what's your favorite hc that you have eddie?
(i was going to talk about how he saves and treasures the most random things but it turned into a mini-fic sorry!)
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"Community outreach?" Hen sighs, one eyebrow raised as she stares at the front doors of the middle school. The truck gleams in the bright sun off to the side, but it's dull in comparison to the force of Buck's smile.
"Community outreach," he repeats, much happier and optimistic than the rest of them feel.
"We're the fire department, people don't hate us," Chim says, but he snaps his gum and shrugs, pulling his ball cap off and starting to stride towards the doors. "Think they'll want signed calendars?"
"They're middle schoolers," Hen says, whacking him in the arm.
It ends up not being so bad; Eddie does a few demonstrations in gym class, beats Buck up the rope twice (out of six, but he won't be mentioning that to Christopher when he retells the story), and has a suspicious number of young, mostly female teachers asking for a demonstration of stop, drop, and roll. He poses for some photos, grinning smugly into the camera whenever he's asked instead of Buck, and spends the ten minutes he's in the cafeteria vowing to himself that he'll start packing lunches for Chris because--no.
There's an assembly on fire safety to end the day, and it's as he and Chim are waiting backstage in the auditorium that he runs across something familiar from his own middle school days--a group of girls clustered around a table, playing MASH and teasing each other.
"We can do you," one of them says to him, and turns bright red when her friend elbows her and bites off a squeal. Chim looks like Christmas has come early, and Eddie throws a glare at him.
"My sisters used to play this, and I always ended up in the shack," he says, pulling out a chair and sitting down. "Pretty sure they were cheating."
He gives a few suggestions for what to put in the categories but mostly lets them choose, hiding a smile as he reads down the list of places he'd never want to live and jobs he would hate, and his heart--and world, it seems--comes stuttering to a halt when one of them giggles and adds Buck's name to the list of potential spouses, giving him a sly but uncertain look.
Eddie, suddenly, is deeply invested in the outcome of this game. He tries not to show it, refuses to let his body lean in as they start counting and marking things off the list, and when Buck's name is the last one left, clasps his hands together so he doesn't do something as silly as reach out for the paper and place it carefully in his pocket.
A teacher calls out and the girls scatter, looking equal parts sheepish and defiant, gathering highlighters and pens that had been strewn around the table and stuffing them into their bags as they walk away, and Eddie's just about to return to where Hen's watching Bobby talk at a podium when one of the girls stops him.
"Here," she says, holding the paper out to him, the ripped edge shaking slightly. "No shack this time. Hope it comes true."
He takes it from her and stares at it, lets his gaze skim down the columns and land squarely on Buck's name, circled in lopsided, purple highlighter.
"Yeah," he says, folding it neatly and slipping it into the breast pocket of his uniform, "me too."
it's sleepover weekend
