For the 1K word challenge on reddit. The word I received was: colour

Eddie had walked out of the Firestation and was surprised to see that Buck's Jeep was still in the parking lot. Their shift had ended about half an hour ago, and while Eddie had stayed behind to talk to Bobby about next week's shift schedule, Buck had left almost immediately like everyone else.

So Eddie was surprised to see Buck, sitting in the driver's seat of his truck, in the dark evening hours, with a fairly disturbed look on his face.

A look that Eddie didn't feel he could just leave Buck there to stew in… whatever was bothering him today. Even though they had made up after the lawsuit, Eddie was still feeling guilty about how he basically left Buck to himself and everything after the tsunami, and he knew he couldn't just leave Buck alone when he was looking like that.

Eddie slowly walked over to the driver's side of Buck's Jeep and knocked on the window. He saw Buck jump slightly, not expecting him, and then a couple seconds later Buck rolled down the window.

When Buck didn't say anything, Eddie spoke up. "What're you doing out here?" he asked. "We got off work over half an hour ago."

Buck remained silent for a couple more seconds, still staring across the parking lot through his windshield. "It's ugly," Buck whispered quietly.

"Ugly?" Eddie repeated. What could Buck possibly be talking about now? He followed Buck's gaze to see the man was staring at his truck. The new truck he had bought about a month ago with the money from his illegal fight club foray. "My truck is ugly?" Eddie asked, momentarily hurt. While he was never really one to put too much importance in what his truck looked like, so long as it was clean and didn't have any large dents or anything on it, it was still a brand new truck, and while he had sort of bought it out of the blue, he had put in a lot of thought into what the truck looked like when buying it.

Buck's face scrunched up momentarily before he answered. "Not the truck, but the color. It's an ugly color, especially in this light."

"It's the same color as your Jeep," Eddie pointed out, affronted.

Buck's face twitched again, before he said. "The color is good for a Jeep, not for a pickup truck."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Eddie asked.

"Just that your truck is ugly," Buck said as he finally put his Jeep into drive. "See you Tuesday, Eddie," he said as he rolled up his window and began driving away.

Eddie was left shaking his head. "The color's ugly? What does he know?" he mumbled to himself as he walked over and climbed into his truck, intending on forgetting the encounter as another instance of 'Buck being Buck' and going home.

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

One thing that Buck had realized early on in their relationship was that Eddie looked better when wearing darker colors. He didn't know how exactly to explain it, all he knew was that it was true, and not matter how much Eddie tried to argue this point against him, he wasn't going to be convinced otherwise.

So when Buck had come over to his house to pick Eddie up for the double date, Maddie had wanted to take them on with her and Chim, Buck's face scrunched up in what Eddie had come to call his 'I don't like it face.'

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Eddie asked when he greeted Buck..

"Like what?" Buck asked.

"Like I made some sort of horrible fashion mistake," Eddie said.

Buck tilted his head to the side. "Maybe because you did?" Buck said. "Did you really have to go with that shirt?"

"What's wrong with this shirt?" Eddie asked, looking down at it. It didn't have any stains or anything on it, so what was Buck's problem now?

Buck let out a troubled noise, before speaking. "It's just… the color doesn't look good on you."

That made Eddie pause, the color didn't look good on him. Eddie knew Buck wasn't really a fan of the color choices Eddie would make, if Buck's complaints about the color of Chris's backpack or Buck's eye roll at the set of plates he bought last month said anything. But this was a new low.

"You look better in darker colors," Buck added.

"Darker colors," Eddie said as he looked at the shirt he was wearing again. It was a simple light blue button down, one of Eddie's favorites actually. "As in not light blue."

Buck let out another humming sound. Eddie took that as his reluctant agreement to what he said.

"You're not going to let us leave until I change will you?" Eddie asked.

"No," Buck mumbled quietly.

Eddie sighed as he turned around to go back to his bedroom, intent on changing his shirt, to some darker color apparently.

"Pick the navy blue one," Buck shouted from down the hall. "You can still wear blue that way!"

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

"If I agree to move in," Buck started to say. Eddie had been trying to get the man to agree to move into his house for weeks now. Buck had already basically been living there, and in the past two months he had only gone back to his loft about once a week. Plus, the lease on his loft was almost up, so it was as good a time as any. "Can we get new throw pillows?" Buck asked.

"New throw pillows?" Eddie repeated, confused. He picked one up off of the couch and looked it over. It looked good, no stains or holes. It was still fluffy and everything. He couldn't see anything wrong with them. "What's wrong with the one's I have?"

Buck hummed in thought. "Nothing's wrong with them, it's just…" he trailed off.

"It's just… what?" Eddie prompted.

"The… colors look awful," Buck eventually said after a couple seconds.

Eddie paused. Was Buck being serious here? The colors of the throw pillows are awful? How could a throw pillow look awful? "Awful?" Eddie repeated, his mind going in circles.

Buck picked at a thread coming off the side of one of the pillows. The pillows were all in the shape of a basic square. One had white and blue stripes, another white and gray, and a third with white and black stripes. Buck didn;t really know why he didn't like them, he just didn't like the pillows.

Buck turned his face to look at Eddie. "The stripes are awful Eddie."

Eddie continued to look into Buck's eyes, and just blinked. His mind spaced out and he didn't know how exactly to refute that statement. Why did Buck's eyes always do that to him?

Eventually, Eddie sighed, "If we get new ones will you finally move in then?"

Buck paused, thinking and looking around Eddie's living room.

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

Buck had been basically living at Eddie's place for two months, when the two men decided now would be a good time for him to 'officially move in.' That of course meant moving all of Buck's stuff from his loft into Eddie's house.

Not all of Buck's stuff. A lot of the larger furniture Buck managed to sell to someone or another. But as Buck brought another box through his house, Eddie realized that Buck had a lot of stuff. Enough stuff that they were needing to rearrange parts of the house. And of course that meant that along the way a scuff here and there appeared on the walls.

"They're not coming out," Eddie grumbled, his face scrunched up as he tried to wipe the dark mark that had appeared at some point during the day. "Where did this even come from anyway?" he asked.

Buck looked at the scuff mark. "Maybe the table we moved to Chris's room?"

"Well we can't just leave it here," Eddie said as he dropped the washcloth. "It's in the middle of the wall in the middle of the room."

Buck turned his head to the side as he looked at the wall. "Maybe we can hang some wall decoration on it?" he asked.

"Hang something two feet off the ground?" Eddie asked, then shook his head. "No, it will end up broken within two weeks."

"Well we can paint the wall," Buck suggested.

"Paint the wall?" Eddie asked.

"Yeah," Buck nodded. "While we're moving all the stuff around is the perfect time. We can give the room a new color."

"A new… color?" Eddie repeated. "What's wrong with the color it is now?"

"Now?" Buck looked at the wall. "It's just… tan is kind of a boring color, you know?"

"Boring?" Eddie repeated, he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "My walls are boring."

"Buck's right Dad," Chris chimed in from across the room. "Tan is a boring color."

"Tan was the way it's been for years!" Eddie said. "You guys have never said anything about it before."

"But that's the way it was when we moved in," Chris said. "It's old now, we should change it."

Eddie rolled his eyes but relented. "What color do you two think we should paint the walls then?"

Buck and Chris shared a conspiratorial look before they answered unanimously. "Orange."

"Orange?" Eddie asked, and blinked at them in disbelief. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Orange?... For a living room?"

"It will help bring out energy, Dad," Chris argued.

"Well, maybe not a bright sunshine orange," Buck said and tilted his head. "But maybe a more… neutral orange. No, pastel orange. There's a lot of different shades you know?"

"But it doesn't go with any of the furniture colors!" Eddie protested.

"Well, maybe if you hadn't had picked such boring furniture-" Buck began.

"We are not getting all new furniture!" Eddie all but screamed. "You already made me get new pillows, now new walls. We're keeping the furniture."

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

Eddie walked into the kitchen, setting down the bags from his latest Target shopping trip on the counter. From across the kitchen at the table, he heard Buck chuckling at something he was looking at on his phone.

"What's so funny?" Eddie asked as he started unpacking the bags and putting things in their respective places in the kitchen.

"Look at this," Buck said as he leaned over and showed Eddie his phone screen. It was a picture Maddie had taken of Chimney trying to put together a baby crib. The man seemed to be stuck in a deep struggle.

"Have they decided on a name yet?" Eddie asked, chuckling.

"No," Buck shook his head as he took his phone back. "They still can't make up their minds on it."

"And if it's a boy or girl?" Eddie asked.

"They're still waiting until after the birth," Buck said. "That's why they want people to buy gender neutral clothes and stuff for her baby shower." Buck then popped his head up to look at Eddie. "You did remember to buy something for the baby shower, right?"

"Of course I did," Eddie said as he pointed at the shopping bags he had just set on the counter. "You're the one that keeps forgetting things when you go shopping."

"Hey!" Buck objected. "I told you to write the stuff you need on the shopping list."

"I do write it on the shopping list," Eddie said.

"Yeah, yeah," Buck said as he walked over to the table and began rifling through the shopping bags. "Let's just see what you got them."

Finding what Eddie bought for the baby shower, Buck pulled it out of the bag. A box of baby diapers, a package of baby bottles, a couple baby toys, and a few baby onesie. The one on top caught Buck's attention first. A simple green onesie with a small bumble bee patch sewn onto the front. It looked nice, although…

"You got her a puke green onesie?" Buck asked as he held the small article of clothing out in front of him.

Eddie rolled his eyes, long since coming to the conclusion that Buck would never accept his color choices. "It's not puke green," he said. "It's olive."

"Come on, Eddie," Buck said as he put the onesie down on the table. "You were at that call with the barfing baby last week. This is the exact same color as the kid's throwup."

"But look at the little bumble bee on the front of it," Eddie pointed out. "That's why I chose that one, not because of the color."

Buck shrugged as he thought it over. "I guess it's cute, but Maddie hates bees after she got stung that one time when she was fourteen, there's no way she'll dress her baby up in this."

Eddie threw his hands up. "If you don't like it then you can go back to the store and buy a new one," he said.

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

Eddie couldn't help but notice that Buck had left all of the green ornaments in the box of Christmas tree ornaments by his foot. It piqued his interest, but he hadn't said anything yet. Buck and Chris had developed a system of sorts when it came to decorating the Christmas tree over the years, and he had quickly learned that it was best for him to just be bossed around when this happened.

But it seemed Chris asked the question for him. "What about the green ones, Buck?" he asked.

"The green ones?" Buck asked as he looked down at the box of remaining ornaments. "Oh," he said. "I must have forgotten about them."

He picked the box up into his hands and then looked at the Christmas tree again. "Do we need the green ones though?" he asked.

"What do you mean, do we need them?" Christopher asked. "It's Christmas, of course we need them."

"But it's just that…" Buck started. "The tree this year has a lot more green on it, so do we really need them?"

Christopher scowled, obviously put off by Buck's suggestion. "It's Christmas Buck," he said. "Green is a Christmas color, of course we need them."

Eddie couldn't help but let out a laugh at the interaction between the two. "What is it?" Buck asked as he looked around at Eddie.

"Nothing," Eddie said. "Now you know how I feel…"