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I: Now.
There are a lot of different ways to say the same thing.
Embarrassment, for example. You might use shame interchangeably. Perhaps humiliation, or indignity. It doesn’t really matter what word you use when they all mean the same thing — that feeling in your gut that settles like a boulder, a heat like a bee sting forming across the back of your neck, the red that spreads blotchy across cheeks and chest.
It doesn’t really matter what word you use because Eddie is familiar with all of it. Place that widely described feeling anywhere on the sliding scale of severity, from a shrug of the shoulders and a casual whatever to chasm-opening, black-hole forming and earth-shattering, and all of that is recognisable to him too. You sacrifice a certain level of self-respect when you become a parent, Eddie offered up another piece of it to his time in the military and more of it still, when he became a first responder.
This ranks firmly on the side of world-ending, by the way. And, like, it’s not even close.
It is very important to Eddie that we set the record as straight as possible here, so to be one-hundred percent crystal clear: he was under the impression they were building up to this. For months, actually. Like, okay, Eddie severely misread a situation but he never, ever would have done this — never would have put someone he cared about in a position akin to this one — unless he had thought about it a lot. And he did! Agonised over it for hours, for days and for weeks. He considered every possibility, ran every single scenario over and over in his head as many times as he could take.
Eventually, it all just started to feel like tempting fate. Like Eddie was manifesting less-than desirable outcomes because that’s just how the universe would interpret all of this second-guessing and fucking dilly-dallying. He thought he was getting ahead of the heartache. He thought he was laying down a winning hand, sweeping all the chips on the table with a royal flush.
Looking back, maybe Eddie had thought about it too much. Maybe he created false memories. Maybe he read too deeply into things that were only ever surface level. Maybe he tried to put together a puzzle and ran out of pieces before the picture was finished, and he just fucking made it all up in the empty space and it never really existed —
Well, no, actually. That’s exactly what he did.
Embarrassment. Abashment. Mortification. Doesn’t matter what you call it: it flares hot like lava in Eddie’s stomach. It’s seeping its way into his bone marrow, spreading slow and thick through his body. He looks at Buck. Buck looks back at him.
Eddie’s scrambling thoughts of a man trying to explain himself slip away like a wave, replaced by something that feels much more hollow, dark and muddled. How could you have ever thought —
Eddie clears his throat. The expression on Buck’s face is unreadable, just all open and vulnerable. Eddie thinks his chest would look like that, if this feeling propagating through all his limbs manifested itself physically. Perhaps that might offer some comfort; Eddie understands the point a to point b of the treatment of wounds. He’s felt the warmth of blood bubble up from between his fingers. He’s seen limbs severed and broken and torn off and crushed. If Eddie had a gaping hole in his chest the whole world could see, there would at least be a protocol to follow. Eddie could slip into that headspace of determined focus, where everything comes to him naturally.
But there is no physical ailment to treat, no skin to sew or cut to clean or bruise to fade. Nothing about this is tangible. It slips through Eddie’s fingers when he tries to hold onto it, like smoke.
(But something must be wrong with him, right? Not just because of the pain in his chest but all of it, his whole life, everything he does. It’s all coloured by it: his shortcomings, his mistakes. Some of the greatest things in Eddie’s left came into it by accident, and had him scrambling up the slick face of a mountain with barely enough strength left to grip.)
And so, with no treatment plan, Eddie tells Buck, “I’m gonna go.”
The last thing Eddie wants to do is sit in his own home and just fucking think some more. Thinking is what put him into this mess in the first place, and now he’s ruined the last thing he had left. Maybe he deserves it, his dark and empty living space, his too-loud brain and his stupid mouth and heart.
“Eddie,” Buck says. Eddie’s not sure what his . . . friend's face looks like right now, because Eddie’s looking anywhere he can that isn’t Buck. His eyes fall across tokens in Buck’s apartment: a picture Christopher drew a long time ago, still stuck to Buck’s fridge with a magnet shaped like a fire engine. An open tupperware container half-full of cookies. And when did Buck change the colour of his drapes?
Buck continues, “you don’t have to leave.”
Eddie can barely hear him over the blood rushing through his ears.
“No, no,” Eddie shakes his head. He’s fumbling for the knob without actually looking at it. “No, um, I really do. Need to go. I’m sorry, I —” and Eddie crosses the threshold into the hallway before he even finishes the thought, leaving Buck’s door wide open in his haste.
He hears Buck call out to him but Eddie doesn’t stop. He moves down the hallway quickly, through the door into the stairwell, afraid to even stand and wait for the elevator and find it impossible to break away again.
Once he’s safe out onto the street and inside of his truck, Eddie presses his forehead against the steering wheel, and wonders how he could have ever been so stupid.
So. Eddie told Buck he loved him.
He told Buck he loved him because it’s the truth. Because he does. Because Eddie thought his body would turn on him completely if he kept it in any longer. Because it was climbing up Eddie’s throat and threatening to choke him, because it was begging him to commit the words to the universe. There would be no rest, not until Eddie spoke it aloud, until he let the words be carried by the wind to leave their tiny marks on the world, the way every little thing does.
That’s all a little poetic, obviously. Whatever. Eddie is in love, he can be a little bit poetic.
That’s the worst part, by the way: it’s not like all of a sudden the love is gone. It’s still there, stuck behind Eddie’s ribcage, beating like a deep-planted seed in his heart, sore like a tender bruise. Only now he has nowhere to put it. And Buck was getting so much of it already, because he was the only person that Eddie saw on a regular basis that wanted any of it.
The love remains, and Eddie has no hope but to attempt to hold onto as much of it as he can. There’s no putting it back inside now.
Because that’s the other worst part: Buck doesn’t love him back.
In theory, this was something Eddie prepared himself for. When he made the decision, when there was nowhere else left to hide his feelings in his body without it all threatening to spill over, Eddie had considered all the variables and charted all the courses. Not just the good versions of the story, but the bad versions too. He told himself, if I tell Buck I love him and he can’t say it back right away, that’s okay. If I tell Buck I love him and he can’t say it back for weeks, that’s okay. If I tell Buck I love him and he can’t say it back for months, that’s okay. If I tell Buck I love him and he never says it back, that’s okay.
Buck didn’t even think they were dating.
Which at first, made no fucking sense to Eddie. Before the words settled over him like ice water, before Buck’s confused expression made Eddie feel like an animal caught it in a trap, gnawing on its own limb. Once it sunk beneath the surface of Eddie’s skin, all of that faded quickly, and it was replaced by a dark feeling that only got worse and worse. Fragments of remembrance flashed through Eddie’s thoughts; moments that meant something to him and, he realised with crashing reality, did not mean the same things to Buck. They were on completely different pages. To Eddie, it was everything. And to Buck, well, maybe it was all nothing at all.
That was not something that Eddie had prepared himself for.
This is, of course, the part where all the embarrassment came flooding in. And the hurt, too. Can’t forget about the hurt.
II: Then.
There are a few things to be said about this particular story:
First, the only way to tell it is to tell it the long way.
Second, it must be stressed that this is Eddie’s version of the events. Maybe, if Eddie’s lucky, he’ll someday understand Buck’s point of view of all this but, for now, that is not the case. It is an unfortunate distinction that must be made. Eddie and Buck were living different variants of the same shared universe. So, with that in mind —
Eddie feels like things are different after Buck sleeps over at his place for two weeks straight.
(Things are different after Buck sleeps over at his place for two weeks straight.)
They don’t plan it on purpose, it’s more just an absurd set of conveniences and circumstances that feel, honestly, perfectly standard for them. Buck spends the night after he drinks too much, pink and giggly. Buck spends the night because Christopher asks him, and then it’s the weekend, so Christopher doesn’t have to go to bed early for school. And then they’re on shift together, and hanging out after every shift, because all of their friends have much more interesting, varied lives when compared to them. It never felt forced. It never felt like too much. Seconds ticked into minutes ticked into hours ticked into days, and each night was just a little bit easier to agree to than the last, as if Eddie and Buck had just formed the worst version of a very intense habit.
Nine days in, Buck kisses Eddie in the kitchen. It’s late, after Christopher has gone to bed, and neither of them have turned any lights on; the room is illuminated by whatever yellow glow slips in from the living room, and a bright slash of fluorescence where Eddie is still holding the fridge door open.
He was getting them more beers.
It should, by all accounts, be a seismic event. It should shake the very foundations of Eddie’s carefully stacked house of cards of a life. But that’s the thing: it doesn’t feel wholly new, just an extension of something that already existed. The nature of things, like Eddie’s brain willed it without conscious thought, the way it does things like breathing and pumping blood all throughout his body.
It begins and it ends. Buck pulls away, and the gleam from the fridge touches every edge of his body. He’s bathed in it, surrounded by thick navy-tinged dark. He’s the brightest thing in the room.
Buck looks at Eddie. Bites the corner of his lip, chuckles mostly to himself.
“Okay,” Eddie says, like Buck just asked him if he wants pizza for dinner.
“Okay?” Buck repeats.
“Okay,” Eddie says it one more time, and nods tightly for good measure.
Eddie half-expects for them to get stuck in some endless loop of okay, okay, okay but then Buck’s body is swaying towards him again. They kiss once more. Eddie breathes in through his nose and tries to commit every single little detail of all this to memory, like etchings into stone.
That night, Buck abandons the couch and sleeps next to Eddie in the bed.
The sex, of course, is what really starts to complicate things.
They don’t actually have sex, not really, during the two week period Buck spends invading every single open space in Eddie’s life. Reaching through every pore until he’s touching the very fabric of it. Eddie feels like he’s expelling Buck’s imprint on his skin for days afterwards, and he’s not sure if all of it ever really leaves him.
But, yeah, they don't have sex then. Not really. What they do is make out a lot, so much so that Eddie’s kind of impressed by his virality at this age. Not that he’s anything less than in his prime, obviously! But still. It’s kind of impressive how much time he and Buck spend making out. It reminds him of high school, the months spent in Shannon’s bedroom with the door open until her parents finally left town. Sometimes it’s in the kitchen and sometimes it’s on the couch. Sometimes it’s in Eddie’s bed. It’s one of those times, against Eddie’s sheets, that Buck flips Eddie onto his back and crawls over him. Buck’s body is pressed against Eddie’s from head to toe, the pressure especially evident at his crotch, where Eddie can feel the thickness of Buck through layers of fabric. Eddie’s mouth hangs open and his hips jerk forward in half-aborted rotations, stop-and-start and stop-and-start. A whine escapes the back of Eddie’s throat before he can close his teeth and catch it.
Neither of them say anything.
(Later, this will only haunt them, in more ways than one.)
Buck gets Eddie off like that, the two of them rutting against each other and kissing sloppily. At some point, Buck grips Eddie’s leg and pulls until it’s wrapped around his waist — a better, more thorough angle, friction so delicious Eddie can feel it like a warm spot between his collarbones — and Buck leaves his hand splayed across the meat of Eddie’s thigh as he continues his work. Along Eddie’s journey to the deepest pit of pleasure, Buck slides his hand between them, right where their hips are joined. All he has to do is fucking cup his hand around the suggestion of Eddie’s cock through his clothing, and Eddie blows his load.
He’d feel worse about it, he thinks, if Buck didn’t immediately swoop in and sink his teeth into his bottom lip. But Buck does do that, and then he swipes his tongue against that same stretch of skin, burn and balm all in one.
Eddie thinks he should probably, like, do something. Thank Buck in some way that isn’t just lying here. But Eddie can’t make himself sit up from where he’s flopped against the mattress, his orgasm still rolling through him and making him lazy. He’s not freaking out (not yet, knock on wood) but it does feel like he might be processing something, something big and important. Buck doesn’t seem to mind, in all honesty, perfectly content to take his own dick out of his pyjama pants and jerk himself off. Eddie watches him, caught looking between the perfect curve of Buck’s hard dick and the way his face looks when he’s trying to make himself come. Buck scrambles to push Eddie’s shirt up, pawing at Eddie’s side to bring it higher — he ends up needing a little bit of help with it — before Buck groans deeply and shoots, all over Eddie’s stomach and chest.
And then they just sit there, breathing hard with the sweat cooling on their skin. Eddie feels ridiculous, his shirt bunched up under his armpits and Buck’s spunk all over him. But, like, it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. Not by a mile.
“I wish my phone wasn’t in the other room,” Buck says. He’s still holding his dick in one hand while the other is firmly planted on Eddie’s knee, using it for balance. “I’d take a picture of you right now just to show you what you look like.”
Eddie grimaces, but he can feel the heat as his body betrays him and reddens. Buck mostly sounds like he’s joking, so Eddie says, “over my dead body.”
If Buck were to really ask him, though — well, Eddie might think about it.
But, again, Eddie would not consider that the turning point where sex entered their relationship. Technically, maybe, but not in the specific way he thinks of it, the version that’s more meaningful. The fine line between a sometimes repeated action and a genuine change in your lifestyle. If we’re talking about the latter, Eddie would say that happened about a month after the two-week-sleepover incident.
Buck has barely touched him after he finally returned to his own apartment. They’ve spent time together since, lots of time, and though most of it was at work, a lot of it wasn’t. Sometimes Christopher was there, too, but sometimes he wasn’t. Buck and Eddie have spent many evenings sitting on this couch, just the two of them, something unimportant on the television that they’re not really paying attention to. This is the same couch they’ve made out on before. This one time that sticks out in Eddie’s memory, Buck pulled Eddie into his lap so he could put his tongue in Eddie’s mouth, and Eddie remembers thinking, wow, Buck has such big hands.
Eddie’s not sure when they decided they weren’t that doing anymore. Maybe he never got the memo.
Eddie jostles Bucks’ foot with his own. “Hey,” he says, pulling Buck’s attention away from his phone. Buck raises an eyebrow, a wordless what. “Is there a reason we haven’t, um, y’know?”
“Put something else on?” Buck asks, reaching forward to pick up the remote off the coffee table. Right now, they’re playing some non-specific nature documentary about the ocean. “I wasn’t even sure what to put on in the first place. Did you have any ideas?”
Buck offers him the remote. Eddie shakes his head.
“No, I mean . . . ,” Eddie trails off. Phrasing it as a question all of a sudden feels intimidating, like Eddie’s searching for an answer he isn’t sure if he really wants. He changes his tactic. “You haven’t kissed me since last month,” he says, because at least that’s a fact. It is indisputable. Wherever Buck takes it after that is up to him.
“Oh.” Buck makes a noise like that was the last thing he was expecting.
“Sorry. I didn’t — forget I asked.”
“No,” Buck replies quickly. He sits up straighter from where he had been leaning against the cushions. “Don’t take it back. I didn’t know if — if you still wanted me too. I thought things might be . . . different, after I left that day. I didn’t want to cross any boundaries.”
Things were different, Eddie thinks. But they were a good kind of different. Wasn’t that obvious? It’s another question Eddie’s not entirely sure he wants to know the answer to.
“You’re not crossing any lines,” Eddie tries to make himself sound adamant, final, despite all the anxiety balled up in his chest like one big knot. He thinks if he found the right threads, he might make some headway at unravelling it, but Eddie’s too afraid it would just end up all the more tangled. “I want you to.”
“What do you want me to do?” Buck asks. His voice has taken on this specific intonation, playful and a little bit sexy. He’s leaning forward now, bridging some of the space that was previously between them.
Everything. Anything. All of it, all at once. Keep looking at me like that. Kiss me, touch me, make me breathe you in. Live here with me, stay with me, me, me. Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.
“Kiss me,” Eddie says, and Buck does.
They don’t stay on the couch long. Mostly because Buck seems desperate for them to shed some layers and Eddie will be damned if he puts himself in a position to be half-naked with Buck and accidentally walked in on. They shut the TV off, and then it’s only a short journey to the bedroom. Behind a door that closes, Buck doesn’t waste any time between the moment it shuts and the first piece of clothing that comes off.
It’s Eddie’s, by the way, his shirt pulled right off of his back without issue. Buck drops it at their feet without a care in the world, and then removes his own shirt in turn. When he pushes Eddie against the door and crowds up to him, it’s skin on skin, and Eddie’s afraid there might be enough friction sparking between them to cause a fire.
Eddie kind of feels like he’s already on fire, actually, only this one is burning inside of him, previously tightly coiled in his gut and now unfurling slowly but surely. His cock is half-hard in his jeans.
(Eddie did do a lot of processing after that first time, for the record. After Buck had graciously used a hot wet cloth to clean Eddie up and then slid into the sheets beside him. Buck had fallen asleep quickly but Eddie found he couldn’t, just staring up at the ceiling and listening to Buck breathe. He did a lot of processing, he thinks, but it wasn’t about anything precise. Just a general survey of the scene, taking in everything and triaging as needed. He found it in himself to accept the things that had just occurred; he did not allow himself time to consider anything else, any of the broader lessons to be learned from this. That was — much harder, and scarier and just. Something Eddie didn’t feel like doing. Not now, maybe not ever, and for this exact moment he could be comfortable with the reality of that. So, yeah. That’s kind of where he’s at right now. All in, and yet somehow half-out.)
“We don’t have to,” Buck starts, finding the resolve to pull away for a beat. Eddie chases his mouth. Buck kisses him again like he can’t help it. “I want to — but if you don’t — I’m not sure what you —”
“I don’t know,” Eddie admits. “I think yes. I think so. Probably. But can we — can we just keep going, and see how I feel?”
Buck is looking at him very seriously. Eddie wonders what exactly it is that he’s seeing: Eddie standing there, half-naked and thoroughly kissed, the blush high on the apples of his cheeks that matches the shade of red patches across his chest. The throbbing tenderness of his spit-slick lips. The slight widening of his pupils, the sharp look in his eyes. Or the hesitation, etched in the latitudes between all of that?
Whatever Buck sees, it’s enough for him to agree to Eddie’s request. “Okay,” he gives a quick nod when he says it.
Eddie feels relieved, at first, and then remembers he’s incredibly turned on. “You should take your pants off,” he tells Buck.
Buck laughs. It fills Eddie up, makes him feel a little more at ease. This is Buck, after all.
This is Buck.
This is Buck, popping open the button on his own jeans and sliding down the zipper. This is Buck, slipping his thumbs into his belt loops and shimmying the fabric down his hips. His boxers are obnoxious; navy blue briefs, with colourful candy hearts all over them. Eddie reads one that says EYE CANDY, and another that says NAUGHTY. A third one, still, says ME + U, red font against pink.
“Those are romantic,” Eddie comments because he can’t help himself. He doesn’t really realise what he’s saying until he’s saying it, but before Eddie can feel some sort of way about it, Buck is dropping his pants to pool around his ankles and stepping out of them with a smile.
“Your turn,” he says, instead of giving Eddie’s comment a direct response. He’s still smiling, though, even as he hooks his finger into one of Eddie’s belt loops now. He uses Eddie’s weight to pull himself forward, gliding back into Eddie’s space.
Eddie admits that when Buck had said your turn he had kind of expected to undress himself. Not that he’s really complaining about Buck seemingly doing it for him. Buck is much slower as he undresses Eddie. His knuckles brush against the soft dusting of hair under Eddie’s navel when he slides the button open and it feels like he pulls the zipper down one tooth at a time. Occasionally he stops to kiss Eddie, capturing his mouth or pressing his lips to his throat or collarbone, but most of the time he just watches Eddie react to his leisurely ministrations. And Eddie is sure he’s reacting. It’s not lost on him the way his chest is moving with every breath, and every time the heat of their two bodies meet in some way it makes Eddie shiver.
At this point, he’s worried he’s going to melt into a puddle of goo.
“What are you even doing?” Eddie asks, watching as Buck pulls his pants down his thighs inch by inch.
Buck looks up at Eddie from under his brow, eyelashes fluttering. His face is so close to where Eddie’s hard-on tents his underwear. Like, within breathing room. Eddie has no doubt Buck is acutely aware of what he’s doing and how well it’s working.
“Enjoying myself,” Buck replies, as good of an explanation as any. “After I take your pants off I’m gonna blow you, okay?”
Eddie chokes around his answer. Buck doesn’t stop though, so it must have sounded enough like an affirmative regardless.
Buck follows-through on his words, because of course he does. He’s the type of person who always does. He doesn’t pull Eddie’s underwear (much less ostentatious, a simple dark grey) all the way down, but leaves them sitting just above Eddie’s knee, and Eddie’s starting to think Buck might have a thing for Eddie being, like, half-dressed. But then Buck is holding Eddie’s dick in his hands and licking the tip, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?
Buck makes up for his sloppy technique with a breadth of enthusiasm. Eddie is describing the way Buck sucks dick here, which is truly and utterly unbelievable. That Eddie would have that kind of practical knowledge. But he does and, holy fuck, it’s like everything Eddie could have asked for and nothing he could have anticipated. Buck takes Eddie’s dick as far back as he can, hollowing his cheeks around it while spit leaks out of the corner of his mouth. It’s messy and wet and noisy. Eddie’s had his dick sucked before but never like this, never like someone was trying to race him, like they were challenging him to keep up. Buck grips Eddie’s thigh — just like he did that night in Eddie’s bed, when all they could manage was to rub up against each other until it was just enough — and digs his fingers into the flesh, massaging gently as he all but gags around Eddie’s length.
Eddie gasps. His fingers twitch where his palms lay flat against the door behind him. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, afraid to mess up some unspoken rhythm, to break open some invisible dam. But, really, what was there left to be held at bay? The water was already rushing past them, pulling them both under. All Eddie could do now was keep swimming and hope to surface.
“Buck,” Eddie croaks, voice ragged. He winces and licks his lips. They taste salty, like sweat. “I’m gonna come.”
It’s true. Eddie can feel it, a big red switch just behind his belly button that Buck’s about to slam his fist against. Boom! Nuclear meltdown.
Buck pulls off Eddie with an obscene pop. Eddie swears he sees it when his dick twitches.
“So . . . come,” Buck replies, dragging out the vowel on the first word, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “And put your hands in my hair. I like it like that.”
Eddie does as he’s told. Buck hasn’t even put his mouth back on him, but already Eddie’s fingers are fisted into Buck’s curls, one in the hair at the base of his skull and the other threaded through the strands at the top. Buck smirks at Eddie, looking satisfied, and returns to his task.
He starts ultra-careful this time. Kisses up the length of Eddie’s wet, hot cock and sucks on the head, tonguing the slit. He runs his hands up and down the expanse of Eddie’s thighs, grips his hips to hold him in place as Buck opens wide and swallows his cock down again. Eddie sucks in a breath through his teeth.
In a split second, the heat of Buck’s mouth is gone.
Eddie groans in frustration, a sound that’s forcibly pulled from him, rather than one he allows. That’s the thing about these encounters he’s had with Buck; Eddie always feels like he’s surrendering something, afraid he might lose it forever, but then Buck always lets him have it back.
Eddie’s hands are still in Buck’s hair. He watches, rapt attention, as Buck pushes his index and middle finger into his mouth. He gets them so drenched in spit they glisten in the low light of the bedroom. Eddie’s confused, eyebrows folded, until Buck gets back on his dick and makes Eddie’s features go all soft and pliant again.
Luckily, Eddie doesn’t wait long to find out what exactly Buck's intentions are. Because as he’s swallowing around Eddie’s cock again, bobbing up and down and groaning in a way that sends little shockwaves through Eddie’s groin, Buck reaches down to run his two soaked fingers across Eddie’s hole.
Eddie jerks in response, but his sharp inhale quickly turns into a drawn out moan. Buck’s fingers are unexpected, but not unwelcome. He does it again, only this time he lingers, circling. Eddie’s breath comes out of him in tight gasps. He’s not sure how he’s still standing on two feet, probably only because Buck is holding onto him. His hand is placed at the apex where Eddie’s thigh meets his pelvis, and Buck absentmindedly runs his thumb back and forth across the same burning patch of skin occasionally.
For Eddie, sex has never felt like this. Not once, in the many years he’s been having it. He’s not sure what that means, another thing he’s not really prepared to unpack. Maybe, in another universe, Eddie is more well-adjusted, and these little things don’t scratch at the back of his mind like a rusted nail. Eddie feels knock-kneed, needed and wanted, white-hot and chilled to the bone. Everything, everywhere, all at once.
Buck manages to take Eddie all the way down to the root as he, naturally, chooses this exact moment to push his fingers inside of Eddie, but just barely. It’s enough to finally push Eddie over the edge, leaving him to do nothing but watch as Buck does his best to swallow. He ends up pulling off just a moment too prematurely, and one last rope of Eddie’s spunk ends up streaked across Buck’s shoulder and collarbone.
Eddie feels like he’s been made and remade. The same consciousness in a new body. Frankenstein’s Monster, brought to life by the amazing power of good head and exclusively the very tip of two fingers in his ass. God. Fuck.
Buck stops to suck a bruise against Eddie’s hipbone before he stands up. Eddie looks down the space between their bodies; Buck’s dick is hard in his underwear, a wet patch stained across the front, and his knees are red from the hardwood floor. They should take this somewhere more comfortable.
“Help me take my clothes off,” Eddie tells Buck, “I don’t wanna eat shit on the way to the bed.”
“Oh, is that right?” Buck’s tone is playful as he asks, “you’re taking me to bed?”
“I think that was the best orgasm I’ve ever had,” Eddie replies. “Feels like I should return the favour. Though I’m not sure if my skills are quite up to par.”
“Believe me, Eddie, your skills are more than satisfactory,” Eddie’s come is still painted across Buck’s skin, creamy-white against slightly honeyed beige. Something possessive takes root in Eddie’s chest, the knowledge that that’s Eddie’s spunk seeping into Buck’s skin feels white-hot inside of him, like a hundred degree knife. He thinks about leaning forward and licking it off, then worries that would be too much.
In the end, Buck helps Eddie step out of his underwear, and then uses them to wipe away the mess on his shoulder before he drops them onto the floor with the rest of their clothes. Eddie makes a face. “What?” Buck asks, incredulous. “They already had your come all over them anyway.”
Well, Eddie can’t really argue with that. His dick started leaking as soon as Buck kissed him on the couch.
“I’m gonna fuck you open with my fingers,” Buck explains, “and if you’re into that, then — uh, we’ll keep going.”
Eddie knows Buck is just being thoughtful and courteous, explaining his intentions to Eddie before he does anything. Eddie wishes he’d stop it. He wishes Buck would just put him where he wants him, do what he wants with Eddie without checking in about it. It would be easier for Eddie to relinquish himself to it that way; yield everything to Buck’s hands and mouth and his still hard cock between his legs. He could do all of it, he thinks, whatever Buck wanted, but he’d prefer not to think about it before it was happening. There is something to be said about the safety of absolute surrender.
Eddie nods because he doesn’t think he has the words. It’s just occurred to him that both he and Buck are completely naked.
“Are you —” Buck starts to ask, but Eddie doesn’t feel like hearing any more questions. He surges forward, cutting Buck off with the pressure of his mouth. Buck seems to get the hint, and walks Eddie backwards, neither of them breaking away, until Eddie’s knee hit the edge of the mattress and he falls backwards against it.
He didn’t make his bed this morning so the sheets are strewn about. Eddie scrambles up the length of the mattress to lean back amongst the pillows, while Buck sits with his legs folded underneath him between Eddie’s wide-spread calves.
Eddie kind of wishes he had thought to turn the lights off. But the vulnerability he suddenly feels is mostly worth it, to be able to see Buck’s body on full display in the warm light.
Eddie doesn’t have any lube and he also doesn’t have any condoms. Neither of them mention it. Buck uses the same fingers he used when he was sucking Eddie’s cock to open him up, only this time he presents them to Eddie first, and Eddie dutifully wets them with his spit and his tongue. Buck watches him the whole time, mouth a little bit ajar and pupils blown wide. When Buck pulls his fingers out of Eddie’s mouth, he drags them lightly across Eddie’s sternum and stomach, and Eddie’s own spit is cool against his blazing skin.
Buck spends a long time fingering Eddie, thorough and precise, almost the exact opposite of the way he was choking on Eddie’s cock earlier. Eddie focuses on trying not to come too quickly. It gets more and more difficult, as Buck adds more fingers, peppering sucking kisses and bruising bites across Eddie’s pectoral muscles. Eddie writhes a little against the mattress, his head thrown back and the long column of his neck on display.
“That’s it, yeah, that’s it,” Buck mumbles into Eddie’s skin, like Eddie is really doing anything besides laying here and allowing himself pleasure. “Feels good, right?”
Again, Eddie nods, long ago too far gone for conversation.
“Wait, lemme,” Buck says then, three fingers deep in Eddie’s ass, he touches some unknown pressure point. One that has Eddie drawing out one long, breathless, holy fuuuuuck. “Yeah,” Buck praises, grin wolfish. “That’s what I was looking for.”
Eddie feels his second orgasm tightening in his guts. He wasn’t even hard when Buck first slid his slicked up fingers inside of him, but now he’s at attention and leaking all over himself again. He’s not sure how much more of this he can take, how long he can stave off the inevitable. Especially when Buck is looking at him like that and doing things like kissing the tip of Eddie’s dick while his fingers are still inside of him. He finds that spot inside of Eddie again, only this time he doesn’t just graze it but massages, hard and insistent. Eddie’s hips lift off the mattress and he shoves three knuckles into his mouth to keep from yelling.
“Buck, Buck, Buck,” Eddie babbles his name like he’s forgotten every other word he knows, except for when he remembers a few more. “Buck, c’mon, please. Please.”
“I got you, I got you,” Buck’s tone is reassuring as he pulls his fingers out. Eddie whines at the loss and Buck shushes him gently. He moves in closer, further into the space between Eddie’s thighs. He’s holding onto Eddie’s hiphone with one hand, and then he gets the other around the base of his own hard-on. Buck pauses, then, jaw working something over before one thick, viscous glob of spit drops from his mouth and onto his dick.
Eddie shivers. Buck mixes precome and spit up and down his dick until it’s fully slicked. It’s still not going to help much, but Eddie finds it difficult to care. Right now, he’s thinking about how one day he’s gonna get his mouth on that beautiful, gorgeous cock. But until then, he allows the world to narrow to a singular moment, as Buck pushes past Eddie's rim and gets inside of him.
The low groan Eddie emits punches its way out of him. He feels suddenly, incredibly full, and he’s pretty sure Buck is only about halfway home. He can’t believe there’s more of this to be had, that Eddie gets to be the one to have all of it.
“Shit,” Buck breathes. For the first time, he’s looking a little unsteady. It makes Eddie feel good, makes him feel accomplished and desired, so deep and true. “You feel so fucking — fuck, Eddie, baby, I — you feel so good.”
Eddie’s spine is molten. It doesn’t exist anymore, the only thing anchoring him to this corporeal state is the slow drag of Buck’s cock as it fits inside of him, bit by bit. Eddie could cry, he thinks, or he could scream or wrestle Buck against the sheets and climb on top of him so he could take him deeper, faster. But Eddie does none of that, just trembles slightly and digs his teeth so hard into his bottom lip he tastes blood.
Once Buck is fully sheathed inside of Eddie, he says, “I’m gonna fuck you now, okay?”
“Just,” Eddie finally manages to make use of his vocal chords with intention. “Just — do it. Stop talking about it and just do it. Whatever you want to do. Make me take it.”
“God,” Buck keens. “Fuck, Eddie. Okay. Okay, I’ll give it to you.”
And with that, Buck does, driving himself a little bit further, touching parts of Eddie with his dick he had previously only grazed with his fingertips. Now Eddie really feels full, like he can barely move. But it’s okay. It’s okay because it’s Buck, and Buck takes the reins, relieves Eddie of any and all responsibility. He’s got a grip on each of Eddie’s hips now, pulling him down to meet every single one of Buck’s forceful thrusts forward.
Eddie whines, a little pathetic, and allows himself to be subjected to Buck’s mercy.
“You really like this, huh?” Buck’s tone is as teasing as it can be when he’s so out of breath. He doesn’t let up his rhythm for even a second. “You like it when I make you? When all you have to do is lay back and let me do whatever I want with you?”
“Shut up,” Eddie groans, throwing an arm over his face. It’s the truth, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not embarrassing.
“Hey, hey, look at me,” Buck tells him. Eddie doesn’t move the arm away completely, only lifts it slightly so he can peek out from underneath it. “It’s really hot, okay? Makes me wanna fuck you harder. Just to prove that I can.”
“Shit,” Eddie breathes. “Then do it.”
Buck smirks, adjusting his angle. He’s sitting flush against Eddie’s ass now, Eddie’s hips tilted slightly upwards. It makes each long stroke land harder, pushes Eddie further and further down the stretch of Buck’s dick. His pace is brutal, excruciating, and simultaneously the best thing Eddie’s ever felt.
It dawns on Eddie, then. Things will never be the same after this. He’s not sure he minds it.
“I’m about to —”
“Inside,” Eddie answers without being asked, voice tinny and wrecked and pleading even to his own ears.
Buck presses himself as far inside of Eddie as he physically can. When he comes, warm and thick and within, he fucks Eddie through it. Eddie loves it, the same way he loved the way his own come glinted in the light against Buck’s skin. It felt good, as things rarely ever purely did for Eddie, and that was all that mattered.
“Your turn,” Buck says, repeating words spoken earlier. His cock is spent inside of Eddie, but he’s doing his best to keep fucking him anyway. It’s less frenzied now, more languid and lazy, but every tug of Buck’s cock against Eddie’s rim still feels so good, sparking through all of Eddie’s already shot-to-hell nerves. “Could you get off from just this — my soft cock and all my come inside of you?”
The worst part is that Eddie thinks he could. He really does. But that also sounds like torture — delicious, sexy torture, but still torture. Eddie shakes his head, whining, “no, no, no.”
Buck scoffs, a little bit mean. Not in a way that upsets Eddie, but instead makes his knees feel like jelly.
“You said whatever I want, didn’t you?” Buck throws Eddie’s own words back at him. “What if I want you to come like this? No hands and dumb on my dick.”
“Buck, please,” Eddie babbles. He’s pretty sure the unhurried thrusts have started to pull Buck’s come out of him, Eddie can feel it as it leaks. Every so often there is a slippery, wet sound that comes from where their bodies are joined, and each time it feels like a glass shard under Eddie’s skin, tearing him apart. “Please, please, please.”
And maybe Buck can be a little mean if he feels like, and maybe Eddie can even like it, but he is so, so thankful that Buck can still find it within him to be merciful. He pulls almost all the way out, until it’s just the tip of his dick holding Eddie open, and wraps his hand around the base of Eddie’s cock.
Eddie sobs, feels pleasure crawl all over his entire body like a spectre, and comes so hard his vision goes blurry.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight: it is easy to see how all of this only served to make the whole situation more confusing. And yet, we have still not yet reached the point of no return. The right decision at the right time, and Eddie could have managed to save himself. He could have made it out of this alive.
Unfortunately, Eddie has never been the greatest at knowing what’s best for him and his own self-interests.
As a result — well, he and Buck keep having sex.
Eddie goes into every time thinking it will be the last. It never is. Buck fucks him again a few days later, and this time there’s lube, but still no condoms. Buck spends thirty minutes tongue-fucking Eddie anyway, so the lube doesn’t even really matter. Eddie ends up wet and loose enough without it. They have a stretch of work days after that and once they’re off again, Eddie spends the late morning with Buck in his loft. Buck lets Eddie ride him and Eddie tries his best, up until Buck is thrusting up to meet him and throwing him off kilter, and Eddie ends up perched in Buck’s lap with Buck’s arm around his waist while Buck fucks up into him at a brutal pace, mouth open hot and wet against Eddie’s clavicle. Two days later, Eddie sucks Buck’s cock in the front seat of Buck’s jeep, hunched over with his head in Buck’s lap and Buck’s hands fisted into his hair, the scent of him everywhere, all over, intoxicating in the same way that Buck’s cock stretching Eddie’s mouth open is.
And here’s the thing: sex is not love, not by any means. Sex is easy, by comparison, just instincts and physicality. Love, itself, is more broad, more open, more susceptible to misinterpretation.
So Eddie and Buck keep having sex. That’s it. And Eddie’s not in love with his best friend who he is actively sleeping with.
That happens later.
Another day, another dollar, and Eddie is dutifully doing his part to clean the engine before the tones go, and Buck is doing his best to distract him.
Not that Buck is doing anything specific. But last night Buck held Eddie’s hands behind his back by his wrists while he fucked him, like, a mile a minute. Eddie had been face down on the mattress, hips in the air, and when Buck came he pulled out and shot it all over Eddie’s ass. It was that, in particular, that was distracting Eddie: the memory of it, burned into the back of his brain like a brand. Buck was just sort of the unknown conduit.
Eddie was recalling the minute details of the things Buck had whispered against the shell of his ear (you were made to take my cock, baby, one of these days I’m gonna come inside you and let it leak out while you get me hard again, and then I’m gonna fuck it all back in) when Buck leans over, knocks their shoulders together and says, “hey.”
Eddie desperately wills himself to not blush. It works, he thinks. Mostly. He’s probably a little wide-eyed and wild looking when he turns, but if Buck notices he doesn’t mention it.
“Yeah?” Eddie croaks, like something thick is caught in his throat.
“Christopher’s got a sleepover tonight, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” Eddie answers. The last time Christopher was at a sleepover and Buck came over, he coaxed Eddie until he got louder and louder, cracking his resolve through slow and torturous manoeuvres. “Why do you ask?”
“We should get dinner tonight,” Buck replies. “Like, we should go out or something. And then we can go back to your place and have a couple drinks. Maybe watch a movie?” Buck shrugs, non-committal. They both know that if they end up back at Eddie’s place, no one will be watching a movie.
Eddie swallows. His throat is dry and there’s something roiling in his gut that feels suspiciously like the steady beat of insect wings. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Okay. That sounds good.”
Buck’s smile could rival the brightness of the sun.
(In hindsight: It was easy to fall in love with Buck. So easy. The way something feels made for you, like a notch that was always just waiting for you to be the one to fill it. Buck was that for Eddie; Eddie thought, maybe, he could be that for Buck.
In hindsight, of course, Eddie was wrong. Eddie was always going to be wrong.)
Eddie lets Buck pick the place. It’s nothing fancy, some nondescript restaurant that is relatively cheap and consistently fine, occasionally great. They both get burgers, and Eddie lets Buck have his pickle that comes on the side. It’s simple and comfortable. Eddie feels happy, in a way that fills him up but doesn’t scare him, as it sometimes does. He has a tendency to shrink away from big emotions, too frightened to engage with them too wholly, to look at them too closely. Halfway through their meal, Buck puts his foot on top of Eddie’s underneath the table, obvious and solid. Then he laughs at something Eddie says, and Eddie feels like he’s batting one-thousand.
Eddie drove them both to the restaurant in his truck, so Eddie drives them both back to his place. The ride is quiet. Occasionally, Buck hums along to the radio, some random Top 40 song that goes, well, good luck, babe. Orange light slides across the inside of the truck as they flit between street lamps. Eddie elbow knock’s against Buck’s as they both lean against the centre console, until Buck threads his fingers with Eddie’s, and pulls Eddie’s hand over to place it high up on his thigh. They spend the rest of the drive like that.
Eddie parks, shuts off the vehicle and moves to open his door.
“Wait,” Buck calls, light and airy as it’s carried across the length of the seats between them.
Eddie stops, turns back around. Buck is looking at him, silent as his eyes dart between Eddie’s eyes and the arch of his mouth. He reaches over and — the same way he moved Eddie’s hand where he wanted it — Buck grabs a fistful of Eddie’s shirt, pulls him forward, and kisses him.
It’s open-mouthed and slow. Buck licks against the roof of Eddie’s mouth, sucks on Eddie’s tongue. Eddie can feel his dick thickening up in his jeans and he reaches down to adjust himself. He thinks about reaching over and cupping his palm around Buck’s dick the same way, but the kissing is nice enough on its own. There are no sounds but the wet-slick of their mouths and the way their breaths come from them in long, purposeful exhales. Eddie makes no move to disengage, content to allow Buck to kiss him and kiss Buck in return for as long as Buck pleases.
When they finally do pull apart, Eddie asks, “what was that for?”
Buck shrugs. “Just wanted too,” he answers, oh-so-typical Buck.
Eddie half-expects Buck to jump him as soon as they make it inside. He’s not sure how long they spent kissing in his truck, but it was significant, and Eddie knows logically they are both at least half-hard. Nights spent between them are hardly defined by restraint, each of them happy to abandon everything in the pursuit of the same end.
But not tonight, it seems, as Buck clambers over the back of Eddie’s couch and makes himself comfortable. Eddie shakes his head fondly, disappears into the kitchen, and reappears with a drink for each of them.
They actually — and a little surprisingly — end up just sitting on the couch together for a while. Buck puts on Top Gun and scoffs at some of the more ridiculous pieces of dialogue, and comments on all the films' inherent homoeroticism. He and Eddie lay against opposite arms of the sofa, their legs tangled together. Buck puts his hand on Eddie’s skin where his pant leg rucks up around his ankle, running his thumb back and forth across the jut of bone there.
Eddie’s not sure how, but at some point he must fall asleep. He wakes when Buck inadvertently jostles him as he gets up off the couch. The movie is over, credits rolling over “Mighty Wings” by Cheap Trick. Buck doesn’t even pick the remote up to turn it off.
“Are you leaving?” Eddie asks, sleepy sounding even to himself.
There’s a look in Buck’s eyes Eddie can’t quite place. “No,” he shakes his head. “Just thought it might be time to get you in bed.”
Eddie closes his eyes again and sighs. “Are you still gonna fuck me?” He wouldn’t be mad if Buck said no, but Eddie really hopes he says yes.
Eddie hears Buck chuckle. “You sure you’re awake enough for that?”
“It’s not like I usually do most of the work anyway,” Eddie retorts, amazed at himself for being able to admit that.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Buck's words are measured and deliberate, a slow drawl. Eddie’s eyes are still closed but he swears he can feel the weight of Buck’s gaze, raking over him head to toe. “Can you make it to the bedroom? Or should I fuck you out here on the couch?”
Eddie thinks he’d die if Buck fucked him on this couch and then he had to sit on it again every day afterwards, so he scrunches up his nose and says, “no, bedroom. Definitely bedroom.”
“You need my help making it there?”
“Just,” Eddie rubs a hand over his eyes before he opens them. “Help me stand?” Eddie reaches out for Buck and Buck pulls him up one-handed.
They have sex with the lights off. Buck folds Eddie in half at the waist and drags the head of his cock back and forth over Eddie’s hole, until Eddie is shuddering. Until Eddie is begging Buck for it, begging for him to slip through that tight ring of muscle and stretch Eddie wide open. He fucks Eddie at a cruel and crawling pace, pulling nearly all the way out before sliding back in up to the hilt. Eddie worries he’s coming apart at the seams, that he’s about to break open like an egg and make a mess of everything. He feels hot and cold all over, and there’s a hornet’s nest buzzing recklessly in his chest. Buck takes such good care of him. That’s nice, to feel like he’s being taken care of.
This isn’t the type of sex they usually have, of that Eddie is acutely aware. Normally it’s all sweat and spit and a temperatures so high it’s stifling. This is methodical and intimate, facing each other so they can kiss in long stretches, with Buck using his own weight as he leans over Eddie to keep his knees at his shoulders.
Eddie is talking more than he usually does too. Nonsensical babbling, of course, but still. A chorus of expletives and Buck’s name, little whiny moans and an insistent stream of please after please after please. As if in response to Eddie’s sudden case of word vomit, Buck is quieter than usual. He touches Eddie all over, though, with something close to reverence in the pressure of his palms. His mouth trails hot paths all over Eddie’s skin, with the occasional sharp-edged graze of teeth.
Buck reaches down to grip Eddie’s cock, smearing precome across the head with his thumb. He lifts his hand to Eddie’s mouth then, and pushes his thumb through the seal of Eddie’s lips, using it to press against Eddie’s tongue. Eddie sucks worshipfully, moaning around the digit. The taste of himself against Buck’s skin makes Eddie’s toes curl.
“You gonna make me come?” Eddie says once Buck has pulled his hand away. It doesn’t return to Eddie’s cock immediately. Rather, Buck uses it to map the path from one of Eddie’s hip bones to the other, dragging over the patch of hair that leads down further and further.
“I don’t know,” Buck shrugs, teasing. “Do you think you’ve earned it?”
“I’ll let you come inside me.”
“I come inside you all the time,” Buck rolls his eyes. He’s not lying. “You like it when I come inside you.”
“And you don’t?”
“I never said that,” Buck counters. He takes a moment to make it look like he’s thinking really hard about something. “I’ll make you come if you ride me after. And then once I come inside you, I’ll make you come again.”
Eddie shudders. But he nods, tongue caught between his teeth.
It doesn’t take much. A few well-timed flicks of Buck’s wrist, his hand around Eddie’s cock again, to match the cadence of his hips, and Eddie is spilling all over himself. He comes with a shout and Buck sounds far away as he tells Eddie, “that’s it, baby, that’s it. That’s so good. You’re so good for me.”
Buck flips them easily. It takes Eddie a second to find his centre of gravity, adjust his balance so that he can start rolling his hips. Buck’s cock is still inside him and Eddie’s still covered in his own spend. It trails down across his abs, until Buck ends up smeared with it too. Buck runs his hand through it while he watches Eddie rut against him from below, scooping some onto his fingers and then sucking those fingers clean.
Eddie rides Buck’s cock with a determination he didn’t know he had for any kind of sex. Just sort of slips into it, single-minded focus on the task at hand. It’s easiest while his dick is still soft, and just gets more and more difficult as Eddie starts to get hard again.
“You’re so fucking hot, Eddie,” Buck tells him, still smearing Eddie’s leftover spunk between them, like he can’t get enough it. “God, I love watching you take it like this. Love watching you fuck yourself on me.”
I love —
Eddie thinks but doesn’t say.
Instead, he picks up the pace a little. Buck finally leaves the mess on both their stomachs alone, grabs onto Eddie by his waist instead, and digs his fingers into Eddie’s ass cheeks. He still makes Eddie do most of the work, only offering some slight guidance as Buck begins to twitch his hips upwards, meeting Eddie’s downward thrusts.
A string of praise drops out of Buck like candy from a vending machine. There you go, baby, you got it. Just like that. Feels so good, being inside of you.
“Shut up,” Eddie cuts off Buck’s rambling when it gets too much. “I’m trying to make you come.”
“And you’re doing — ahhh, fuck — a great job.”
Eddie is possessed by the sudden urge to dampen Buck’s teasing energy. His thighs are screaming, but Eddie manages to lift himself up and almost entirely off of Buck’s cock, and then he drops back down, slamming into Buck and slamming Buck’s cock deep inside of him. All the air leaves Buck’s lungs in a single gasp. And then Eddie does it again, and again, and again.
They are both panting heavily by the end of it. Buck’s hold onto Eddie’s ass gets tighter, his nails dig in sharper. And then in one final, blissful meeting of their pelvises, Buck holds Eddie down against him, throws his head back, and comes with one lengthy moan.
Eddie’s on his back again before he can even really process it. It happens so fast; Buck ebbs down the length of Eddie’s body, slips two fingers inside of Eddie’s still sloppy hole, and takes Eddie’s cock into his mouth. Eddie barely has the wherewithal to choke out a what are you before he’s coming again. Just like Buck said he would.
Buck flops boneless on the bed beside Eddie, unceremoniously wiping his hand on the sheets. They’re both a mess, still covered in sweat and come. Eddie finds it difficult to care, even as more and more of Buck’s come leaks out of him.
Buck saddles up right next to Eddie, his lips at Eddie’s shoulder. “That might be the best we’ve ever done it,” he says, dropping a kiss against all that open skin.
“I have come all over me,” Eddie deadpans.
“Yeah,” Buck speaks slyly, mouth quirked up in the corner as he looks up at Eddie through his eyelashes. He’s beautiful, Eddie realises with an odd sort of finality. He’s the most beautiful person Eddie’s ever known, inside and out.
Buck falls asleep first, still tucked into Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie can feel Buck’s steady breath fan out against him, raising goosebumps.
Eddie is left alone with his thoughts. And his thoughts are nothing short of cyclonic, taking him all over the place, up and down and right and left. It’s occurred to him that he and Buck have been actively sleeping with one another for months at this point. But they don’t always sleep together; sometimes they just spend time together, just the two of them, and sometimes they go out to eat. Sometimes Buck follows Eddie and Christopher to the grocery store, and puts things he wants for himself in Eddie’s cart, and leaves them all at Eddie’s house. There are some of Buck’s clothes in Eddie’s drawers — sweatpants, a hoodie, a few t-shirts and a few pairs of underwear. Buck washes it all himself, throwing it into laundry cycles along with things of Eddie’s. Buck will make dinner on occasion, sometimes for Eddie and for Christopher, and sometimes just for Eddie. He baked Eddie a birthday cake, frosted it and decorated it all himself, and then he gave Eddie a blowjob in the kitchen to celebrate. It’s all coming together in Eddie’s head, and that same feeling of finality is back.
Are Eddie and Buck . . . together?
If it was anyone else, Eddie thinks the answer would be obvious. But he and Buck have always sort of blurred the lines of standard friendship. It’s probably what facilitated this whole friends-with-benefits situation in the first place, operating firmly within its vagueness. And then somewhere along the way, the lines just kept blurring. And then there were no lines at all, just one life where there used to be two and wow, how had this never occurred to Eddie before?
It makes him feel a lot better, to put all these pieces together after —
After realising he’s in love with Buck.
Big emotions. Eddie usually shrinks away from big emotions. He finds it within himself now; the part of him that wants to pull back from the confirmation. But the truth remains, no matter how hard Eddie tries to run from it. And, what’s more, he’s not sure if he really wants to.
It would be nice, after all, to just let himself have this.
It’s okay. Because they’re dating now, right? They’re definitely dating. So it’s okay. If Eddie can’t tell Buck yet, if he needs to sit with it just a little bit longer, everything will be alright. Eddie can work up to it. He can tell Buck he loves him. Eventually.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight:
The realisation — that he and Buck were together (again, they weren’t, not according to both of them, at least), that Eddie loved Buck — reminded Eddie a lot of that first kiss in the kitchen. Like some part of him always knew, and when he looked back upon the road travelled, he found it difficult to pinpoint the exact moment. When it went from Buck and I are having sex to Buck and I are in a relationship. It wasn’t all at once. No, it was little things, built up over time. A foundation that had brick after brick laid upon it, until eventually it felt like something close to home. Eddie remembers thinking it was sweet — the way they never had to discuss anything, never had to use words to understand each other. It was so them, to just fall into all this, with no regard for speed or velocity. To Eddie, it all made perfect sense.
To Buck? Well, Eddie’s not sure what any of it meant to Buck.
It turns out it wasn’t some divine intervention. That he and Buck were not meant to be together in some grand, cosmic, fate of the universe kind of way. They just weren’t talking about it, plain and simple, each of them giving the other the wrong impression.
Eddie laments not seeing what was happening while it was happening; but then, he thinks, he’s not sure he ever could have. He was too content with all of it, too pleased to maintain a status quo he convinced himself existed.Meanwhile, Buck was operating under the influence of a different set of rules and regulations.
Eddie doesn’t think this could get much more pathetic than it already is.
III: Now, again.
Eddie thinks he might be kissing rock bottom.
In the aftermath of the love confession, and all the humiliation that came with it, he has hardly found a reason to leave the house. His phone sits abandoned on his bedside table, at least a dozen notifications from Buck still emblazoned across the screen. Eddie, can we talk? I’m sorry. Please answer me. I think we really need to talk about this. It’s okay. I’m not mad at you. I hope you’re not mad at me? I’m sorry, if that’s what you need to hear. Please, Eddie. Please. Just tell me you’re okay.
Eddie can appreciate the sentiment while simultaneously acknowledging it doesn’t help at all. The thing about all of this is that it has nothing to do with Buck, actually, and everything to do with Eddie. It turns out none of it — not even Eddie falling in love with him — had to do with Buck. And Eddie just can’t reconcile that, especially not if he has to look Buck in the face.
Maybe it should have occurred to Eddie that this was all too good to be true. Every nice thing in Eddie's life he never really did anything to deserve, and almost all of those things ended up leaving him in the end anyway. Even his own son.
Might as well add Buck to that list. It probably would have always happened eventually.
Eddie calls out for his next shift. It’s only been a few days and the wound is still so fresh. It’s barely even scabbed over, and Eddie keeps picking at it. Keeps finding remnants of Buck in his life, his socks in Eddie’s drawer and the extra toothbrush he’s used a few times in the cup by the sink. Eddie would get rid of all of it if he had any inkling that it would make him feel better. Right now, it would probably only make him feel worse.
Eddie falls back asleep after he bails on work. It’s easiest to just exist amongst his sheets for the moment, flat on his back and feeling sorry for himself. One day, he’ll manage to get up, to spit-shine the veneer he’s used to wearing, put it on and let it be. One day, he’ll face Buck again, after he’s convinced himself none of it actually matters, but there will always be that piece that lingers, that part of him that’s not okay. But Eddie can pretend. He’s good at pretending. He’s done it for years and years.
Eddie naps on and off for hours and dreams come to him in snatches. Some of them feel more like memories, or at least they caress Eddie's mind like they are, and others are fantasy whole cloth. In one of them, Buck tells Eddie he loves him back, and the world slots back into place like it was always meant to. In another, Buck holds Eddie down while he fucks him rough and messy, angry teeth biting into Eddie’s shoulder and his grip bruising into Eddie’s skin. Eddie wakes up on his stomach, rutting against the mattress. He jerks off, because he can’t help himself, and then feels guilty about it. He’s sure Buck has no desire to exist in Eddie’s thoughts like this. Not anymore, at least.
The final time Eddie wakes, the digital clock on his bedside table reads 5 PM and Eddie’s phone is dead.
It takes Eddie a second to orient himself. His mind is fuzzy with sleep but he’s pretty sure somewhere, someone is banging on something.
Oh. That’s his front door. Someone is banging on his front door.
Eddie extracts himself from the wallowing space of his mattress, but the emotion itself still clings. He’s so hungry there’s a pit in his stomach. Whoever is knocking is getting more and more insistent.
Eddie throws it open, and standing on the other side of the threshold is Buck. He has to temper the urge to slam the door shut again.
“What are you doing here?” Eddie asks. He had expected to sound more defeated, but his voice is steady. Thin, but steady.
“You weren’t answering my texts. I thought something was wrong,” Buck says. “Cap let me take off early to check on you.”
That would be sweet if it wasn’t so humiliating. Eddie tries not to imagine it; Buck’s stricken face as he pleaded with Bobby, the confused knit of Bobby’s eyebrows. Maybe Buck told Bobby everything. Maybe he told him nothing. It doesn’t matter. All this fuss made about Eddie over nothing. He wishes he had just gone back to sleep.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Eddie replies. “I’m fine.”
Normally, by this point in the conversation, Eddie would have already let Buck inside, or Buck would have already shucked politeness and barged his way in. This time, neither of them move, opposite sides of an open door. It’s safer this way; for Eddie, for Buck, for everyone. There are some lines that cannot be uncrossed, and thus walls must be built in their place. In truth: this is merely the consequences of their actions, the both of them.
“Eddie, I —”
“Buck, I really don’t feel like doing this –”
“I think I could try.”
Eddie pauses. He frowns. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t want to — I need to fix this, right? I need to do something. So I could try. Being in love with you, I could try.”
Sweet, lovely, self-sacrificing Buck. Unfathomably accommodating even while he’s breaking Eddie’s heart.
“Is that what you think I want?” Even after all those hours lost to sleep, Eddie is exhausted, everything still weighing so heavy. He could sleep for a thousand years, he thinks, and still not feel rested. “For you to force yourself to care about me?”
“I care about you already, Eddie. I do,” Buck takes a step forward, yet he remains on the other side of the threshold. So close and so far away. “That’s why I — this is my fault. And I need to do something to fix it.”
“Buck,” saying Buck’s name feels like breathing fibreglass, raw and awful in Eddie’s throat. He worries he might start coughing up blood. “There’s nothing to fix.”
“Don’t — don’t say that, Eddie.”
“There’s nothing to fix because I was wrong,” Eddie elaborates. At his side, his hand trembles, and he shoves it defiantly into the pocket of his sweatpants. “I thought this was something it wasn’t. You get that, right? You understand that every moment we were — that I thought it was all something and it turns out it wasn’t anything at all.”
Eddie hates the way Buck is looking at him — all open and vulnerable, the same look on his face when Eddie told him he loved him, only now there is pity there too, and that makes it so much worse — but he wills himself to not look away. There’s nothing to do but face this head on.
“I didn’t mean . . .” Buck trails off. Mean for what? For me to fall in love with you? To be you, and that somehow meant that I couldn’t help it?
“I know, Buck. I know you didn’t.”
And that’s it, isn’t it? Nothing to be gained if nothing was really lost. Buck holds no responsibility, but he does sort of hold Eddie’s heart, and Eddie isn’t really sure how to get it back. But Buck never asked for it, never demanded it, never begged or pleaded or even desired it. So, that’s it. So, what now?
“I just . . . I just want to fix this. I don’t want to leave it until there’s nothing left to fix.”
Eddie shakes his head. “Buck. It’s just. Not your job to fix it. That’s all.”
AN INTERLUDE: Buck, now.
(Eddie shuts the door without ever letting Buck inside.
Buck just stands there for a bit, imagining and re-imaging Eddie’s home, a space he’s so familiar with that he’s been denied entry.
When Eddie told Buck he loved him, he had no idea what to do. But he wishes Eddie would have stayed, that they could have talked about it, right then and there. Because now Buck’s just spent days catastrophizing, trying to remember what his life was like before Eddie was a part of it. He isn’t sure he could ever go back to that, doesn’t think he has it in him.
Buck’s never been the type to let go very easily. It’s his curse.
It wasn’t a bad thing, Buck wishes he had thought to say. It wasn’t a bad thing that Eddie loved him. Buck would take anything Eddie wanted to give him, gleefully and without complaint. How could he ever say no?
It was a privilege, Buck thought, to be a person that Eddie cared about. And maybe — maybe if Buck had considered even the possibility, had allowed himself to envision things that he never ever thought could be his — maybe it could have happened. Maybe he could have met Eddie halfway. But when Buck considered the two of them, even with all the time they spent together and all the things they were doing, he never considered that things could be that way. That they could, that they would be, that they might be. Doomed by his lack of imagination, doomed by the things Buck thought that he did and did not deserve.
Buck had been so afraid of flying too close to the sun that he never even let himself leave the ground.)
It gets easier.
The love never goes away.
Eddie can still feel it, tucked back into his chest. He nudges it every so often, just to check if it’s still there, and every time it throbs like a fresh bruise. Eventually, he checks on it less and less, but he never lets himself think it’s not still there.
Eddie goes back to work. If anyone notices anything — and Eddie is sure they do — no one ever says anything. It should make Eddie feel better, but it doesn’t. It just means he’s constantly thinking about the things other people know that they don’t want to tell him. Like they’re all talking about Eddie behind his back. He knows none of them would ever do that, not maliciously, so he does his best to try and not hold it against them.
He keeps his distance from Buck. Sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he’ll catch Buck watching him. He’s usually wearing some forlorn expression, eyebrows knit and mouth folded down slightly in the corners. Eddie never acknowledges it, just turns away and puts more space between them. One day, maybe, things will be normal again between them, but that day hasn’t come.
Time passes because it always does. Eddie feels a little bit better every day.
After dinner on a Tuesday, Eddie answers his phone, and it’s Christopher on the other end.
“Dad,” his son’s voice carries through the phone, sounding older, like years have passed. Maybe they have, maybe Eddie just missed them all.
“Hey, bud,” Eddie replies. He’s smiling because he can’t help it, because this is the first time Christopher has been the one to call him since he left for Texas. “What’s up?”
“I think I’m ready to come home now,” Christopher says, and suddenly Eddie feels better than he has in weeks.
“Really?” Eddie asks, afraid of having the rug pulled out from him under him again. “I can be on the next flight out, Chris, I promise.”
“Yeah,” Christopher agrees. “I’m still kind of mad at you. But I feel . . . I feel better. And I want to come home.”
“Alright, that’s okay,” Eddie is nodding as he speaks, his eyes wet. “That’s fine. I’ll come get you. I’ll come bring you home.”
It occurs to Eddie in an airplane forty-thousand feet above Arizona:
It could still happen. Everything could still end up okay, eventually.
Eddie and Christopher fly back into LAX in the late evening. It’s dark outside, and the quick travel turnaround means Eddie is exhausted. Bobby, god bless him, not only accommodated Eddie’s last minute request for time off (of course, Eddie, this is important) but he also granted him a few extra days, for Eddie to recuperate and spend some extra time with his son. Nevermind all the work it’s going to take to get Christopher settled again, and enrolled in school, but Eddie’s not thinking about that right now.
Right now he’s thinking about ordering pizza, and the three different kinds of ice cream in the freezer, bought in anticipation of Christopher’s return. He also bought Christopher’s favourite cereal, his favourite kind of juice and his favourite snacks. It had felt so good, so right, for Eddie to put those groceries back into his cupboards. They were so empty beforehand.
Christopher wants sausage and pepperoni on his pizza — a newly acquired taste, it seems — and so Eddie gets sausage and pepperoni pizza. Christopher eats four whole slices, and then has two bowls of ice cream. Eddie doesn’t think he could deny Christopher anything right now, and he’s lucky his very perceptive kid hasn’t somehow realised that.
Eddie’s in the kitchen doing dishes, so he doesn’t hear the knock on the door. Only hears it when Christopher shouts, “Buck!” and Buck responds by calling Christopher’s name back to him.
Eddie drops the fork he was cleaning. It screeches as it scrapes across the plate still left in the sink.
Buck is here.
Buck is here. And that’s okay. He and Eddie have barely spoken a word to each other in so long, let alone spent any time alone together. Buck most certainly has not shown up to Eddie’s place unannounced, not since that last time. But it’s okay. Buck is here and Christopher is happy to see him, and that’s all that matters. Everything is going to be okay, Eddie is going to be okay. He’s going to go into that room, and he’s going to look Buck in the eyes, and he’s going to smile and they’ll just — they’ll move on.
Or, Eddie won’t, he thinks as he still feels that little tight ball of love at the back of his heart, but he’ll make do. He’ll figure out how to make do. He always does. For Christopher, for Buck and, ultimately, for his own good.
It’s easier said than done. When Eddie pads back out into the living room, Buck and Christopher are hugging, and Eddie stops dead in his tracks. His heart is going to explode, he thinks. Maybe he should turn around and run out the back door, pretend he was never here in the first place. He’d been so sure he knew how to handle heartbreak, but every time it ends up staring him in the face and knocking the wind out of him.
All hope of leaving undetected is lost when Buck opens his eyes and looks at Eddie from over Christopher’s shoulder.
Eddie doesn’t ask Buck why he’s here, how he knew Christopher would be home tonight. It doesn’t really matter how he found out. All that matters is that he’s here now, filling the spot that was left waiting for him. In Christopher’s life, in Eddie’s, on the couch with Christopher between them, asking Christopher a million questions about Texas like every thought that passes through a fourteen year olds head means the world to him.
“I missed you, bud,” Buck says, ruffling Christopher’s hair.
Christopher pulls away from the touch, but Eddie knows he means it when he tells Buck, “yeah, well. Missed you too.”
Christopher has one more bowl of ice cream before he goes to bed, officially having sampled all three flavours Eddie bought. Buck has one too, and he’s polishing it off just as Christopher is saying goodnight and heading off to bed.
Eddie stands and follows Christopher down the hallway.
“I don’t need you to tuck me in, dad, I’m fourteen,” Christopher says, rolling his eyes. Eddie’s kid really is so much older, doesn’t just look it but sounds it too. Eddie would be more proud if it didn’t make him sort of sad.
“Okay, okay,” Eddie throws his hands up in surrender. “Sleep tight, kid. See you in the morning,” Eddie says, because he will, and it’s nice to remind himself.
Back in the living room, Buck has finished his ice cream, and his bowl sits abandoned next to Christopher’s on the coffee table. Alone with Buck, with the reality of it, Eddie has no idea what to say, so he scoops up the dishes wordlessly and brings them into the kitchen. There’s still water sitting in the sink. Eddie pulls the plug to drain it and starts to run the tap again, the knob turned all the way hot.
It doesn’t take long for Buck to follow, appearing in the kitchen like an apparition in the corner of the room. Eddie plugs the sink again, and the water is scalding. The skin on Eddie’s hand comes out red. He drops in both bowls inelegantly.
“Bobby, uh, Bobby told me. That you’d be coming home with Chris tonight,” Buck answers a question Eddie never asked him. They used to do that a lot.
“I figured,” Eddie replies, a little stilted. The water in the sink is steaming. Eddie uses a sponge to wipe away the leftover ice cream in one of the bowls anyway. His hands get redder, like cooked lobsters.
“Eddie,” Buck says his name the same way someone else might say please. “I’d really like for us to talk about some things.”
Eddie lets the bowl he was working on and the sponge drop back into the sink. He turns on his heels, leans back against the counter that’s now behind him. Buck is across the kitchen, his hands shoved into his pockets, and his gaze is shy. His eyes flit, back and forth, between looking at Eddie and looking at the floor.
“What is there to talk about?” Eddie asks, and then has to bite his own tongue. There’s so much to talk about, really, but Eddie has no desire to broach any of it. Not tonight, probably not tomorrow, maybe not ever.
“Eddie. C’mon.”
“No, I’m serious,” Eddie continues. “What is it? Because I’d love for us to just — to just move past this but you keep wanting to bring it up. It hurts — you get that, right? It hurts me to talk about this. To keep remembering it. To remember that you —”
That you don’t love me.
“I promise, Eddie,” Buck’s voice is soft, careful. “I promise this is the last time. We can talk right now, one more time, and I’ll never bring it up again.”
Eddie clenches his jaw. His fingers flex against the edge of the counter, still sweltering. He wonders if Christopher is asleep, or if he’s at least wearing his headphones.
“Fine,” Eddie relents. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I made a mistake —”
“Buck, I told you,” Eddie shakes his head. “I told you none of this was your job to fix. It wasn’t your mistake, it was mine —”
Buck cuts Eddie off. “Please don’t say that,” he mumbles, and then, louder. “Please don’t say you think loving me was a mistake.”
Eddie feels his heart stop. “What — Buck, what do you mean?”
“I made a mistake. I made a mistake because I thought I didn’t love you. Or, I didn’t think about it all actually, but I let you believe I didn’t love you. And then I — and then I thought about it, I thought about it a lot. And I realised I did.”
“Buck, are you . . .” Eddie’s afraid to ask. He’s always been afraid to ask. But that’s what screwed up all of this in the first place, wasn’t it? So he might as well save himself now, while he still can. “You love me?”
“Yes,” Buck breathes. “I love you, okay? That was the mistake. That I didn’t tell you. When we were — when you and I were — when all of that was happening, I don’t think . . . I don’t think I ever let myself think about it. Because Eddie I thought it was impossible. I didn’t think that would ever be something that you — that you wanted from me. So I didn’t even let myself imagine it. I kept it locked up tight. I thought I could live with whatever you were willing to give me. And then you told me — you told me you loved me, and I had spent so long telling myself it would never happen that I didn’t even understand my own feelings. But I never — even though you caught me off-guard that night, I never — I never thought it was a bad thing. I always thought I was lucky, for someone like you to love me.”
Eddie’s mouth feels like sandpaper. He wants to call Buck’s name, but he can’t find the syllables, can’t force his vocal chords to do the work for him. His left hand lets go of the counter. Against his leg, Eddie feels the fingers twitch, begging to be outstretched. Begging for Eddie to reach across the room and hope to bring Buck towards him, like two opposing magnets. Get close enough, and neither of them will be able to help it.
Eddie thinks he knows what Buck means: it does feel sort of impossible.
But isn’t that so typical? To be told something is impossible only for them to do it anyway.
“You love me,” Eddie repeats lamely. It’s not a question this time. Buck nods, and still Eddie repeats, “you love me.”
“I do, Eddie. So much. I really do.”
Eddie thinks of that first kiss. That night in this same kitchen, the bright white gleam from the fridge. The way it lit Buck up like he was an angel, like he was sent to Eddie, special delivery, just what Eddie needed. And he was, wasn’t he? It feels like it was so long ago, and so much has happened since, but maybe they’re still those people. Maybe they can pick up from there, from before all the wrong impressions and the misunderstandings and the lack of communication. Maybe they can go back to that night, when Eddie said okay and Buck said okay and Eddie said okay again, one more time, just to be sure.
“Okay,” Eddie says, because it’s all he can think of. “I love you too.”
Buck smiles. After this, Eddie decides, he's going to cross the distance between them himself and kiss him.
“Okay,” Buck repeats back to him.
“Okay.”
One more time. Just to be sure.
fin.