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“I should go.”
Eddie says it because it’s the kind of thing you say when you’ve been laying in someone else’s bed for the past hour, scrolling through your phone in silence after waking up from crashing there after a night out. The shadow of a hangover is throbbing faintly behind his left eye, mouth a little dry, clothes feeling a little stale on his body. It’s the kind of thing you say when you have to get up and take a shower and brush your teeth and drink some coffee.
Buck grunts. “Why?”
And Eddie turns his head.
He’s laying on the pillows on the far side of the bed, the one that’s not permanently indented with the shape of Buck. The pillow smells a little like Buck anyway, and a little like his laundry detergent, and a little like Eddie’s own shampoo which he knows Buck uses sometimes. It smells like the two of them tangled up.
They’re twenty seven hours into ninety six off, three more days of nothing stretching out in front of them. Nothing but this, and Buck, and the early afternoon sun pouring in through the big loft windows.
“I guess I don’t have to go,” he says. He locks his phone and drops it on his chest and curls an arm under the back of his head. “I do kind of have to pee, though.”
Buck raises his eyebrows and looks away from his own phone.
“I have a bathroom,” he says. “Two of them.”
Eddie smiles. “You do.”
“Which you can use.”
And –
“Okay,” he says.
Okay . Just like that.
He uses Buck’s toothbrush while he’s in there too, splashes some water on his face and strips out of last night’s clothes and wanders back into the bedroom naked to dig around in Buck’s drawers for a fresh pair of underwear and a shirt. When he turns back around, Buck is watching him from the bed, eyes trailing up.
He lifts his chin. “Looks good on you.”
And Eddie looks down at his chest, at the cracked and faded logo for the 2007 Central Pennsylvania High School Wrestling Championship, and laughs.
“Thanks.”
He climbs back in bed and leans against the headboard and reaches for the TV remote on the nightstand. Buck, who’s still laying sprawled on his back, rolls over until he’s nudging himself up under Eddie’s arm, and Eddie lets him, lets his own hand fall where it lands until Buck turns his head and noses at Eddie’s thumb enough for him to catch the hint and move it to his hair instead.
“What do you want to watch?” he asks.
“Don’t care,” Buck says. His voice is quiet. Even and soft. He yawns, and Eddie winds his fingers through a few curls and gives them a little tug. “Something scary. For Halloween.”
Even though it’s technically over now.
He pages through the horror section of a few different apps anyway, flips through options until he gets bored of trying to decide and picks one at random. They watch in silence for a few minutes, and then around the time someone gets slashed for the first time, Buck shifts against his side and says,
“I’m hungry.”
Eddie combs the hair off his forehead and brushes a thumb over his temple. “So go make something.”
“Don’t want to,” Buck says. He rolls over again until he’s laying flat with his head in Eddie’s lap. “I want tacos.”
Eddie glances down at him, at the way his hand has shifted so it’s resting against the side of Buck’s neck instead. His thumb nudges up against the knot of muscle at the hinge of his jaw just below his ear, and he digs it in, applies just enough pressure to make Buck’s mouth drop open a little.
“So order tacos,” he says after a beat, dragging his eyes away from the pink color of his lips to meet his eye instead. “And get me a breakfast burrito. Bacon and jalapeno.”
“And potato,” Buck says. He picks up his phone. “I know.”
But halfway through ordering, Buck changes his mind and decides that what he actually wants is a burger, so Eddie ends up with a steak sandwich instead. Which is fine. He doesn’t actually care what he eats, just that he has a reason to stay.
When their food shows up, Buck slips out of bed and pads down the steps to answer the door. Eddie listens to the sound of him shuffling around the kitchen to make coffee, hears the downstairs shower start and stop while it brews, and when he finally reappears, he’s got two mugs in one hand and the handles of a takeout bag in the other. He’s also still naked from his shower, and he doesn’t bother to get dressed before he clambers back into bed.
“Yours,” he says as he passes Eddie one of the mugs. “What happened in the movie while I was gone?”
Eddie shrugs a little as he takes a sip of his coffee, black instead of the half gallon of oat milk that Buck dumped into his own. “The cheerleader died.”
“Oh,” Buck says, and he sounds genuinely disappointed. “I wanted her to make it.”
“The cheerleaders never make it.”
Buck excavates one of the takeout containers and peeks inside before passing it to Eddie.
“Still.”
They eat in silence for a few minutes while they watch the killer shamble across the screen; Eddie’s sandwich is spicy with horseradish and arugula, and it clears out his sinuses, scrubs the last of the hangover from the inside of his brain.
“You want to talk about it?” he asks after a moment. He steals a fry out of the box in Buck’s lap. “Last night.”
The breakup that happened in front of everyone while they were all wearing stupid fucking costumes and having a good enough time until –
Buck doesn’t answer, and Eddie watches him take a bite of his burger, chew and swallow and sip at his coffee. Eyes still fixed on the screen where someone’s getting a knife in the back. Eventually he takes a deep breath, holds it in, then lets it back out all at once.
“Not really.”
Which means yes.
There’s a scar on Buck’s left collarbone left by some piece of shrapnel at some point, and Eddie’s eyes fix there, on the way his chest rises and falls in steady rhythm where he’s sitting cross-legged and naked and just within reach.
“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” he says after a beat. “What happened.”
Buck’s eyes slide from the TV screen over to Eddie. He sets down his burger and moves the takeout container to the nightstand.
“I know.”
“Okay.” Eddie picks at his sandwich. Nods his head and swallows around his own throat. “Did he really say that? About us.”
It would be nice of you to actually dump me before you crawl into bed with Eddie .
That’s what Buck had said that he said, but they’d all been drunk. Eddie was drunk, and Buck was drunk, and Tommy was drunk too. But they’re not drunk now, and Buck clears his throat then takes a sip of his coffee.
“Yep.”
Eddie feels the corners of his mouth draw down.
“Yikes.”
Buck raises his eyebrows. “Was he wrong?”
Eddie sets down his sandwich, lets his eyes draw up the line of Buck’s body where he’s sitting folded in on himself, hunched over his coffee and facing Eddie on the bed.
“I mean,” he says. “Do you want him to be wrong?”
Buck makes a quiet sound. His head tilts to the side, and Eddie feels his heart thump.
“I asked first.”
Eddie lets out a breath. “You know what I mean, though,” he says. “What he meant.”
Buck shrugs a little. “You’re already here. I want you here.”
And Eddie feels himself nodding before the thought has even made it all the way to his brain.
“Yeah,” he says. “I want to be here too.”
They lay side by side as the movie autoplays into something else, stretched out on their stomachs while they watch a new cast of improbably attractive college students get murdered by a different axman. And then twenty minutes in, Eddie turns his head to sink his teeth into the bare meat of Buck’s shoulder.
“Hey,” he says quietly
Buck draws in a breath and leans into him. “Hi.” His hand comes up to cup the back of Eddie’s head. “Are you pulling a move on me?”
Eddie laughs, soft and muffled against his skin. “Yeah,” he says. He nudges the bridge of his nose against Buck’s arm. “Roll over.”
He’s still not wearing anything, so there’s nothing but a long unbroken line of skin under Eddie’s hands when Buck flops down on his back, soft and warm and easy.
“Have you ever done this before?” Buck asks, two big hands cupping either side of Eddie’s head, fingers mussing up his hair as Eddie drops his mouth to the first patch of skin he can reach. “With – not a woman?”
Eddie hums, picks up his head. His own hands are shaking as he draws them down Buck’s sides, shivery and light. Lets himself be dragged up until he’s hovering an inch above Buck’s face. Their lips brush together for the first time as he says,
“Once.” He drops a kiss on Buck’s mouth as he watches his face twitch in surprise. “A couple years ago.”
One of Buck’s hands drops from Eddie’s hair to rest on his shoulder instead, and Eddie tilts his chin forward just enough to catch his lips again, deeper this time. And it’s – better. It’s better than he thought it would be, than he imagined. He’s spent a lot of time imagining, in quiet private moments kept safe and close to his heart, but he couldn’t have known it would be like this: hot and raw and tinged with desperation. Sunlight streaming in through the windows and the wide expanse of Buck’s body under him, a firm ripple of muscle under his hands as he runs his fingers down Buck’s arm to grab at his wrist where Buck’s holding onto the back of his neck, tongue in his mouth like he’s trying to climb down Eddie’s throat and make a home there behind his ribs.
When they come up for air, Buck’s teeth latch onto his jaw next to his chin. Sucks and bites until it stings while Eddie works his way out of the boxers he stole from the drawer earlier.
“You never told me,” Buck says as he moves to a spot on the underside of Eddie’s chin.
It’s not accusatory, more – true. A fact. Eddie never told him.
“I was trying to get over you,” he says, an admission tumbling out before he can stop himself, like the filter has been stripped away now that he actually has him. Has this. “Didn’t work.”
“You said it was a couple years ago, though.”
He pulls back to meet Eddie’s eye as Eddie nudges his legs apart with one of his knees, and Eddie raises his eyebrows.
“Yeah.”
Buck’s breath is sharp when it punches out of his lungs.
“Oh.”
Eddie smiles as he settles on top of him, the lines of their hips slotting into place. Buck pushes a hand back through his hair and draws him back down into a kiss, then – muffled against his mouth,
“When?”
“Um.” Eddie lets out a breath, a little shaky. Buck is hard against his hip, and it’s making his brain struggle to focus. “When you were with Taylor? And I was – not doing great.”
“Did he look like me?” Buck asks. There’s a glint in his eye, and Eddie runs a hand down his side to grab at his hip. “The guy.”
Eddie laughs. “A little.”
“Good,” Buck says, smug tilt to his smile. He lifts his hips until they press up against Eddie’s. “Touch me.”
“Oh yeah?” Eddie says. He raises his eyebrows. “You’re calling the shots?”
Buck lets out a laugh, lets Eddie move him where he wants him. “If you want.”
“I just want you,” Eddie says. That’s all he’s ever wanted, really, and he already has him. Has had him, but now has him like this too. He wraps a hand around Buck, watches the way his face shifts with it. “Tell me what you like.”
Buck’s breath stutters, eyes fluttering shut. He’s beautiful – beautiful, and Eddie’s chest aches.
“You.”
Eddie breathes a laugh, draws his hand up the length of him and runs his thumb over the head. “What else?”
“Um,” Buck says. His turn to lose the thread of his words. Eddie drops his head down to press his forehead to Buck’s sternum, stares at the expanse of his own hand on Buck’s dick and tries not to let his brain spiral out of his ears about it. “A little more. Tighter, I mean. Faster.”
Eddie does, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. He shifts his grip, tilts his own hips toward his hand until he can wrap his fingers around them both, letting them slide against each other through his hand. Buck’s breath catches in his chest, ragged and sharp, and his hand comes down to join Eddie’s, closing the space between his fingers.
“Kiss me again,” Buck says, and Eddie picks up his head. “Just –” He lets out a breathy laugh. “Embarrassing, but –” His hips twitch. “I’m close.”
“Me too,” Eddie says, because he is. Ten seconds of Buck’s hand on him and he’s literally – he’s right there on the edge. “We’ve got three more days off work to practice.”
“Two and a half,” Buck says, muffled against his lips. “Sort of.”
“Two and a half,” Eddie agrees. “And then –” He feels it curl at the base of his spine, in the low pit of his stomach, warm and tight and threatening to snap. “Then – fifty more years, okay?”
Buck lets out a choked sound that sounds halfway to a sob, and it gets caught in Eddie’s mouth, swallowed down his own throat as their tongues slide together, as Buck’s hips stutter up into their joined hands, as the fingers in Eddie’s hair go tight, pressure on the back of his skull holding him down as teeth dig into his lip.
His come is hot and slick where it bubbles over their fingers, his dick kicking against Eddie’s as Eddie feels himself start to tip over the edge. Buck is panting into his mouth, tight grip on his hair loosening in favor of combing his fingers through the hair at the back of his neck, easing him through it while his tongue licks out to draw Eddie back into another kiss.
“Fifty more years,” Buck says. His eyes are shut, and there’s a smile on his face. He lets out a short laugh, overwhelmed. “You’re going to be so hot when we're eighty.”
Eddie kisses him because he can, because he wants to, because he has wanted to.
“And seventy,” Buck says into his lips. “And sixty, and fifty, and –”
“I love you,” Eddie says, because it’s true.
Buck’s eyes open, and there’s sun on his face. Sun on his face and a smile on his lips and something soft in his eyes. He’s Eddie’s best friend; they know each other like – like everything. On every level. He loves him. Has loved him, maybe forever.
“Me too,” Buck says. “I love you too.”