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Buck knows what he’s doing might be constituted as ‘a bit creepy,’ but he can’t really help it. He has a book in his lap, so it’s not like he’s just staring at Eddie, but—ok, so he hasn’t actually read a page in over twenty minutes, and in the meantime he has watched his best friend chop like six different kinds of vegetables to go in Bobby’s ragu.
“How’s it going, Buck?” Hen asks, flinging herself into the adjacent arm chair.
“Fine,” Buck says, barely looking at her. “But something’s up with Eddie.”
“Really?” Hen glances over to the kitchen. “He seems pretty normal to me.”
Buck shakes his head. “He’s all—smiley.”
It had started that morning, when Eddie showed up with a coffee for Buck from that fancy place on Robertson, which was at least ten minutes out of his way and usually had a long line in the mornings besides.
“What’s this for?” Buck asked.
Eddie just shrugged. “Just felt like bringing you something nice.”
Buck hadn’t been able to stop from smiling idiotically at Eddie when he took the drink, though thankfully Chim had stopped him from truly embarrassing himself by interrupting at that exact moment.
Eddie’s inexplicable good mood persisted through the morning and the afternoon, even after they were called out to deal with a burst sewer main. He whistled walking back to the truck, complimented Ravi on his new haircut (which, ok, did look pretty good) and didn’t even get annoyed when Hen and Chim started arguing over whether the street where the sewer main burst was jinxed, since they’d been called out there three times in the last two weeks.
Now it’s almost dinner time, and not only did Eddie volunteer to help Bobby prep, he’s over there smiling and laughing and dancing like he’s the host of some daytime cooking show.
“So the guy’s in a good mood,” Hen says, cracking open her textbook. “Sounds like you’re inventing reasons to be worried, Buck.”
It’s not just a good mood, though. Every time Buck so much as glances at Eddie, Eddie’s looking back at him with this unbearably fond look. And he keeps teasing Buck, which—okay, that’s not that unusual, but it’s like there’s this new undercurrent to it, something Buck would almost call flirty if he didn’t know any better.
And then there’s the touching—and Buck isn’t talking about the usual kind, where Eddie will clap a hand on his shoulder or trail his fingers across Buck’s back in passing. This is something else. This is Eddie fitting his hand to the dip of Buck’s waist like it belongs there. Throwing an arm around Buck that would be casual enough, if not for his thumb tracing firm circles into Buck’s shoulder. Squeezing Buck’s thigh in the engine on the way back from a call.
Buck made the mistake of working out before dinner, and Eddie immediately offered to spot him, which Buck hadn’t realized meant use as an excuse to put his hands all over him but that’s exactly what happened. Buck still hasn’t recovered.
If Eddie’s intention with all this is to steadily drive Buck insane, he’s doing an admirable job.
At that exact moment, Eddie glances up from chopping zucchini, meeting Buck’s gaze with a private smile that makes Buck’s stomach flip over. He’s usually a lot less pathetic, but it’s been non-stop today and Buck is hanging by a very thin thread.
Buck drops his gaze quickly, glancing back to Hen who’s watching with an amused expression.
“He’s probably just glad you’re back at work,” she says.
This is Buck’s first shift back after being laid up from a nasty fall from the ladder during a fire rescue a few days ago. He’d actually spent the first forty-eight hours at Eddie’s recuperating, and then Maddie had picked him up and taken him home to spend the day with her and Jee while Eddie went in for a shift. Even though Buck maintains he didn’t need a babysitter, it was just a mild sprain and a lingering headache from his concussion. Maddie was insistent, though—you don’t fuck around with head injuries.
“Yeah,” Buck agrees. “Maybe that’s it.”
He doesn’t really believe it, though. Especially not when, after dinner, Eddie corners him outside the bunk room.
“Hey,” Eddie says softly, and that’s his hand on Buck’s hip, nudging him back against the wall, out of sight from anyone passing by.
Buck’s mouth goes dry, his pulse spiking. “Hey.”
“You wanna come over tomorrow?” Eddie asks.
“Uh.” Buck has temporarily forgotten how to use words, because all he can think about is Eddie’s hand on his hip and the warmth of his body inches away from Buck’s.
Eddie glances over his shoulder like he’s checking for other people before he leans in slightly, “Promise I’ll make it worth your while.”
He must have no idea the kind of images that conjures, with him gazing Buck from under his lashes with an expression that can only be described as smoldering, and he’s still touching Buck what the fuck what the fuck what the—
“S-sure,” Buck says, just because he needs Eddie to stop touching him before he completely loses it. “That uh—that sounds good.”
He’s barely able to stop his voice from breaking.
Eddie smiles, pleased. “I have to admit, this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.”
Before Buck can ask him what that even means, Ravi emerges from the bunk room. Buck startles like they’ve been caught doing something wrong, but Eddie just takes a smooth step backward and finally takes his hand off Buck.
Ravi looks at the two of them, lingering for a second on Buck’s heated face, and just says, “Nope.” And then goes back into the bunk room.
Buck pushes past Eddie to follow Ravi in and says, way too loud, “Okay well I’m just gonna try to get some sleep now, bye Eddie!”
He all but slams the door shut, leaning back against it with a groan. Ravi is making up his bunk, carefully not looking at him.
“What the fuck,” Buck says.
Ravi puts his ear plugs in and turns over.
Buck makes it through the rest of their shift without any more Eddie-induced incidents, mainly by being asleep the entire time. After he showers and changes, he finds Eddie waiting for him in the parking lot.
“Hey,” Eddie says, looking unbelievably beautiful in the soft morning light. “I gotta run to get Chris from Pepa’s and take him to PT but I wanted to see you before you took off.”
“You did?” Buck says dumbly.
Eddie quirks a smile at him. “Of course. Can’t remember the last time twenty-four hours felt so long. I wasn’t sure I’d make it. We’re on for later though, right?”
Buck jangles his keys nervously. Even if Eddie’s been looking at him and touching him and teasing him more than usual, he can be normal about it. They’re just going to hang out, like they always do.
“Yeah,” he says, proud of himself for how casual he sounds. “I told Maddie I’d stop by after lunch but—after? I can pick up some groceries for dinner. Maybe burgers?”
“Sounds perfect,” Eddie says, and he seems perfectly normal except—except then he touches Buck’s bicep and slides his hand all the way down his arm, leaving goosebumps in its wake. “See you then.”
There’s something like a promise in those words, in his heated gaze, and Buck is—he has to be imagining this, right? It’s like Hen said—Eddie’s just in a good mood. This is all in his head.
“Yeah,” Buck echoes, stepping back. “See you then.”
Buck feels weird and jittery the rest of the day. Maddie keeps asking if his head’s still bothering him when they get together for lunch.
“What? No, I’m fine,” Buck replies, but he doesn’t tell her the real reason for his distraction. After trying to bring it up with Hen, he no longer holds any hope he can explain what’s wrong in a way that doesn’t make him sound crazy or pathetic or both. What’s he going to say? I’m distracted because my best friend looked at me and touched my arm and now I literally can’t think about anything else.
Nerves are dancing in his stomach when he pulls up to the Diaz house with a Jeep full of groceries later that afternoon. He has to sit at the steering wheel for a full minute and a half and give himself a pep talk before he can go inside.
He grabs the grocery bags and uses his elbow to knock since he doesn’t have a free hand to open the door. He’s surprised when it swings open almost instantaneously.
“Hi,” Eddie says, a little breathlessly, his eyes wide and shining, like Buck is the best thing he’s ever seen.
“Hi,” Buck answers. Before he can so much as take a step, Eddie grabs both of the grocery bags, drops them on the floor, and hauls Buck inside by the front of his shirt. “Eddie, what’re you—?”
“Buck!” Christopher cries, appearing at the end of the hallway.
Eddie sighs, letting go of Buck’s shirt and taking a step back.
“Christopher!” Buck answers, matching his excited tone and barreling toward him.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Chris gushes. “I just finished my Pokédex in Arceus! You have to come see!”
“No way! You got Giratina?”
“Yeah! And Cresselia and Regigigas! I had to get all the plates first which took so long and then I had to go to Mt. Coronet to challenge Volo.”
“Oh man, you gotta tell me everything. Give me one second to put these groceries away and then you can give me the blow-by-blow,” Buck promises.
Chris huffs in annoyance, turning to go back to his room. “Okay, fine, but hurry up!”
Buck catches Eddie’s eye with a laugh and fond head shake and then picks up one of the grocery bags and lugs it into the kitchen. Eddie grabs the other and follows.
“They were out of regular buns at the store, so I ended up getting the fancy brioche ones,” Buck says, opening the fridge to put away all the refrigerated produce. “I forgot if you said you have mustard already, but I got some dijon just in case and oh—I noticed you were out of yogurt and I know Chris likes those smoothies Carla makes so I got some bananas, too. The tomatoes looked really good, I think they’re in season, so I got some extra and I thought maybe we could do a salad or something for—”
“Buck.”
Buck looks up from the crisper to find that Eddie is practically on top of him, trapping him up against the fridge. The cold air inside is a stark contrast to the heat of Eddie’s body. Buck shivers.
He’s not imagining it, he’s not, when Eddie’s gaze flicks down to Buck’s lips. Buck can’t breathe.
The kitchen door swings abruptly open. “Buck! What’s taking so long?”
Buck steps around Eddie. “Be right there, buddy.”
When he looks back at him, Eddie is wearing a rueful smile. “Go ahead,” he says, grabbing a bunch of asparagus and waving it at them. “I’ll finish up here.”
Buck flees from the kitchen after Chris, more confused than ever. Does Eddie have any goddamn idea what he’s doing to Buck? Does he know how close Buck is to snapping? Is this a game?
Is Buck making this all up in his head?
He has no idea anymore, except that his chances of surviving the evening are quickly dwindling.
To Buck’s relief, Eddie seems almost completely normal all through dinner and clean-up, although weirdly distracted, or impatient or something. They had no particular plans for the rest of the evening, and Chris is on summer break, so they wind up playing a few rounds of Street Fighter and eating ice cream.
At precisely nine, Eddie presses stop on the game and says. “Time to brush your teeth, Chris. You can read a few chapters of Wilderlore once you’re in bed.”
Chris whines a little bit about having to keep his same bed time on summer break, looking to Buck to back him up. Buck just shakes his head.
“Nice try, but what Dad says goes,” Buck says loyally. Eddie quirks a smile at him.
There’s a weird charge in the air, an itch under Buck’s skin, and half of him wants to stay here so he can demand Eddie explain what’s been going on with him for the last twenty-four hours. But the other half of him is terrified that if he’s alone with Eddie and Eddie touches him or looks at him with those unbearably soft eyes, he’s going to do something incredibly drastic, like cupping Eddie’s face in his hands and kissing him until he’s dizzy with it.
He just—he doesn’t know. If all of the touching and the weighted looks are just in his head, or just a byproduct of Eddie’s mysterious good mood, if Buck is reading this all wrong and getting his hopes up just in time for them to get dashed to pieces.
He doesn’t think he can handle that tonight, so instead he pushes to his feet. “All right, well, think I should head out now.”
Eddie looks up at him, his smile fading into confusion. “You—I thought you were gonna stay?”
“Chris isn’t the only one with a bed time,” Buck says, forcing his voice to stay light, his mouth to smile, even as his heart beats double-time.
Eddie looks put out, like Buck has really thrown off his whole evening by declining to hang out and drink beers on the couch.
“Next time,” Buck promises, laying a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “I’m just really beat.”
Eddie meets his gaze, searching his face like there’s some mystery he has to solve. Buck swallows down his anxiety that Eddie can read everything he’s trying to hide and offers a weak smile.
Eddie nods. “Right. Sure. I’ll just—I’ll see you at work.”
“Night Buck!” Chris chirps.
“Night buddy.” He’s out the door before he can change his mind.
If Buck thought Eddie had been acting strange on their last shift, then he doesn’t even have a word for how Eddie’s acts on the next one. He avoids Buck practically all morning, volunteering to wash the truck with Ravi and then restock the ambulance with Hen. In the engine on the way to their first call of the day, he sits as far away from Buck as he can, and doesn’t make any attempt to join in when Chim and Lucy start teasing Buck for blaming the downed telephone wire on their last call on Mercury retrograde.
This time, though, Buck isn’t the only one who notices Eddie’s weird mood.
“You doing okay, Eddie?” Hen asks when they pull back into the station and file off the truck.
“Fine,” Eddie says, cutting a quick glance over to Buck. He flicks his gaze away just as quickly, and then mutters some excuse about calling to check on Chris and disappears.
Hen watches him go with a confused frown.
“What’s up with him?” Chim asks, equally confused. “He was in a great mood like three days ago, wasn’t he?”
“You know what this reminds me of?” Hen asks. “Remember when Cap and Athena got together, and he was all happy and chipper for a few days, and then got all grumpy and snappish because they had a fight?”
“You think Eddie’s seeing someone?”
Chim and Hen turn to look at Buck at the exact same time.
“W-what?” Buck says. “Eddie’s not seeing anyone.”
He’d know. Eddie would tell him—wouldn’t he? The thought of it makes Buck’s stomach turn to lead, and he finds he can’t really stomach dinner, which is a shame because Bobby’s been branching out lately and the banh mi sandwiches smell amazing.
They get called out again about an hour later to a mild fender bender in the middle of Olympic boulevard. The drivers are both mostly fine, but the twenty-year-old kid who caused the accident by losing control of his skateboard is pretty banged up. Luckily, neither of the cars hit him, having swerved into each other to avoid it.
“I just wanted him to think I was cool,” the kid is sobbing at Hen.
“You did this to impress a guy?” Buck asks, securing the collar on the kid’s neck while Eddie brings over a gurney.
“What, you’ve never done anything stupid to impress a crush?” the kid asks. He looks Buck up and down. “What am I saying—there’s no way you’re single.”
Buck laughs. “Actually, I am.”
A loud crash pulls all of their attentions over to Eddie, who’s accidentally rammed the gurney into the curb and is staring at Buck with the weirdest expression on his face, stunned and a little hurt. When he realizes they’re all staring at him he shakes himself slightly and mutters, “Sorry.”
Buck blinks, and then nods at him once he’s in position to lift the kid. “On three.”
They lift the kid onto the gurney.
“As for doing something stupid to impress a crush, I’ve definitely been there,” Buck tells the kid as he straps him in. He forces himself not to look at Eddie, but he can’t force himself not to think back to an evening where he stepped inside an ambulance with a live grenade in it just because the hot new guy volunteered to defuse it.
“How’d it go for you?” the kid asks.
Well, he’s my best friend now, Buck wants to say. Instead he just smiles and answers, “Not too bad, actually.” Out of the corner of his eye he sees another kid—also around twenty, his expression frantic—racing over to them. “Looks like maybe this didn’t go too bad for you either.”
“But maybe try something that involves fewer broken bones next time,” Hen advises, and then wheels the kid off to the ambulance, leaving Buck and Eddie standing there, watching the kid’s crush (or so Buck assumes) fuss over him.
Buck turns to Eddie, still smiling, but finds Eddie has already turned away and is walking back toward the truck.
The ride back to the station is…weird. While Eddie doesn’t seem to be ignoring Buck anymore, he keeps sending him all these agitated looks while Lucy and Ravi try half-heartedly to keep a conversation going.
Buck is more than a little confused, and is starting to get more than a little agitated himself. He has no idea what he did, if he did anything, to upset Eddie, and he’s spiraling a little. It’s just—he’s not used to not knowing what’s going on in Eddie’s head and he kind of can’t stand it. He just wants to grab Eddie and look him in the eye and ask him what Buck did and what he can do to fix it.
Except he’s pretty sure if he tries to have an honest talk with Eddie about feelings then all of Buck's feelings are just going to come pouring out. Or worse—that Eddie will just take one look at Buck and see it all written there. It’s not like he’s been doing a great job hiding it.
The rest of their shift is just as tense. It’s also busy, with little opportunity for uninterrupted sleep. By the time the sun comes up and Buck is changing back into his street clothes, he’s wrung out and more exhausted than he can remember being in weeks. He just wants to go home and close his eyes, and maybe when he wakes up all this weirdness with Eddie will be magically gone.
“See ya, Buckley,” Lucy calls as she takes off, clearly still wired from their busy shift.
Buck gives her a half-hearted wave and realizes he’s the last to leave.
Or, almost the last.
“Hey,” Eddie says. He’s leaning up against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. The morning light filtering through the glass lights up the edges of his hair. He’s—fucking breathtaking. “You’re coming home with me.”
Buck’s chest clenches. “I am?”
“Yep,” Eddie says. “We need to talk.”
It’s not like Buck doesn’t agree with him, it’s just that there’s really only one way for that talk to go and he’s not sure he’s up to spilling his pathetic feelings all over Eddie at this exact moment. But he recognizes the blazing look in Eddie’s eyes and knows he’s not going to tolerate Buck begging off again.
Fuck.
He follows Eddie silently out of the station and into the parking lot to his truck. Eddie gets in the driver’s side and starts the car.
They don’t speak the entire drive to Eddie’s house, and Buck feels every beat of his heart like the ticking of a clock counting down to something he’s not sure he’s ready to face.
Eddie pulls into his driveway, turns off the car, and undoes his seatbelt but makes no move to go inside.
Buck feels like he’s swallowed a swam of bees.
“I just want you to know, I get it,” Eddie says at last. He’s looking down at the steering wheel, not at Buck, and his voice has that dull, flat tone it takes on when he’s trying to pretend he doesn’t have feelings.
“You get…what?” Buck asks, because he sure as hell doesn’t get any of this.
“That things are moving too fast. We can—we can slow down or—whatever you need.” He waves a hand vaguely, his face carefully scrubbed clean of any emotion.
“Eddie, I’m—I’m gonna be honest, man, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about how you can barely stand to be in the same room with me,” Eddie says. Finally there’s an edge to his voice, and while Buck hates hearing it, it’s better than the stoic blankness. “I thought we were on the same page here, but obviously you’re—” He stops abruptly, rerouting his sentence. “I just. If you changed your mind, just tell me. I can’t handle this hot and cold routine.”
He finally locks eyes with Buck and what Buck sees there scares him more than anything else about this conversation. Because Eddie doesn’t just look mad, or frustrated, or upset. He looks crushed.
And Buck doesn’t understand. “Changed my mind about what? Eddie, you’re the one who avoided me all day yesterday.”
“Because you obviously wanted space and didn’t know how to ask for it,” Eddie says.
“Where is this coming from? Who said I wanted space?”
“You practically bolted out of my house the other night,” Eddie points out.
This—this is why Buck was dreading this conversation. He wants to cover his face with his hands. “Only because you—you kept touching me a-and flirting with me and I couldn’t tell if you were serious, or what it meant, if it meant anything. I feel like I’m going crazy over here Eddie, just—just tell me what you want. Please.”
Eddie stares at him with an incredulous look on his face. “I thought I was pretty clear about what I want when we made out on my couch for over an hour.”
It takes a second for the words to fully land, because there’s just no way Eddie is talking about making out in reference to Buck. It takes another few seconds to realize that Eddie isn’t just talking about making out, he’s saying they already did that.
Which, sure. Maybe in Buck’s wildest dreams.
Not in real life.
“What?” he croaks. He cannot seem to form any more words that aren’t just what and the fuck? Finally he says, “Eddie, we didn’t—” He can’t even say it. “When did—? Eddie.”
Eddie’s now looking at him in alarm, his face paling. “Buck,” he says slowly. “Do you…not remember that?”
Buck is already shaking his head, so he starts shaking his head more vigorously, and then maybe his entire body is shaking. He feels hysterical, untethered. What the fuck is going on?
“Oh shit,” Eddie says. And then he starts the car again and tugs his seatbelt back on.
“What? Eddie, what’s going on? Where are we going?”
Eddie’s grip on the steering wheel tightens as he backs out and floors it down the street. “Do you remember a week ago when we had that call where you fell off the ladder?”
“Uh, yeah, I still have bruises from that,” Buck says.
“Yeah, and you had a pretty bad concussion,” Eddie continues, eyes still on the road. “I took care of you for like two days after that, you don’t remember that?”
“Of course I do,” Buck replies, which is the truth, although he was mostly sleeping off his injuries so honestly the details of those two days are pretty fuzzy. He remembers sleeping in Eddie’s bed and Chris bringing him snacks and reading to him from his new favorite book series. Remembers they kept the shades drawn because the light was hurting his head and he even kind of remembers feeling Eddie’s fingers stroking gently through his hair, although he convinced himself he’d dreamed that.
“And then on the second night you said, ‘thanks for taking care of me, Eddie’ and I said, ‘I’ll always take care of you’ and then you kissed me?”
“No,” Buck says, almost desperately, because that—that can’t be real. “I don’t…that’s—I really kissed you?”
Eddie nods, pressing hard on the accelerator as they fly down Pico. “Yeah. But you don’t remember it, so we’re going to the ER.”
“Because I hit my head,” Buck says slowly, “when I fell off the ladder.”
Eddie nods again, jaw tight.
Buck stares at his profile, the intense look on his face familiar from hundreds of calls where things got dicey and Eddie got very focused and very in control. Only now, he can see the cracks in the armor, the crease in his brow, the slight hitch in his breathing.
And then he realizes, “Wait, so…the last few days…you were actually hitting on me? That wasn’t just in my head?”
“I wasn’t hitting on you,” Eddie argues, weaving through the morning commuters.
Buck reframes the last couple days. “You thought we were already together. So all the flirting and—you were trying to kiss me. Oh my god. And you invited me over and I just took off. Oh god.”
Eddie smiles grimly. “I spent three days waiting for a chance to kiss you again without our coworkers or our son walking in on us and then you just walked out on me. But now’s really not the time to rehash this because you might have a brain bleed. Is there anything else you don’t remember from the past week? Any more missing time?”
“I don’t think so?” Buck says, but he’s more thinking about every time Eddie stepped close and reach for him the second they were alone, like he couldn’t wait to get his hands on him. Like it was all he could think about.
He feels warm, and kind of giddy, and Eddie’s right, he might have a brain bleed but he can’t really bring himself to worry about that when Eddie wants him.
Eddie, clearly, has different priorities, and he makes that clear when he continues to quiz Buck about his symptoms as he parks the truck and hustles Buck into the ER. They get checked in, Eddie calls Maddie to let her know what’s going on and to see if she has any more insight into Buck’s symptoms. Then he calls Carla to ask if she can keep Chris a few more hours, and if not, to drop him off with Pepa, who Eddie then calls to update as well. Then he calls Bobby, and texts the 118 group chat, and all the while Buck just sits in his uncomfortable plastic chair in the waiting room, trying not to grin like an idiot.
The doctor runs a bunch of cognitive tests on Buck and does a CT scan, and then lets the nurses take him to a bed and get him settled in.
Some of the gravity of the situation has finally started to settle in, and Buck feels more than a little nervous awaiting the results of the tests. But Eddie’s holding his hand, pressing kisses to his knuckles every few minutes and saying things like, “Whatever this is, it’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna take care of you.”
And if Buck weren’t already completely gone on him, he’s pretty sure this would do it.
“Well,” the doctor says when she comes back. “Your CT scan looked good and it seems like you’re no longer having any difficulty retaining short term memory, nor do you show any other signs of cognitive impairment, so I don’t see anything to be concerned about, Mr. Buckley.”
Eddie squeezes his hand and looks as though a huge weight has been lifted off him. “What happened, exactly? What caused the memory loss?”
“It seems when you hit your head last week, there was some swelling and inflammation of the brain,” the doctor says. "In rare cases, that can cause temporary anterograde amnesia—essentially, your brain is unable to encode short-term memories into long-term memories. Once the swelling went down and your brain started to heal, that process was able to return to its normal functioning state.”
“So no chance of it happening again?” Eddie asks. “He’s not going to forget the last twenty-four hours, for instance?”
The thought of forgetting again that Eddie wants to be with him makes Buck feel like throwing up.
“I would say it’s highly, highly unlikely,” the doctor replies. “As of now, I don’t expect you to have any long-term effects. But keep an eye on things, and if you do experience other symptoms, please do come back.”
“And what about the memories I lost?” Buck asks. “Am I going to get them back?”
The doctor shakes her head. “Unfortunately, that’s not really how this kind of amnesia works. The memories weren’t really ‘lost,’ they were never properly recorded to begin with.”
Buck doesn’t expect it to hit him so hard, but as Eddie thanks the doctor and she gets up to leave, he feels himself start to tear up.
Because those weren’t just any memories he lost. Those were memories about him and Eddie. About their first kiss. About the moment they finally crossed over into something new.
“Hey,” Eddie says softly, moving onto Buck’s bed and cradling his face. “Hey, it’s okay. Remember what I said? You’re okay now.”
Buck shakes his head, still sniffling, and lets Eddie pull him in close, tucking Buck against his chest and wrapping his arms around him. He presses a kiss to Buck’s temple and that just makes Buck cry harder, because he can’t remember if this is the first time Eddie’s ever done that, if Eddie cuddled him to sleep that night or brushed comforting kisses over his forehead.
And how could he ever, ever forget something this important? How could he ever forget feeling like this, like there was finally a place on this earth where he belonged without question, without doubt? How could he forget the soft ache of knowing, for the first time in his life, that his heart was safe in someone else’s hands?
“I don’t remember it,” he says wetly into Eddie’s collar bone. “I don’t remember our first kiss, or the first time I told you I was in love with you. I’m never going to have those memories.”
Eddie strokes a hand through Buck’s hair and says, very tenderly, “Well, you didn’t actually tell me you were in love with me yet. So."
Buck pushes out of Eddie’s arms so he can see his face. There’s no trace of a lie there, just pure, shining adoration. “I didn’t?”
“Not in so many words,” Eddie says. “After we kissed, you just said, ‘you and Chris are the best things that ever happened to me’ and I said the same, and then we made out until you got too tired and we went to sleep.”
“Oh,” Buck says. “Well—I love you. Only now I kinda wish I had waited for a better moment to tell you than when I’m crying in a hospital bed.”
Eddie smiles that smile that’s just for Buck where his eyes go soft and indulgent. “I’m glad you didn’t wait. This is the perfect moment. I love you, too. Very much. And that’s the first time I’ve told you that.”
Buck doesn’t hesitate. He leans into Eddie, capturing his lips. And it may not be their very first kiss, but Buck knows he’ll remember this one for the rest of his life. He’ll never forget the way Eddie relaxes into him, soft and sweet and just a little demanding. He’ll never forget the way he sighs into Buck’s mouth and pulls him closer, his grip firm but gentle on Buck’s waist, like he has no intention of letting go anytime soon.
When they break apart, Eddie keeps him close, looking him intently in the eye. “Listen to me. We’re gonna have a whole lifetime of memories together. What’s twenty-four hours compared to that?”
“A whole lifetime, huh?” Buck flushes, looking down. “You’re uh…you sound pretty sure about that.”
Eddie cups his face in one hand, brings Buck’s gaze back up to meet his. “I’m sure about you, sweetheart.”
“Eddie,” Buck says helplessly and then they’re kissing again, losing themselves in each other in a sterile hospital room.
“Please tell me this is not a ‘I’ve only got hours to live and my only regret is that we never kissed’ kiss,” Maddie’s voice says from the doorway.
Eddie tears himself away from Buck, whipping around to face her. He makes like he’s going to get off the bed now that they’ve got company, but Buck’s got his arms wrapped around his waist and isn’t about to let him go.
“It’s more of a ‘my brain is perfectly fine now even though I was concussed and forgot we already kissed’ kiss,” Buck replies.
“Thank god,” Maddie says, plopping down in Eddie’s empty seat next to the bed. “Wait—what?”
“It’s a long story,” Buck says. “Which unfortunately only Eddie can tell because I only remember half of it.”
“But you’re together,” Maddie says with a slow smile. “And your head is ok?”
“Never better,” Buck promises.
“I’m so glad.” To Eddie, she says, “Your call had me convinced Buck was about to become the next Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates.”
Eddie looks appalled. “Would that make me Adam Sandler?”
“You’re a billion times hotter than Adam Sandler,” Buck says, and immediately flushes even though it’s like, obviously true. He remembers, suddenly, the conversation he and Maddie had about that movie out on his balcony, right before he ended things with Taylor. Looking back, he knows now he’d been right on the precipice of putting it together—of realizing that the love he’d described wasn’t a love he was looking for, but a love he already had. That there was one person for whom he’d always try again.
He doesn’t realize he’s smiling dopily at Eddie until Eddie smiles back and says, “What?”
“I just really love you,” Buck says, and leans up to kiss him again—chastely, because his sister is still in the room thank you very much.
Even so, she groans like this is the worst thing she’s ever witnessed, but her voice is fond when she says, “God, you two are going to be so obnoxious now, aren’t you?”
Buck thinks about the other day, when Eddie couldn’t seem to stop smiling, when Buck was almost worried because he’d never seen him that happy. It hits him that all of that was because of Buck. Because three nights before, they’d kissed for the first time and told each other how much they meant to each other. The idea that he has that kind of effect on Eddie makes him feel like a firecracker is going off in his chest.
He kisses him again, and is still looking into his eyes when he answers, “Absolutely.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart,” Eddie says softly. “And I’m never gonna let you forget it again.”