The team may have thought that Buck and Eddie were oblivious to their feelings for each other, but that wasn't actually the case. In fact, they regularly talked about it, but they both knew that they weren't ready to change their relationship from platonic to romantic.

They weren't always planning on dating eventually. When they first met, Eddie was still technically married to Shannon and Buck was waiting on Abby to come home. Their morals wouldn't have let them consider dating each other then. They wouldn't even let "What if's" take root in their dreams.

But then, Shannon died in the accident and Buck decided to quit haunting Abby's apartment waiting for her to never return. It wasn't immediately after that when they began allowing their feelings to grow, but the doors were cracked open.

In quiet moments, their love began to develop. It developed over building Christopher's skateboard, over fighting over pizza toppings, over reading stories to Chris. Even at work, every time that Eddie lowered Buck on a rope, or grabbed him an axe, or hunting for runaway botflies, their love for each other kept growing.

"Okay, so did you know, that if you were to try and live off of only wild rabbits, you would suffer from 'rabbit starvation' and end up starving to death? Like even if your stomach was super bloated from eating so much rabbit meat, you'd still die from starvation?"

Eddie pulled the phone away from his ear to try and look at it. It took a minute for his eyes to willingly adjust to the brightness.

"Buck. Okay, one. That makes literally no sense. Isn't the point of dying from starvation that you don't have food? How does that even work? But besides that. It's like three in the morning. Why are you researching this?"

Eddie ran his hand over his face.

"Oh. Right, sorry man. I should let you get back to sleep," Buck apologized.

"Nope. Nope. You stay on the phone. I'm demanding answers. You can't just spring this oxy-oxymoron? whatever it's called on me at three in the morning and not give me an answer, Buck. It will literally haunt my dreams if you leave it at that," Eddie said.

"You sure you don't mind?"

"Buck."

"Right. So it's purely because there's not enough fat in the meat. So if you also ate something that does have enough fat in it, then you'd be fine. But it only takes a couple weeks of just rabbit meat to kill you. So, I guess if we ever get lost in the wilderness we know the trick to not dying, right?" Buck laughed.

Eddie got comfy on the bed as he let Buck's voice wash over him, rambling about his research.

After going on a bunny trail about the latest conspiracy theory he had read about, something to do with 5G towers, Buck paused.

"Buck?" Eddie prompted.

"Do you think we'll ever- do you think that maybe we could, you know. Date? In the future, I mean," Buck asked.

Eddie hummed in thought. He could picture it. Cuddling on the couch while watching Disney movies with Chris. Going out to fancy restaurants and trying not to drool over Buck in a pair of slacks. Of pushing Buck down onto the bed after a rough day at work, before giving him the best backrub of his life-don't go there, Eddie. He scolded himself. Backrubs lead to babies. Though, Buck holding a baby...and he can't get pregnant. He doesn't have to worry about that anymore.

"Eddie?" Buck asked.

"You're not going to reveal to me that you are actually an alien sent to this planet to seduce random men so that you can get knocked up and create a weird hybrid baby army, right?" Eddie couldn't help but ask.

"Dude, what?"

"Just checking," Eddied defended himself. "But, yeah. Not yet, but I think we could date. I just don't think I'm ready right now."

Buck sighed in relief.

"Good. I mean. Not that I don't want to date you, because I really do- I just don't think I'm ready right now either."

After that first conversation, it was like the ice was broken. There was something new between them. Like they were both just a little more comfortable with each other now that they had acknowledged the attraction building between them.