Buck's Baby (By Accident)

Confidence

The holiday period had been and gone in a flurry of wrapping paper and family dinners, and (weirdly) there was not a single fight to be had. Buck and Eddie had piled the kids and a whole pile of presents into the car on Christmas Day, after Buck's surprise, and had made their way over to Maddie and Chimney's house. Thankfully, the Buckley parents had opted to stay in Pennsylvania for the holidays; probably stung by the fact that it had taken Buck almost 7 months to mention that they had a second grandchild. It had been quite some time since Buck had last been properly angry at his sister but telling his parents that Buck had a child... well that was another matter entirely. Maddie had taken him aside at the Christmas dinner and apologised before Buck could say a word about it, begging for his forgiveness and blaming the pregnancy hormones. Buck had been slightly shocked that that was how Maddie decided to announce her pregnancy to him but all anger at her had immediately melted away, completely understanding that 1. Maddie was very hormonal and 2. His parents were assholes who probably pried the information out of Maddie unwillingly.

New Year's Eve had been eventful. Eddie had fought Christopher nail and tooth about staying up until midnight, stating very firmly that Christopher was too young for that just yet and needed his sleep. There had never been such a commotion in the Buckley-Diaz household as the headstrong 12-year-old had been met with this response and Buck had watched nervously from afar as his boyfriend and stepson went head-to-head, each Diaz absolutely certain that the other was being unreasonable. In the end, they'd compromised (Eddie had caved) and Christopher was allowed to stay up, spending the time with some of his friends in the park down the road. The only condition was that he had to call Eddie every hour and send him a text ever half hour to update him on his whereabouts, which Christopher was more than happy to do. Buck and Eddie had opted for a quieter night in, tucking Aidan to bed around 9pm and lazing on the couch as they watched a movie before flicking over to a news channel around 11:50 and watching the countdown together. It had been the first year in a long time that either of them had had a New Year's kiss and they were equally as giddy about it, the kiss escalating quickly and ending with them hurriedly fucking one another into the mattress before Christopher got home.

The new year had seen the removal of Aidan's stitches from his eyebrow, leaving behind the faintest hint of a scar; a small white line bisecting his eyebrow, making it almost two separate entities. It was a new part of Buck's nighttime routine to kiss the small cut gently, much like Eddie did with his birthmark. The fact that Aidan's scar and Buck's birthmark were on the same side made Buck oddly happy, as if the symmetry between father and son meant something more than the random genetic discrepancy of one and the clumsiness of the other. Buck had been very pleased that the cut had almost completely healed by the time Eddie had to appear in court for Aidan's adoption processes. The last thing he would have wanted was for the small accident to reflect poorly on Eddie and throw a spanner into the works. Luckily, it hadn't been so much as mentioned and Eddie flew through the proceedings, stepping out the other end as the proud father of one wriggly 9-month-old baby.

They'd had a brief moment of respite in mid-January where life seemed calmer. Christopher was happy at school and getting good grades, Aidan was picking up skills quickly and his little personality shining through more with each passing day, and Buck and Eddie had finally managed to get into the groove of things with work and juggling two kids. However, unfortunately, with Aidan's most recent mental leaps came a new phase of Buck and Eddie's lives: sleepless nights due to an over excited child who wanted nothing more than to be awake and explore his world.

It was 3am and for the third time that week, Buck found himself sitting on the floor in Aidan's nursey cradling his son as the boy looked around the room, his eyes wide in the dark.

"Aidan, honey, please for the love of God could you go to sleep?" Buck begged as he rocked the baby back and forth, his hand pressing Aidan's head firmly into his shoulder in an attempt to get him to settle.