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Part 5

Buck shoved the halligan into the doorjamb near the lock, and the door gave away under a mixture of leverage and weight. He stepped back as Hen and Tommy pushed the gurney into the apartment. The 9-1-1 had come through—elderly patient, fallen with a probably hip break. Eddie leaned on the wall beside him and exhaled slowly as they both stared out at the street. The neighborhood was nice, neatly maintained, and filled with very nose neighbors who were all standing on their porches watching the process.

“My neighbors are nosy like this,” Eddie said.

“Mine just have parties,” Buck said. “The ones on the left like to skinny dip in their ridiculous infinity pool and I’m starting to think my uncle considered it a feature not a flaw.” Eddie laughed. “And the ones on the right keep trying to set up an HOA. I threatened to sue them for harassment if they kept it up.”

Eddie laughed.

“What are you doing to do about the naked people when your son is old enough to look?”

“I already had a privacy fence built,” Buck admitted. “Eight feet. They tried to complain about it disrupting their view, and I offered to call the police the next time I saw one of them naked instead. They stopped complaining about the fence.”

“That’s good,” Eddie said and exhaled slowly as the woman was removed from the house. She was clearly in a lot of pain. “The sound of someone suffering has always been difficult to handle, it only got worse after I came online.”

“Yeah,” Buck agreed. “But being able to help has always been relieving to me.” He cleared his throat. “Sleep well?”

“The meditation helped,” Eddie said roughly, clearly reluctant to admit that Buck had been right. “And I kept the cuff off until I got ready to leave the house. I took Christopher to his mom’s and told her what we learned at the center. She’s clearly trying very hard to be good about it, but it’s overwhelming.”

“It’ll get easier,” Buck said. “Adjustments will take time, across the board.”

“You mean more than just the stuff with Christopher?” Eddie questioned as they headed toward the ladder truck.

“Yeah, of course, but that’s a private convo,” he said as he climbed into the truck after storing the halligan. Eddie sat down across from him in the seat that Hen normally occupied since she was in the ambulance.

Buck sent him an amused look and pulled out his phone. He had a single text from Dr. Salas that merely said, handled. He really didn’t know what to think about that.

Eddie cleared his throat. “Uh, Dr. Salas filed a complaint with the state licensing board and Ana Flores has been suspended from…whatever teachers get suspended from. She isn’t legally allowed to teach pending an investigation.”

“That would explain his single word text to me,” Buck said. “He’s the sort to continue a conversation in text and expect everyone to know what he means.”

Eddie nodded like that was reasonable and Buck filed that away as a potential future communication issue. “Dr. Summer’s email is pretty brief, but she does say that the school board had already put her on probation and they’re doing an audit of her classroom performance through a series of very careful student interviews. I’ve been asked if I’d like to include Christopher in that.”

“I’d say no,” Buck said when Eddie raised an eyebrow at him. “He considers that situation resolved for him personally and his only lingering concern is for other students. You can sooth that concern without creating any misplaced anxiety. And also, probably take him back to the library to get an additional book for his pile to reinforce your approval. If you think he’s still concerned.”

“He’s still concerned,” Eddie said. “He rearranged his books on his desk twice last night before bed. If she’s created a serious problem for him, I’m going to be filing a complaint personally. Though I think what Dr. Salas has done has probably created a situation where teaching children is no longer in her future. Should I feel bad that her career has been ruined?”

“No, because she’s clearly biased and the school shouldn’t have hired her at all to work with vulnerable children. At the least, she’ll be prevented from teaching latent children in the future because that’s where Dr. Salas’ power really sits on this issue. She might be able to pivot into adult education for mundanes or research. That’s not your problem. She created the mess.”

Eddie nodded, frowned at his phone, then put it away. “We’re touring two different Burton schools tomorrow. Shannon has work so Carla is coming along.”

“Carla Price, right?” Buck questioned and Eddie raised an eyebrow. “I recommended her for you when Bobby mentioned you were looking for childcare with a medical background. I met her a couple of years ago when she was working as a home health nurse for a friend. I’m glad she worked out for you.”

“She’s a godsend and Shannon was absolutely thrilled to get someone we could trust with a nursing degree. The state pays her salary through a grant, and it makes things much easier across the board considering out schedules. She recently got promoted to a leader position in the ICU where she works as a nurse practitioner, and schedule changes meant more overnights where Carla came in clutch.”

“She’s great people,” Buck said and sent Dr. Salas a thumb’s up emoji in response his one-word text. Though, he figured the older man wouldn’t be confused at all by the response. He looked up and found Eddie staring at him. “What?”

“Just realizing you started managing me before you met me,” Eddie said wryly and Bobby laughed from the front seat.

Buck shrugged and logged into the crèche’s secure portal and got a live view of the playroom. He quickly zeroed in on his kid, who was on a playmat with another baby and one of the Guides employed by the Burton Foundation at the Psionic Center’s crèche.

“What are you watching?”

“Wyatt attempting to share with another kid who is clearly not used to being shared with.”

Eddie shifted right over onto the bench beside him to check it out. So, he tilted the phone in the man’s direction.

“Only kids meets youngest kid,” Eddie said in amusement. “My sisters never shared anything with me.” He stared for a moment. “That’s secure, right? That building seemed kind of open.”

“Yeah, three locked doors with badges required between the crèche facility and public facing part of the center,” Buck said. “Though the child of an online parent is not a target in a traditional sense because that’s the road to a feral homicide. No amount of money is worth trying to escape that kind of manhunt.”

“Granted,” Eddie said then took the phone out of Buck’s hand. “Stop being stingy with the baby.”

Buck just huffed and watched Eddie watch Wyatt. He figured that it might be part of his new norm going forward. At the station, he counted himself fortunate to get his phone back, but he had no luck getting actual space from the man.

He really didn’t want space, but he figured he might like to at least have the option. Buck eyed Eddie as he cut vegetables as the man had only retreated to the sofa next to the kitchen area in the loft to stare moodily at his own phone. Since it was tempting to take his phone back to Eddie so he could continue to stare at Wyatt, Buck decided to ignore his pouting Sentinel-to-be.

“This could be the most entertainment I’ve had on the job in years,” Bobby muttered as he tossed the cut chicken in the large wok he had on the burner.

Buck shot him a dirty look and his captain just grinned in return. He finished the veg he was cutting, brushed it into a bowl, then washed the cutting board before setting it aside to dry on a rack. He checked the time on the two rice cookers on the counter before putting a stack of plates and the basket of silverware on the table.

Eddie came to the table at that point, did the work to set it up and Buck went to get the rice out of the cookers since Bobby preferred to serve meals family-style, and no one on shift was prepared to argue with him since they ate so well.

The most interesting part of the return to work as that no one on the squad had asked him a single intrusive question about being a Guide, his search process, or the whole thing with Eddie following him around like a dejected puppy. When lunch was on the table, everyone got comfortable and ate with a little bit of conversation that was easy, light, and completely bereft of the ugly little teasing edges he’d noted before his leave.

He turned to Eddie. “Is this your fault?”

Eddie shrugged. “Probably. The first three shifts I worked here, they were all borderline inappropriate whenever Bobby turned his back.” Several people huffed and those that didn’t sent him amused looks. “But I only ever reported one person, and the rest took it on as a life lesson which was not my intention, but I can’t fault the results.”

Buck nodded thoughtfully even as Hen laughed. “What exactly does borderline inappropriate mean to you?”

Eddie stared at him for a moment then focused on his food.

“I used to tell dirty jokes,” Hen confessed. “But they made him have a sad face in my direction.”

“I used to meet my boyfriend out in the parking lot on breaks,” Chad Rogers confessed. “Eddie rolled his eyes at us four times in the same day over it so now he doesn’t visit because he doesn’t want to get eye-rolled by an Alpha Sentinel.”

Eddie sent him a dirty look. “You could’ve brought him into the station and introduced him instead of treating him like some dirty secret. Which is weird, since you can’t keep a secret to save your own life.” He waved his fork briefly then shook his head before returning to his food.

“Anyone else?” Buck questioned. “Cosmo?”

Cosmo Fuentes shrugged. “We have to mute the TV when we’re on the PlayStation, just in case.”

Eddie huffed. “They were up here playing Call of Duty, and while I can tell the difference between actual gun fire and gun fire in a game—the acoustics in the station are…. It was a lot. I can’t imagine how it would’ve gone if I wasn’t wearing the cuff.”

Buck sent Cosmo an appalled look.

“We took all the war games out of the rotation,” Cosmo said in his own defense. “And he got to pick all the meals for the next two shifts as an apology.”

“A Sentinel on shift required adjustments,” Bobby said easily and glanced around the room. “We were happy to make them—after all he’s saved the lives of nearly all of us at least twice due on instinctual responses on scenes in the last six months.”

Buck made a note to get a detailed explanation on those events later because everyone got a little stiff at the mention, but then slowly relaxed. He wondered how they would respond to the news that Eddie was on track to be the next Alpha Prime of Los Angeles. The man had seemed pretty convinced of his leadership path amongst their own kind and it had felt right when Buck had thought about it.

“Anyone else want to confess to making Eddie sad?” Buck questioned and Eddie sighed. “Now’s the time.”

“They’re no worse than anyone else,” Eddie said and sat back with a shrug. “Everyone does shit the shouldn’t. My neighbor is cheating on his wife and seems to think I haven’t noticed because I’m not bonded. His wife already knows he’s cheating and is currently gathering evidence so she can ruin his life.

“They’re both assholes so I don’t even care which one of them wins that particular fight. At least they don’t have kids, because no kid deserves to live with either of them. She’s banging the guy who cuts their grass out of spite. He lives on the corner with his grandmother and is sleeping with three different women on the street. He’s just twenty so he’s young enough to be morally bankrupt with youth as an excuse. He offered to cut my grass for fifty dollars a week.”

“Did he offer you his other services?” Buck asked in amusement and even Bobby laughed at that.

Eddie shrugged. “He makes the appearance of being straight. I don’t know if they’re paying for the sex, or if he’s just using the opportunity to get leg over. All three of them are a full decade older than him.”

“Wow,” Hen said with a laugh. “I don’t think your neighborhood can afford for you to bond, Eddie.”

“Fortunately, for them, I’ll have to move. My current house is small and is my uncle’s rental property. It doesn’t have the wiring or room for an empathic dampening system,” Eddie said easily. “And while the Burton Foundation would pay for renovations on a house I was buying, they wouldn’t want to waste funds on a rental. Plus, my current neighbors are depraved, and they’d probably irritate the hell out of an online Guide which would piss me off to an untold degree.”

“You’re so judgmental,” Hen said with a delighted grin.

“Most Sentinels are,” Buck admitted and shrugged when Eddie sent him a dirty look. “It’s just the way they are—but it makes it easier to trust them with the gifts they’ve been given. They exist in a very binary moral space, and there is a wide divide between right and wrong for a very good reason. They guard the balance.”

* * * *

Eddie leaned on his truck as Buck left the station house and headed in his direction. They were parked side-by-side, by his own design, and he had no shame for it. He crossed his arms and watched Buck put his bag in the SUV then walk over to him.

“What other adjustments?”

Buck raised an eyebrow. “When do you pick up Christopher?”

“Our first appointment is at eleven. Carla is going to pick him up since we don’t ever plan for me to be responsible for him directly after a shift,” Eddie said. “Just in case the shift is difficult. When do you pick up Wyatt?”

“He’s at home. Everstar, the nanny, picked him up at six last night and she expects me home shortly. So, follow me.” He waved a hand. “It’ll make things easier across the board for you if you know exactly where I sleep.”

Eddie made a face but nodded.

As it turned out, Buck lived further away from the station than he did but it wasn’t a bad drive and shortly he was parking in the guest parking spot he was pointed toward. He followed Buck into the house and stayed in the foyer as the other man stored his work bag in a closet.

A young woman, fresh faced with a genuine smile joined them almost immediately. She had a backpack over one shoulder and a baby monitor in her hand. Buck took the device when she offered it.

“Everstar Bartlett meet Eddie Diaz,” Buck said. “My Sentinel.”

Eddie took a deep breath because Buck had never been so direct about it before and the claiming was nice. It was also kind of exciting and that was instantly also annoying.

She smiled. “It’s a pleasure, Alpha Diaz.”

He stared for a moment. “You’re a Guide.”

“Yeah, of course,” she said easily. “I came online last year and trained to work as a conservator and nanny. I’m in psionic studies at UCLA.” She checked her watch. “I have time to hit the library unless you need me to stay and watch Wyatt for longer?”

“No, we’re good,” Buck said. “Did you grab some food?”

“Yeah, I promise not to skip any more meals,” she said with a laugh, waved, and slid out the door even as Buck opened his mouth to speak. “No complaining, Buck!”

Buck huffed as he shut the door and locked it. “Her schedule is tight and she was skipping meals because of it. I made her promise to make food here to take with her, at the very least.”

He walked away and Eddie couldn’t help but follow him through the house to what turned out to be the nursery. It felt weird to follow him into the room without an invitation, so Eddie lingered in the doorway watching Buck stare at his son for a full thirty seconds before he nodded and turned to face him.

“Adjustments.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said.

“Let’s sit in the den,” Buck said quietly and Eddie exhaled slowly as he nodded.

He let himself be led deeper into the house toward a large room full of windows and a beach view. Eddie stared for a moment then sat down on the sofa where he was pointed. Buck sat down near him, close enough to touch, but far enough that they couldn’t touch accidentally.

“Tell me about Christopher’s relationship with his mother and why you have primary custody.” He wet his lips. “Exactly why—not the surface level response you give everyone when it comes up.”

Eddie wet his lips. “I’ve not…this isn’t something anyone but Shannon knows.”

“I kind of figured,” Buck murmured.

“When I came home, Shannon insisted that I should recover in her apartment. Christopher was very upset that I’d been hurt and was stressed out, which worried us both since he often has issues eating if he’s upset. He was, at the time, already a bit underweight.” He focused on the cuff, rubbed against the runes with his thumb.

“Things were fine for a while—I was healing well but I was getting rashes and itching like hell all the time. I was referred to an allergist by the VA, and through a genuinely awful process we came to realize that I was allergic to Shannon. It was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard, and I told the doctor that. I had sex regularly with that woman for years, Buck.”

Buck laughed a little. “Yeah, that fact remains very crazy.”

“So, I got a studio apartment near by, but it wasn’t enough. I stopped sleeping, I lost weight, and I came precariously close to a feral episode because she told me she wanted to take him out of town for a weekend to visit her mother in San Bernardino without me.

“She surrendered primary custody with practically no discussion, and I think a part of her is afraid of me even now,” he admitted. “I’ve tried to reassure her, but there’s a hard thing between us that was never there before. I can’t see it ever going away because the Sentinel in me doesn’t…. I don’t think it’s about trust.”

“It’s not,” Buck assured. “If it was, you wouldn’t be able to let him spend the night with her. It was a territorial response, Eddie. At the time, El Paso was your territory, and she tried to remove your only child from it. I don’t see how you could’ve avoided that kind of response. The fact that neither of you considered it a problem until it happened, demonstrates exactly why you’ve genuinely hindered yourself by ignoring the resources the Burton Foundation has on offer for you.”

“Right,” Eddie said roughly and cleared his throat. “Tell me what adjustments I’m not prepared for.”

“Having a Guide in your home is going to change the dynamic again—between you and Christopher and between Christopher and his mother. He’s going to prefer your Guide, Eddie. The Guide part of him is going to be drawn to me due to our very nature.”

“He’s going to prefer you,” Eddie said. “Over both of his biological parents.”

“Eventually, yes,” Buck said. “He’s a very empathetic kid so he’ll certainly try to keep it to himself, and he certainly won’t reject either of you, but he’ll be invested in being in my company whenever possible. Also, he’ll watch the way you treat me and develop expectations for his own bond in the future based on that.”

Eddie sat back a little, put off by the wording. “How do you think I’d treat you?”

“Exactly how I need to be treated,” Buck said easily. “So, we need to make sure Christopher understand that his future needs might be very different from my own. We’ll already battle various stereotypes he’s exposed to by the media and the general public at large. He’s probably already been told that you’re a savage that mundanes tolerate out of fear of being punished by the psionic plane.”

Eddie huffed a little. “Yeah, that’s…my own mother has called me a savage, Buck. She didn’t even mean it to be an insult, just like a description of me that she believed to be true. Before I came online, either one of my parents would tell me if off if I did something they didn’t like. I was still the favorite, overtly so, but they were free with their opinions. Now, they treat me like I’m a bomb.”

“Are you the first online Sentinel in your family in a while?” Buck questioned.

“There are no Sentinels on my maternal side at all,” Eddie said. “And on my father’s side, a few distant cousins are online as Guides and my great-grandfather was a Sentinel, but he passed when my father was a child.”

“So, most of your immediate family has little to no experience with having an online Sentinel in their space on a regular basis,” Buck surmised. “We can hand them information all day long, but it won’t change much if they aren’t prepared to educate their selves. Your leadership path in the region is going to be intimidating to a lot of people, you know that, right?”

“Right,” Eddie said and looked down at the cuff. “Does it intimidate you?”

“No.”

“Just no?”

“K2 is intimidating—a beautiful, Alpha Sentinel is not,” Buck said in amusement. “Though it’s been years since I’ve come close to climbing a mountain that size, and now it’s not an option. Job risks are one thing but taking a risk with my life for fun feels obscene.”

Eddie nodded. “I get it—fatherhood changes you in fundamental ways that seem impossible before it happens. I don’t even recognize the man I was before Christopher.” He cleared his throat. “I want you in the worst possible way. I’ve never, ever been so attracted to someone I barely know. It’s been difficult to get my head around.”

“I can see that,” Buck said. “Feel it, too, in the spirit of full-disclosure.”

“You’re an alpha in your right,” Eddie said. “Most Wolf Guides are, right?”

“Right and it’s why Dr. Salas handled my training personally. He knew that my Sentinel would be an Alpha Prime. You were probably already on his radar as you stand out in the region despite the cuff. Even before I set eyes on you, I felt your presense within the psionic current of the area. Most guides over level five could probably physically locate you within a few hours due to that influence, if it were required.”

Eddie stared for a moment as he processed that, as he hadn’t considered his impact on the empathic landscape of the city. “Is my unbonded status upsetting them?”

“It’s not upsetting in the least, but you’re probably tempting the hell out of a lot of people. Unbonded ones probably go out of their way to get close to you in public in the hopes of getting your attention. Nothing manipulative or malicious, mind you, but you’re going to catch their notice until you’re bonded. Even then, you’ll be extremely pleasant to be around for the vast majority of Guides due to your Alpha status.”

“I’ve noticed Guides here and there,” Eddie admitted. “But none of them were all that interesting…until you. Which is pretty frustrating.”

Buck grinned and raised an eyebrow. “Wanna taste?”

“Yeah,” Eddie admitted immediately and took the hand Buck offered with a little sound of approval he couldn’t keep to himself.

He eased right into his Guide’s space, and the first brush of Buck’s mouth against his was so good that he shuddered with it. Eddie took a deep breath as a big hand slid down his back, and he realized he owed Buck some intimate details about himself that were certainly going to be relevant. He pulled his mouth free, let his forehead rest against Buck’s and took a deep breath.

“I’ve…hmmm.” He exhaled slowly when Buck laughed a little. “Shut up.”

“You cool?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re shaking,” Buck murmured and let his hand rest on a hip. “I wish I knew you better than I do.”

“Same,” Eddie confessed and closed his eyes. “I’ve never been with another man.”

“Oh,” Buck said.

Eddie was relieved by the lack of a retreat—no stiffening, no show of physical withdrawal that he’d expected. “There has been…you know attraction in the past, but women were easier and I lived in Texas as a teenager then joined the Army.”

“And after the Army?” Buck questioned.

Eddie shook his head and averted his gaze. “The last was a woman. I had leave in Germany about six months before I came online and I met a woman—fierce, strong, and utterly open to whatever kind of sex I wanted to have. It was very good.”

“And you’ve been online for three years.”

“Yeah, just about that,” Eddie said. “At first, it was about recovery and dealing with the fact that I’d come online in combat. But even after I healed, there was no real interest to be had. I had tests done, and the doctor referred me to a psychologist. I didn’t go.”

Buck sighed. “Eddie.”

“I know,” he muttered. “I just really didn’t want to be told I was basically broken by combat and coming online in the most violent fashion possible. Over the last six months, things have shifted a little and it was like I relaxed enough to think about letting other people close again. Except, even with the cuff, practically everyone I got close to just smelled wrong. Until you.”

“I’m relieved to be the exception,” Buck murmured and shifted them around until Eddie found himself relaxing on the other man’s chest in way he’d definitely thought more about than he’d ever admit. “I’m bisexual—so I’ve experience with men and women. More men than women, if I’m honest, because even as a latent my empathy was pretty advanced. Everyone is equally emotional on the empathic front, but men are often better at suppressing it which isn’t necessarily healthy, but it made sex with them easier.”

Eddie nodded and studied Buck’s face. “How will I be adjusting to you?”

“I’d like you to consider moving in here at some point as I own it and there’s no point in paying rent elsewhere. It’s already been renovated for empathic and sense shielding. You clearly want things that you’ve never experienced before so I think there could be a learning curve there and I don’t just mean the sex itself.”

Eddie stared for a moment. “I’m not a virgin, obviously.”

He laughed. “Yeah.” He used his thumb to smooth down Eddie’s eyebrow. “But sex with a woman isn’t like sex with a man.”

Eddie wet his lips. “I let the woman in Germany…peg me.” He shrugged when Buck’s blinked in surprise. “She was very accommodating—a Marine and she was getting ready to enter training for Force Recon—so her leave was her last bit of freedom before she went into some intense training. Feminine, but strong. Anyways, we spent the weekend together and she admitted to being bisexual.”

“And that led to a strap-on?” Buck questioned and Eddie shrugged. “Man, I never get that lucky.”

“Don’t tell me lies,” Eddie muttered and Buck laughed. “With your looks, you get lucky every single time you want to.”

He shifted upward and kissed him again because Buck’s genuine amusement was so attractive and sweet that he could hardly stand it. Buck pulled him close, held him with firm but careful hands and it made him feel precious, which was shocking and perfect.

They parted for a moment, shifted and immediately sought another kiss as they settled on the couch in an easy sprawl. The desire to get as close as possible was overwhelming—he couldn’t get enough suddenly and that was alarming.

“I’ve got you,” Buck murmured against his jaw. “It’ll be okay.”

Eddie relaxed against him and buried his face against Buck’s throat as he tried to regain some semblance of sanity.

“Sorry.”

“For what?” Buck questioned and ran his fingers gently through Eddie’s hair.

“You deserve better than this—than me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Buck said, tone amused and indulgent in such a way that Eddie felt both comforted and patronized to at the same time.

Wyatt started crying and Eddie moved away from Buck reluctantly then slouched back on the sofa as his partner rolled off the sofa then grabbed the baby monitor. After a few moments, Eddie stood and followed Buck toward the sounds of a fussy baby.

Once more, he found himself hovering in the doorway of the nursery as Buck plucked Wyatt out of the crib then took the baby to the changing table. He retreated immediately when the diaper situation took an appalling turn because he figured he had weeks of leeway on that subject at the very least and he intended to make the most of them.

Eddie meandered into the kitchen, got himself a glass of water, and just shrugged when Buck joined him with a look. “I’m considering stealing his affection after potty training.”

Buck grinned. “Do you intend on including Shannon in this plan?”

“Nah, she’s on her own,” Eddie said. “I already have to basically hose down one kid due to her—no need to add the baby to that mix as well.” He checked his watch. “I should probably go but…I don’t want to.”

“We’ll be right here when you get done,” Buck said easily. “You can come back with Christopher—we’ll have dinner.”

“Dinner,” Eddie agreed with a nod. “Sounds good.”

“Any food allergies or intolerances for either of you?”

“Christopher has complained about kiwi in the past—making his mouth feel weird but the allergist said it was probably a pollen response rather than an actual allergy the fruit itself after some testing. But he doesn’t like it as a result,” Eddie explained.

“No kiwi,” Buck said in agreement. “We can handle that.”

“Right,” Eddie said, made a face at him. “Walk me out and lock the door behind me.”

“You’re a long way from getting bossing privileges around here, bud.”

“No, I’m not,” Eddie assured and laughed when Buck frowned at him.