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Carla’s words sit with Eddie for a long time. The thing about how he has to choose with his own heart and not Christopher’s. It makes sense, but it doesn’t feel right. Perhaps it is because he knows it’ll only solidify the belief in Christopher that no one in his life lasts, and that’s a heartbreaking thought on its own. To be so young and so painfully aware of the woes of life. It’s not fair.
And neither is living a lie, Eddie supposes. Because that’s what it’s starting to feel like – this life he’s built with Ana. For as perfect and amazing as she is, whatever they have is starting to feel like two mismatched puzzle pieces fitted together with the sharp bang of a fist. It works, but it’s tight, duty and expectations and family squeezing them together. They are one, after all, has become one because it’s easier to go down the stream rather than up.
Eddie knows he’s only got himself to blame, knows it’s his own cowardice that’s led to this. He could tell himself that he doesn’t know why it feels like this between Ana and him, but that would be a lie, too. The reason sits right beside him.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” Buck asks, cocking his head slightly to the side, voice bordering between careful and ribbing. There’s a gentle smile on his lips but it begins to drift when the silence between them lasts for a moment too long.
“Nothing,” Eddie assures, thinking he does a fair job at smoothing it over, but Buck doesn’t buy it—the look in his pretty blue eyes says as much.
“You sure? You seem a bit… distant.”
“I’m sure.” Eddie wills a smile onto his face, and all it earns him is a not-so-convinced nod from Buck. He sets his beer bottle to the side and leans closer, the evening sun catching his hair as he does and bringing out the warm hues.
“You know you can talk to me, right?”
Eddie feels a twist next to his heart and looks away from Buck’s burning gaze. “What if I don’t want to talk?” he returns, not realizing the bite behind his words until he hears himself.
“What?”
“I don’t want to talk,” he says again, softer this time around, reining in the truth that’s so desperate to cut itself free.
“So something has happened,” Buck concludes after a blink, but then it’s as if the last five seconds haven’t happened because he starts pushing—the worry so bright in his eyes, in his voice that Eddie must look. “Is it about Ana? Or Christopher?”
He shakes his head. “They’re fine—”
“—then what is it?”
Despite being out in the open air, it still doesn’t feel like there’s enough oxygen in his lungs as the words slip past his lips. “It’s you.”
“Me?” Buck looks at him as if the reply smacked him across the face. He leans in impossibly closer, the confusion on his face magnifying. “I—wait—have I done something?”
It would be easy to shake his head and mouth a no, but after such a long time living with lies, it’s suddenly hard to tell a new one. Something has happened after all—love has. He’s not sure exactly when it did, but he knows that the name branded on his heart has been there for long enough to be a faded scar. What he feels has been forged by fire and cooled by the fear of what everyone would think, would say, would believe.
Whatever he wants to say remains on his tongue like a leaden weight. The tension coils between them. Buck reaches out, a warm hand resting on Eddie’s forearm as the look in his eyes turns pleading. “You can tell me—whatever it is that I’ve done—I mean, I want to make it right.”
Eddie can hear how much he means it. The tightness in his chest mounts and he swallows thickly over a desert-dry throat. If being a firefighter has taught him anything it is that only a moment separates now or never.
And it’s now, now. It really fucking is.
The distance between them is tiny and then it’s vanished. He launches himself at Buck for a lack of a better word, accidentally knocking the balcony table in the process, the clinkclankchugchug of the toppled beer bottle becoming the soundtrack as he leans in-in-in. He catches Buck’s face, thumbs sweeping once over the shaved skin, and then it is as if the world stops. It’s hard to tell as his eyes slide shut. It could be his heart, too, because it sure as hell feels like it when he brings his lips to Buck’s.
The kiss is one-sided until it isn’t. It takes a breath, perhaps two, but then Eddie feels it—as delicate as the wind shifting direction—the softest press back. The evening light brightens around them and suddenly it feels like they’re in the middle of a burning building where everything is crystal clear and razor sharp. Fire does that – it makes everything that’s not important melt away and right now, all that he feels is how the knot in his chest comes undone.
Maybe Buck feels it, too, because what happens next is nothing but incendiary. Their lips fall open, the kiss deepens, and an eternity of locked-away feelings become tinder. For the first time in a long time, it feels right.
The feeling lasts even as the kiss fades. It lasts even as the harrowing realization sinks its claws into him. It lasts even as he opens his eyes and finds Buck looking right back at him.
“Are you okay?” Buck whispers, his voice so low that it breaks toward the end. Eddie nods, the reply I am now being conveyed through a shaky nod alone. A moment passes where all they do is just look at each other, a moment where it felt like one of those delicate moments where everything hung in balance and shifting a mere feather would make it or break it.
But then the patio sofa creaks as Buck leans in and before Eddie realizes what’s happening, the second kiss is a fact.