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☆
‘I am an adult.’ Eddie announces as he closes the door behind himself and steps into Frank’s office.
‘Good morning, Eddie. How are you to—’
‘I am thirty-five years old.’ Eddie repeats exasperatedly, dropping himself down onto the armchair opposite his therapist and throwing his arms open, as if this information about his age is lost on either of them.
When Frank doesn’t reply, doing that weird therapist thing where the lack of reply is the reply, Eddie repeats himself.
‘I am thirty-five.’ He insists, putting emphasis on the numbers in the hope that this will somehow be sufficient enough for Frank to disentangle the countless layers of internal conflict that have Eddie storming into his office for their Thursday appointment frustrated out of his mind.
‘You are,’ Frank nods. Eddie wants to throttle him. ‘Though I imagine your age isn’t the reason why you called to have your appointment moved up by two hours.’
Eddie wants to argue that actually it kind of is. But it also isn’t. He wishes it was.
Eddie wants to tell Frank that he woke up at 7am this morning to drive his kid to school, got back to his empty apartment and spent an hour staring at himself in the bathroom mirror because he was having a premature mid-life crisis over a grey hair or a new wrinkle on his forehead.
But that would be a half-truth at best. Because the Diaz’s might be far from perfect, but they’ve got good genes. And Eddie is a firefighter who works out every day, so he is not exactly concerned—nor does he honestly care—about getting older.
However, he does seem to be having some kind of premature mid-life crisis. And he did, in fact, spend the better part of an hour staring at himself in the bathroom mirror after dropping Chris off. Not because he was worried about his looks, but because he needed to remind himself—his thirty-five-year-old self—that he is, in fact, very much an adult.
He is not the teenager that he has spent the entirety of the last week feeling like he is, all awkward and sweaty and stupid and, well, horny. He is not.
Eddie swallows the urge to look up at Frank and say a petulant nuh-uh that contradicts this fact, however he must have been quiet for a beat too long, because Frank’s setting his pen down against the notebook on his lap and giving Eddie a look that involves raising his eyebrows and tilting his head to the side and—for the millionth time that week—Eddie feels like he’s sixteen.
‘I’m—’ he starts, Frank’s gaze compelling him to talk as though Eddie's under hypnosis. Eddie wouldn’t put it past him—he’s astounded by the things he has divulged to this man.
Eddie clears his throat and tries again. ‘I’m thirty-five years old,’ He says, quieter this time, looking Frank in the eye and sitting up straight because he knows how to do this, knows how to talk about his feelings. He didn’t, but it’s been eight months and he does now, sort of.
Frank seems to notice his effort and nods encouragingly, and then Eddie’s talking as if it isn’t something he only learned to do in his thirties.
‘I am thirty-five years old and I have a 10-year-old son but ever since our conversation last week I’ve been feeling like a fucking a teenager.’
Frank hums, and seems to consider him for a moment, ‘and you think this has something to do with what we talked about last week?’
‘Well, up until then I wasn’t falling all over myself every time Buck so much as looked at me, so I’m thinking that there might be a correlation between me acting like a teenager and you making me realize that I like—’ Eddie runs a hand through his hair and pointedly moves his eyes to the painting on the wall behind his therapist before he continues, ‘love him or whatever.’
‘Or whatever?’ Frank expression has morphed slightly into something adjacent to a smirk when Eddie dares to resume eye-contact, and Eddie has to resist the urge to throw the pillow he’s currently holding at his therapists’ face. Instead, he just groans and rubs his face with his hands.
‘I don’t know! It’s only been a week,’ And Eddie’s aware that his voice has taken on a somewhat squeaky quality, but he has more pressing things to worry about than this further regression into adolescent behaviour.
‘All I know is that last Wednesday, before I spoke to you,’ looking to Frank accusingly, as if this is anyone’s fault but his own, ‘Buck came over for dinner and everything was fine. We put Chris to bed, we watched a movie, and then he left. Nothing weird.’
Sighing dramatically, he continues, ‘But then, when I got home after our appointment last week, Buck was in the living room with Chris—just like he said he’d be,’ He rushes to add, as if this detail is instrumental. ‘And I could barely get through saying “hi” to my best friend and my child without my heart beating so fast that I thought I was having a cardiac event. And I know what that feels like, Frank.’
It was true. Eddie had driven home from therapy last Thursday after having said something he thought was inconspicuous but that had inadvertently led to a conversation Eddie never wanted to have because he knew what would happen.
He knew that if he ever let himself acknowledge any of the maybe-not-so-platonic feelings he had for his best friend he wouldn’t be able to take it back. Wouldn’t be able to undo the damage of that particular emotional dam breaking and flooding his body with feelings that he hadn’t had since he was sixteen. Not since he was lab partners with Shannon, snapping his kit-kat in half in AP Biology and blushing when his hand grazed hers under the table when he passed it to her slowly, sharing shy, devious smiles when their teacher failed to notice.
Except, somehow, this is worse than kit-kat’s and hands grazing because this is Buck and even the thought of him makes his eyebrow twitch and his palms sweaty and his heart soar like it never fucking has before. He’s pretty sure that if Buck tried to hand him half a kit-kat Eddie would ask him to marry him or something equally stupid.
Frank seems to take pity on Eddie’s misery, because his face softens sympathetically—which simultaneously makes Eddie feel better and worse—when he replies, ‘You know, Eddie, it’s normal for people to have a physical response to seeing someone they love.’
And Eddie knows that, but it isn’t the point. And Frank knows that too because it’s less than a second before he’s continuing, ‘I know that it was overwhelming for you, letting yourself embrace the feelings you have for Buck.’
Slight understatement, Eddie thinks.
‘But letting yourself feel things, saying them out loud, even when those feelings are complicated, or perhaps feel as though they might make things complicated, is an integral part of opening up. Not just to me, but—most importantly—to yourself.’
Eddie takes a deep breath as Frank finishes, ‘You know as well as I do that whatever feelings you have for Buck didn’t simply start last week when you said them out loud. They are—like all the other feelings we’ve talked about over this last year—a part of you, and that’s why you should let those feelings breathe, let them take shape, let them tell you what they want to say.’
Frank is sure to be certain that Eddie is looking him in the eye when he adds, ‘because you deserve to hear it, you deserve to listen to yourself.’
And Eddie is suddenly taken back to a conversation they had two months ago. The one where Frank had fixed him with warm, gentle eyes and Eddie had looked down at his own hands and whispered into the silence between them that he thinks he might be bisexual. Frank had smiled and whispered back unflinchingly, letting Eddie confess every detail that had led him to his realization while the rain drummed against the windows outside. And Eddie had whispered, and Frank had whispered back, until the rain grew quieter to Eddie’s ears and he realized it was because he was no longer whispering. Rather, he was talking with hesitant and shaky confidence.
Eddie swallows and levels Frank’s gaze, ‘Yeah. I deserve to hear it.’
☆
The drive back from therapy is not as exhausting as it used to be, but Eddie is tired. He has been all week, because it turns out that allowing yourself to embrace every thought you’ve ever suppressed about your best friend of six years—who also happens to be a father figure to your son, is smart, sweet, funny and so fucking gorgeous that you actively tripped over your own foot at work three days ago—is exhausting.
Tripping over at work on Monday was an actual thing that happened. Eddie had been in the middle of getting ready for a twelve-hour shift and had just pulled his boots on when the door had swung open, Buck and Ravi tumbling into the room, laughing and shoving one another like playful puppies. Ravi was telling Buck some crazy story Eddie that had already heard the day before, claiming he was going to tell him something that would ‘cheer him up’ since his ‘work husband’ wasn’t there. When Eddie had tried to argue that he was absolutely, resolutely, not in need of ‘cheering up’, nor was Buck his ‘work husband’, he had received disbelieving and mocking looks from pretty much every single person within hearing distance.
So, yeah. Eddie had already heard the story about Ravi’s roommate trying to impress a girl with his—apparently limited—culinary skills and giving them both food poisoning. But he didn’t mind hearing it again, not when Buck was giggling and smiling and looking at Eddie with his eyes all crinkled with laughter and asking him if he had heard the story yet. Eddie couldn’t reply, could barely manage a nod before Buck returned his attention to Ravi to hear the end of the story, because Eddie was dumbstruck with how beautiful he found this man.
He always knew, of course, that Buck was attractive, and ever since he had come out, he had let himself consider Buck, among other men, to not simply be “objectively attractive” but attractive to him. This, however, was an all-new level of attraction because Eddie had never, ever in his life looked at someone and felt sick with how pretty he found them. So pretty, it seemed, that when Eddie got up from the bench to put his bag in his locker, he had been too distracted to have realized he hadn’t done up his laces and had promptly fallen flat on his face.
Buck had been endlessly concerned. Ravi, on the other hand, had found it hilarious. But Eddie couldn’t bring himself to care about the incredulous look Ravi was giving him from over Buck’s shoulder when he had helped him and checked him for injuries. Eddie had let Buck fuss over him until the bell went off seven minutes later, deciding that if it took humiliating falls in the workplace to get Buck to run his thumb across his eyebrow with tender concern, he would do it again. Hell, he would do it a hundred times.
Eddie could still feel the phantom touch of Buck’s hand cupping his face when he pulled into the driveway and saw Buck’s car parked outside, only then remembering that Buck had offered to come over after his appointment and hang out. Eddie had Thursday’s off because of his weekly appointments, and Buck came over afterwards each and every time if he wasn’t working. It was impossibly nice and if Eddie hadn’t just spent the last 45-minutes with Frank he would probably let himself believe, even just for minute, that he doesn’t deserve it. But he’s trying not to think like that anymore, so when he turns the key in the door and his stomach actively flutters at the promise of Buck on the other side, he just lets it happen—because he’s helpless to it now.
‘Hey,’ Buck smiles, already sat down on the couch with a coffee in his hand and a book that Eddie can’t make out the title of already set down on the table in front of him, as though Buck had heard Eddie’s key in the door and paused whatever else he was doing just to have his smile be the first thing Eddie saw when he came in.
Eddie loves him. Loves him.
‘How was therapy?’ Buck asks, rising from the couch and walking to the kitchen to pour Eddie a cup of the coffee he had brewed.
‘It was good,’ Eddie smiles, successfully managing to swallow back the nonsensical stream of embarrassing confessions threatening to explode out of him and all over Buck, who is placing a mug down in front of Eddie and pulling out a chair, gesturing for Eddie to do the same.
‘How come you moved your appointment up? Is everything okay?’ Buck asks gently, sounding so concerned that when he curls his fingers around his own cup of coffee and looks across the table at Eddie, he almost looks younger than he is.
His eyes are so soft, and he’s wearing the hoodie that Eddie gave to him to wear last week when they had gone to the park with Chris and Buck had insisted that he would be fine in his t-shirt.
‘You’re going to get cold.’ Eddie frowned when Buck greeted him at the door. He was wearing a white tee and Eddie was really fucking relieved he had said the whole you’ll-get-cold-thing and not the alternative you’re-so-sexy-and-beautiful-and-we-should-kiss-on-the-mouth-thing that was also threatening to come out of him.
Buck had laughed uproariously, as if bewildered by Eddie’s concern. ‘Eddie, it’s June. I’ll be fine,’ he had scoffed, darting past the older man to find Christopher and throw him over his shoulder.
Eddie had watched Buck carry his kid out the front door like that, the two of them squealing and giggling. He grabbed the hoodie that was flung over the kitchen counter and wrapping it around his waist over his Henley before following the two of them out, clenching his fist to keep himself from wrapping his arm around Buck’s waist and sliding his hand into his back pocket when he caught up to them.
And—yeah.
Buck is wearing Eddie’s hoodie, even though he has a million of them at home and could have easily worn one of those. He’s sitting across the table looking at Eddie with his stupid blue eyes and concern all over his face and Eddie doesn’t know if this coffee is fucking laced with something, but he feels drunk. He looks at Buck and hears him ask why his appointment got moved and he’s drunk on the sound of his best friend’s voice. Drunk on the blond of his curls and how they move when Buck tucks his chin to flinch at the heat of the coffee he just sipped. Drunk on how he’s just gorgeous—impossibly gorgeous in every conceivable way.
And Eddie is going to blame Frank for this. Is going to blame him for making him all loose-lipped and insane. He's also probably going to blame his parents, and how they instilled within him an aversion to emotional vulnerability. But Eddie can’t help but say it. Doesn’t want to not say it. Will never not say it again.
‘You’re so beautiful.’
The words are out of his mouth before the rational part of his brain is able to chime in and suggest otherwise.
Worse yet, though he thinks he tried to say the words softly, he is quick to realize that he just shouted them across the table like a maniac, because Buck is jumping out of his skin and dropping his mug as though someone’s just pulled a knife on him.
Which…okay. In Eddie’s defence, he is just as surprised as Buck is by both the volume and suddenness of his confession, and while he realizes he should probably help Buck stop choking on his coffee, he can’t.
He’s so paralyzed with self-mortification that he just sits there in wide eyed horror, hoping that Buck will finish coughing and say something. Anything.
‘Jesus fuck,’ Buck finally croaks, knocking his own fist against his chest as he recovers.
Eddie figures it could be worse than jesus fuck, probably. Maybe. Oh, god.
Eddie is going to have to move. He is going to have to pack up his and Chris’s apartment, pull him out of school right now and drive to fucking Canada. They’ll have to change their names.
Eddie is already trying to remember where the passports are when Buck starts talking again.
‘You didn’t mean to say that, did you?’ Buck is looking at him with something that Eddie doesn’t recognize in his eyes, but amusement that Eddie is endlessly familiar with on the curve of his lips.
Eddie groans, pushing his chair back with his feet and standing up to lean against the counter and bury his face in his hands.
‘Well, I definitely didn’t mean to shout it.’ He grumbles, face still very much buried in his hands and half-a-mind still trying to remember the location of those damn passports when he hears the tell-tale scrape of Buck’s own chair against the floor, and the impending sense that his best friend—who he just unceremoniously word-vomited all over—is walking over to him.
Eddie feels warm hands around his wrists, pulling his own away from his face, and suddenly he’s got the most beautiful man in the world stood right in front of him, holding his wrists on either side of him. Eddie looks up at Buck’s face, and he is—smiling? Well, he isn’t smiling. But he’s got that glint in his eye, the sparkly one that makes Eddie feels like he’s seeing actual stars and—Eddie has to forcibly clamp his mouth shut to prevent himself from saying that out loud and stop it from joining you’re so beautiful on the list of reasons he’s going to have to give Chris when he tells them they’re moving to Canada.
‘I realize that you didn’t mean to shout it,’ Buck says slowly, shaking Eddie out of his reverie. His eyes are searching, and Eddie wants to say the right thing, wants his eyes to convey whatever it is Buck is looking for. But when Buck is still looking at him after several moments, cautious and soft, like he’s trying to decipher exactly what Eddie’s thinking and save them both from saying or doing the wrong thing, Eddie decides he doesn’t want to be cautious.
‘I meant it,’ He says, quietly this time, because the rest of the room doesn’t need to hear it. Buck inhales slightly at Eddie’s words, his eyes still sparkling, still so blue, and Eddie can’t help but submerge himself—can’t help but fling himself into Buck’s orbit or dive into his ocean or whatever other metaphors there may be that do justice to how weightless he feels and how all-encompassing Buck is.
He gently frees his wrists from Buck’s hold and brings his hands to either side of Buck’s face, stubbled and warm and perfect.
‘I think you’re beautiful.’ He says slowly, terrified of what happens next but more scared of what happens if he doesn’t say it. Because he feels the words too intensely to not say them, and when Buck continues to just stare at Eddie, dumbstruck and unmoving, Eddie can’t help but bleed his love for him all over the kitchen floor.
‘You’re beautiful, Evan. You’re beautiful all the time and I had to move therapy up by two hours because I was so overwhelmed by how beautiful you are. I’m sorry for shouting at you,’ Buck smiles at that—properly this time—and Eddie laughs and grips Buck’s face tighter, more assuredly.
‘So, to answer your question,’ Eddie breathes, stepping impossibly closer to Buck, who is smiling at him like maybe this isn’t the dumbest thing Eddie has ever done, ‘everything’s okay—except that I am stupidly in love with you and every time I so much as look at you, I can’t move because you’re beautiful and you’re smart and you’re kind and—’
You’re perfect gets squashed into a gasp when Buck finally shuts Eddie up with his lips. Eddie freezes for maybe half a second before he’s returning the kiss, moving his thumbs over the softness of Buck’s cheeks and opening his mouth to let Buck’s bottom lip catch between his.
The kiss is warm and wet—Eddie doesn’t know whether he or Buck is crying, though it could be both of them—and Eddie’s about to pull away and ask Buck what this means when Buck moans a little, effectively shutting Eddie right back up again. Eddie spins them around and presses Buck against the edge of the counter, the latter’s hands sliding under Eddie’s shirt to hold his waist.
Eddie thinks he is about to pass out when Buck’s tongue slides over his lips. He opens his mouth immediately and the two of them make-out like teenagers—the irony is not lost on Eddie, but he does not give a fuck when he’s got his fingers in Buck’s hair and his tongue in his mouth—until Eddie’s curiosity wins out and he pulls back, smiling when Buck whines, finally dropping his hands from Buck’s face to hold the others slightly larger ones in his.
Eddie raises their joined hands to his lips and kisses Buck’s knuckles, taking in the sight of the other’s face, because if Eddie thought Buck was beautiful before, it has nothing on how he looks now. His cheeks are flushed, his lips are a little swollen, and he’s looking at Eddie with so much in his eyes that Eddie can’t breathe, can’t look away. He doesn’t breathe until a few seconds later, when Buck finally speaks.
‘I’m in love with you,’ He says somewhat shyly, as if Eddie didn’t just declare his undying love for him or have his tongue down his throat.
‘Thank fucking god,’ Eddie replies, swallowing Buck’s laugh with another kiss, because he can. Holy fuck.
Buck pulls back after a few moments, smirking at Eddie’s presumably lovestruck expression when the older man tries to chase his lips, ‘I can’t believe I’m so hot that you had to get therapy about it.’
‘Oh my god, shut the fuck up.’
Buck doesn’t shut up about it, and Eddie doesn’t stop spontaneously declaring how attractive Buck is at inappropriate volumes. Mostly because, as it turns out, he can’t fucking help it.
Chris does not appreciate it. An intervention is staged after it happens on school grounds.