whatever you write is probably going to take me straight out but i love the way your fics do that to me, so "laughing while kissing" for the soft prompts please and thank you 🤗
Soundtrack to this one. Soft prompts! Finished ones!
“Chimney’s doing another round of s’mores, you want one?”
Buck half turns from his spot at the edge of the tide. It was hot enough earlier that the cool bite of the ocean around his ankles still feels good as they creep closer to midnight than evening. “Nah, I had like eight of them with the kids.”
Eddie does a little hop over the foamy surf to stand beside him, and then licks his marshmallowy fingers clean. “Suit yourself.”
Another wave comes in and Eddie does his little hop over it again, except they really are at the very edge of the water so there's not really much foam to avoid. Buck squints at him a little, but he's unable to help the fond smile yanking his mouth around.
"Huh? Oh…" Eddie looks down at his feet and lets out a sort of bashful laugh. "Uh, we came to the coast to visit Pepa when we were kids - like little kids, I don't know if I was even five yet - and, uh…" Eddie looks at him, also sort of squinting and smiling. "I had it in my head that if the very edge of a wave touched me I'd get eaten by an alligator."
"W- why?" Buck gets out past a laugh. Eddie shoves him gently.
"I dunno, I was four. Made sense at the time. I think I maybe thought California was in Florida."
Buck laughs again, and when the next wave comes and they both hop over it he laughs harder, hands on his knees as Eddie chuckles beside him. He hasn’t bothered to straighten up when Eddie speaks again.
Buck looks out at the moon’s reflection cutting a path all the way to the distant islands that are just visible on this clear, bright night. “Just nice to be in a different ocean for a bit.”
Eddie hums, and kicks a little wet sand at him. “Now who thinks he’s in Florida? Same ocean, Buck, we’re two hours from home.”
“You know what I mean.” He waves a hand in a sweeping gesture. “It’s… vacation ocean.”
Eddie’s smiling in a way that seems to have trapped the words in his mouth, and Buck has to look back out at the waves or the full moon will give away the burning in his cheeks. “Yeah,” Eddie says eventually. “I know what you mean.”
Buck thinks he does. Eddie is the responsible one, of the two of them, level headed and no nonsense and calm, so it's been a little delightful to watch him throw himself into this camping trip with reckless abandon. He’d challenged the firefighters among them in a swimming race out to the floating platforms just offshore, begged alongside the kids to go walk down the beach to the little burger joint for ice cream, and charged around the woods with them after dinner, playing right along in their game of hunting for a spaceship full of aliens that might want to make friends, blinking their flashlights and throwing their laughter up into the sky in attempts to communicate.
Buck had spent the week before the trip feeling kind of sad about getting dumped, and feeling kind of guilty for not feeling more sad, and feeling a little… something, about how relieved Eddie had looked when he’d told him things with Marisol had also fizzled out. He’d liked Natalia, a lot. She was cool, and beautiful, and thought he was too, and she knew so little about him and his life that she felt like a safe place to exist without context for a while. It’s all a little dreamy, though, in hindsight, and Buck thinks he’d maybe tricked himself into finding a new method of running away from his own life disguised as grabbing on to a new one.
Vacation ocean. Maybe that’s what this is, too, another escape. Except Eddie is here, standing next to him and real as anything.
Buck feels like he’s got all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle floating around in his head, and has just started in on the edges when Eddie says “Hello, earth to Buck.”
“Oh, sorry, were you saying something?” Buck takes a step further into the water, back to the waves despite any good advice about ocean safety. Eddie’s watching out for him, he’ll be ok.
“Did you ever find them?” Buck is wet up to his mid calves now.
Eddie’s face scrunches into a grin. “Uh huh. Turns out they like s’mores too. And look a lot like Maddie and Jee-Yun.”
Buck breathes out laughter, and Eddie steps closer to him. “I didn’t text Bobby this morning.”
“Well, he was like five feet away. Drew short straw, had to set up his tent next to you and your rhinoceros snores.”
Buck takes another step back, and Eddie takes another step forward. They’re wet to the knees, now. “I mean… I was less surprised today. When I woke up.”
Eddie’s expression almost looks neutral, Buck can only see the smile because he might know this man’s face better than his own. “Yeah?”
Eddie nods. “That’s good. You’ve seemed a little… something.”
“Before now, or this weekend?”
Eddie tilts his head, in a move so like Buck himself it makes him smile. “Both. In different ways.”
Buck takes another half step back, water licking at his thighs. “I think things were a little dull before. I think things are a little bright now. Letting my eyes adjust.”
Eddie nods again, thoughtful, and just a hair nervous. “Hope you like the view.”
Buck grins with half his mouth, biting his cheek with the other. “Mmhm.”
They’re quiet for a moment, the gentle roar of waves around them, a distant happy shout drifting over from the campground. Eddie takes the half step to close the distance. “Buck,” he sighs. “I have bad news.”
“What?” He frowns, and his stomach flip flops just a little. He’d like to think he knows Eddie well enough that he hadn’t misread the situation, but he’s been known to be an idiot about these kinds of things before.
“Unfortunately…” Eddie tilts his head forward, very close to Buck’s own, and says “There were also evil aliens and I did get possessed by one,” before shoving him backwards into the sea.
Buck goes down laughing, and comes up spluttering. Eddie is giggling as he moves sideways in the surf to escape revenge, but he’s not trying all that hard and Buck’s lunge takes him off his feet. They roll around in the water, a lot colder now that it's not just their ankles submerged, and end up in a kind of breathless tangled together kneeling situation, rocked by the current as it comes and goes.
“You piece of shit,” Buck says, fully grinning, and Eddie roars with laughter. “We’re gonna get our tents soaking wet.”
“So we change in yours and you come to mine,” Eddie says, a little scared and a little brave.
Buck splashes him, and Eddie laughs, and then Buck kisses him, and Eddie laughs into that too, the sound a little disbelieving and a lot giddy. Buck pushes forward into it and Eddie falls back till he’s sitting and they’re both almost underwater, so Buck pulls him back up again and Eddie chases the kiss, and they’re both laughing into it now, puffs of air passed back and forth between them.
“This is-“ Buck speaks the words mostly into Eddie’s mouth, shaking a little from the giggling and the cold and the everything else. “I can come to your tent?”
“And this is- it’s vacation ocean?”
Eddie pulls back, just a tiny bit, and puts his hand on Buck’s face, fingers already a little pruny. “It’s the same ocean as always, Buck.”
“I can… come home, after?”
“You can come home forever,” Eddie says, and kisses him again. It’s not a very successful kiss, what with Buck nodding into it and Eddie smiling too much to work his mouth at all, but Buck is putting it in the top five kisses of his life anyway. “Come on, let's go get dry.” Eddie stands up out of the water, and then pulls Buck to shore.
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