novel. We’ll be fine.”

“What,” Eddie says, immediately on guard.

“That,” she says, pointing at his face.

“What that?”

She steps closer, peers like she’s inspecting a suspicious object.

“That stupid soft look,” she decides. “Like you’ve just seen a puppy, or Chris asleep, or… oh my God.” Her grin turns sharp. “You’re smitten.”

He scoffs. “I’m not twelve.”

“Exactly,” she says. “You never did it properly then, so the universe is making up for lost time now.”

“I’m not smitten.”

“Uh-huh. So you’re not standing there replaying last night over and over like a badly edited music video?”

He opens and closes his mouth.

She lifts a brow. “You didn’t text me back after I rang to check you got home, by the way. I assume that’s because you were busy thinking about absolutely nothing?”

There’s an image then, unbidden: the American turning towards him on the lookout, wind catching his hair, eyes gone soft and wondering. The way Eddie had wanted to lean in and close that last tiny gap.

“Nothing,” Eddie says firmly. “Nothing at all.”

Sophia folds her arms, clearly delighted. “What’s his name again?”

“We’re not having this conversation.”

“Oh, so there is a he?”

He drags a hand over his face. “We’ve been over this. The American. That’s all.”

“You’ve been over nothing, you emotionally constipated muppet. I’m your sister, not a therapist, but I can still tell when you’re walking around with a crush like it’s a secret you’re guarding for the crown.”

“It’s not—” he starts, then stops, because Christopher’s laugh peals again from the lounge, bright and unaware.

Something in his chest twists, sharp and immediate. The idea of the American’s face if he found out about Chris—about the whole messy, complicated truth of Eddie’s life—flashes through him like cold water.

Sophia’s smile softens a fraction.

“Oh,” she says quietly. “That bit.”

He shrugs, uncomfortable. “It’s just… easier. For now. To keep things simple.”

“And by simple, you mean completely unsustainable.”

He glares. She ignores it.

Before she can push further, there’s a tug at his jumper. Christopher has appeared, hair sticking up on one side, socks mismatched.

There’s a cartoon on low in the lounge, colours flickering over the doorway, and Christopher’s laugh spills out a second later—bright, bright, cutting straight through Eddie’s chest the way it always does.

He stands there for a heartbeat too long, soaking it in like he can top up some internal reservoir before spending the rest of the day at his desk, wading through manuscripts and emails and meetings with people who use the word “synergy” without shame.

Then he kisses the top of Chris’s head, squeezes his shoulder, and pulls himself away.

“Text me if you need anything,” he says to Sophia.

She rolls her eyes. “Go. Before your authors start having feelings in your inbox.”

When he gets home, there’s an email from Adrianna at the top of his inbox, subject line: HOW ARE MY BOYS (and are you behaving).

He rolls his eyes fondly and clicks it open.

From: Adriana Diaz
To: Eddie Diaz
Subject: HOW ARE MY BOYS (and are you behaving).

How are you? How is my favourite nephew? How is my house? Is the American still in one piece or have you scared him off with your resting murder face?

Also May says hi. She keeps sending me pictures of him in our village like I’m running some kind of remote romance surveillance op. She is VERY INVESTED.

Tell me everything. I’m bored of sunshine and my LA life is tragically Buck-less. ;)

Eddie snorts despite himself.
He hovers for a second, then starts typing.

From: Eddie Diaz
To: Adriana Diaz
Subject: re. HOW ARE MY BOYS (and are you behaving).

We’re fine. House is fine. Chris is fine. Your plants are miraculously still alive, (so is Arthur - i know you're worried!)

The American is also… fine. I saw him last night.

He stops there, staring at the blinking cursor.

He could leave it at that. He should leave it at that. She is on the other side of the world; there is no actual reason to confess anything that might lead to questions like What do you want? and Does he know about Chris? and Have you considered therapy?

He adds, before he can stop himself:

We nearly kissed.

There. It’s out. Onto a screen, at least.

He hits send quickly, like he’s ripping off a plaster.

The reply arrives faster than any reasonable human should be capable of, given the time difference.

From: Adriana Diaz
To: Eddie Diaz
Subject: Re. Re. HOW ARE MY BOYS (and are you behaving).

WHAT.

What do you mean you “nearly” kissed?? There is no nearly in this family. We commit.

Details, Edmundo. Also this explains why May was being weirdly cagey when she told me he’d been “out walking with someone” and kept saying “I don’t know if I’m allowed to be excited yet.”

Side note: he mentioned a Sophia, btw. I told May that was our sister and she was like OH THANK GOD because apparently he’d been doing the thing where he assumes you’re unavailable and therefore pines in a very annoying way.

Eddie blinks.

Slowly scrolls back up to that line.

He mentioned a Sophia.

He assumes you’re unavailable.

“Oh,” Eddie says out loud, alone in his home office.

Because of course he did. Of course that’s what it must have sounded like through a stranger’s ears—him, breathless on a phone, saying he had to go, Sophia needed him, there was “him” to take care of. Buck, standing a few feet away, hearing half a conversation and drawing his own conclusions.

The idea that the American had thought Sophia was—what? His girlfriend? Partner? Some complicated on-off situation?—makes something hot and exasperated flare in his chest.

“What an idiot,” he mutters. “What a sweet, ridiculous idiot.”

And under that, tangled with the irritation, is something warm and fragile. Because if he assumed Eddie was unavailable, that means—what? That he cared. That he’d looked at Eddie and thought there might be a possibility there, if not for someone else in the picture.

He types back.

From: Eddie Diaz
To: Adriana Diaz
Subject: re. Re. Re. HOW ARE MY BOYS (and are you behaving).

Sophia is going to be offended that you had to clarify she’s not my girlfriend.

Also. He thought I was taken?

We were at the lookout. It was… nice. And then Sophia rang about Chris and I had to go and the moment sort of evaporated. Which is probably for the best.

He doesn’t specify why. He doesn’t have to. Adri knows the shape of his life: the way everything bends towards his son, the way he’s wrapped his heart in careful routines and schedules to keep them both safe.

He sends it.

This time it takes a little longer for a reply to land, which makes him picture Adriannna lying on some sun-drenched sofa in LA, phone held over her head, chewing thoughtfully on her lip the way she does when she’s choosing between being gentle and being a menace.

Her eventual email is, predictably, both.

From: Adriana Diaz
To: Eddie Diaz
Subject: re. Re. Re. Re. HOW ARE MY BOYS (and are you behaving).

Firstly: tell the American that Sophia is your sister before I do.

Secondly: “for the best” my arse. You’re allowed nice things, you know.

Thirdly: May says he’s been “weirdly floaty” in our calls and then pretending he’s not, and if you make me team up with her in some cross-continental conspiracy to get you both to admit you like each other, I WILL.

Go to the tree lighting tonight. Wear the good sweater. If you pretend you have plans, I swear I will fly back purely to smack you.

He stares at the line about the tree lighting for a long moment.

Then, of course, his phone buzzes.

Sophia: Reminder: tree lighting tonight. You’re going. Don’t even think about hiding. I'm taking Chris. No questions!

He glares at the phone like it’s personally responsible.

His laptop pings again with a new email.

From: Adriana Diaz
To: Eddie Diaz
Subject: re. Re. Re. Re. Re. HOW ARE MY BOYS (and are you behaving).

P.S. from Adri: I told May you’d be at the tree lighting and she said Buck will be there too.

Eddie groans.

He is surrounded by traitors.

By late afternoon, the village feels like it’s holding its breath.

December twenty-second has always been a sort of unofficial turning point; tomorrow people will be elbow-deep in turkeys and last-minute panic wrapping, but tonight is for the communal prelude. The tree in the square has been standing bare for a week, waiting. Now, the air is full of stepladders and tangled lights and the distant clank of the generator being coaxed into cooperation.

Eddie could, in theory, stay home. No one would drag him out of his house. He has a son, a built-in excuse, and a well-earned reputation for being “not that fussed about crowds.”

Unfortunately, he also has Sophia.

She turns up at his door at half five with a plastic bag in hand and the kind of expression that brooks no argument.

“Change,” she says, pushing past him into the hall.

“I’m already dressed.”

“Yes. In that jumper, which says ‘I have given up.’ Put this on.”

She pulls a folded knit from the bag. It’s navy, thicker than his usual ones, soft-looking. He recognises it with a sinking feeling.

“The good sweater,” he says flatly.

“Exactly.” She shoves it at his chest. “You look good in it.”

“That is not an incentive.”

“It is if the goal is to make a certain American’s brain short-circuit.”

He glares. She stares back, unbothered.

“Chris?” he asks, because distraction is his only weapon.

“With me,” she says. “He’s staying at mine tonight after the lighting, so you can stop using him as a human shield and go drink hot chocolate and be awkward in public like a normal person with a crush.”

Eddie opens his mouth, no idea what argument is about to come out.

She tips her head, softens. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” she says. “But sitting in your house pretending you don’t care isn’t going to make any of this easier. You can handle one tree and some fairy lights.”

He looks down at the jumper in his hands.

It is, infuriatingly, really soft.

“Fine,” he mutters. “But if Maureen makes me sing, I’m leaving the country.”

“That’s the spirit,” she says, kisses his cheek, and leaves him to change.

The square is already buzzing when he gets there.

The tree towers over everything, a northern soldier in its wooden crate, branches lined with fairy lights waiting for their moment. Stalls are set up around the perimeter—mulled wine, mince pies, a charity raffle. Kids run underfoot in puffy coats, high on sugar and the idea of staying up late.

The air smells like spices and damp wool and faint diesel from the generator. Over by the church, someone’s testing the speakers, a tinny version of “Fairytale of New York” escaping into the fogged air.

Eddie shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tells himself this is fine. It’s just a village event. He’s been to dozens. He will stand, he will nod, he will possibly be forced into small talk with the vicar, and then he will go home.

He does not have to talk to the American.

He can, in fact, avoid him entirely.

His heart, apparently aware he’s lying, thuds hard enough to make his throat feel tight.

He’s halfway across the square when he sees him.

It happens in a blink: his gaze snags on movement near the tree, a flash of familiar hair, and then the rest is there in an instant like someone has yanked the sheet off a painting.

The American is up a step-ladder, holding one end of a garland while Maureen fusses with the other. He’s wearing a dark coat, open at the front to reveal a sweater of his own, and the cold has pinked the tops of his cheeks. His mouth is curved in concentration. When Maureen says something, he laughs—Eddie can’t hear the sound over the general rumble, but he can see it in the way the man’s whole face changes, light sparking in his eyes.

And just like that, something drops in Eddie’s chest.

It’s not subtle. This is… similar to what he imagines being crushed by a building would feel like, privately, absurdly so. Like a piano has been dropped from a height right into the centre of him, keys jangling, strings snapping.

Fondness slams into dread in one hit.

Because he likes him. Of course he does. How could he not, when the man is like this—cheerfully helping Maureen, leaning down to listen when she gesticulates, stepping carefully off the ladder like he’s more worried about her balance than his own.

And under that warm rush is the cold knowledge that there is this huge thing Eddie hasn’t told him. Something that lives at the heart of Eddie’s life, that shapes every choice he makes. A seven-year-old boy with bright eyes and weaker legs and a laugh that could light up this whole square.

Hiding that from someone you… what? Fancy? Like? Are quietly falling headfirst over?—feels suddenly not just complicated, but actually cruel.

He swallows, hard.

Before he can decide whether to flee, the American looks up.

Their eyes meet.

And the dropped-piano weight does something else—rearranges, a muddled chord settling into something that almost resembles music.

Because the American’s face does this incredibly unfair thing where it lights up. No hesitation, no awkwardness, just clear, immediate pleasure like seeing Eddie there is the best thing that’s happened to him all day.

“Hey!” he calls, raising a hand.

The sound threads through the noise, finds Eddie cleanly.

He tries to arrange his features into something that isn’t obviously horribly gone.

“Hi,” he manages, when Buck reaches him, cheeks still pink from the cold—or the ladder. Or both. Eddie doesn’t particularly care what caused it; he just feels winded by the sight.

“Nice sweater," he says, eyes flicking down and back up, amused. “Very… festive. In a brooding way.”

“It’s navy,” Eddie says. “You can’t brood in navy.”

“I don’t know,” Buck says. “You’re managing it.”

His smile is easy, steady. There’s no sense of the almost-kiss hanging between them, no weirdness, just the gentle buzz of that same connection Eddie felt on the hill. It’s like the other man has decided they’re just… here now. In this new space. No autopsy of the moment required.

The relief is sharp enough to sting.

“Helping Maureen?” Eddie asks, because small talk is safer than blurting something like Why didn’t we kiss, why do I want to do it now, right here, under a giant pine tree.

“Apparently I am tall and therefore useful,” Buck says. “It’s my new job description.”

“Careful,” Eddie says dryly. “That’s how she ropes you into everything. One day it’s garlands, next you’re playing Joseph in the nativity and holding actual livestock.”

“Tempting,” the American says, grinning wider. “Also, I never got to—uh—ask. Everything okay? You ran off pretty fast last night. After the call.”

Panic prickles under Eddie’s skin. Of course he did. Of course the man noticed.

“Yeah,” Eddie says too quickly, waving a hand like he can shoo the subject away. “Fine. Just—family stuff. My sister needed me.” And my son had an asthma attack, his brain adds unhelpfully.

The American’s brow creases, that soft, earnest concern Eddie is rapidly becoming allergic to. “Right. Of course. I didn’t mean to keep you, I just—” He shrugs, a little sheepish. “I liked being up there with you.”

The words land gently and still somehow knock the breath out of him.

Eddie swallows. “I’m sorry I legged it,” he manages. “Didn’t mean to just… vanish.”

“Hey,” the American says, eyes warm, “you don’t have to apologise. Things happen.” He hesitates, then adds, quieter, “I’m just… glad you’re here tonight.”

He is saved from having to answer by Maureen appearing at his elbow, smelling of spice and determination.

“Good, both of you,” she says, wagging a gloved finger. “We’re short at the cocoa station. Come on, you can charm the masses together.”

Eddie opens his mouth to protest. Maureen is already moving, leaving them to trail in her wake.

“Guess we’ve been volunteered,” Buck says lightly.

“Apparently,” Eddie says, heart picking up again for entirely new reasons.

The cocoa station is a long table set up near the tree, flanked by urns and a frankly alarming number of mismatched mugs. Someone has attempted to make it festive with a red tablecloth and a basket of candy canes. The urns hiss quietly like disgruntled dragons.

Maureen gives them approximately twelve seconds of instruction, most of which boils down to Don’t scald anyone and Be nice, then disappears to shout at the generator.

There’s a brief, ridiculous moment where Eddie and Buck just stand there shoulder-to-shoulder, staring at their new domain.

“So,” Buck says finally. “On a scale from one to I’m-going-to-burn-the-square-down, how qualified are you to handle hot beverages?”

“Shockingly competent,” Eddie says. “You?”

“I host a children’s baking show,” the American reminds him. “I’ve survived two seasons of undercooked cupcakes and sugar highs. I can ladle cocoa.”

Eddie can’t help it; he smiles. “Is that what’s going on your headstone?”

“A beloved son, friend, and cocoa ladler,” he says solemnly. “Yes. Exactly.”

People start to drift over in twos and threes, drawn by the promise of warmth in a mug. At first it’s all awkward elbows and wrong handoffs—Eddie nearly gives a small child scalding liquid, the American has to grab his wrist and redirect, their fingers wrapping around each other for a brief, startling second.

“Careful,” he murmurs, close enough that Eddie can feel his breath against his cheek. “Too full.”

“Right,” Eddie says. “Yes. Don’t want to traumatise anyone before the lights even go on.”

They fall into a rhythm surprisingly quickly. Buck takes orders, joking about toppings (“One with marshmallows, one without, and one with a frankly illegal amount of cream, got it”), while Eddie ladles and passes mugs down the line.

It should be entirely ordinary. It is, externally. But Eddie’s awareness of their proximity is loud as the bells.

Every time Buck leans past him for napkins, Eddie’s shoulder brushes his chest. Their hands bump over the marshmallows. They both reach for the same spoon and jerk back, laughing, and Eddie’s pulse stutters, stupidly grateful for the cover of noise and movement.

“International cocoa relations,” Buck says at one point, when they manage not to spill a tray, eyes gleaming. “We’re practically ambassadors.”

“Speak for yourself,” Eddie mutters. “I’m just here for the health and safety violations.”

They grin at each other like idiots.

At some point, a little girl in a bobble hat gasps.

“Mum, look,” she hisses, tugging on her mother’s sleeve. “It’s the cake man from telly.”

The woman shushes her, embarrassed, but it’s too late; the words hang in the air like a flare. Two more heads turn, then four. Murmurs ripple through the queue.

“Is it? Oh, my niece loves his show—”

“Sunny something, isn’t it? The baking one—”

“Sunny Bites,” the little girl says importantly. “He makes cakes that look like animals and sometimes they fall over.”

The American’s ears go pinker than the cold alone could justify.

He gives the girl an easy smile, though, and crouches a little so he’s more on her level. “Hi,” he says. “Don’t tell anyone, but the animals falling over is my favourite bit.”

She giggles, delighted.

Eddie watches, something in his chest swelling and twisting simultaneously.

Because of course he’s good with kids. Of course he can talk to them without talking down, listen properly, make them feel like an equal participant in the joke. It’s there in the way he tilts his head, the way he remembers he’s holding her cocoa and checks the lid twice before handing it over.

“Are you having your picture taken with the tree?” he asks her.

She nods wildly. “Mum says I have to stand still.”

“That sounds very serious,” he says. “Tell you what, if you stand very still for the photo, you’re allowed to dance like crazy afterwards.”

She gasps, thrilled at this new legal development, and runs off to share it with her friends.

Buck stands, ducking his head bashfully when a couple of adults offer quiet, grateful comments. He handles the mini-recognition with the same grace he’s handled everything else Eddie’s seen him do—wry, a bit embarrassed, but never dismissive of the joy he clearly brings people.

Eddie’s throat feels thick.

On the one hand, watching him like this opens up whole new wings of the house in Eddie’s chest. Rooms he hasn’t let himself wander into in years suddenly flick on their lights: the idea of Buck at Christopher’s physio session, making him laugh, of him leaning over Chris’s homework at the dining table, flour on his wrists, of him sitting in that worn armchair in Eddie’s lounge like he belongs there.

On the other, that very ease with children makes the thing Eddie’s not saying loom bigger and darker.

Because if it goes further—if this becomes anything more than cocoa stations and almost-kisses—eventually Buck will have to meet Christopher. There’s no having Eddie without having Chris; they’re a two-for-one deal. And once he finds out, once he sees the whole picture—the braces, the appointments, the nights Eddie still wakes up at the slightest sound from Chris’s room—what then?

Will that bright, open interest shutter a little? Will the weight of it all be too much? Eddie knows what it feels like when someone looks at you and sees not a person, but a project. He’s not sure he can risk that for himself again, never mind for his son.

His ladle hovers over a mug a beat too long.

“Hey,” the American says quietly beside him. “You okay?”

Eddie jerks back to the present. “Fine. Just thinking about the vicar starting a fight over the last mince pie.”

Buck huffs a laugh, but his eyes linger on Eddie’s face for a second longer than they need to. “Dangerous man,” he agrees. “We should probably give him extra cream. So he’s sleepy.”

“Strategic cocoa deployment,” Eddie says. “Now who’s the ambassador?”

They grin at each other again, the moment smoothing over, but the tight feeling in Eddie’s chest doesn’t fully ease.

A small boy steps up next, eyes huge, holding onto his dad’s hand. “Are you really the cake man?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper.

“I am,” the American says, and Eddie watches him soften all over again, like someone dimmed the world’s harsh edges just for this kid. “What’s your name?”

“Tom.”

“Tom,” he says, like it’s the most important name he’s heard all day. “Well, Tom, would you like extra marshmallows, seeing as it’s a very special occasion?”

Tom nods, awestruck.

Eddie scoops an extra generous handful into the mug. He can feel the American’s gaze on him again, a quiet, grateful warmth.

There. That. That’s the problem.

Because Eddie likes being seen by him like that. He likes being on the same team, likes the feeling of them as a unit, synced up enough that a whole conversation can pass between them in a look.

And he is not used to liking things that much without bracing for their loss.

“Ribbon malfunction,” Buck says suddenly.

Eddie blinks. “What?”

He gestures to the front of the table. Someone has tied a big red bow around the urn’s stand, which has now come loose on one side and is drooping sadly, threatening to slide off entirely.

“I tried to fix it,” the American says. “Turns out my skill set does not extend to decorative knots.”

Eddie snorts despite himself. “Move.”

He steps around the table, close enough now that he can smell Buck's aftershave—something clean and a bit citrusy, cut through with cocoa and cold air.

The bow is indeed a disaster. He takes the ends in his fingers, redoing the knot with quick, practiced motions. Years of school Christmas fairs and trying to make things nice for Chris without spending much money have given him a surprising competency in cheap decor.

Buck watches him, amused. “Is this one of those secret dad skills?” he asks lightly.

The words hit Eddie like a slap and a caress at once.

Dad.

He knows he meant it as a joke about being practical, not as a literal label. Still, his fingers stutter for a second, breath catching.

“Something like that,” he says, when he trusts his voice.

He pulls the last loop through, tightens it. The bow sits neatly in place now, jaunty and smug.

“There,” he says. “Structural integrity restored.”

“Wow,” Buck says, very solemn. “I’m impressed.”

He reaches out without quite seeming to think about it, fingers brushing Eddie’s where they rest on the ribbon. It’s a tiny contact, nothing anyone would notice amidst the general chaos. Eddie feels it all the way up his arm.

They both look up at the same time.

For a fraction of a second, the world narrows to just the two of them. The tree, the muttering crowd, the kids racing past trailing sticky cocoa—everything else blurs.

The American’s eyes are warm, crinkled at the corners, sincere in a way Eddie’s not sure he’s earned. There’s the faintest question there, lodged under the surface, the echo of last night’s almost-moment on the hill.

Eddie’s heart does that horrible hopeful lurch.

Then the speakers crackle, someone announces the countdown to the lights, and the spell shatters.

They step back like they’ve been caught doing something scandalous instead of fixing a bow.

“Showtime,” Buck says, clearing his throat, flashing a quick grin.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. His voice sounds a little rough. “Showtime.”

They serve cocoa through the countdown, through the cheer when the tree finally blazes to life in white and gold, through the off-key communal singing. They move around each other with an ease that feels dangerously like familiarity.

By the time Maureen comes to relieve them, Eddie’s cheeks are stiff from smiling, his fingers are sticky, and his head is full of the Buck's laugh.

“Go on,” Maureen shoos them. “Enjoy yourselves. Try not to cause trouble. Or do, but don’t get caught.”

They drift away from the stall together, like it would be stranger now to split up.

“Thank you,” Buck says softly, once they’re out of the worst of the noise. “For tonight. I know you don’t love crowds.”

Eddie raises a brow. “And you know that how?”

“That face you make when you’re around more than ten people,” he says. “Like you’re doing complex maths in your head.”

He huffs a reluctant laugh. “Maybe I just hate cocoa.”

“Liar,” he says gently.

The word is light, but it lands heavier in Eddie’s gut than he wants to examine.

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? He is lying, in a way. Not with what he says, but with what he omits. Every second he stands here, not telling this man about Christopher, feels like tightening a spring a little further. At some point, something is going to snap.

He swallows. His pulse is ridiculous—too loud, too present—like his body hasn’t received the memo that he is supposed to be a rational adult making rational choices.

“I should—uh—head off,” he says. “Soph’s got… stuff.”

The American nods once but doesn’t step back. “Of course. Thanks again for braving it. And for saving the ribbon’s honour.”

“Anytime,” Eddie says—because apparently being a masochist is now a personality trait.

They stand there, just outside the glow of the fairy lights, breath clouding in the cold. The space between them feels like a question.

He could leave. He should leave.

Instead he hears himself say:

“Where are you headed?”

Buck blinks, startled—but pleased. “Just back to the cottage.”

“Right.” Eddie clears his throat, shifting his weight like the pavement suddenly requires choreography. “I’m going that way.”

He absolutely isn’t.

But he will be now.

“Walk me home?” Buck asks—not coy, not teasing. Just open.

Something low and warm lights in Eddie’s chest.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Okay.”

They fall into step easily, shoulder brushing shoulder every few paces like gravity keeps trying to link them.

The village has settled into quiet now—kids gone home, music faded, the night holding that particular December stillness. Their shoes scuff over cobblestones. The moon hangs low and pale above the rooftops.

For a minute, neither of them speaks.

Eddie can feel every point of awareness: the cold air against his cheeks, the warmth radiating from the man beside him, the delicate thread of maybe looping between them like tinsel.

“You’re different tonight,” Buck says quietly, eyes forward.

Eddie tenses. “Different how?”

“Less…” He searches for the word, then laughs softly. “Armoured, I guess.”

“Well,” Eddie says, dry as winter air, “you can’t ladle cocoa under heavy emotional fortifications. Health and safety nightmare.”

Buck huffs a laugh, and Eddie’s stomach does that traitorous swoop.

A beat. Then:

“I’m really glad you didn’t disappear after last night.”

The honesty in the words nearly knocks Eddie off balance.

He lets out a slow breath. “I… almost did.”

“I know,” Buck says gently. “But you didn’t.”

They walk the rest of the hill in silence, but it’s the soft kind—something shared rather than avoided.

Foxglove Lane appears like a secret, narrow and moonlit, the cottage a warm square of gold at the end.

They stop at the gate.

It feels like the world holds its breath.

Buck smiles, small and uncertain and devastating. “Thanks for walking with me.”

“You’re welcome.”

His hand moves before his head approves it. He reaches out—not a grab, just fingers brushing the American’s wrist.

Permission. Not pressure.

The American looks down at the touch… then up at Eddie with an expression so unbearably tender Eddie feels his ribs expand too far.

He leans in first.

Slow—giving Eddie every possible second to back away.

Eddie doesn’t.

Their mouths meet gently, carefully—like opening a wrapped gift without ripping the paper.

Warm. Soft. Sweet in a way no cocoa could ever replicate.

The American’s breath catches. Eddie feels it.

It is not last week’s reckless drunken kiss—not a crash or a dare. It is something deliberate. Something terrifyingly real.

When they finally—finally—pull back, the world feels both sharper and quieter.

“Goodnight, Eddie.” Buck whispers, voice barely there.

Eddie can’t speak for a second. His body is all static and heartbeat and stunned, dizzy want.

“Night,” he manages, voice low. “Sleep well.”

He forces himself to turn and walk away.

He makes it, unbelievably, three whole paces before stopping, closing his eyes, and letting out a breath he’s been holding for days.

He doesn’t look back. Not because he doesn’t want to. But because if he does, he might not walk away at all.

Christopher is already asleep when he gets to Sophia’s. She meets him at the door, hands wrapped round a mug of tea, eyebrows raised in silent enquiry.

“Well?” she says eventually.

“Well what?”

“Did you talk? Did you stare? Did anything explode?”

He hesitates, then admits, “We did cocoa duty together.”

Sophia’s smile goes slowly, brilliantly smug. “Of course you did.”

She sobers a touch, taking in his face. “And?”

He exhales, scrubby hand through his hair. “He’s… He was just… him. The same. Like last night hadn’t been awkward at all. Like it’s easy.”

“But it’s not,” she guesses.

He shakes his head.

Back home, the house feels too quiet.

He showers, changes into an old T-shirt, and ends up at the kitchen table with his laptop again because if he doesn’t put some of this somewhere, he is going to vibrate out of his own skin.

He opens a new email to Adrianna.

Tree lighting survived.

He pauses, fingers hovering.

From: Eddie Diaz
To: Adriana Diaz
Subject: Cocoa duty.

Got ambushed into cocoa duty with him. He is… annoyingly good at being a person.

Kids recognised him from the show. He was really sweet with them.

I like him. More than I meant to. It’s stupid and fast and we don’t actually know each other that well and he goes home in what, ten days? Less?

And the whole time, I’m lying by omission. He keeps saying things and I have to dodge around them like barbed wire. Today he joked about “dad skills” and I nearly had a full cardiac event.

He blows out a breath, shoves his free hand through his hair.

The idea of telling him about Chris makes me feel sick. Not because I’m ashamed—God, you know I’m not—but because once I do, everything changes. He either runs a mile, or he stays and it gets real and Chris is in it too and I can’t—

He backspaces the last three words.

He can’t what? Can’t trust someone? Can’t risk his son’s heart? Can’t survive another disappointment?

He doesn’t know. Not enough to put it in writing.

He stares at the half-finished thought and deletes it entirely.

Instead, he writes:

Anyway. Sophia says I’m smitten. You’re both unbearable. Please advise.

He hits send before he can over-edit himself into oblivion.

He makes a cup of tea, waiting for the reply. It doesn’t take long.

From: Adriana Diaz
To: Eddie Diaz
Subject: re. Cocoa duty

Firstly: I just showed your email to May and she said—and I quote—“Oh my God, they’re both pacing around thinking they’re going to ruin each other’s lives by existing.”

So. You’re not the only one panicking.

Secondly: liking someone isn’t stupid or fast. It’s just… happening. You can’t logic your way out of it any more than you can logic yourself out of being Chris’s dad.

Thirdly: if he runs when he finds out about Chris, he was never someone you could have built anything with anyway. I know that doesn’t make it less scary, but it does make it… cleaner? Maybe?

Fourthly (because I am thorough and gorgeous): you don’t have to tell him everything right this second. But you also don’t get to beat yourself up for having feelings in the meantime. You’re allowed to enjoy the way he looks at you like you built the tree yourself.

Eddie’s chest tightens.

He can picture Adri as she typed that—curled on some LA sofa, bangs in her eyes, determination in every keystroke. He wishes, abruptly, that she were here in this kitchen, instead of words on a screen.

Another email pops up as he watches.

From: Adriana Diaz
To: Eddie Diaz
Subject: re. Re. Re. Cocoa duties

Also, May says: “For the record, I am in favour of your brother for him. He needs someone who sees him as more than ‘the cake man from telly.’ He needs someone who knows what real life looks like, and still chooses him.”

So. No pressure.

He laughs once, a small, choked sound that turns into something almost like a sob if he doesn’t clamp it down.

Real life.

He does know what that looks like. It’s physio appointments and IEP meetings and nights spent half-awake listening for a cough that might mean more. It’s budgets and fatigue and the bone-deep ache of being responsible for a whole other human being’s world.

But it’s also Chris’s grin when he manages something new, the warm weight of him dozing against Eddie’s side, the way his son says “we” about everything like they are, fundamentally, a team.

To offer that to someone is to offer the best and hardest bits of himself at once.

He closes his eyes, leans back in his chair.

He wants—God help him, he wants—to see what Buck would do with that offer. He wants to see that bright, open face looking at Chris with the same gentle interest he shows to every child he meets, except this time with the added weight of mine.

He is also absolutely terrified that the moment he reveals that reality, he’ll watch the light in those blue eyes dim, just a little. Enough to tell him he’s made a mistake.

He opens his eyes again, staring at Adri’s email until the words blur.

His fingers move almost of their own accord.

From: Eddie Diaz
To: Adriana Diaz
Subject: re. Re. Re. Re. Cocoa duties

I’m in trouble. I really, really like him. And I have no idea how to do this without breaking something.

Because he’s here on holiday. That’s all this is meant to be for him — a breather, a reset, a Christmas escape before he goes back to whatever life waits for him in LA. And I don’t…

I don’t know how to be temporary. Not anymore. Not with someone who feels like this.

Adri’s reply is slower this time, but when it comes.

From: Adriana Diaz
To: Eddie Diaz
Subject: re. Re. Re. Re. Re. Cocoa duties

Okay FIRST OF ALL:
DUH you like him.
I’ve known this for DAYS. The second you sent me that text that was like “he has flour on his face and it’s… fine” I KNEW.

SECOND:
You’re not going to break anything by caring about someone. And even if you do? You’ve survived worse, Eddie. Like WAY worse. Remember that guy who said he had a “creative soul” and then made you sit through his acoustic covers of Coldplay?? EXACTLY. You lived.

THIRD (and this is the important one so listen):
Yes — he’s on holiday. Yes — this might be temporary. But temporary things can still matter.

People aren’t flights you catch and then forget. Sometimes they’re… I don’t know, like those books you buy at the train station thinking they’ll be light and silly and then suddenly they’re your favourite and now you underline sentences and loan them out carefully and panic when someone bends the spine.

You don’t have to know what this is yet. And you DEFINITELY don’t have to plan the ending before the middle has even started.

Also — and don’t roll your eyes — not everything good is supposed to last forever to still be good.

BUT.
If — if — this turns into something real?
Christopher is part of that real. And anyone worth having around will choose both of you. Period.

Also I told May you’re officially spiralling and she sent a gif of someone screaming into bread??? I think that was support???

Anyway: wear the good sweater again. And maybe don’t run away this time.

Love you.
And yes I’m smug about being right.

In the lounge, the radiator ticks. Outside, he can hear distant laughter from stragglers leaving the square, bells chiming the hour.

He closes the laptop gently.

In the dark reflection of the kitchen window, he can just make out his own face—tired, wary, and, yes, if he’s honest, a bit stupidly soft.

He thinks of Buck's smile when he’d said I’m glad you’re here tonight.

He thinks of Chris, asleep, safe and beloved.

He thinks of how it had felt, for a few hours under fairy lights and cocoa steam, to stand beside someone and not feel like he was carrying all of it alone.

His heart tips, a slow, steady, terrifying slide from interest into something that looks an awful lot like yearning.

He turns off the light and goes to bed with the taste of cocoa still faint on his tongue and the memory of blue eyes under Christmas lights pressed against the inside of his skull.

Chapter Text

Buck stares at the blinking cursor like it’s trying to diagnose him.

The subject line at the top of the email is still: Re: Re: Re: tiny British village update!!! which suddenly feels criminally inadequate. There should be something like: Hey, I Accidentally Kissed a Man (again) and My Brain Has Left the Chat.

He types that into the subject line.

He deletes it immediately.

“Coward,” he mutters at himself, then looks up at the cottage window. It’s just his reflection there, slightly distorted by old glass: messy hair, sleep-creased cheek, gigantic eyes. No help at all.

He inhales, exhales, and forces his fingers to move.

Subject: Update
From: Evan Buckley [email protected]
To: May Grant-Nash [email protected]

Okay, May, hypothetical question, he types. If you were, say, standing under a stupidly picturesque porch in a town that is also stupidly picturesque, and you got kissed—

He stops, pulse giving a traitorous little hop.

—by a guy.

He adds the words before he can talk himself out of them. They sit there on the screen, too bright, too loud.

A guy you already had a tiny crush on, And maybe it was… I don’t know, magical? What are you meant to do the next day? Text? Not text? (I don't have his number, should I ask Adrianna?)

Love,
Your emotionally compromised boss

He hits send before he can edit anything, and then immediately regrets his life.

Sprout flicks an ear from the back of the sofa, unimpressed.

May’s reply is exactly as ruthless as he deserves.

Subject: EXCUSE ME!!!!
From: May Grant-Nash [email protected]
To: Evan Buckley [email protected]

EXCUSE ME
You can’t just drop “a guy kissed me and it was magical” and hit send like that. DETAILS, Buck! Was it Eddie? It better have been Eddie!!!

Secondly, yes you text. You always text. You are not a “play it cool” person, babe. It’s part of your charm.

He splutters, but he’s smiling. The cottage feels less echoey with her voice in his head.

A second email pings in.

Subject: EXCUSE ME!!!!
From: May Grant-Nash [email protected]
To: Evan Buckley [email protected]
Date: November 23

Also, since we’re sharing kiss updates NOW: Adrianna kissed me. Like, capital-K Kissed. Hands in my hair, backed me into the counter, I died. I’m a very happy ghost.

Buck sinks into the chair, grinning at the screen. The image of steady, organized, sourdough-obsessed Adrianna grabbing May and kissing her senseless in his kitchen in Los Angeles makes his chest go warm and fizzy.

He emails back almost instantly.

Subject: EXCUSE ME!!!!
From: May Grant-Nash [email protected]
To: Evan Buckley [email protected]

Fingers in your hair??? Are we talking full rom-com? Did you squeak?

She responds almost immediately.

Subject: EXCUSE ME!!!!
From: May Grant-Nash [email protected]
To: Evan Buckley [email protected]
Date: November 23

YOU DON’T GET TO JUDGE MY SQUEAKING!
This from the man who once wrote “do you think he meant to brush my fingers on the mug or was that an accident” about a barista. For the record: yes, full rom-com.

P.S. stop asking what you’re “meant” to do. This isn’t a recipe. Do you WANT to see him again? Start there.

Buck stares at that line until the words blur.

Because yes. God, yes. He wants to see Eddie again. He wants to know what Eddie looks like in proper morning light instead of fairylight shimmer. He wants to know if that careful, deliberate kiss under the tree was a one-time Christmas-magic-we’ll-never-speak-of-this-again thing or the start of something that has more days in it than just December.

His phone buzzes, dragging him out of the spiral.

This time it’s from an unknown local number. He recognizes the signature in the tone before he even finishes reading.

You’re still good for this afternoon? Children’s tent. Adriana swore you’d be PERFECT. :) -Lydia

The smiley face feels vaguely threatening.

He presses call before he can think better of it. “Hi, Lydia, it’s Buck,” he says. “Just checking—I’m supposed to be…?”

“Decorating biscuits with the children,” she says briskly, in the tone of someone who has already organized five fairs and a small coup before breakfast. “The poster’s already up.”

“The—poster?”

“Oh yes,” she says proudly. “We pulled an image from the internet. You look very friendly.”

Buck looks at his reflection in the window again. “Terrifying,” he mutters, and then into the phone, “Great. What time?”

“One o’clock sharp,” Lydia says. “Apron provided. See you then, love,” and hangs up before he can protest.

“Okay,” Buck tells Sprout.

Sprout yawns silently.

By the time he’s showered, found a sweater that doesn’t clash with his only decent coat, and tamed his hair into something less “electrocuted marshmallow,” the frost outside has thinned but the air is still sharp. His breath fogs as he walks down the lane toward the village, hands jammed into his pockets more for comfort than warmth.

The town has gone full Christmas. Strings of lights loop from lamppost to lamppost. Music drifts from the green—brass band, slightly off-key. The smell of woodsmoke and sugar wraps around him like a scarf.

The village green itself looks like someone pressed “festive” on real life. Stalls ring the grass: hot chocolate, mince pies, candles, knitted hats. A small, valiantly creaking carousel spins near the far side.

And, at the edge of it all, is a striped tent with a sign that makes his stomach flip.

Children’s Biscuit Decorating – with Sunny Bites’ Evan “Buck” Buckley! beams the banner, complete with a blown-up screenshot of his face mid-laugh, flour on his cheek. It’s not the worst photo of him on the internet, but it’s up there.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” comes Lydia’s voice from his elbow. She’s wearing a jumper that says SLEIGH MY NAME in glitter and radiates project-manager energy. “The kids are going to lose their minds. Some of them think you live inside the telly.”

“Sometimes I think I live inside the telly,” Buck says weakly.

She laughs. “Apron’s in the tent. Two sessions. Try not to let them eat the sprinkles straight from the bowl, we had an incident in 2019.”

The tent is lined with long tables covered in red paper cloths. Trays of plain biscuits—cookies, his American brain insists—are laid out in neat rows: stars, trees, snowmen, a few reindeer with alarming antlers. Bowls of icing in pastel colors sit along the middle, next to tubs of sprinkles and chocolate chips.

Lydia thrusts an apron at him printed with gingerbread men. “You’ll be brilliant,” she says. “They adore chaos. You’re from children’s television. It’s practically the same thing.”

He doesn’t have time to be nervous once the kids arrive.

They’re a blur of puffy coats and woolly hats and big eyes. A little girl in a unicorn raincoat stops dead when she sees him.

“Mum,” she hisses, too loud. “It really is the cake man.”

Buck’s TV persona clicks on like someone’s hit a switch. His smile goes automatic, his voice warm. “Hi,” he says, crouching. “I’m Buck. What’s your name?”

“Ellie,” she breathes. “You made a cake that was a dragon.”

“I did,” he says. “Do you think we can make biscuits as cool as a dragon today?”

She nods so hard her hat pom-pom wobbles.

After that, it’s straight, glorious, sticky chaos. He moves up and down the tables, showing one kid how to outline the edge of a star, helping another coax a blob of green into something vaguely tree-shaped. He high-fives sugar-coated hands. He gently pries the sprinkle tub out of the grip of a three-year-old mid-attempted theft. A boy solemnly informs him that his show is “good, but could have more dinosaurs,” which Buck accepts as fair criticism.

By the time that first session ends in a flurry of coats and parents and glittery sugar, his cheeks ache from smiling and there’s icing in his hair.

He’s scraping excess icing into a bin bag when it happens.

That weird, internal weather shift. Like when a set door opens and the air changes, and he knows without turning that someone has walked in whose gravity his body has learned.

He straightens, wiping his hands on his apron, and looks toward the tent entrance.

Eddie is there.

He’s half inside, ducking a little to clear the canvas edge, dark hair ruffled from the wind. His coat is unzipped over a worn jumper, his gloves tucked into one hand. His cheeks are pink with cold.

For half a second, all Buck can see is last night: the press of Eddie’s gloved fingers at his jaw, the careful lean-in, the warm shock of lips and breath and the tremble of possibility.

Then his brain zooms out, because Eddie isn’t alone.

Next to him stands a kid in a bright red coat, hands resting on the sides of a sleek, red crutches. The child’s legs are set carefully, braced, metal peeking at the ankles where supportive braces catch the tent light. A bobble hat a size too big sits slightly askew over big brown eyes that are taking everything in at once.

Behind them, a woman Buck assumes must be Eddie and Adrianna's sister Sophia.

“Buck,” Lydia calls, oblivious. “Look who finally made it. Eddie, Sophia, Christopher—our star baker agreed to slum it with us today.”

Christopher.

The name lands with a quiet thud. Buck has seen it under framed photos in the cottage: Christopher, age six! Christopher’s first day of school. Eddie with his arms wrapped around a laughing kid whose grin takes up half his face.

“Hey,” Eddie says, and when Buck drags his gaze up, Eddie’s looking straight at him. There’s something exposed in his expression that Buck has never seen before. Calm wrapped around nerves. Hope wrapped around fear. “Didn’t know they were making you earn your keep.”

“Apparently fame comes at a price,” Buck says, because his mouth works even when his lungs don’t. “I’m being paid in sprinkles.”

Sophia laughs. “You must be Buck.”

Buck smiles and holds out his hand, “Nice to finally meet the famous Sophia Diaz.”

Christopher’s looking at him with open curiosity now. Up close, the resemblance is brutal. The same eyes as Eddie, the same stubborn tilted chin.

“Hi,” Christopher says. “You’re the cake man.”

Buck’s laugh comes out softer than usual. “I am,” he says. “Though today I’m more of a biscuit guy. I’m Buck.”

“I’m Christopher,” the boy informs him. “Dad said we could come if I didn't say he was excited to see you again."

“Snitch,” Eddie mutters, deadpan, though his hand lands briefly and gently on Christopher’s shoulder—steadying, affectionate. “What did we say about exposing your father in public?”

Christopher shrugs, unbothered. “You said I’m too honest.”

“I said selectively honest,” Eddie corrects, then finally looks up at Buck.

And suddenly it’s not banter anymore.

Something flickers across Eddie’s face—hesitation, resolve, something that looks like trust shaped into words before it even reaches his mouth.

He shifts, stands a little straighter, protective lines softening into something that feels almost ceremonial.

“Buck,” he says quietly, voice steadier than his eyes. “This is my son. Christopher Diaz.”

There’s no rush to it. No throwaway tone. Each word lands like he’s placing something fragile and important between them with both hands.

Buck’s breathing goes weird.

Dad. My son. Christopher.

Not just facts—context. Belonging. Priority.

And suddenly the crush Buck’s been trying to laugh his way around grows roots.

Christopher peers up at him expectantly, swinging one brace-supported foot.

Buck swallows and crouches so he’s eye level, heart in free fall.

“Hi, Christopher Diaz,” he says, softer than anything he’s offered today. “It’s really, really good to meet you.”

Christopher studies him for a beat, then nods—solemn, satisfied.

“You have icing on your face,” he announces.

Buck laughs, breath coming back all at once. “Good. Otherwise no one would believe I worked today.”

Eddie huffs a laugh—small but warm, like relief disguised as amusement—and the moment eases just enough to breathe inside it.

But the shift is done. Buck feels it.

He wasn’t just introduced to a kid. He was introduced to Eddie’s whole world.

Lydia claps her hands. “Perfect timing,” she says. “Second session’s about to start. Christopher, love, do you want to decorate some biscuits? We’ve got stars, trees, snowmen—proper ones this year.”

“Snowmen?” Christopher perks up. “Last year they were weird.”

“In my professional opinion,” Buck says gravely, “these snowmen will be at least forty percent less weird.”

Christopher beams. It’s like looking directly at the sun.

Sophia shifts, subtle but practised. “Okay, mijo,” she says, moving around to the back of Chris with a steady arm. “Let's go get a seat.”

Eddie hovers just enough to help if needed, not enough to smother. It’s a dance, clearly rehearsed.

Buck’s hands twitch with the urge to help, and he realizes suddenly that he has no idea what he’s allowed to do. This is not his space. This is a piece of Eddie’s life that has been kept carefully separate until this exact minute.

He forces himself to stay where he is and looks up.

Eddie’s already looking at him. Their eyes catch, hold.

There’s a question in Eddie’s gaze, and something that looks a lot like decision. Like he’s opened a door and is waiting to see if Buck walks through.

“All right, bakers!” Lydia barrels in, clapping her hands for attention as more kids pour into the tent. “Find a seat! Tiny humans at the front, larger humans at the edge!”

Parents shuffle. Kids swarm the tables. In the chaos, Sophia guides Christopher and his crutches to a spot at one of the center tables, where he can reach the biscuits and Buck can, if he just happens to be standing there, help.

Buck takes his place at the front again. “Okay,” he calls, in his best TV voice. “Who’s ready to make a gigantic mess?”

A wave of YES crashes back at him.

He starts the demo. Icing basics. Star outlining. His hands move, his mouth provides jokes, his brain stays mostly on task.

His heart, though, keeps pinging back to the table where Christopher sits, Sophia beside him, Eddie leaning against a tent pole a few feet behind, arms folded, expression soft and sharp all at once.

When he moves down the aisle between tables, he finds himself there first.

“How’s it going, chef?” he asks, stopping by Christopher’s table.

Christopher has a star biscuit in front of him and a piping bag in both hands, tongue peeking out in concentration as he squeezes a pale blue line around the edge. It wobbles, but it holds.

“You’re a natural,” Buck says. “Beginner’s level is usually ‘blob.’ This is advanced.”

Christopher’s entire face lights. “I watch your videos,” he says. “Dad puts them on when I have to do stretches. He says they’re a good distraction.”

“Oh,” Buck says, too quietly. “Yeah? Which one’s your favorite?”

“The dinosaur cupcakes,” Christopher answers instantly. “And the space cake. And the one where it went wrong and you dropped the spoon.”

“That was not supposed to air,” Buck says, then catches Eddie’s eye over Christopher’s head.

Eddie is watching them with a look that makes Buck’s knees feel weak. Like he’s seeing something he didn’t know he wanted to see until right now.

Buck keeps his smile easy for Christopher. “Well,” he says, “we definitely need to honor a distinguished viewer. I think this star needs at least ten thousand sprinkles.”

Christopher gasps. “Ten thousand?”

“At least.” Buck tilts the sprinkle tub toward him. “Maybe eleven. I trust your artistic vision.”

Sprinkles go everywhere. On the cookie, on the table, on Christopher’s blanket, on Buck’s apron.

Sophia laughs. “You’re a menace,” she tells Buck.

“Occupational hazard,” he says.

He forces himself to move on to the other tables. He helps a shy girl pipe eyes on a snowman. He assures a boy that yes, absolutely, purple trees are legal. He nods seriously when a kid explains the complex backstory of their gingerbread reindeer.

But he keeps looping back.

Every time, Christopher has another biscuit and another question. “Do you ever burn stuff?” (Yes.) “Do you get to eat all of it?” (No, sadly.) “Is it scary on TV?” (Sometimes.)

Every time, Eddie is nearby, eyes flicking between his son and Buck like he can’t quite decide which one is more likely to explode.

By the time the second session wraps, there is, scientifically, more icing on surfaces than on biscuits. Lydia looks delighted. Parents look resigned. Children look like they’ve seen the face of God and it’s made of sugar.

They start to tidy up. Kids are bundled away. The brass band outside segues into “Silent Night.” Lanterns in the tent cast everything in a warm, golden glow that makes the mess look intentional.

Buck is ferrying a tray of decapitated snowmen to a side table when Christopher calls, “Buck!” again.

He turns.

The tent is quieter now. Just them, Lydia at the far end, and the Diaz cluster near the front.

Christopher’s hat has slipped back a little, hair ruffled. His cheeks are pink with excitement. Eddie stands with one hand resting lightly on Christopher's shoulder, Sophia stuffing spare biscuits into a tin.

“Hey, dude,” Buck says, setting the tray down. “You survived the sprinkle storm.”

Christopher grins, showing the gap where he’s clearly lost a front tooth. “I made four,” he says proudly, nodding at the small pile of biscuits on a napkin in his Dads hand. “This one’s for Dad, this one’s for Sophia, this one’s for me, and this one—” He hesitates, suddenly shy. “This one’s for you. If you want it.”

The biscuit in question is a star that has lost all structural integrity under the weight of sprinkles and three different colors of icing. It is, objectively, a disaster.

Buck’s throat pulls tight.

“It’s perfect,” he says. “I love it. Thank you.”

He takes it carefully, like it’s breakable.

Outside, the brass band finally lands the last note of “Silent Night.”

“Are you going back to America after Christmas?” Christopher asks suddenly, like this has been sitting in his head the whole time.

Buck’s first instinct is to dodge. He could joke about being deported if he eats one more mince pie. He could shrug it off.

But Christopher is looking at him like the answer matters. And Eddie is very, very still.

“I live in Los Angeles,” Buck says slowly. “So, yeah. After New Year’s, I’m supposed to fly back. That’s the plan.”

Christopher’s mouth turns down at the corners. “That’s far.”

“Pretty far,” Buck agrees. “But planes exist. Video calls exist. Baking shows exist.”

“You like it here,” Christopher says. Not a question.

Buck thinks of the cottage, of Arthur the sourdough starter, of Sprout across his chest. Of frost on the hedges and brass band carols and Lydia’s terrifying efficiency. Of May’s delighted emails, Adrianna’s kiss. Of Eddie’s hand on his jaw, and Eddie’s voice now, saying my son.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I really do.”

Christopher chews on his lip. Then: “You should visit again,” he says. “Dad gets grumpy in January.”

“Hey,” Eddie protests. “I do not.”

“You do,” Sophia says immediately. “You hate the cold and you mope.”

“That’s slander,” Eddie tells them, but when Buck looks up, his eyes are bright, soft. “Ignore them.”

Buck’s laugh comes out a little shaky. “Well,” he says, “in the interest of global January grumpiness reduction, I’ll… see what I can do.”

“Promise?” Christopher asks.

It hits harder than it should, that little word. Like a hook.

There are practical reasons to hedge. His contract. His life. The ocean. The fact that this was supposed to be a few weeks of escape, not the start of something that feels suspiciously like hope.

But Christopher is looking at him with Eddie’s eyes, and Eddie is looking at him like he’s braced for disappointment and trying not to show it.

Buck swallows.

“I can’t promise everything,” he says carefully. “But I can promise I’ll try. And I can promise that even if I’m far away, I’ll be cheering you on. With every stretch and every biscuit. That’s a Buck guarantee. We take those very seriously.”

Christopher considers, then sticks out his hand. “Okay,” he says. “Deal.”

Buck takes his hand gently, feeling the small, solid warmth of it. Something in his chest clicks into place, like a seatbelt.

When he straightens, his eyes meet Eddie’s.

There’s so much in that look: gratitude, worry, something like awe, something like want. And threaded through it, there’s that same slow-burn current from the night under the tree, steady and humming, now wrapped around the shape of a kid in a red coat.

“Thank you,” Eddie says quietly.

“For the biscuit?” Buck jokes.

Eddie’s mouth twitches. “For… all of it,” he says. “You were really good with him. Sometimes people… aren’t.”

The way he says that hits Buck somewhere deep, in all the old places where he’s used to being too much or not enough.

“It wasn’t hard,” he says, and if his voice is rough, nobody calls him on it. “He’s pretty great.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, looking at his son like he’s the only light source in the tent. “He is.”

For a moment, time stretches thin. The lanterns hum. The fair noise is a blur beyond the canvas.

Buck stands there, sugar-sticky and buzzing, and realizes that something fundamental has shifted. The ground he’s standing on isn’t just borrowed-cottage-in-a-foreign-country ground anymore. It’s ground that includes Eddie’s kid. Eddie’s life. Eddie’s trust.

Stepping into that feels huge. Dangerous. Wonderful. It feels like the moment a recipe finally clicks and you realize you never tasted home before.

Buck peels off his apron and it crackles when he moves.

There’s icing crusted on the hem and a smear of blue on his cheek. Lydia just hands him a Tupperware of broken snowmen and declares, “You’ve earned chips,” before sweeping away.

Outside, the fair has slid into evening. Lanterns glow against a dark sky; the brass band has retreated to carols. His arms ache. His throat is raw. His pocket holds one star biscuit with too many sprinkles that says Christopher in wobbly icing.

He’s halfway to the lane, mind whirring, when someone falls into step beside him.

“Thought you might sneak off before I could feed you,” Eddie says.

Buck turns. Eddie’s hair is ruffled from the cold, hands shoved into his coat pockets. Behind him, Sophia walks Christopher toward the car park.

“I was going to go home and lick icing off my arm,” Buck says. “Classy, I know.”

“Come to the pub instead,” Eddie says. “Pretty sure they have actual food.”

It sounds throwaway. To Buck, it feels like the next step after tree, kiss, tent, Christopher.

“I don’t want to crash family time,” he says.

“Chris is done,” Eddie says. “Sophia’s taking him home. I thought you might be hungry. Also, you saved us from a sprinkle riot. Seems only fair.”

“Civic duty,” Buck says. “Pub sounds good.”

“Yeah?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah,” Buck says, and feels the word settle somewhere warm.

They walk side by side toward the village. Frost crackles faintly under their boots. Fairy lights stretch between lampposts. Their shoulders almost, almost brush.

“He likes you,” Eddie says suddenly.

Buck’s heart trips. “Christopher?”

“Yeah.” Eddie’s eyes stay on the road. “He’s picky. Most adults either pretend not to see the braces or talk to me and not him. You didn’t do that.”

“I talk to puppets for money,” Buck says. “Regular-size humans are a step up.”

Eddie huffs a laugh. “Still,” he says. “Thank you. For taking him as he is.”

Buck wants to say, You trusted me with the most important person in your world. Instead: “He bribed me with biscuits. I’m weak.”

“Yeah, that’s on my parenting,” Eddie says. “Raising a tiny manipulator.”

The village appears around the corner, all warm windows and wreaths. The pub crouches on the corner, sign creaking gently.

“So this is the famous local?” Buck asks. “Everyone knows your name and your tea order?”

“And your business,” Eddie says. “Don’t worry, they already know we’ve imported a TV baker who doesn’t understand radiators.”

“I understand them,” Buck mutters. “I just don’t trust them.”

The pub door sticks, then opens. Heat and sound spill out: conversation, the smell of beer and chips and oranges, the crackle of a fire. Inside, beams cross the low ceiling; fairy lights loop along the walls. A dog is asleep in front of the fireplace.

Eddie steers them to a small table by the fire. “Before someone’s nan steals it,” he says.

They squeeze into the corner. The fire sends prickly warmth into Buck’s fingers. When he nudges his chair in, his knee bumps Eddie’s under the table. Neither of them moves away.

“What’s good?” Buck asks.

“Pie,” Eddie says, without looking at the menu. “Always the pie. And chips. And you have to order at least one drink or they revoke your residency.”

“I’m calling Amnesty International,” Buck says.

Eddie snorts. “I’ll get them. Don’t let anyone take the table.”

Buck watches him at the bar, leaning an elbow on the worn wood. He looks at home here in a way that makes Buck’s chest ache.

Buck glances down at his hands, faintly sticky, a line of red food colouring on his wrist. He feels temporary. Borrowed cottage, borrowed village, the new knowledge of Christopher’s name.

Eddie comes back with two pints and a smaller glass. “Mulled cider,” he says, putting the small one in front of Buck. “Didn’t think you were ready for proper warm flat beer.”

“You say that like I’m twelve,” Buck says, but he wraps his hands around the glass. The first sip is hot and spiced. Heat blooms in his chest.

“Okay,” he admits. “Fine. You were right.”

“I usually am,” Eddie says, quietly.

They order food—pie for Eddie, nut roast for Buck, chips “for the table”—and when the bartender leaves, the space between them feels full of everything they haven’t named.

“So,” Eddie says, drawing circles in the condensation. “Your first village fair. How’s the trauma?”

“I think I’ve inhaled enough icing sugar to fail a drug test,” Buck says. “But it was… good. The kids were great.” He hesitates. “Christopher was great.”

Eddie’s mouth curves, quick and proud. “He’ll be unbearable now the cake man knows his name,” he says.

“I kind of told him,” Buck says, “that if I came back one day, we’d make dinosaur biscuits. With volcanoes.”

Eddie stills. “If you came back,” he repeats.

Buck grimaces. “He asked. It felt wrong to say no.”

“He doesn’t usually ask that,” Eddie says. “About people coming back. He’s decided it’s safer not to expect it.”

Buck’s voice drops. “His mom?”

Eddie nods once. “She—yeah. We divorced first. We tried. And then last year…” His jaw tightens. “It was a car accident in El Paso. Fast. Sudden. Chris was already struggling with distance and then—one day it wasn’t distance anymore, it was gone.”

Buck feels that land somewhere low and reverent inside him. He thinks of Christopher’s careful little promise — like something fragile he wasn’t sure he was allowed to touch.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

Eddie just nods, eyes fixed on the condensation sliding down his glass.

Buck thinks of the way Christopher had said promise like it was delicate.

“I’m not promising I can throw my whole life in a suitcase,” he says. “But I meant it. I’ll try. To come back. If that’s not just… a nice line over gravy.”

Eddie looks at him, eyes dark. “You’re supposed to go back to sunshine and TV,” he says. “I’m pretty sure there’s a spreadsheet somewhere with your name on it.”

“That’s May,” Buck says. “She laminates them.”

It earns him a brief laugh.

Their food arrives. Eddie’s pie is golden and leaking gravy; Buck’s nut roast looks fine. The chips are perfect.

Eddie cuts into his pie, then offers a forkful across the table. “Official welcome,” he says.

Buck leans forward, bites. “Okay,” he says. “I get why you people stay.”

“If you stay for pie, I’m judging you,” Eddie says, pointing a chip at him.

“You’d rather I stay for your sparkling personality?” Buck asks.

“Absolutely not,” Eddie says. “Those are terrible reasons. Pie’s more reliable.”

They talk more easily after that: Lydia, the cottage oven, Eddie taking Christopher sledding and ending up in a hedge. Buck laughs more than he expects. Underneath, something steady hums.

Eventually Eddie’s gaze drops to his pint. “So,” he says. “Are we just… pretending we haven’t kissed. Twice.”

Buck nearly aspirates on a chip.

“It just feels weird,” Eddie says, eyes on the table. “Acting like it was some kind of glitch in the system.”

“Rude to my entire coping mechanism,” Buck says, but his heart is pounding.

“It meant something to me,” Eddie says quietly. “The tree. And the part where you didn’t run.”

Buck’s throat works. “Yeah,” he says. “Same.”

“And today,” Eddie adds. “Bringing Chris. That wasn’t nothing.”

“I know,” Buck says. “I don’t know what this is. I just know it doesn’t feel like a joke. Even if it ends up being temporary.”

For a moment Eddie doesn’t move. Then his fingers twitch and he shifts his hand the few centimetres until his knuckles brush Buck’s.

The contact is small and warm.

“What are we doing, then?” he asks, finally meeting Buck’s eyes. “Because you’re leaving. I’m here. There’s an ocean. A kid. A lot of reasons this should’ve stayed a nice Christmas thing we both pretend we misunderstood.”

Buck thinks of L.A. and the cottage and the tent full of kids, Christopher’s hand in his, Eddie’s voice saying my son. Sitting here feels less like borrowing someone else’s life and more like the start of something that might hurt and be worth it anyway.

“I don’t know yet,” he says. “I just know I don’t want to lie and say it didn’t matter.”

Eddie exhales, shoulders dropping a fraction. His thumb nudges very slightly against Buck’s hand.

“Okay,” he says. “We can start there.”

Buck turns his hand so their fingers line up along the edge of the table. Not quite a handhold. Just contact.

Someone opens the pub door; a gust of cold air spills in, carrying a scrap of carol from the green. The fire pops. The dog snores. Fairy lights blink along the beam over their heads.

Buck sits there with Eddie’s knuckles pressed against his, cider warm in his chest, and realises that for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel like a guest star in somebody else’s story.

He feels like he’s at the first scene of his own.

Maybe it lasts a week. Maybe it doesn’t. Right now there is pie and a boy who wants dinosaur biscuits and a man whose hand is resting against his like it belongs there.

Buck squeezes, just once, steady.

“Okay,” he echoes. “We can start there.”

They didn’t move their hands for a long time.

It was such a small point of contact—knuckles lined up on sticky wood, the barest edge of skin touching—but Buck’s whole nervous system had apparently decided this counted as a major event. His pulse had shifted into some new rhythm that he was pretty sure wasn’t medically recommended.

Around them, the pub went on cheerfully ignoring their quiet crisis. Glasses clinked. Someone at the bar told a story with the word “bloody” every other sentence. The dog by the fire sighed in its sleep.

Eddie finished the last of his pie, set his fork down, and glanced at Buck’s nearly untouched chips. “You done?” he asked, like they hadn’t just sort of defined reality between sips of cider.

Buck looked at his plate. “I hit my personal chip limit,” he said.

Heat from the fire pricked at Buck’s back. He suddenly became aware of how late it was, the way the buzz of conversation had thinned out. The night outside pressed at the windows, black and cold and full of their next decision.

Eddie traced another circle in the condensation on his glass and broke their knuckle contact just long enough to rub his palms dry on his jeans. Buck’s skin missed the touch immediately—like a draft had slipped in.

“So,” Eddie said. “You… walking home?”

“Yeah,” Buck said, too quickly. “It’s not far. And I already risked my life driving on the wrong side of the road once this week.”

“Technically it’s the right side,” Eddie said, purely on reflex.

“You’re wrong, but okay,” Buck said.

Eddie huffed a little laugh, then looked up, and there it was again—the quiet, deliberate choice.

“I’ll walk you,” he said.

Buck swallowed. “What about—”

“I’ll cut through back,” Eddie said. “It’s ten minutes from yours to Sophia's.”

“Yeah,” Buck said, because every part of him that knew how to say no had apparently clocked off for the night. “Okay.”

They put on their coats at the door, fingers clumsy with sleeves. When Eddie held the pub door open, the cold hit like a wall. Their breath fogged immediately, curling together in the air.

Outside, the village had gone mostly quiet. The fair had packed up, leaving only a few lingering stalls and a faint trail of dropped glitter. Fairy lights still twined along the eaves, washing the stone cottages in soft gold.

Buck pulled his scarf tighter around his neck. The cider had been warm; the air was not.

“Is it always this cold?” he asked.

“This is barely cold,” Eddie said. “You haven’t seen January yet.”

“Jury’s still out on whether I will,” Buck said lightly, and then immediately wanted to reach out and catch the words.

Eddie’s hands slid back into his pockets. “Yeah,” he said. “Right.”

They started down the lane. Their boots crunched on frost, the sound loud in the quiet. A thin strip of moon hung above the rooftops, watching.

For a while they walked without talking. Their shoulders brushed occasionally, that fuzzy overlap of coats making tiny static sparks Buck could almost feel through his sleeves.

His brain, meanwhile, was doing its usual thing: a full production meeting behind his eyes.

He’d met Eddie’s son. He was walking home from the pub with Eddie’s knuckles still ghosting warm against his own. He was leaving in a couple of weeks, and everything about this felt nothing like temporary.

“You okay?” Eddie asked, like he’d heard some of that.

“Yeah,” Buck said. “Just thinking.”

“Dangerous,” Eddie said. “Doctor’s orders: no more than three thoughts after 10 p.m.”

“Wow,” Buck said. “Ableism against overthinkers. I see how it is.”

Eddie smirked, but then he glanced sideways. “About earlier?” he asked. “At the tent.”

Buck nodded, throat suddenly tight. “I’ve… worked with a lot of kids,” he said slowly. “On set. At hospitals. Charity thing for the show. But that—” He swallowed. “Christopher. That was different.”

“Because he’s mine,” Eddie said.

“Yeah,” Buck said. “Because he’s yours. Because you chose to… let me into that. You didn’t have to.”

Eddie’s jaw flexed. “Yeah, I did,” he said after a moment. “Actually.”

Buck frowned. “You did?”

Eddie’s breath fogged out on a quiet laugh. “He watches your show every week,” he said. “He knows you’ve been here. He saw the poster for the biscuit thing and looked at me like… like I’d personally cancelled Christmas if I didn’t take him.”

“Oh,” Buck said, stupidly relieved. “So I was a bribe.”

“No,” Eddie said, and now his voice was different—lower, more serious. “You were… the test.”

That made Buck stop. They were halfway down the lane, between pools of lamplight, everything blue and silver and quiet. He turned to face Eddie.

“A test,” he repeated.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, meeting his eyes. “I needed to see what it looked like. You and him. Not just in my head.”

Buck’s breath caught.

“And?” he asked, because apparently he wanted to live dangerously.

Eddie’s gaze flicked down, then up again. “And you were you,” he said. “Which was kind of the problem.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Buck demanded, but his heart was pounding in his throat.

“It means,” Eddie said, stepping closer, “that he liked you immediately. That you talked to him like a person. That you let him see you were listening. That you promised him dinosaur biscuits like an idiot.” His mouth curved. “So now I have this kid who thinks the cake man is his friend and a weird American in my village who’s made himself at home and—”

“And?” Buck whispered.

“And I kissed you,” Eddie said, voice barely audible. “Twice. And I’ve been trying all day not to think about what it would be like to do it again.”

Buck managed a strangled laugh. “You’ve been trying,” he said. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to focus on piping demonstrations when your brain is just replaying one man’s mouth in IMAX?”

Eddie’s breath stuttered out. The lamplight hit his face, picking out the lines of it, the soft curve of his lips, the fragile, stubborn hope there.

“So don’t try,” Buck said before he could stop himself. “Not tonight.”

For a second nothing happened. The village held its breath.

Then Eddie closed the remaining distance.

It wasn’t a sudden grab, not a reckless crash. It was slow, almost careful. One hand lifted to Buck’s jaw, fingers warm through the cold. He tilted Buck’s face up, gave him just enough time to say no if he wanted to, and when Buck didn’t—couldn’t—Eddie leaned in.

The kiss was different from the others. The tree kiss had been tentative, a question. The second had been a confirmation.

This one was an answer.

Buck’s lips parted on a soft inhale. Eddie’s mouth was warm, his nose cold against Buck’s cheek, his thumb brushing just under Buck’s ear. Heat flared through Buck, sharp and immediate, chasing the chill out of his bones.

He made a sound he’d be embarrassed about later and leaned in, one hand finding Eddie’s coat, bunching the wool. Eddie responded like he’d just been waiting for that small surrender, deepening the kiss, his other hand sliding to the back of Buck’s neck.

The world narrowed to breath and warmth and the taste of cider, the rough scrape of stubble, the little hitch in Eddie’s chest when Buck kissed back harder, no cameras, no distance, just this.

When they finally broke apart, it was only a fraction. Their foreheads leaned together. Eddie’s thumb stroked Buck’s jaw once, like he was memorizing it.

“Okay,” Eddie murmured. “That didn’t help.”

“Define help,” Buck said, a little dazed.

Eddie swallowed. “We should walk,” he said. “Before my aunt drives past and I have to explain why I’m snogging the telly baker in the lane.”

“If we walk,” Buck said, “that implies I remember how to use my legs.”

“We’ll go slow,” Eddie said. His voice had gone rough. “Come on.”

They didn’t let go of each other entirely as they walked. Eddie’s hand found Buck’s, fingers curling around his, and that simple, solid grip did something to Buck that the kiss hadn’t. Kissing could be spun as a moment, a lapse, Christmas magic. Hand-holding on a half-frozen lane in the dark felt like intent.

The cottage came into view sooner than Buck wanted. Its windows glowed softly, Arthur presumably fermenting in judgment on the counter.

“Here,” Buck said, unnecessarily.

“Yeah,” Eddie said.

They stopped at the gate. Their joined hands slipped apart, then came back together again as if caught mid-mistake.

“You don’t have to—” Buck began.

“I know,” Eddie said, at the same time.

They both smiled, small and crooked.

“Do you want to come in?” Buck asked. The words felt huge. He could have said, Do you want tea, want to meet my cat, want to defrost. They all stacked on the same question.

Eddie exhaled, a white cloud. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I do.”

Buck’s fingers fumbled with the latch, with the key, like he’d never used his hands before. The door stuck, then yielded with its usual little groan. Warmth breathed out—radiators, finally pulling their weight, the faint smell of whatever he’d baked last, the soft sound of paws hitting the floor.

Sprout appeared in the hallway, tail high, eyes luminous in the dim light.

“Hey, traitor,” Buck whispered, kicking off his boots. “We have company. Be nice.”

Sprout considered Eddie, then twined briefly around his ankle, shedding cat hair on dark denim like an anointing.

“I’ve been accepted,” Eddie said. “Big night.”

Coats went on hooks. Scarves landed on the little chair by the door. The cottage felt suddenly very small and very, very private.

For a heartbeat, they just stood there in the narrow hallway, the quiet loud around them.

“Tea?” Buck asked, because muscle memory.

“Later,” Eddie said.

And just like that, the air shifted.

Buck’s back found the wall without him exactly planning it. Eddie stepped in, close, bracketed him there with one hand by his shoulder, not trapping, just… present. Asking.

Buck nodded, tiny, enough.

The next kiss was deeper than the one in the lane, less careful. Eddie’s mouth slotted over his like he’d been rehearsing this in his head too, his hand sliding to Buck’s waist, fingers curving into the heat there.

Buck melted. There was no other word for it. His hands found Eddie’s shoulders, the solid line of his back, and then couldn’t stay still. They mapped the breadth of him through wool and cotton, the curve of his neck, the warm skin at the edge of his collar.

He was aware of everything at once: the uneven plaster against his spine, the steady rise and fall of Eddie’s chest, the hitch of Eddie’s breath when Buck’s fingers slipped under his jumper to find warm skin.

“Buck,” Eddie murmured against his mouth, something between a warning and a plea.

“Yeah,” Buck said, not sure what he was agreeing to, only that yes, yes, yes felt right.

They broke apart just enough to breathe, foreheads pressed together.

“Are you sure?” Eddie asked, eyes searching his.

Buck could have thrown out a joke. He didn’t. “I’ve been sure since we almost kissed the second time,” he said. “Probably before that.”

Something in Eddie’s face softened and sharpened at once.

“Okay,” he said.

Buck’s heart did a cartwheel. “Yeah,” he replied, voice gone embarrassingly hoarse. “It’s—uh—”

Eddie was smiling, and kissed him again before he could spiral.

They half-walked, half-stumbled down the short hall, bumping into a doorframe and laughing into each other’s mouths. It felt clumsy and natural, like they were learning the choreography as they went.

In the bedroom, the fairy lights strung along the curtain rod cast everything in a soft, non-judgmental glow. The bed was unmade. There was a book on the nightstand, face-down, and his laptop cable snaked across the floor like a tripping hazard.

“Welcome to my glamorous life,” Buck said.

Eddie turned to him, and whatever comeback he’d been planning died on the way out. His gaze moved slowly over Buck’s face, his chest, the hand still twisted in the hem of Eddie’s jumper.

“You have no idea,” Eddie said quietly, “how good this looks to me.”

Heat flooded Buck’s neck. “You have terrible standards,” he said, hoping to keep his voice steady.

Eddie stepped closer again, hands finding the buttons of Buck’s shirt. “Look at me,” he said.

Buck did. Eddie undid the buttons one by one, not in some slick movie move, just careful, fingers brushing the skin underneath as if he wanted to learn it. Buck’s breath shortened with every inch of exposure—the cool air on his collarbone, the warm slide of Eddie’s palms over his chest.

He helped with Eddie’s sweater in a brief tangle of fabric and laughter, and then there was a lot of warm skin and the solid press of Eddie’s body against his.

They moved to the bed almost without deciding to, tumbling down in a heap of limbs and half-formed jokes. The mattress dipped; the headboard knocked softly against the wall. Sprout, wisely, did not follow.

“Careful,” Buck said, coughing out a laugh. “The neighbors will hear.”

“Pretty sure they already think we’re scandalous,” Eddie murmured, his mouth tracing a path along Buck’s jaw, down his throat. Each brush of lips sent sparks racing under Buck’s skin. “This just confirms it.”

Buck’s hands slid over the planes of Eddie’s back, the flex of muscle, the dip of his waist. It felt both impossible that they were here and weirdly inevitable, like everything from the first email to the tree to the biscuit tent had been pointing at this exact moment.

“Hey,” Buck said softly, a little breathless. “Eddie.”

Eddie lifted his head.

“This isn’t—” Buck searched for the words. “It’s not just a Christmas thing for me. Not just a… snow globe moment.”

Eddie’s eyes softened. “Me either,” he said. “We’ll figure the rest out later. Right now, can we just…” He swallowed. “Be here.”

Buck’s chest tightened, in a good way. “Yeah,” he said. “We can be here.”

So they were.

They kissed until talking would’ve been impossible anyway. Until the room felt hazy around the edges and the only things in focus were Eddie’s hands and Eddie’s mouth and the way he said Buck’s name like it had weight.

Clothes loosened, shifted, dropped. Skin met skin, heat against heat, the world narrowing beautifully. They moved together in a messy, earnest rhythm, all breath and touch and small, unguarded sounds that said more than any carefully constructed conversation could.

Buck’s last coherent thought was that he’d never felt this seen in his own body before—not as the guy on TV, not as the host with the jokes, but as himself. Just Buck. In a borrowed bed, in a borrowed village, with a man who’d let him hold his son’s hand and was now holding him like he was something worth the risk.

When the intensity finally crested and ebbed, they stayed tangled in the aftermath, breathing hard, the fairy lights blinking lazily above them.

Eddie’s hand rested over Buck’s heart, fingers splayed, feeling the stuttered beat slowly settle.

“Still with me?” Eddie murmured.

“Barely,” Buck said. “You broke several laws of physics.”

“American hearts aren’t used to the cold,” Eddie said, voice sleep-rough now. “We’ll acclimate you.”

Buck huffed a laugh and turned his head enough to brush a soft, almost absentminded kiss over Eddie’s shoulder. It felt so domestic it made his chest ache.

“Tomorrow?” he asked, before he could be cowardly about it. “You’ll still—”

“Be here?” Eddie finished. His hand pressed a little closer, steady. “Yeah. I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

Buck let his eyes close, leaning into that simple promise, fragile and enormous all at once.

Outside, the village slept under its thin layer of frost. Inside, in a cottage that wasn’t really his but felt like it tonight, Buck lay wrapped up with Eddie Diaz and the warm, terrifying knowledge that he’d just crossed a line he couldn’t—and didn’t want to—step back from.

Temporary, he thought, as he drifted, had never felt so much like the beginning of something permanent.

Chapter Text

Eddie woke up wrong.

Too warm, for one. Too comfortable. His mattress at home had a dip in the middle he kept meaning to fix and never did, just like the leaky tap and the squeaky hinge on Chris’s bedroom door. This bed didn’t have a dip. It had… support. It had a duvet that felt like sleeping inside a cloud. It smelled faintly of laundry detergent, lemon, and—

Buck.

Eddie’s brain did the thing it always did, the pre-programmed panic sequence flickering to life before the rest of him was fully awake.

Where’s Christopher?

He jackknifed up too fast. His vision blurred, head spinning. His hand shot out on instinct, reaching for the edge of the bed, for the nightstand, for—something.

His fingers met warm skin.

There was a soft, sleepy “oof,” and the body beside him shifted, a hand closing loosely around his wrist.

Right. Okay. Breathe. Christopher is at Sophia’s.

Last night wasn’t some hazy half-remembered dream. The ache in his muscles and the pleasant soreness proved that. So did the scattered trail of clothes on the floor, his jeans inside out next to Buck’s T-shirt, a single sock somehow draped over the lamp like it was trying for mood lighting.

He blinked the room into focus. Adriana’s cottage. Buck’s temporary nest of chaos—books stacked unevenly on the nightstand and his open suitcase half-unpacked in the corner. The curtains were only half-drawn, the weak winter light turning dust motes into slow-falling snow.

And Buck, lying on his stomach, face smushed against his pillow, hair a disaster zone, one arm stretched out to where Eddie had been.

He looked… peaceful. That was the only word Eddie had.

Buck’s shoulders weren’t bunched up like he was bracing for impact. His forehead—usually creased with too many thoughts—was smooth.

Something in Eddie’s chest squeezed, sharp and aching and terrifyingly soft.

Terrific. Step one of the day: have a quiet heart attack over your… whatever Buck is. Good job, Diaz.

He realized Buck’s hand was still wrapped around his wrist, thumb resting exactly over the spot where Eddie’s pulse was trying to break a land-speed record.

“Sorry,” Eddie whispered automatically, even though Buck was very clearly still asleep.

He tried to ease his arm away. Buck frowned in his sleep and made a low noise, then opened one eye, blue and unfocused.

“Hey,” Buck mumbled, voice rough with sleep. He tightened his grip for a second, like a sleepy octopus. “You okay?”

Eddie should have said yes. That would’ve been the smart, non-embarrassing answer.

Instead, what came out was, “I forgot where my kid was for a second and had a minor existential crisis, but it’s fine.”

Buck’s mouth curled, sleepy amusement lighting through the fog in his eyes. “Very normal morning activity.”

“I’m a very normal guy,” Eddie said, which was definitely not something normal people said.

Buck huffed a laugh and finally let go of his wrist, rolling onto his back. The duvet slipped a little, revealing the long line of his chest, the constellation of freckles Eddie had traced with his mouth last night like they were a map to somewhere important.

Yeah, okay. He was staring.

“Chris is at Sophia’s,” Buck said gently, like he was reminding Eddie of something they hadn’t already established three times last night before Eddie had finally let himself relax. “He’s probably currently terrorizing her cereal cupboard. You’re allowed to have a minor existential crisis and also… this.” He gestured vaguely between them.

This.

Eddie’s stomach did a weird flip. “Is there a manual for how you’re supposed to act the morning after you sleep with your—” He stopped himself just in time from saying your kid’s favorite person. That was not helpful. “—someone?”

“Your someone,” Buck repeated, one eyebrow tilting. His grin turned smug, which was unfair when he was naked and smug at the same time. “I like that.”

“That’s not—” Eddie scrubbed a hand over his face. “I meant there’s probably a manual. Somewhere. In a grocery store aisle. Right next to the parenting books and also the ones about fixing your boiler.”

Buck’s eyes sparkled. “Like, So You Slept With the Hot Baker: A Practical Guide?”

“Stop,” Eddie said, laughing before he could help it. His laugh came out softer than usual, like it was trying to match the quiet of the room. “It’s too early for you to be funny.”

“It’s never too early to be funny.” Buck stretched, arms up over his head, every muscle under his skin shifting, and Eddie very valiantly did not make a sound. “What time is it?”

Eddie glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “Quarter past eight.”

He should get up. He needed to shower, walk to Sophia’s, pick up Chris. The guilt from that initial moment of panic still burned at the back of his throat, even though he knew—rationally—that one night did not make him a bad father.

But the part of him that had spent years being scared of screwing up refused to be quiet.

He slid out of bed, grabbing the first T-shirt he could find. It was one of Buck’s, soft and worn-in, hanging looser on his frame. He hesitated, tempted to put it back and find his own shirt, and then didn’t.

If he was going to be reckless, he might as well lean in.

He felt Buck’s gaze on his back as he tugged the shirt over his head.

“You look good in that,” Buck said, voice gone low and warm in a way that made Eddie’s skin heat from the inside. “Gives me ideas.”

“Mmm… what sort of ideas?” Eddie said, refusing to turn around because then he’d have to see Buck’s face, and if he saw Buck’s face, he might crawl back into bed and never leave. Which was… not an option. “You want coffee?”

“I will always want coffee,” Buck said solemnly. “And also you, but coffee first or I might die.”

Heart. Attack. Again.

Eddie fled to the kitchen.

Adriana’s kitchen had somehow grown more Buck since the last time Eddie had been in it. There were still her touches—cute mugs with terrible puns (“You’re Brew-tiful”), herb pots on the windowsill, the jar labeled Arthur sitting on the counter like a small, sentient responsibility—but they’d been joined by Buck’s orbit: a worn notebook splattered with batter, a folded list of recipe ideas, a packet of American hot chocolate mix May had apparently express shipped over because Buck had been dramatic about missing it.

Eddie fumbled with the kettle, filling it more than necessary. His hands felt stupidly big, stupidly clumsy. A grown man and he couldn’t figure out how to be a person in a kitchen after life changing sex.

The kettle clicked on. The quiet hum filled the room. Outside, the village was just waking up: the distant rumble of a car, the faint murmur of someone’s dog barking.

He leaned his palms on the counter and let his head hang between his shoulders.

You slept with him. You wanted to sleep with him. You’d wanted it for days, if you’re honest. That was the problem, wasn’t it?

Buck padded in a minute later, wrapped in the duvet like some kind of cozy Greek god, hair standing on end in every direction. He yawned, covering it with the back of his hand, and Eddie felt something in him soften even more, which he hadn’t thought was physically possible.

“I like morning Eddie,” Buck said, leaning against the doorframe. “He’s very… thoughtful. A little scary. But in a hot way.”

“I’m not scary,” Eddie protested, automatically.

“You’re staring at the kettle like you’re trying to intimidate it into boiling faster.”

He glanced down. He was indeed glowering at a kitchen appliance.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “It might ruin my reputation.”

“What, as the calm, sensible Diaz sibling?” Buck opened a cupboard and, of course, went directly to the right one with the mugs. The human had been in the cottage for, what, three weeks, and already navigated the space like he’d grown up in it.

Eddie made a face. “I’m not the sensible one. I’m the one who has to follow behind everyone else cleaning up their mess.”

“That’s just sensible with extra steps,” Buck said, completely serious.

He busied himself with the mugs, measuring out instant coffee and frowning when he realized he’d done it without thinking. “Oh no. She’s in my brain.”

“Arthur?” Eddie asked, because he couldn’t resist.

“Adriana,” Buck said. “Arthur is also in my brain, but in more of a, ‘feed me or I’ll die’ way.” He looked over at the jar on the counter with fond devastation. “I’m responsible for Arthur now, Eddie. It’s a very intimate level of commitment.”

Eddie snorted. “So you can handle Arthur, but not me.”

Buck paused, spoon hovering over the mug. It took Eddie a second to realize what he’d said.

He wanted to crawl into the loaf tin and bake himself at 200 degrees until he stopped being alive.

“Wow,” Buck said eventually. “Bold for before coffee. I respect it.”

“I didn’t—” Eddie shut his eyes, breathed out slowly through his nose. “Ignore me. I’m malfunctioning. You broke my brain.”

Buck set the spoon down and crossed the small kitchen in three easy strides. He stopped just in front of Eddie, still wrapped in the duvet, close enough that Eddie could see the pale crescent of his birthmark where it disappeared into his hairline, the one Christopher had once described as “like a superhero mark.”

“Hey,” Buck said softly. “Just for the record? I would very much like to handle you. In all senses. And I know that’s a big deal. So you’re allowed to malfunction a little.”

Eddie let out a half-laugh, half-sigh. “You say that like it’s an occasional thing.”

“Okay,” Buck conceded. “You’re allowed to malfunction a lot.”

The kettle whistled. Neither of them moved.

Eddie swallowed. “I should… pick up Chris. Sophia will start texting me threatening messages if I’m late.”

Buck’s expression shifted, something thoughtful settling behind his eyes. “Yeah. Of course. We can get you fueled up first. Coffee, toast. Do you think Arthur would be offended if I made pancakes without using him?”

“He’ll probably write you out of his will,” Eddie said, grateful—again—for the way Buck could dance them back toward lightness without pretending the heavy stuff wasn’t there.

They moved around each other in the small kitchen, bumping hips, passing spoons, their fingers brushing more than necessary. Eddie tried to memorize it—the domestic ease, the way Buck hummed under his breath as he stirred sugar into Eddie’s mug, like this was a thing he did, like he’d done it a hundred times.

Like he might do it again.

And that was the part that scared Eddie more than anything: not that last night had happened, but that some reckless, traitorous part of him wanted it to keep happening. Wanted mornings like this to be a recurring event, not a one-off.

Eddie sat at the little kitchen table, hands wrapped around his mug, watching Buck flip pancakes in a pan he’d clearly claimed as his own. There was flour on Buck’s forearm again, because flour and Buck were in a committed relationship.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Buck said without turning around.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re thinking very serious thoughts and also maybe imagining me naked.”

Eddie choked on his coffee. “Oh my God.”

Buck looked over his shoulder, grinning, eyes so fond it made Eddie’s breath catch. “You make the same face for both. It’s confusing, but very flattering.”

“I hate you,” Eddie said, which was impossible because he’d never felt less hatred for another human being in his life.

“I know,” Buck said cheerfully, plating the pancakes. “You should probably tell me all about it. On the way to Sophia’s after we stop by the bakery for a second coffee.”

The air outside bit at Eddie’s cheeks in that way only British winter could manage—damp and determined. The sky was a washed-out grey, the kind that made it impossible to tell what time it was if you couldn’t see a clock. The village high street was already starting to look like a Christmas card: fairy lights twined around lampposts, shop windows dressed with plastic snow, the bakery’s front door flanked by two small potted trees with red bows on top.

Buck walked beside him, hands wrapped around a takeaway cup, curls tucked under a beanie that had a tiny embroidered whisk on it. May had mailed that too, apparently. Eddie did not want to think too hard about how many people in Buck’s life had helped him settle into this little temporary world.

“Okay,” Buck was saying. “Rank your top five childhood Christmas foods.”

“Top five?” Eddie repeated. “That’s very specific.”

“Food is serious business,” Buck said. “There are rules.”

“You’re making them up as you go.”

“That’s also serious business,” Buck said. “Come on. I need data for the Christmas menu. I can’t just bully Arthur into being festive.”

They reached the bakery and Buck slowed, eyes already going soft in a way that was half religious experience, half kid-in-a-candy-store.

The sign above the door read Bells & Buns. The smell of butter and sugar hit them as soon as Eddie pushed the door open, a wave of warmth that fogged his glasses. The bell chimed overhead, announcing their presence.

Mrs. Bell—small, sharp-eyed, and terrifying in that kindly older-lady way—looked up from behind the counter. Her gaze flicked from Eddie to Buck, taking them in, and Eddie had the sudden, irrational urge to straighten his posture like he was being inspected.

“Morning, love,” she said to Eddie first, then shifted her attention to Buck. “And morning to our resident celebrity.”

Buck winced. “I’m not—”

“You’re the one who had all the kids making snowman cupcakes at the fair,” Mrs. Bell said, already reaching for a paper bag. “And who convinced my Arthur”—she nodded toward the kitchen, where Mr. Bell was, presumably, slaving over ovens—“that cinnamon buns needed orange zest. Which, I’ll admit, was a revelation, so you’re forgiven.”

Buck brightened. “I’ll take my absolution in croissants, if that’s an option.”

“Always an option.” Mrs. Bell’s gaze flicked between them again, just a fraction too sharp. “Usual for you, Eddie?”

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie said. Usual. Like he had a routine. Like this was normal: walking into the bakery on a Saturday morning with a man who’d been in his bed, who was currently standing close enough that their arms brushed every time one of them breathed. “Flat white and a croissant, please.”

“And for you, dear?”

Buck glanced at Eddie. “I’ll have the same. And, um, two of those chocolate twist things? For Christopher. I mean, if that’s okay.” He turned back to Eddie, suddenly uncertain. “Does he like chocolate in the morning, or is that like, super bad parenting?”

Something warm rolled through Eddie’s chest, unspooling slow and dangerous.

“He’s seven,” Eddie said. “His entire goal in life is to make sure I say yes to chocolate in the morning. So you’re about to become his favourite person. Again.”

Buck’s shoulders relaxed. “Then chocolate twists it is.”

They stepped aside while Mrs. Bell fussed with the espresso machine. Buck’s arm brushed his again, and Eddie wondered if Buck was doing it on purpose, or if the universe was just like, “Here, have some casual physical contact to wreck your brain more thoroughly.”

Across the street, Mr. Patel was sweeping the pavement outside his shop. He lifted a hand in greeting, eyes crinkling. Eddie lifted his own hand automatically, then realized Mr. Patel’s gaze had shifted to Buck.

Eddie’s stomach tightened.

Small village. People noticed things. People talked.

He didn’t know what he thought they would say, exactly. That Eddie Diaz, widower, single dad, was walking around town with the American? That he’d clearly slept over at the cottage again when everyone knew his kid had been at Sophia’s?

Maybe they’d say nothing. Maybe they’d already guessed, because apparently Eddie’s subtlety had died somewhere back between the fair and the pub.

“Hey,” Buck said quietly. “You went quiet. Did I over-croissant you? Is that a thing?”

Eddie snorted. “You can never over-croissant someone.”

Buck looked pleased, like Eddie had passed some secret test.

“It’s just—” Eddie hesitated, fingers tightening around his empty cup. “People talk. In the village.”

Buck followed his gaze to Mr. Patel, then back to Eddie. “About us?”

The word us hung in the air like the puff of steam from the coffee machine.

Eddie cleared his throat. “About everything. It’s just new, that’s all. Being… seen. With someone. Again.”

Buck’s expression softened. “Do you want me to stand, like, ten feet away? We can pretend we’re not together. I’ll be your weird American shadow.”

The ridiculousness of it helped. Eddie laughed, tension easing. “You’d trip over a planter.”

“Wow,” Buck said. “Harsh but accurate.”

Mrs. Bell handed them their coffees and the bag of croissants and twists with a knowing smile that had Eddie’s ears burning.

“You two have a lovely morning,” she said. “Give Christopher my love, will you? And tell him if he keeps practicing, he’ll be better at piping than my Arthur by next Christmas.”

“I will,” Eddie promised. Buck practically glowed at the compliment on Chris’s behalf.

They stepped back out into the cold, cups warming their hands through the cardboard.

“So,” Buck said, nudging Eddie’s shoulder with his own as they started walking again. “Top five childhood Christmas foods. Ready?”

Eddie considered. “My Abuela's tamales. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Buck agreed gravely.

“The sugar cookies we made with her.” He could see it if he closed his eyes—his mom’s kitchen, flour everywhere, his little sister covered in sprinkles. “Mince pies.”

“Mince pies?” Buck repeated, delighted.

“It was Christmas,” Eddie said. “It was food. It counted.”

“Fair point. That’s three.”

“Leftover turkey sandwiches for breakfast.”

Buck made a reverent sound. “Excellent answer. And number five?”

Eddie hesitated. “I guess—” He swallowed. “Whatever Chris is excited about. Last year it was these stupid novelty waffles shaped like reindeer. He thought they were hilarious.”

“Reindeer waffles?” Buck looked like he’d just learned his purpose in life. “We’re absolutely doing reindeer waffles this year.”

Eddie’s heart stuttered.

This year.

He could picture it too easily: Buck in his kitchen, sliding plates of ridiculous waffles in front of Christopher, flour on his shirt, grin bright. He could picture the way Chris’s face would light up, how he’d talk about it for weeks.

He could also picture the empty space after Buck left, the quiet that would follow, the way Chris’s shoulders would droop when he asked when Buck was coming back and Eddie didn’t have an answer.

His hand tightened around his coffee cup.

Say nothing. Keep it casual. Enjoy the next couple of weeks and then let him go. Protect the kid. Protect yourself.

Or—

“So, uh,” Eddie said.

Buck glanced sideways at him. “Uh-oh.”

“No,” Eddie said quickly. “Not uh-oh. Just—” He exhaled, breath clouding in the cold air. “Christmas Day. We’re—it’s usually at my place. Sophia comes over. Maybe our parents on a video call if the timing works, they are travelling. My Abuela and Aunt Pepa will be there. Chris insists on being in charge of the playlist, which is a mistake every year. And I just—” His tongue felt too big in his mouth. “If you don’t have plans. Or if you do have plans, that’s fine, but if you don’t, maybe you could—”

Really smooth, Diaz. Nailed it.

Buck slowed to a stop, turning to face him fully. They were only a few houses away from Sophia’s now, her little semi-detached with the bright blue door and the fairy lights Chris had insisted on helping her hang.

“Are you inviting me to Christmas?” Buck asked, voice very gentle.

Eddie’s instinct was to deflect. Make a joke. Say something like only because we need your lasagna opinions. Instead, he heard himself say, “Yeah.”

Buck’s eyes did something complicated, like someone had turned on a light inside him and he wasn’t sure where to put it.

“You don’t have to make it a big thing,” Eddie blurted, heat crawling up his neck. “It’s just—Sophia will probably bring too much food, and Chris will want to talk to you about Star Wars for six hours, and it might be boring for you, and we’re not exactly—” He flailed a hand. “Festive magazine people. But you’re here and I thought—”

“Eddie,” Buck interrupted, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I know what it means.”

Eddie’s throat went dry.

“For you,” Buck added, softer now. “To invite me. To Christmas. With Chris.”

He did know. Of course he did. Because Buck, for all his chaos and bad puns, paid attention. He’d watched Eddie’s face tighten when people mentioned “family” and “traditions” in the same sentence, had seen how Eddie hovered at the edges of group things until Chris tugged him closer.

“I’m not saying it… means anything,” Eddie lied badly.

Buck’s smile widened, eyes crinkling. “Okay.”

Eddie scowled. “Don’t okay me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re humoring a small child.”

“I’d never,” Buck said, absolutely humoring him. His hand twitched like he wanted to reach out and touch Eddie, then he seemed to remember they were on a street, in public, with neighbors in their windows. He stuffed his free hand into his coat pocket instead. “For the record, though? I’d… really like to spend Christmas with you. And Chris. If you’re sure.”

Eddie’s heart gave up on all pretence of being under his control and just… expanded.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I’m sure.”

Buck’s answering look was so bright Eddie had to look away, focusing on Sophia’s front door instead.

“Then it’s a date,” Buck said.

“Don’t say that,” Eddie muttered.

“What, date?” Buck repeated innocently. “Christmas date. Christmas Day date. Christmas Day with Diaz—”

The door flew open before Eddie could retaliate, and Christopher barreled out in a whirlwind of too-long pajamas and mismatched socks.

“Dad!” he yelled, throwing himself at Eddie. Eddie barely had time to set his coffee down on the low wall before his arms were full of warm, wriggling kid.

“Hey, mijo,” he said, laughing as he lifted Chris up. “You have fun with Aunt Sophia?”

“We had pancakes and a movie and she let me stay up until eleven thirty,” Chris reported proudly, like this was a personal achievement.

Sophia appeared behind him, wrapped in a robe, hair up in a messy bun. She lifted a hand in greeting. “Blame the movie, not me,” she said. “It had three fake endings. How was your night?”

Eddie’s brain flashed back to Buck’s hands, Buck’s mouth, the way he’d said Eddie’s name like it meant something sacred.

“Fine,” Eddie said too quickly. “Normal. Sleep.”

Sophia’s gaze slid to Buck, standing a step behind Eddie, holding a paper bag and looking like a man who’d been caught in the world’s most obvious situation. Her eyebrows shot up.

“Uh-huh,” she said, clearly logging that for later. “Hi, Buck.”

“Hi,” Buck said. “I, um, brought chocolate twists. For the, uh, child I may have corrupted with sugar.”

Chris twisted in Eddie’s arms. “Chocolate twists?” He wriggled like he was trying to turn himself inside out. “Can we have them now? Can we, can we, can we?”

Eddie looked at Sophia.

She shrugged. “You’re the parent. I’m just the fun aunt.”

Traitor.

“Yeah, okay,” Eddie said, because honestly? Screw it. “But you need to get dressed properly first. No chocolate on Aunt Sophia’s good carpet.”

“It’s not good,” Sophia muttered. “I bought it from a discount warehouse.”

“Still counts,” Eddie said.

Chris wriggled down and grabbed Buck’s free hand without hesitation, tugging him toward the door.

“You have to come in,” he told Buck. “You brought the chocolate, so you’re part of it.”

Buck let himself be towed, looking back at Eddie for silent permission. Eddie nodded, something warm and terrified and right fluttering in his ribs.

Sophia stepped aside, hiding a smirk behind her mug of coffee as they all trooped inside.

It wasn’t until that evening, after they’d gone back to Eddie’s house, after the chocolate twists had been demolished and Chris’s sugar high had finally crashed him into sleep, that Eddie sat down at his kitchen table with his laptop and stared at a blank email.

The house was quiet in that specific way that still felt unfamiliar some nights. He hadn’t quite gotten used to the creaks and sighs of these old English walls, the way the radiator clanked when it turned on. Chris was snoring softly in his room, door cracked open just enough for Eddie to hear him.

Buck had gone back to the cottage around eight, after an afternoon of letting Chris beat him at Mario Kart “because he’s the guest,” according to Chris, and “because he’s a tiny tyrant,” according to Buck.

They’d lingered in the doorway too long, both of them hovering like teenagers outside a school dance. Buck had eventually leaned in for a kiss, quick and sweet, one hand curling around the back of Eddie’s neck. Eddie’s stomach had swooped like it was the first time all over again.

Now, staring at the cursor blinking accusingly in the Compose window, Eddie wondered how you were supposed to explain any of that to your sister.

Subject: everything is fine, don’t be weird

From: Eddie
To: Adriana
Subject: everything is fine, don’t be weird

Adri,

Before you say anything, YES, I KNOW.

I can hear your voice in my head already and it’s very annoying, so I’m just going to get ahead of it.

Everything is fine. Christopher is fine. We are having a normal, completely uneventful December.

(Yes, I am writing you an email specifically to tell you that nothing is happening. Shut up.)

You’ll be pleased to know your cottage is still standing. Buck hasn’t burned it down or filled it entirely with flour. There is only flour in MOST places. Arthur appears to be thriving. Buck talks to him like he’s a person, which I’m choosing not to examine too closely.

The Christmas fair was good. Chris made approximately 400 cookies. Buck was a hit with the kids, obviously. You were right about him being good at this. (Don’t get excited. I’m just acknowledging your uncanny matchmaking abilities this one time.)

I am… seeing him.

There. I said it. I’m not writing the other word you’re thinking.

It’s new and I’m trying not to be a complete idiot about it. He’s great with Chris, but you already knew that, because apparently you know everything. I’m trying to be careful. For the record.

Also, I may have invited him to Christmas. Please do NOT make a big deal out of this. It just… happened.

E.

He read it back, grimaced, and hit send before he could overthink it.

The response came ten minutes later. Of course it did. Adriana had a gift for appearing in his inbox at the worst possible moments.

From: Adriana
To: Eddie
Subject: RE: everything is fine, don’t be weird

Oh my dear big brother,

You are an absolute disaster.

First of all, “nothing is happening” and then “I am… seeing him” in the SAME EMAIL? Do you hear yourself? Because I am hearing you and what I’m hearing is: you have let someone in and you are panicking about it.

Deep breaths. Remember the mindfulness app Sophia made you download and then never used. Inhale, exhale, etc. etc.

Second of all: YOU INVITED HIM TO CHRISTMAS?????

That is not “it just happened.” That is a CAPITAL-M Moment. That is “come into the inner sanctum of Diaz Family Chaos” level intimacy. I am VERY PROUD of you and also extremely smug.

I told you he was good for you. You were so grumpy on the phone when I said that, remember? Please imagine me doing a victory dance in my LA kitchen right now. May is laughing at me.

Oh, right, update on this end: May and I had drinks after work and somehow ended up talking until 2 a.m. about everything, including YOU, so feel flattered. She’s great. She says hi and also says to tell you that “Buck is a big boy and allowed to make his own choices,” which I assume is code for “stop overthinking and let yourself be happy.”

(Also, side note, how does it feel knowing your maybe-boyfriend and your little sister’s maybe-girlfriend are best friends? The group chat potential is astronomical.)

Re: Chris. I know you’re worried. I know you’re thinking ten steps ahead about how attached he’s getting. That’s what you do. That’s what makes you a good dad.

But you also deserve to have something that is just good. And from everything you’ve told me (and everything May has told me, because yes, we compare notes), he makes things good. For both of you.

So. Let yourself have the good thing. We’ll figure out the logistics later.

Love you. Try not to break your own heart out of sheer habit.

Adriana

P.S. I am calling him your boyfriend. You can fight me from across the ocean.

Eddie groaned and let his forehead thunk down onto the table.

“Boyfriend,” he muttered into the wood grain, as if saying it out loud might make it less terrifying. It did not.

He lifted his head and banged out a reply before she could send him a paragraph of heart emojis.

From: Eddie
To: Adriana
Subject: RE: RE: everything is fine, don’t be weird

Absolutely not.

We are NOT using the B-word. It’s too early. We’ve had… a night. Some mornings. A walk. A Christmas invitation that you are blowing wildly out of proportion.

Also, stop befriending everyone I know. (Well I know because of Buck or whatever?) It’s suspicious.

Tell May I said hi and that I am NOT overthinking. I am thinking a normal amount. For me.

E.

Another reply. The woman had no chill.

From: Adriana
To: Eddie
Subject: RE: RE: RE: everything is fine, don’t be weird

“Normal amount (for me)” is not the flex you think it is.

I’ll leave you alone now because May and I are going to a flea market (she says hi again), but I reserve the right to be insufferable about this forever.

Kiss your BOYFRIEND under the mistletoe for me.

Adriana 💚

Eddie closed the laptop before the word boyfriend could burn through the screen and brand itself onto his retinas.

The thing was… Adriana wasn’t entirely wrong.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. The light fixture needed dusting. He’d add it to the mental list that never seemed to get shorter.

He was terrified. Of how fast this felt like it was moving. Of how natural it had become to text Buck goodnight, to find flour on his own sleeves because he’d let Buck drag him into some baking experiment.

He was terrified for Christopher most of all.

Chris, who had climbed into Buck’s lap during Mario Kart without being asked, who had looked up at him with that open, trusting grin and said, “You’re coming for Christmas, right?” as if the idea of Buck not being there was genuinely incomprehensible.

Buck had glanced at Eddie over Chris’s head, eyes searching. Eddie had nodded.

“Yeah, bud,” Buck had said, ruffling Chris’s hair. “If your dad doesn’t get sick of me before then.”

“Impossible,” Chris had declared. Eddie had pretended not to hear his own heart join the conversation.

And that was the thing. Chris was already attached. Eddie was already attached. They were all wrapped up in each other, and the clock was ticking down to the day Buck would pack his suitcase and kiss them both goodbye at the airport, and—

“Dad?”

The small voice from the hallway jerked him out of the spiral.

Eddie turned. Christopher stood in the doorway, hair sticking up on one side, clutching his worn dinosaur blanket.

“Hey, buddy,” Eddie said, softening automatically. “What’s up? You okay?”

“I can’t sleep,” Chris said, rubbing his eyes. “My brain’s… busy.”

Yeah, welcome to the club.

“Busy with what?” Eddie asked, patting his thigh in invitation.

Chris shuffled over and climbed clumsily into his lap. He’d gotten bigger lately; his legs were all angles and length. Eddie adjusted the blanket around them both, breathing in the smell of kid shampoo and chocolate.

“I was thinking about the gingerbread house,” Chris said. “I don’t think the roof’s gonna stay up.”

Eddie blinked. “The what?”

“The gingerbread house,” Chris repeated, giving him a look like Eddie had grown a second head. “You said we could build one tomorrow. With Buck. Remember?”

Right. He had said that. Somewhere in the blur of earlier, with Buck and Chris arguing cheerfully about the spiritual worth of gumdrops, he’d promised they’d make a house.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “I remember.”

“I think we need more icing,” Chris went on, serious now. “Like, structural icing. The walls have to be strong.”

Structural icing. He got that. He lived his whole life trying to reinforce walls.

“We can do that,” Eddie said. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Okay,” Chris said, relaxing into him. “Good. I don’t want it to fall down.”

Eddie rested his chin lightly on Chris’s head.

“Me either, mijo,” he murmured. “Me either.”

They stayed like that for another minute, the house quiet around them, the hum of the fridge the only sound. Slowly, the weight in Eddie’s lap got heavier, looser. Chris’s breathing evened out, the way it always did when sleep finally dragged him under—soft little puffs against Eddie’s T-shirt.

“Hey,” Eddie whispered. “You drifting?”

Chris made a noncommittal noise that could have been yes, no, or “gingerbread,” and Eddie smiled.

“Come on, bud,” he said gently. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

He stood carefully, one arm under Chris’s knees, the other cradling his back. Chris was long and lanky now, not the tiny kid who used to curl up against his chest like a koala, but he still fit there just fine. Eddie carried him down the hall, nudging the bedroom door open with his foot.

The nightlight in the corner threw soft, star-shaped patterns across the walls. Eddie eased Chris down onto the mattress, tugging the dinosaur blanket up to his chin. Chris blinked up at him, eyes half-closed.

“Dad?” he mumbled.

“Yeah?”

“Buck’s gonna help, right? With the icing. He’s good at roofs.”

Eddie’s throat tightened. “Yeah, buddy. He’s gonna help.”

Chris seemed satisfied with that. His eyes slid shut again. Eddie brushed a hand through his hair, smoothing it back from his forehead, then leaned down and pressed a kiss there.

“Goodnight, mijo.”

He stayed for a moment, listening to make sure Chris’s breathing stayed steady. When he was sure, he backed out of the room, leaving the door cracked just enough, same as always.

The living room felt bigger on the way back—quieter, somehow. He turned off the lamp, leaving only the soft glow of the fairy lights they’d strung half-heartedly along the curtain rail because Christopher had declared the house needed “festive vibes.”

Eddie sank onto the couch with a sigh, scrubbing his hands over his face. The day caught up with him all at once—the fair, the walk, inviting Buck to Christmas, Adriana’s emails. His chest felt too full and too empty at the same time.

He was considering whether he had the energy to go brush his teeth when someone knocked on the front door.

He froze.

It was late. Not scary-late, but late enough that his first instinct was to tense, to catalog: Chris asleep, door locked, phone on the coffee table. He stood slowly, an undercurrent of adrenaline buzzing under his skin, and crossed to the hall.

Another knock. Softer, a little hesitant.

“Yeah, okay, calm down,” he muttered to himself, undoing the lock and opening the door.

Buck stood on the doorstep, hands shoved into the pockets of his coat, curls damp from the mist that had settled over the village. His nose was pink from the cold, cheeks flushed, breath fogging in front of him in little clouds.

“Hi,” he said, a little sheepish. “So, uh. Don’t freak out.”

Eddie blinked at him. “That’s the worst possible way to start a sentence.”

“Yeah, I heard it as I said it,” Buck admitted. “Can I… come in? I promise no emergencies. Unless you count my brain.”

Eddie stepped aside automatically. “You’ve got five minutes before I call a therapist.”

“Fair,” Buck said, slipping past him into the warmth. He stomped his boots on the mat, like he’d absorbed British door etiquette by osmosis, and shrugged off his coat. Underneath, he was in the soft navy sweater Eddie liked maybe a little too much.

Eddie closed the door and leaned back against it, folding his arms. “What’s wrong? Is the cottage okay?”

“It’s fine,” Buck said quickly. “Arthur’s alive, the oven’s off, nothing is on fire—well, except maybe my dignity, but that’s ongoing.”

“Then why are you here?” The question came out sharper than he meant, more defensive, and he winced. “I mean—”

Because Eddie knew himself. Knew the way his brain could spin, filling in blanks with worst-case scenarios. Knew he’d lie awake wondering what had gone wrong if Buck was showing up at his door after they’d already said goodnight.

Buck’s expression softened immediately, like he’d heard all of that in the space between Eddie’s words.

“I missed you,” he said simply.

Oh.

Just that. No drama. No big speech. Just three words that landed like a warm weight in Eddie’s chest, heavy and gentle at the same time.

“You saw me two hours ago,” Eddie pointed out, because his mouth was absolutely not on the same page as his heart.

“Yep,” Buck said. “And yet.”

He shuffled his feet, suddenly awkward in a way Eddie didn’t see often.

“I got back to the cottage,” Buck went on, “and it was… quiet. Not bad quiet, just—” He gestured, searching for the word. “You know. Empty. And I was sitting on the couch, thinking about how you were here, and Chris was here, and how tomorrow we’re going to attempt structural icing and probably lose the kitchen to sugar, and I just…” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to see you again. So I put my shoes back on and walked over before my brain could talk me out of it.”

Eddie stared at him.

“You walked across the village because… you missed me,” he repeated slowly.

Buck’s ears went a little pink. “Is that okay?” he asked. “I can totally go home if it’s weird. I just—” He blew out a breath. “I like falling asleep knowing you’re in the same building. That’s all.”

Something inside Eddie, a tight knot he didn’t even realize he’d been holding, loosened a little.

“It’s not weird,” he said quietly. “It’s—” He swallowed. “It’s nice.”

Buck’s shoulders dropped, tension he hadn’t seemed to be aware of draining away. His smile appeared, small and real.

“Okay,” he said. “Good. Great. Ten out of ten, no notes.”

Eddie huffed a laugh. “Drama queen.”

“You knew what you were signing up for.” Buck’s eyes flicked toward the hallway. “Chris asleep?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “He came out to tell me he’s worried about the gingerbread roof.”

Buck’s mouth curved. “Smart kid. It is a legitimate concern. I’ve seen many a gingerbread tragedy in my time.”

“He thinks you’re good at roofs,” Eddie said, the memory warming him from the inside. “He asked if you’re going to help.”

Buck’s gaze snapped back to his, bright and stunned and a little wet around the edges. “He did?”

“Yeah.” Eddie shifted his weight, suddenly self-conscious. “So no pressure, but you are now officially in charge of structural icing.”

Buck let out a shaky little laugh. “I can handle that responsibility,” he said. “As long as you’re in charge of overall safety regulations.”

“I’ll make a risk assessment,” Eddie said dryly. “We’ll submit it to Arthur.”

Buck grinned, the last of the tension easing away. “Perfect. See, we’re already a great team.”

There it was again—that word. Team. It landed differently this time, echoing Chris’s earlier certainty.

Eddie jerked his chin toward the living room. “You want some tea or something? I was just… sitting.”

“I’ll take or something,” Buck said. He hesitated. “And if it’s okay, I’d… like to stay. Here. Tonight. Couch, spare room, floor, whatever. I brought my toothbrush.” He patted his coat pocket, like that proved something.

Eddie’s heart did a stupid little flip at the idea of Buck standing in his tiny bathroom, toothbrush in the cup beside his, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“There’s room,” Eddie said, more steady than he felt. “You don’t have to sleep on the floor.”

Buck’s eyebrows lifted, slow and careful. “Yeah?”

Eddie rolled his eyes, heat creeping up the back of his neck. “Don’t make it weird, Hollywood,” he said. “Come on.”

He led the way down the hall, flicking the living room lamp back on. The yellow light made everything feel softer—muted colors, familiar shapes. Their half-finished puzzle on the coffee table, Chris’s favorite blanket thrown over the back of the couch, one of Buck’s recipe notes tucked under a coaster from last week.

Buck stood in the doorway, looking around with an expression Eddie couldn’t quite name. Something like wonder. Something like… home.

Eddie’s stomach swooped.

“You good?” he asked, because if he didn’t say something, his brain was going to take off again.

“Yeah,” Buck said. “Just—” He shook his head, smiling a little at himself. “This is nice. Being here. With you. I know I keep saying that, but it keeps being true.”

Tremendous. Now Eddie’s heart was melting and reorganizing itself into a new, more inconvenient shape.

“You’re very sappy for someone who threatened to ice my face earlier,” he said, because he did not, under any circumstances, know how to respond to sincerity without making it at least 30% dumber.

Buck’s grin went crooked. “I contain multitudes.”

“You contain something,” Eddie muttered, but he stepped closer anyway.

For a second, they just stood there, close but not quite touching. Eddie could feel the warmth radiating off Buck, could see the tiny freckles across his nose, the way his pupils blew wide when Eddie’s gaze dropped to his mouth.

He reached out, fingers catching lightly in the hem of Buck’s sweater, tugging him closer.

“You sure the cottage is okay?” he asked, one last time, because apparently he needed the reassurance as much as he needed oxygen.

Buck’s eyes softened. “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s four walls and some furniture and an extremely demanding jar of yeast. It’s great. But…” He ducked his head, forehead brushing Eddie’s. “I’d rather be here. If you want me.”

There it was. No bells, no fireworks. Just a simple question that somehow felt bigger than the both of them.

Eddie’s answer came easily, for once.

“Yeah,” he said. “I want you here.”

Buck’s exhale was shaky, relief and something like joy tangled up in it. He leaned in, closing the space between them, and Eddie met him halfway.

The kiss was soft. Not like the ones they’d had last night, all heat and urgency and hands everywhere. This one was slow, careful, like they had all the time in the world. Buck’s hands slid up to cradle Eddie’s jaw, thumbs skimming his cheekbones. Eddie curled an arm around Buck’s waist, pulling him in until their bodies aligned, chest to chest, heartbeat to heartbeat.

The world shrank to the warmth between them, the press of Buck’s mouth, the quiet little sound he made when Eddie nudged his nose against that familiar birthmark.

When they finally pulled apart, it was only enough to breathe.

“Hi,” Buck whispered, ridiculous.

Eddie huffed out a laugh. “Hi.”

“You, uh.” Buck brushed his thumb gently along Eddie’s jaw. “You want me to take the couch?”

Eddie thought about it. About the distance that would put between them. About how easy it had felt, lately, to fall asleep with Buck close enough to reach out and touch.

“No,” he said, surprising himself with how certain it sounded. “Bed’s more comfortable. And I already let you steal my duvet once. Might as well commit.”

Buck’s eyes went very soft. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s commit.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Eddie grumbled, heat shooting straight to his face.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re making a declaration.”

Buck’s smile turned into a grin. “Too late.”

They moved quietly through the small nighttime routine—Buck ducking into the bathroom with his battered toiletry bag, Eddie checking on Chris one last time, tucking the blanket around his shoulders. By the time Eddie slipped into bed, the sheets cool against his skin, Buck was already there on “his” side, hair damp, wearing an old T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms covered in cartoon dinosaurs.

“Are those—” Eddie squinted.

“May sent them,” Buck said defensively. “She said they were ‘cottagecore.’”

“They’re a cry for help,” Eddie said, climbing in beside him.

Buck bumped their shoulders together. “You love them.”

Eddie did. He loved that Buck was ridiculous enough to own them, to wear them, to look at home in them in Eddie’s borrowed bed.

He lay on his back for a second, staring at the ceiling, awash in the strange, quiet intimacy of it: Buck beside him, breathing slow and steady; Chris down the hall; the house soft around them.

After a moment, Buck rolled onto his side, facing him.

“Can I—?” he started, then stopped, suddenly shy.

Eddie turned his head. “Can you what?”

“Just—” Buck gestured awkwardly, then gave up on words entirely and scooted closer instead, tucking himself in against Eddie’s side like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Eddie’s arm came up automatically to make room, muscle memory kicking in from years of holding a sleeping kid, from last night, from every quiet moment he’d ever spent with someone he trusted. Buck tucked his head against Eddie’s shoulder, one hand resting light over his chest, right above his heart, as if he’d been granted access and didn’t quite know what to do with it.

“Is this okay?” Buck asked, voice muffled by Eddie’s T-shirt.

Eddie swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s… good.”

Buck let out a content little sigh, his whole body relaxing, melting into the mattress. He was warm and solid and real, his weight a steady, grounding presence.

Eddie stared up at the ceiling, listening to the soft chorus of the house—radiator ticking, distant car passing, the faintest hint of Chris’s snore down the hall—and felt something settle in his chest.

The cottage was fine. The village was fine. Everything out there was still uncertain: flights and visas and rooftops made of sugar. But right here, in this small house, in this small bed, with Buck’s hand resting over his heart and his son safe and sleeping a few doors down, things were… good.

Better than good.

He turned his head slightly, pressing a kiss into Buck’s curls.

“Night, Buck,” he murmured.

“Night, Eddie,” Buck whispered back, already half-asleep.

Eddie lay awake a little longer, not out of worry for once, but because he wanted to remember this. The weight of Buck against him. The quiet. The way the fear was still there, but softer around the edges, wrapped in something warm and hopeful.

He knew he was in deep. Knew there would be hard conversations and messy feelings and decisions down the line he couldn’t see yet.

But as he finally let his eyes close, breathing in time with the man curled against him, he let himself sleep.

Eddie woke slowly.

Not with panic this time. Not with that knee-jerk jolt of where’s my kid—what did I forget—what broke—what burned down.

No.
This morning, he woke to… sound.

Soft clattering. A low hum of something that might’ve been singing or might’ve been an attempt at singing. A pan being set down. Cabinet door opening. A muffled curse that sounded suspiciously like Buck burning his fingers.

For a moment, Eddie lay very still, letting the pieces click into place.

Chris.
Protected, safe, still asleep, his slow breathing faint through the slightly ajar door.

Buck.
Absolutely in Eddie’s kitchen, doing something ambitious and unnecessary before nine a.m., because of course he was.

Eddie rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, feeling an unfamiliar heaviness behind his ribs—soft, warm, content. That should’ve scared him. Should’ve set off the alarm bells.

Instead, it made him want to move slower, like the morning shouldn’t be disturbed.

But the smell of bacon finally pushed him upright.

He stretched, muscles pulling in that pleasant way earned from a night spent tangled with someone who slept close and warm and entirely too comfortably for a man who’d theoretically meant to take the couch.

Eddie dragged his fingers through his hair and padded out of his room, bare feet silent on the floorboards.

Halfway down the hall, he stopped.

Buck was in his kitchen like he’d been born there.

Wearing Eddie’s T-shirt.
Using Eddie’s frying pan.
Maneuvering around Eddie’s too-small counters with a familiarity he absolutely shouldn’t have yet but somehow did.

There was a gentle chaos to it—bowls, eggshells, a whisk that had seen combat, bread warming in the oven for reasons unknown. Buck was humming some Christmas song off-key, shoulders swaying a little.

The coffee machine gurgled.
The bacon sizzled.

And Buck—Buck looked over his shoulder and lit up like a sunrise when he saw Eddie standing in the doorway.

“Morning,” Buck said softly, voice warm as the pan in his hand.

Eddie’s breath caught, stupidly. “You’re—making breakfast?”

“Well,” Buck said, flipping something with practiced ease, “you let me sleep here. And I figured I should contribute more than heat and snoring.”

“You snore?”

“I snore adorably,” Buck said. “Ask Chris when he wakes up.”

Eddie crossed his arms to hide the ridiculous feeling blooming through him. “You know you don’t have to do all this.”

“I know,” Buck said easily. “I wanted to.”

And that—that was the problem.

Buck wanted to.
Buck liked being here.
Buck had woken up in Eddie’s bed, in Eddie’s house, surrounded by Eddie’s things, and his first instinct had been to make breakfast for Eddie and Chris like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Eddie leaned against the doorframe, watching the way Buck moved around his kitchen.

How he already knew where the spatula was.

How he set the plates out in the exact spot Eddie usually did.

How he reached for the coffee mugs without hesitation—Eddie’s mismatched set, the one with the chipped handle, the one Chris had painted with a dinosaur footprint.

“How long have you been up?” Eddie asked.

“Not long,” Buck said, shrugging. “Woke up and you were warm and breathing on me and I decided if I stayed in bed for five more minutes I was going to kiss your shoulder awake, and I figured that might be pushing my luck.”

Eddie’s stomach swooped. “You could’ve.”

Buck’s hand paused on the handle of the pan. Just a second. Just long enough for the quiet to deepen around them.

“Next time,” Buck said gently.

Eddie swallowed. “Yeah. Next time.”

Buck smiled again—soft, blooming, private. Then he turned back to the stove, sliding eggs onto plates.

“Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat, “I figured I’d make something easy. Eggs, bacon, and this thing my gran used to do where she puts cinnamon sugar on toast and calls it breakfast.”

“Chris is going to marry you for that,” Eddie muttered.

Buck beamed. “I hope he at least buys me dinner first.”

Eddie snorted. “You’re impossible.”

Buck set two plates on the table, then hesitated like he wanted to say something else. Instead, he slid into the chair nearest the window and nodded toward the one across from him.

“Sit,” he said softly. “Coffee’s ready.”

Eddie did. Automatically. Like gravity.

Buck poured him a mug, handed it over with an absent slide of fingers across Eddie’s. Warm. Intentional. Thoughtless in a way that came only from comfort.

“Thanks,” Eddie said, quieter than he meant to.

Buck shrugged a little, eyes dropping to his plate. “It’s just breakfast.”

“No,” Eddie said before he could stop himself. “It’s… nice.”

Buck’s head snapped up, smile small and a little startled.

“Yeah?” he asked.

Eddie nodded.

And it wasn’t just nice.
It was domestic.
It was intimate in a way that last night’s heat hadn’t been.
It was dangerous.

But Eddie didn’t recoil from it. Not yet.

They ate quietly for a few minutes, the kind of silence that felt companionable, gentle, lived-in.

Buck’s knee brushed his under the table.
Not an accident.

Eddie didn’t move his leg.

“Chris’ll smell the cinnamon toast from his room,” Eddie said eventually. “He’ll be out here in three minutes.”

“Good,” Buck said. “I want him to try it hot.”

“You’ve thought about this,” Eddie said, half amused, half breathless.

Buck sipped his coffee. “I think about you guys a lot.”

Eddie’s pulse did something wild.

Before he could process that, small footsteps padded down the hallway.

Chris appeared, hair sticking up in all directions, eyes sleepy, blanket dragging behind him.

He blinked at the table. At the food. At Buck.

“Are you making breakfast?” Chris asked, shocked and delighted and half-awake.

Buck nodded. “Yep. And there’s cinnamon toast.”

Chris gasped like he’d been handed front-row tickets to the universe.

“Dad,” he whispered, tugging Eddie’s sleeve. “We need to keep him.”

Buck choked on his coffee.

Eddie choked on his entire existence.

“We’ll—uh—we’ll talk about that later, bud,” Eddie managed, glaring at Buck, who was failing badly at not looking smug.

Chris climbed into his seat and began inhaling bacon like he hadn’t eaten in days.

“Buck?” he said through a mouthful. “Can we make the gingerbread house after breakfast?”

Buck grinned. “Absolutely. I've been thinking about structural icing all night.”

Eddie put his face in his hands.

Both of them—his son and the man wearing his T-shirt—laughed.

And for the first time in a long time, the sound wrapped around Eddie’s ribs like warmth instead of fear.

This—this breakfast, this kitchen, this morning—felt like something steady.

Something good.

Something he was dangerously close to wanting every day.

And as Buck reached across the table to steal a piece of bacon from Chris’s plate, grinning when Chris swatted at him, Eddie let himself think one quietly terrifying, quietly hopeful thought:

Maybe this isn’t temporary.

Chapter Text

Buck was pulling on his boots when his phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. He ignored it at first—Eddie and Christopher were in the other room deep in a debate about whether a reindeer hat could be both “festive” and “cool,” and Buck didn’t want to miss the verdict.

The phone buzzed again.

He sighed and crossed the kitchen.

Buck leaned back against the counter before opening it.

From: May Grant

To: Evan Buckley

Subject: Heads up

Hey Buck,

I wanted you to hear this from me first, and with context, rather than it dropping into your lap mid-mulled-wine or during some charming village carol situation.

The network would like you back for a live TV special on December 29th. It’s an end-of-year wrap with a charity angle, and they’re positioning it as a feel-good holiday moment. Big audience. High visibility. You being you.

They know you’re currently out of the country and “on holiday,” but they’re hoping you can be back in the States by the 27th to allow time for rehearsal and press. I pushed back where I could, but they’re fairly set on the timing.

I’m really sorry to bring this to you on Christmas Eve. I just didn’t want you enjoying the next few days without knowing there’s a very real deadline attached.

No pressure to respond right away. I know today is about other things.

—May

Buck stared at the screen, the date echoing in his head.

December 29th.

Five days.

Five days until this stopped being temporary and became goodbye, even if no one was calling it that yet.

He typed slowly, forcing himself not to minimize it, not to pretend it didn’t matter.

From: Evan Buckley
To: May Grant
Subject: Re: Heads up

Hey May,

December 29th is soon, which I know you already know. I’m not panicking (yet), but it does change the shape of the next few days more than I expected.

I can make it work logistically. I always do. I just need a minute to recalibrate my brain from “holiday” back to “work.”

I’ll call you later today or tomorrow so we can talk through details properly. Please let them know I’m not saying no—I just need to be human for Christmas Eve.

—Buck

He sent it before he could second-guess himself, then set the phone face-down on the counter like it might bite him if he kept looking at it.

It buzzed again twenty minutes later, after he’d helped Christopher find his gloves and Eddie had handed him a mug of coffee without asking.

From: May Grant
To: Evan Buckley
Subject: Re: re: Heads up

That all makes sense.

For what it’s worth, you don’t sound like someone stressed about work. You sound like someone who found something that makes leaving feel complicated.

You don’t owe anyone a decision today—not the network, not me, not even yourself. Go be where you are for the next few days. We’ll handle the rest when the world spins back up.

Merry Christmas, Buck. Truly.

—May

Buck read that one twice.

Then a third time.

He didn’t reply. He didn’t trust himself to put anything honest into words without cracking something open he wasn’t ready to face.

Instead, he slipped his phone into his pocket and stood there for a moment longer, letting the reality of December 29th settle deep in his chest.

It wasn’t theoretical anymore.

It was close.

When he stepped back into the living room, Eddie looked up from helping Christopher with his scarf, concern flickering briefly across his face.

“Everything okay?” Eddie asked.

Buck smiled, easy and practiced, and hoped it didn’t look like what it felt like.

“Yeah,” he said. “Just work stuff.”

Eddie nodded, trusting him.

Buck wished he wasn’t already counting down.

“Ready for the market?” Eddie asked.

Buck grabbed his coat, pushing the thought of dates and flights and studios as far down as he could.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”

And with that, he carried the deadline with him into the lights.

Buck had always liked Christmas Eve better than Christmas Day.

Christmas Day came with expectations. Timelines. Big feelings that had to land somewhere neat and shiny by the end of the night. Christmas Eve, though—that was anticipation. Lights still twinkling, gifts still wrapped, the possibility of something wonderful hanging in the air without anyone demanding it resolve just yet.

Standing at the edge of the village Christmas market, snow dusting his shoulders and the collar of his coat, Buck thought maybe that was why his chest felt so tight. This whole thing—Eddie, Christopher, the cottage, the village—it all existed in that fragile space between not-yet and maybe-never.

The market stretched out in front of them, a warm spill of light and sound against the dark winter sky. Wooden stalls lined the square, all garlands and fairy lights, steam rising from mugs of mulled wine and hot chocolate. Somewhere a brass band was valiantly attempting “Jingle Bells,” and the smell of cinnamon, roasted chestnuts, and sugar hung heavy in the air.

Christopher tugged excitedly on Eddie’s sleeve, nearly vibrating out of his coat. “Dad, look! They’ve got the wooden trains again.”

“I see them, buddy,” Eddie said, smiling down at him. “You want to check them out?”

“Yes. Please. And then can we get the hot chocolate with the marshmallows?”

“The big marshmallows,” Buck added solemnly, because this had apparently become a very serious distinction.

Christopher beamed at him. “The big ones.”

Eddie laughed, glancing over at Buck like he was sharing a private joke, and Buck felt that familiar, treacherous warmth bloom in his chest. Buck loved that look—fond and a little overwhelmed, like Eddie couldn’t quite believe Buck was here doing this with them.

They walked deeper into the market, Christopher darting from stall to stall with the frenetic energy of a kid who knew it was Christmas Eve and therefore operating on some kind of pure holiday adrenaline. Buck stayed close, half because the crowd was thick and half because he liked the way Eddie’s presence anchored him, solid and steady at his side.

It was ridiculous how quickly this had all become normal.

Two weeks ago, Buck had been stressing over flight delays and whether the cottage radiator would actually work. Now he knew which stalls Christopher liked best, which carols Eddie hated, and exactly how Eddie took his coffee in the morning. He knew the rhythm of Eddie’s laugh, the way it changed when Christopher said something particularly clever. He knew how it felt to stand shoulder to shoulder with him in the cold and think, without even meaning to, this is where I belong.

That thought scared the hell out of him.

“Buck?”

He blinked, realizing Eddie had stopped walking. “Sorry. What?”

Eddie tilted his head, studying him with that soft, perceptive look that made Buck feel both seen and slightly exposed. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Buck said automatically. “Just… a lot of lights.”

“That happens to you?” Eddie teased. “Too much Christmas cheer?”

“Tragic allergy,” Buck said gravely. “I break out in feelings.”

Eddie snorted, the sound disappearing into his scarf, and Buck relaxed a fraction. Humor he could do. Banter was safe. It was the quiet moments that made his chest ache.

They reached the wooden train stall, Christopher immediately launching into a detailed explanation of why this year’s trains were better than last year’s, and Buck listened, nodding along like he fully understood the intricacies of handcrafted miniature locomotives. Eddie watched them, hands tucked into his pockets, expression soft in a way that made Buck’s stomach flip.

That look again. The one that felt like gratitude and wonder all tangled up together.

Buck shifted, suddenly hyperaware of the crowd around them, of the fact that this wasn’t a private moment at all. People brushed past, laughing, talking, living their own holiday stories. Somewhere in that crowd, Buck was just another guy in a coat, holding a cup of cider and pretending not to be very famous.

He’d almost forgotten about that part.

“Excuse me?”

Buck turned at the sound of a hesitant voice and found himself facing a girl who couldn’t have been more than eight, bundled up in a puffy pink coat and clutching her mother’s hand.

“Yes?” Buck said, offering what he hoped was a friendly, not-intimidating smile.

The girl’s eyes widened. “Mum,” she whispered loudly, “it’s him.”

Her mother flushed. “I’m so sorry—”

“It’s fine,” Buck said quickly. “Hi.”

“You’re the man from the baking show,” the girl said, staring at him like he’d just stepped out of the television.

“That’s me,” Buck said. “Guilty as charged.”

“Are you really here?” she asked, awed.

“I am,” Buck said, amused. “Right here. In the cold. Same as everyone else.”

The girl giggled. “Can I have a picture?”

Buck glanced instinctively at Eddie, who was watching the exchange with that same overwhelmed fondness, like this was somehow just another charming quirk of Buck existing in the world. Eddie gave a small nod, reassuring.

“Sure,” Buck said. He crouched down to be closer to her height. “You ready?”

The girl beamed, and her mum snapped a quick photo, murmuring thank-yous as if she couldn’t quite believe this was happening.

“Happy Christmas,” Buck said, and meant it more than he usually did.

They moved on after that, but the effect lingered. A few more curious glances. A whispered name or two. Nothing overwhelming, but enough to remind Buck of the life he’d stepped away from for a few weeks. The one waiting for him back home.

He felt Eddie’s hand brush his, tentative, like he wasn’t sure if this was allowed in public. Buck didn’t hesitate. He threaded their fingers together, feeling Eddie tense for half a second before relaxing into it.

Eddie looked down at their joined hands, then back up at Buck, eyes warm and searching.

“Is this okay?” Eddie asked quietly.

Buck swallowed. “Yeah. It’s more than okay.”

They slowed, falling back from Christopher by a few steps. The noise of the market faded just enough to give them a bubble of privacy, the world narrowing to the space between them.

“Are you doing alright?” Eddie asked again, softer this time.

Buck shrugged, trying for casual. “Just forgot for a second that I’m… me.”

Eddie smiled faintly. “I like that you forget sometimes.”

Buck huffed a laugh. “Me too.”

Eddie squeezed his hand, then tugged him gently toward a gap between two stalls, a narrow alley strung with lights and smelling faintly of pine. They stopped there, half-hidden from the crowd.

Eddie stepped closer, their coats brushing. He lifted his free hand, thumb grazing Buck’s jaw in a way that sent a shiver straight down Buck’s spine.

“Hey,” Eddie said.

“Hey yourself,” Buck replied, voice a little rougher than he intended.

Eddie rested his forehead against Buck’s, eyes closed. They breathed together, the cold air fogging between them. Buck felt the steady press of Eddie’s presence, the warmth of him, and wished—absurdly, desperately—that this moment could stretch forever.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” Eddie murmured.

“So am I,” Buck said. And that was the terrifying part.

They lingered for one more heartbeat before pulling apart, slipping back into the crowd like nothing had happened.

Christopher found them moments later, triumphant, clutching a small wooden train. “Dad, look!”

“That’s a good one,” Eddie said. “You happy with it?”

Christopher nodded vigorously. “Best one yet.”

Buck smiled, but the warmth in his chest had shifted, tinged now with something sharper. A thought he didn’t want to examine too closely.

How many best ones yet do I get to be part of?

They made their way through the rest of the market in a comfortable blur—hot chocolate with an unreasonable number of marshmallows, carols sung slightly off-key, Christopher insisting Buck try a mince pie and then laughing when he made a face.

It felt like a montage from one of those movies Buck had starred in, the kind where everything was charming and magical and just a little too perfect.

And like in those movies, Buck knew the other shoe was going to drop.

It happened later, back at the cottage, when the night had settled in and Christopher was sprawled on the rug with a new book, fire crackling softly in the hearth.

Buck was helping him fit batteries into a toy—something loud and plastic and inexplicably beloved—when Christopher looked up at him, expression thoughtful in a way that always made Buck brace himself.

“Buck?” Christopher asked.

“Yeah, bud?”

“Are you coming back next Christmas?”

The question landed like a punch.

Buck froze, the battery halfway to its slot. His brain scrambled, searching for a response that didn’t exist. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, heart pounding.

“I—” He stopped. Tried again. “I don’t know, Chris.”

The room felt suddenly too quiet.

Christopher frowned, absorbing that. “Oh.”

Buck saw the disappointment flicker across his face, quick and carefully contained. It hurt more than Buck had any right to let it.

“I mean,” Buck rushed, hating himself for the way his voice wobbled, “a lot can happen in a year.”

Christopher nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

From the corner of his eye, Buck saw Eddie standing in the doorway, having clearly overheard the entire exchange. Eddie’s face was carefully neutral, but Buck recognized the tension there, the way his shoulders had gone stiff.

Neither of them said anything.

Christopher went back to his book, Buck finished fixing the toy with hands that shook just enough to be noticeable, and the moment sat there between them—unspoken, heavy, impossible to pick up without dropping something.

“Alright,” Eddie said suddenly, clapping his hands once, like he’d just remembered something very important. “Cookies and milk. Let’s go.”

Christopher looked up immediately. “For Santa?”

“For Santa,” Eddie confirmed. “Can’t forget.”

He moved with easy purpose, already reaching for the plates, like this was the most natural next step in the world. Buck watched him do it—watched the way he didn’t look at Buck, didn’t make it a thing, just… shifted the air in the room.

They gathered in the kitchen, the quiet following but thinner now, easier to breathe through.

Buck was halfway through pouring the milk when Eddie reached for a napkin.

He folded it once—neat, practiced—and set it squarely on his own head. Then, as if completing the look, he reached for his reading glasses and perched them on his nose, peering over the rims with sudden, exaggerated seriousness.

Christopher blinked.

Then laughed.

“Dad!” he said, delighted. “You’re doing Mr Napkin Head!”

Eddie straightened immediately, solemn as a man accepting a sacred duty. “Of course I am,” he said. “It’s Christmas Eve.”

Christopher grinned so wide it almost hurt to look at. “You didn’t have to!”

“I absolutely did,” Eddie replied seriously, adjusting the napkin so it flopped over one eye. “Mr Napkin Head only appears when cookies are involved. It’s in the rules.”

Buck froze, milk carton still in his hand.

He hadn’t known this was a thing. Hadn’t known Eddie did this—quietly, instinctively, like joy was something you just… made room for.

Eddie leaned over the counter, peering at the cookies. “Hmm,” he murmured in a deep, ridiculous voice. “These look suspiciously like excellent cookies.”

“They’re for Santa,” Christopher reminded him, laughing.

“Ah,” Eddie nodded gravely. “Then Mr Napkin Head must protect them.”

He slid the plate a careful inch farther from the edge of the counter, like Santa’s snacks needed guarding. Christopher watched him like this was magic.

Buck’s chest tightened.

Eddie crouched in front of Christopher, napkin wobbling. “Do you think he’ll like the milk?”

“Yes,” Christopher said immediately. “Santa likes milk.”

“Good,” Eddie said. “Because Mr Napkin Head personally selected it. Cold. Fresh.”

Buck let out a quiet laugh before he could stop himself.

Eddie glanced over, one eyebrow visible beneath the napkin. “This is very serious business, Buck.”

“Sorry,” Buck said, smiling helplessly. “I didn't realize how professional Mr Napkin Head is.”

Christopher laughed again, leaning into Eddie’s side. Eddie’s arm came around him automatically, easy and sure, like this was muscle memory.

Buck watched them, heart in his throat.

This was Eddie distracting him, Buck realized. Gently. Intentionally. Making sure Christopher stayed buoyant, making sure the weight of the question didn’t settle anywhere it shouldn’t.

Eddie lifted the glass of milk in a mock toast. “To Santa,” he said. “May he appreciate our offerings.”

Christopher raised his juice box solemnly. “To Santa.”

Buck echoed it softly. “To Santa.”

Eddie finally took the napkin off and set it aside, ruffling Christopher’s hair. “Alright,” he said. “Mr Napkin Head’s job is done.”

“Already?” Christopher asked.

“Big night,” Eddie said gently. “He has to rest.”

Christopher nodded, satisfied, and went back to his book like everything was right with the world.

Buck turned back to the counter before either of them could see his face.

Because Eddie had seen the moment for what it was—and handled it without asking for anything in return.

And Buck didn’t know how not to fall a little more in love with him because of it.

Buck leaned against the counter, staring at nothing, heart racing. He hadn’t lied, exactly. He didn’t know if he’d be back next Christmas. But the truth—the real truth—felt too heavy to put into words.

Behind him, Eddie moved quietly, stopping a few feet away.

“You okay?” Eddie asked again.

Buck nodded, still not turning around.

“Okay,” Eddie said, and Buck could hear the things he wasn’t saying layered under that single word.

They didn’t push. They didn’t unpack it. Instead, they fell into a careful, almost exaggerated normalcy.

Later, after Christopher was in bed and the cottage had settled into a hush broken only by the ticking of the clock and the occasional crackle of the fire, Buck found himself alone on the lounge, staring at his phone.

Buck sank onto the edge of the lounge, rubbing a hand over his face. He’d known this was coming. Of course he had. His life didn’t just pause because he’d found something good somewhere else.

Still, the timing felt cruel.

Buck waits until the house settles.

Until the fire burns low and the kettle clicks off and the clock on the mantel feels too loud in the quiet.

Eddie is rinsing mugs at the sink when Buck finally speaks.

“Hey,” Buck says.

Eddie glances over his shoulder. “Hey.”

Buck leans against the counter, hands shoved into his pockets like that might keep him from fidgeting. His heart is beating too fast for a room this calm.

“There’s something I should tell you,” Buck says.

Eddie stills.

Not dramatically. Just enough that Buck notices.

“Okay,” Eddie says, turning fully now, drying his hands on a towel. “What’s up?”

Buck exhales slowly. He’d rehearsed this in his head—half a dozen versions, all worse than the last. None of them sounded right.

“The network emailed me this morning,” he says. “May did, technically.”

Eddie’s expression shifts, subtle but immediate. Attentive. Guarded.

“About work?” Eddie asks.

Buck nods. “Yeah.”

He pauses, then forces himself to keep going before he can lose his nerve.

“They want me back in the States by December twenty-seventh.”

Eddie blinks once. “That’s… soon.”

“Yeah,” Buck says quietly. “For a live TV special on the twenty-ninth. End-of-year thing. Charity. Big audience.”

The words hang between them, heavy and unavoidable.

Eddie sets the towel down on the counter, careful and deliberate. He doesn’t interrupt. He doesn’t ask questions yet. He just waits, like he’s bracing for the rest of it.

Buck swallows.

“I wasn’t going to say anything tonight,” he admits. “I didn’t want to ruin Christmas Eve.”

Eddie huffs a quiet, humorless breath. “Buck.”

“I know,” Buck says quickly. “I know that’s not how this works. I just—” He falters, then presses on. “I didn’t want to make tonight about leaving.”

Eddie’s jaw tightens. “But it is.”

Buck nods. “A little.”

They stand there, the silence stretching. The fire pops softly in the other room.

“How long have you known?” Eddie asks.

“This morning,” Buck says. “Before the market.”

Eddie absorbs that. His gaze drops to the floor for a moment, then lifts again. He closes his eyes briefly. “Okay,” he says after a second. “Okay.”

Buck hates that word right now. It sounds too neat. Too accepting.

“I don’t want you to think I was hiding it,” Buck says. “I just didn’t know how to say it without making it feel… final.”

Eddie leans back against the counter across from him, arms folding loosely over his chest. He looks tired suddenly. Not angry. Not cold. Just tired in a way that feels earned.

“I get it,” Eddie says. “I do.”

Buck searches his face. “You do?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “You didn’t come here planning to stay. I knew that. We both did.”

Buck’s throat tightens. “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.”

Eddie’s mouth quirks faintly. “No. It still sucks.”

They share a small, sad smile.

“I keep telling myself this is how it works,” Buck says quietly. “That it was always going to be temporary. But it doesn’t feel like that anymore.”

Eddie looks at him then, really looks at him, and Buck has to resist the urge to look away.

“No,” Eddie says. “It doesn’t.”

The silence that follows is heavier, but also more honest.

“I don’t regret any of this,” Buck says. “Just in case that needs saying.”

Eddie’s voice is soft when he replies. “Good. Because neither do I.”

Buck lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

“Christopher’s already attached,” Buck says, the words slipping out before he can stop them. “I didn’t mean for that to happen so fast.”

Eddie nods. “He gets attached fast.”

“He asked me if I’d be back next Christmas,” Buck says again, quieter this time. “And I froze.”

“I heard,” Eddie admits.

Buck winces. “I’m sorry.”

Eddie shakes his head. “It wasn’t wrong. Just… hard.”

They stand there, both of them looking at the floor now, like it might offer answers.

“So,” Eddie says eventually, “you leave on the twenty-seventh.”

Buck nods. “Twenty-sixth, actually.”

“And between now and then,” Eddie continues, careful, “we still have Christmas.”

Buck’s chest aches. “Yeah.”

Eddie pushes off the counter, stepping closer. Not quite touching. Not yet.

“Okay,” Eddie says again, but this time it sounds different. Not neat. Not closed. Just steady.

Buck meets his gaze. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Eddie says. “We’ll… figure it out later.”

Buck nods, relief and fear tangling together in his chest.

“Later,” he agrees.

Eddie reaches out then, fingers brushing Buck’s wrist, tentative but sure.

“Come here,” Eddie says softly.

Buck does.

Eddie pulls him in, one arm sliding around Buck’s back, the other coming up between his shoulders, warm and solid. Buck hesitates for half a second—like he’s afraid to take up too much space—then sinks into it, forehead tipping toward Eddie’s shoulder.

It’s not a tight hug. It’s not rushed. It’s just… there. Steady. Eddie’s hand presses once at Buck’s back, a quiet reassurance that feels like I’ve got you without needing to be said.

Buck exhales, the breath shuddering more than he’d meant it to. Eddie doesn’t comment. He just holds him, grounding and present, like this is exactly where Buck’s supposed to be.

For a moment, the noise in Buck’s head goes mercifully quiet.

Buck is sitting on the couch when his phone starts buzzing again.

He considers ignoring it.

He’s emotionally wrung out, his chest still tight from the conversation he and Eddie just had—the one where words like December 27th and live TV and leaving had settled between them like furniture neither of them knew how to rearrange yet. The cottage is quiet now. Christopher is asleep. The fire has burned down to embers. Everything feels fragile.

The phone keeps buzzing.

Eddie glances over from where he’s standing by the window, arms folded, posture deliberately casual in a way Buck recognizes as effort. “You gonna get that?”

Buck squints at the screen.

FaceTime: May Grant

“Oh no,” Buck says immediately.

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “That bad?”

“She never FaceTimes,” Buck says. “And when she does, it’s either an emergency or she’s had alcohol.”

The buzzing intensifies, like the phone is offended by the delay.

Buck exhales and answers.

The screen fills with movement, noise, and terrible camera angles.

“—no, tilt it down, you’re cutting off my forehead—”

“I am not, you’re just tall—”

“Oh! He answered! Hi, Buck!”

May’s face appears first, too close to the camera, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. Adriana’s voice is audible before her face shows up, laughing loudly somewhere off-screen.

Buck winces. “Hi. Wow. Okay. You’re both… enthusiastic.”

“Festive,” May corrects, very seriously.

“Celebratory,” Adriana adds, popping into frame with a grin. “It’s Christmas Eve!”

“It is currently three in the afternoon,” Buck says automatically.

“In Los Angeles,” May says, waving a finger. “Time is a construct.”

Buck rubs his face with one hand. He can feel Eddie’s presence beside him, quiet and observant, and that somehow makes this both funnier and more mortifying.

“Are you two drunk?” Buck asks.

May gasps. “Tipsy.”

“Joyfully compromised,” Adriana says.

“Spiritually relaxed,” May finishes.

Buck sighs. “I hate that you rehearsed that.”

“We did not,” Adriana says immediately.

“We absolutely did,” May says at the same time.

The screen freezes mid-smile, then jumps.

“Oh,” Buck mutters. “We’re lagging.”

“We are not lagging,” May says a full second after Buck finishes speaking. “You’re just talking too fast.”

Eddie leans slightly into frame, polite smile firmly in place. “Hey.”

May squints. “Hold on.”

She leans closer to the camera, eyes narrowing in concentration. “Is that—”

“That’s my brother,” Adriana says brightly.

May’s expression shifts instantly. She straightens, smoothing her hair with exaggerated care. “Oh. Hi.”

Eddie blinks. “Hi.”

“I’m May,” she says. “Buck’s manager. And long-suffering friend.”

Buck groans. “Please don’t introduce yourself like that.”

“It’s accurate,” May says.

Adriana grins at Eddie. “You look tired.”

Eddie exhales. “It’s nearly midnight here.”

“Oh my god,” May says. “You’re in the future.”

Eddie nods solemnly. “It’s not great. Still cold.”

Buck snorts despite himself.

Adriana tilts her head, studying Buck through the screen. “You look… weird.”

Buck stiffens. “Weird how?”

“Like you’re smiling, but in a way that suggests you were crying earlier,” Adriana says, far too perceptive for someone tipsy.

Buck opens his mouth, then closes it again.

May squints at him. “Oh.”

Buck winces. “Don’t do that.”

“That face,” May says softly. “I know that face.”

Eddie shifts closer, his shoulder brushing Buck’s. The contact is grounding and dangerous all at once.

“It’s fine,” Buck says quickly. “We’re fine. It’s just—Christmas Eve emotions.”

“Mmhmm,” Adriana says, clearly unconvinced. “Is this about the thing?”

Buck blinks. “What thing?”

“The thing,” Adriana repeats, waving vaguely. “The leaving thing.”

Buck stares at the screen. “How do you already know about the leaving thing?”

May lifts a glass slightly. “I may have mentioned dates.”

Buck groans. “May.”

“It was contextual,” May says defensively. “And Adriana already suspected.”

“I have a sixth sense,” Adriana says proudly. “It’s called being a younger sister.”

Eddie mutters, “You absolutely do not.”

“You absolutely do,” Adriana shoots back without missing a beat.

Buck laughs, the sound a little shaky but real. The tension in his chest eases just a fraction.

“So,” May says, leaning back. “You told him.”

Buck nods. “Yeah.”

“And you survived,” Adriana adds.

“So far,” Buck says.

May softens, her voice losing some of its sharpness. “Hey. You okay?”

Buck hesitates. He can feel Eddie’s eyes on him, warm and steady.

“I’m… processing,” Buck says finally.

“That’s code for ‘not okay but functioning,’” May says.

Buck points at the screen. “You’re not allowed to psychoanalyze me when you’re tipsy.”

“False,” May says. “That’s when I’m best at it.”

Adriana leans in. “For what it’s worth, Buck? My brother doesn’t let people in easily.”

Eddie groans. “Adriana.”

“I’m just saying,” she continues. “You’re here. That matters.”

Buck swallows, nodding.

“And also,” Adriana adds cheerfully, “if you hurt him, I will ruin your life.”

Buck snorts. “Fair.”

“And if you hurt him,” May says, pointing at Eddie through the screen, “I will also ruin y
Buck's life.”

Eddie blinks. “That feels… misdirected.”

Buck laughs, really laughs this time, and the sound feels like a release valve opening.

“We should probably let you go,” Adriana says, glancing off-screen. “Before May orders food we don’t need.”

“I absolutely need it,” May says.

“Merry Christmas Eve,” Adriana says warmly.

“Merry Christmas,” May adds blowing kisses into the phone.

Buck ends the call and keeps staring at the blank screen like it might glow back to life if he gives it enough time.

It won’t. That was the point. Laughter as a pressure valve, then quiet again. The cottage settles around them with the soft insistence of a lived-in place: the low crackle of the fire, the faint hum of the refrigerator, the steady ticking of the mantel clock that sounds, right now, like it’s counting down.

Three days.

Buck doesn’t say it out loud. He can feel the number sitting in his chest anyway, heavy as a stone.

Eddie is a few feet away, half in shadow, hands in his pockets like he’s trying to keep himself contained. His face is tired in the way midnight makes everyone tired, but his eyes are still on Buck, steady and careful.

“They’re a lot,” Eddie says, and it’s almost a smile.

Buck lets out a breath that turns into a laugh because if he doesn’t laugh he might do something inconvenient like fall apart. “Yeah,” he says. “They’re… my favorite kind of a lot.”

That gets a laugh out of Eddie, a quiet huff that loosens something in Buck’s ribcage. Buck watches Eddie’s shoulders drop a fraction, watches the tension shift.

He slips his phone into his pocket, like putting it away will keep his other life from bleeding into this one. “You okay?” he asks, because he’s been asking all night and he keeps meaning it.

Eddie’s gaze flicks down, then back up. “I’m here,” he says, like that answers the question and also doesn’t.

Silence fills the space between them. Buck can feel the things they aren’t saying hovering at the edges: December 27th. December 29th.

Buck takes a step closer anyway.

Eddie’s hand comes out of his pocket and reaches for Buck’s sleeve. Not gripping. Not pulling. Just touching, asking.

Buck’s breath catches. His body responds before his brain can get involved, leaning into the contact like it’s gravity.

“Okay?” Eddie asks softly.

“Yeah,” Buck says. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

Eddie’s fingers slide from Buck’s sleeve to his wrist to his palm, slow and deliberate, giving Buck every chance to say no. When their hands fit together, Buck feels something in him unclench. It’s such a simple thing—warmth, a choice—but it steadies him.

Eddie’s smile is small but real. “You’re just Buck,” he says, like he heard what Buck needed instead.

Just Buck.

The words land like a blanket. Buck feels his throat tighten, the way it always does when someone sees him without asking him to perform first.

“I don’t want to mess this up,” Buck admits.

Eddie’s gaze softens. “You’re not,” he says, firm in a way Buck can’t argue with.

Buck exhales, shaky. “You don’t know that.”

“I do,” Eddie says. He steps closer until Buck can feel the heat of him through their clothes. “Because you told me. Because you showed up. Because you care.”

Eddie lifts his free hand and cups the side of Buck’s face. His palm is warm, a little rough, grounding. Buck leans into it, eyes fluttering shut, and for a second the ticking clock gets quieter.

“I hate that you’re leaving,” Eddie says quietly.

Buck’s eyes sting. He blinks hard. “Yeah,” he manages. “Me too.”

Eddie pulls back just enough to look at him. “I’m not asking you to fix it,” Eddie says. “Not tonight. I just…”

He stops, jaw working, and Buck realizes Eddie is choosing his words with the same care he uses around Christopher. Like he’s handling something fragile on purpose.

“Just what?” Buck asks, gentle.

Eddie exhales, a soft surrender. “Just be here,” he says. “With me. Tonight.”

Buck’s breath catches. It’s permission and a boundary at the same time. Not forever. Not a promise Buck can’t make. Just now.

Buck nods. “Okay,” he whispers. “Yeah. I can do that.”

Relief flickers across Eddie’s face. He leans in slowly, giving Buck time.

Buck meets him halfway.

The kiss is warm and steady. Not rushed. Not desperate. It carries the weight of everything they didn’t solve and the certainty of what they do have: hands, breath, the choice of each other for this moment. Buck’s fingers curl into Eddie’s sweater, anchoring himself.

For a moment Buck forgets how to think in anything but sensation: the warmth where Eddie’s mouth has been, the firm slide of Eddie’s hand at his back, the way the rest of the cottage feels miles away. Buck has kissed people before—plenty of people, sometimes in bright daylight with cameras and scripts and marks to hit—and none of it has felt like this. This isn’t something he’s performing. There’s no angle to find, no line to deliver. Just Eddie’s breath, Eddie’s quiet patience, Eddie’s wanting.

Buck’s fear doesn’t vanish; it shifts. It becomes a pulse under everything, threaded through the sweetness, not ruining it, just making it vivid. Because this is what he’s leaving. This softness. This ordinary, impossible thing: standing in a cottage in England, being kissed like he’s allowed to be wanted without explanation.

His hands move without permission, sliding from Eddie’s shoulders to the back of his neck, fingers tangling in hair that’s slightly damp from melted snow earlier. Eddie makes a low sound, barely there, and Buck feels the answer to it in his own chest. He pulls back a fraction, searching Eddie’s face in the dim light—checking, always checking.

Eddie’s eyes are dark and steady. He nods once, like he’s telling Buck, I’m here. I’m still choosing this. So Buck breathes in, steadying himself on that certainty, and lets himself lean back into the kiss. That choice feels like air, and Buck finally inhales.

They part for air, foreheads still touching.

The living room is dim, lit by embers and the glow of the tree in the corner. Buck’s brain tries to narrate, tries to make a joke, tries to keep him safe.

Eddie’s hand tightens around his. A tug, gentle and asking.

Buck follows.

They move down the hallway carefully, steps muffled by the carpet. Buck sees the soft light under Christopher’s door and his chest tightens. Eddie glances at it, too, and in that glance Buck sees everything: love, worry, the instinct to protect.

Eddie looks back at Buck. “We can stop,” he says quietly. “Any time.”

Buck nods. “I know,” he says. “You can stop, too.”

Eddie’s bedroom door is half-open. Nothing dramatic. Just a room. A life. Eddie pauses at the threshold like he’s giving Buck one last chance to choose.

Buck steps forward.

Eddie closes the door softly behind them, the sound not a click but a hush, like the world outside is being held back on purpose. The room is dark except for a sliver of streetlight through the curtains. Buck can hear his own breathing.

Eddie doesn’t rush. He just stands close, hands resting at Buck’s waist, steadying. Buck rests his palms on Eddie’s chest and feels the thud of Eddie’s heart under his hand, fast and real.

“I’m scared,” Buck admits.

Eddie’s answer is immediate. “Me too.”

Buck lets out a small, shaky laugh. “Great. Love that for us.”

Eddie’s mouth quirks. “You’re coping.”

“It’s my brand,” Buck whispers.

Eddie kisses him again, slow, like he’s making a promise without words: I’ll be careful with you. Buck lets the kiss pull him under, lets it quiet the future for a minute.

When they part, Eddie’s lips hover near Buck’s ear. “Just tonight,” Eddie murmurs. “Okay?”

Buck closes his eyes, letting the words settle, safe because they don’t ask him to predict the future. Buck nods and turns his face, kissing the corner of Eddie’s mouth. “Okay,” he whispers.

Eddie’s hands rise, cradling Buck’s face, thumbs brushing away tension Buck didn’t realize he was wearing. Buck presses closer until there’s no space left for the clock, the calendar, the countdown.

Eddie’s voice is soft against his skin. “You with me?”

Buck’s mouth opens on instinct. Always—because that’s what Buck wants to be. But always is a promise and Buck is terrified of breaking promises.

He meets Eddie’s eyes in the dark. “Tonight,” he says instead, honest and aching.

Eddie smiles like he understands exactly why. “Tonight,” he agrees.

And when Eddie pulls him closer and the line between talking and something more disappears, Buck holds onto the only thought that feels true enough to carry into the dark.

I don’t want this to end.