Candles, Eddie thinks, beat anything any day of the week.
He thinks of this as he lights one in the living room, the flame slowly taking to the wick and flaring brighter for it, the gradual trace of pine reaching him as the wax begins to melt. Chris giggles when Eddie sets it down and shoots him a playful warning look. It’s one of their favourite scents these days, a woody scent that's crisp and fresh — and covers the smell of burnt toast from this morning.
“Dad?” Chris pipes up from where he’s working on his reading.
“Hmm?” Eddie asks, settling down next to him with a book of his own.
“Why do you like candles so much?”
“I don’t know, buddy, I just do, I guess. I like seeing the flame flicker, and they smell good, and they come in a lot of different scents. They make good gifts, and they don’t make my nose itch like air fresheners do.”
Chris leaves it at that with an obliging hum, but as Eddie flips through his own book, he thinks about how exactly he started liking them.
There isn’t a set moment in time that he could remember turning over to candles rather than those plug-in room fresheners. He used to see his mom light the ones her friends would give her for different occasions and Sophia used to light one in her room, but outside of that, candles weren't really things men paid attention to.
Maybe that’s where.
He remembers being curious enough to buy his own mini candle and light it in the dark. The flame would dance wildly, which was always an amusing image but somehow, Eddie used to feel steadied by the steadfast light. Somehow, it’d turned into a symbol of positivity and hope that Eddie took with him even in the darkest moments, even stuck in a desert away from his family, even stuck forty feet underground.
Slowly, that flame of hope took the shape of Christopher’s form, another guiding light to bring him home, but the warmth from either of them had never really faded.
Vaguely, Eddie recognizes how ironic it is for a firefighter to like candles so much, but they’re one indulgence he can’t really let go of. There are stacks of coupons and discount deals piling up in his inbox for them, because he’s constantly on a lookout for new ones.
It’s a part of him that really only Christopher and Abuela know about. And Eddie is more than happy with that, not ready to reveal exactly why he likes them so much.
He looks at the label on this particular candle, making a note to take it off the container before recycling it. He can never keep all the names straight.
An idea hits him then. “Hey, Chris, what do you say we go candle shopping together? You can smell all of them before we buy them.”
Christopher automatically starts cheering, making Eddie laugh.
He's excited, he realizes, to share this particular indulgence with his son fully.
Eddie smiles as Christopher leans into him, reading out loud from his chapter book, carefully pronouncing the letters.
Pressing his lips to the top of Chris' head, Eddie forms a plan in his head.
Candle shopping it is, then.
-------
Buck finds out in a bout of spring cleaning.
As he bends to pick up the recycle bin, he finds a bunch of short, open containers with faint soot marks looking up at him amidst beer bottles and pasta sauce jars. Some of them have the tell-tale sign of a label ripped off, peaking Buck’s curiosity.
“Hey Eddie?” Vaguely he realizes that it’s probably weird to be rooting through his best friend’s recycle bin, but there’s a lot of them.
“Yeah?” he calls back from where he’s sorting through his cabinets for expired food cans and cans that could be donated to food drives, leaning back to look at him.
“What are all these?” He finds the least dirtiest one and holds it up for him to see. Eddie laughs, sticking his head back in the cabinet.
“They’re from candles. The jars are recyclable if they’re made from soda-lime glass, so I clean the wax out and dump them in there.” His voice comes back muffled and distorted, but Buck just stares at the parts of him he can see.
“Since when do you like candles?”
“Since...middle school? When Chris was born, I didn’t want to leave any fire hazards around so I stopped. Now that he’s older and has more control over his crutches and all, we sometimes light one.”
Yet another thing that he’s learned about his best friend that he probably wouldn’t have imagined in his wildest dreams.
Eddie sticks his head back out, giving him a confused look. “What’s wrong?”
He’s nervous, Buck realizes, before realizing his jaw dropped somewhere along the way and he’s gawking at Eddie like he’s insane. Which he's not, it's just caught him off-guard.
“Uh, nothing. I was just surprised. It’s cute, the candle thing,” Buck says, scrambling to reassure Eddie for sharing a part of himself. As the word leaves his mouth, he internally winces for having been too transparent.
Because it was cute. Now that he knew, Buck could picture Eddie lighting one of those candles, the light casting a soft glow across his handsome face. Somehow, the candle in his mind smelled exactly like Eddie did.
It’s such a specific image that it leaves Buck, who’s always equal parts amused and hurt by his overactive imagination, breathless — spinning pictures that he probably has no business seeing.
Eddie levels him with a steady look before cocking his head thoughtfully. “Well, Chris and I were going candle shopping this weekend. Wanna tag along?”
Buck can't stop the grin from splitting his face in two. Going out with Eddie and Chris is one of his favourite things ever, and continually being included makes his chest warm with giddiness. “Yeah, of course, just let me know!”
Eddie looks more amused than anything after that as he tosses another can at Buck. “This weekend, but for now, take that bin out. I’ve got more things to recycle.”
------
It turns out that Chris and Buck were more excited about the prospect of going candle shopping than Eddie imagined.
He took them to one of his favourite shops in a less-populated part of LA, one that Abuela had pointed out to him. It was owned by the sweetest old lady who didn’t seem to be here today. Instead, there’s a tall, gangly teen at the register, drumming her fingers absently on the counter, a textbook open.
He can already see the awe on their faces as they look at the rows of shelfs with varying sizes of candle jars. The whole place smells a little funky from a mix of so many, but it's comforting, in a way. He'd been nervous to let them in completely to this particular indulgence, because he knows how unconventional it is. But he doesn't see a trace of judgment on Buck's face, and never on Christopher's; he's more confident about this.
Still, he recognizes the look on those scheming faces. “Don’t break anything,” he warns them before heading off to quickly grab the ones he needs to buy.
Mahogany Teakwood
Woodland Pine
Cashmere Woods
Unscrewing the cap to a new sandalwood one, Eddie holds it up to his nose, freezing at the warm scent.
He’s smelled this before. He can’t remember where or how, but the scent was so overwhelmingly familiar. It’s disconcerting, and the fact that he can’t place it bothers him a lot more than it should.
Slowly, he slips the cap on but instead of returning it to the shelf, he instinctively puts it in the basket alongside the others. Ducking through the aisles, he finds Buck and Christopher giggling over in the back aisle.
“What’s so funny?”
“Some of these smell so weird, Dad,” Chris wrinkles his nose, holding a patchouli candle up. Eddie cringes at the name itself, already stepping away.
“Yeah, I’m not smelling that one. I don’t like the way patchouli smells.”
“What about...vanilla bean?” Buck plucks a random jar off the top shelf and uncapped it, holding it out for Eddie.
He takes a sniff, eyes almost watering at the strong, overly-sweet scent. It smells less like vanilla and a lot more like what he imagines sugar to smell like.
“That’s way too sweet.” Eddie shakes his head and picks up one of the jars in his basket, passing it to Chris. “This one is much better.”
“This one smells like the one in the kitchen.”
“Smells like a forest,” Buck comments, turning it around to look at the label. “Oh, that’s why.”
Eddie laughs, holding the basket out for Buck to put it back in.
He sets it down and claps his hands together. “Okay Eds, true friendship test, what do you say Chris?”
“Yeah!” The two high-five, turning matching grins on him. The same impish twinkle glimmers in both their eyes, unperturbed mischief dancing in blue and grey irises. Eddie smiles at the sight of the two boys that he loves more than anything else in the world, completely at ease for having shared this part of himself.
“Hit me with it, what’s the test?”
“You have...five minutes. Find a scent that suits me, that I would love.” Eddie snorts at the clearly smug tone.
“You think you’ve done something here, but you really haven’t. Challenge accepted on the condition that you’re honest about what I choose.” Once he agrees, Eddie meanders over to the other aisle, easily picking out a candle he’d recognized from his last visit. It had reminded him of Buck instantly; now he slides it off the shelf before handing it to his best friend with a smirk, winking down at Christopher.
“‘Autumn Leaves,’” he reads before taking a whiff. Eddie already knows what it smells like; a hint of the woods and maple laced with the tang of citrus. He watches the surprise spread across Buck’s face, and his smirk grows wider. “You’re right. I do love this one. How’d you know? That didn’t even take a minute.”
“Because he’s my dad, and my dad’s the best,” Chris boasts, laughing brightly at the mock betrayed look on Buck’s face.
Eddie points at his son, glowing with pride. “That. What he said. Also, I saw it last time I was here and knew you’d like it.”
“That’s cheating!” Buck protests, even as he tucks the jar under his arm, a small smile flitting across his mouth.
“No, you said I had to find a scent in under five minutes, which I did. Never said anything about knowing it beforehand. I won fair and square,” Eddie shrugs, pulling a spicy-smelling cinnamon one off the shelf to add to his basket.
"Touché, Eddie, touché," Buck says dramatically.
"Don't be a sore loser, you can pick one out for me next time we come," Eddie teases. Buck's expression softens a little at the implication of him coming along next time too, a wide smile spreading across his face.
"Lucky for you, Christopher and I already found one. Show him, Chris."
"Recruiting my son is cheating," he points out, following Christopher to where the jar sits along a mid-level shelf. He picks it up and takes the cap off. "'Balsam and Clove.' Interesting. You're right, I do like this one but you don't win because you cheated."
"No, he didn't, he chose it first," Chris tells him. Eddie laughs and slides it into his basket. It smells like cedar, cinnamon, with a hint of pine and amber. Eddie's honestly shocked at how well Buck knows him, and only barely resists getting a huge jar of the thing.
“Alright, I'll take your word for it. Are we done here? Let's grab lunch?” The two agree and start following him out. Chris trails along with him as Eddie pays. “Did you have fun, bud?”
“This was the best! Can we come here again?”
“Sure,” he says, adding, “when we use these up.”
“Is that why you only buy the short ones?” Buck asks, sliding his own card through the reader for the candle Eddie chose for him.
He smiles to himself before answering. “Well, if I buy the bigger ones, then we’re stuck with it for a while. It gets boring. Tumbler candles work out better. The minis are even better if I can find them.”
“You know how adorable it is to hear you talk about this stuff?” Buck blurts out as they turn to leave. Eddie’s face, neck and ears grow hot, even as he watches his friend splutter wildly, his pale skin glowing a faint pink that almost makes his birthmark blend in.
Eddie decides to let him off the hook, simply shaking his head and herding them out the door. He pointedly ignores the smirking teen at the counter, looking between them as she smacks her gum. “Now that you let me know, I may never stop.”
------
It doesn’t come to him until much later after that fateful day that the candle he’d picked up on a whim smells exactly like Buck’s cologne .
He freezes where they’re changing in the locker room, Buck having changed into formal clothes for dinner with Maddie. It’s the scent of his cologne that tips him off, and suddenly, he remembers the wax tumbler sitting in a dusty drawer at home.
Eddie barely manages to choke out a goodbye as Buck claps him on the back, pulling him in for his usual side hug. He catches another trace of the heady scent, staring after his best friend as he leaves.
He thinks about it the entire ride home — what it means for him to know his best friend’s signature scent. Then he thinks of the little moments of the past three years that have made up who they are. He thinks about Buck's willingness to tell him exactly what he's thinking, even if he doesn't quite mean to.
For all that he’s denied himself this one thing for the better part of the last two years, he’s finally at a place where he can take a chance for the one he wants.
When he gets home, he pulls that candle out, thinking of how best to take this step.
In the end, he leaves it on the table closest to the bottom of the stairs, next to the record player. He slides a little note underneath, heart at ease with having finally done it.
The only one he clearly isn’t slick enough to get by is Christopher, who asks him about it the minute they’re back in the truck. “What did you give Buck?”
Eddie smiles. “Just a little something.”
------
Buck finds it half an hour after Eddie and Christopher leave, the dark-colored candle blending in well to the table. It’s the stark white note at the bottom that tips him off, a very familiar neat script across the rectangle.
This one reminds me of the man I love. You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you?
All my love, Eddie
Buck stares at the note long enough that he can see holes burned into it. He flips and turns every letter in his mind for every possible conclusion, before uncapping the jar to smell it.
One whiff and Buck already knows it smells like his cologne.
It still doesn’t quite compute until he looks between the note and candle a few times, and when it sinks it, it hits him like an anvil.
“Holy fucking shit, Eddie Diaz,” Buck whispers, pulling his phone out and hitting speed-dial.
“Hey.” Eddie’s smooth voice comes out of the receiver, highly amused. Buck glares at the note as if his friend's standing in front of him.
“You did not just tell me like this.”
“I really did.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did , Buck. It’s right there.”
“What the fuck, Eddie! I didn’t know you could be this romantic and this is the best thing anyone’s ever done for me, but damn, I would’ve liked to see your face when you say it! It’s not like I was going to say no!”
Eddie laughs, making Buck’s heart skip. He doesn’t even sound nervous, while Buck feels like a mess from the swell of happiness making his chest feel too small for his heart.
“You better get your ass over here, how can you just leave after that?!”
He’s re-reading the note for the hundredth time when his phone buzzes with Eddie trying to switch to FaceTime. Buck accepts, finding his best friend grinning at him.
“You know I can’t come over now, but I love you, Buck. Is that a yes?”
Buck laughs, staring down at him. He’s so far gone for this man, it’s completely ridiculous. But standing here clutching a paper note and his phone, the candle sitting in front of him, he can’t really think of anything else.
