Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Every silence at the Diaz house feels a little different.

There's the middle of the night, when the world is so quiet that everything else is just a little too loud, Eddie's buzzing fridge and the dangerously old pipes hissing in the wall, the kitchen clock ticking away the time it takes for Buck to breathe through whatever's forced him awake.

There's the silence that takes over naturally sometimes, when Christopher is in his room doing homework and Eddie's in the kitchen with the door just a little ajar, trying to decipher one of Linda's recipes.

There's the crumpled kind of silence, which usually follows Eddie in from the car after therapy, hovering over him until it swells with all the words he's holding back and rains pain all over the table. There's the TV-on-mute, toes-touching silence after Christopher's gone to bed but the two of them can't bring themselves to get off the couch; there are terse silences, sometimes, and soft ones that descend when there's nothing else to say, but in a good way.

And the other silence, the terrifying one, which he's only ever heard once, heavy in his ears, from behind Eddie's locked bedroom door.

Still, Buck's almost sure he has the full repertoire down. He's heard it all, because he knows every inch of this house, every temperamental floorboard, every facial expression of his favorite people that live in it.

Except then he comes through the door on a nondescript October afternoon, and yells “I brought snacks!”, and is met with a brand new silence.

“Hello?” he tries, shuffling out of his shoes. “Snacks?”

Nothing. And Buck really wishes he could just—assume something normal, that Eddie and Chris are both taking a nap or stopped by the grocery store on the way home, but what happens instead is an overwhelming rush of blood in his ears, and the grocery bag slipping out of his fingers as he stumbles into the house.

“Hello?” he tries again, and he sounds kind of like he's bleeding the words instead of saying them, but there's no one in the living room, and the dining room is empty, and—

Eddie is sitting at the kitchen table with his chin propped up on his fists, staring at nothing.

Buck stops in the doorway.

“Eddie,” he says, swallowing down the knot of emotions he'll probably never have time to untangle. “What the hell?”

Eddie blinks, syrupy slow, at a spot somewhere by Buck's hip.

“Huh?”

“What are you doing in here?” Buck asks, automatically pulling out a chair, taking the seat opposite Eddie, because that's all he needs to do now. Sit and wait. “Where's Chris?”

At that, Eddie inhales, sharp like he's just woken up. He rubs a rough hand over his face, and the eyes he trains on Buck afterwards are so comically tragic they dispel the last wisps of anxiety hanging around the base of Buck's throat.

“He's at his friend's house,” Eddie says, the corners of his mouth turned down, like he's recounting some kind of personal tragedy. He looks like a basset hound. “He's gonna sleep over.”

Buck blows out a long, slow breath. Inhales, recalibrates, puts his elbows on the table.

“Okay,” he says, because he doesn't see the problem, but Eddie clearly has one. “Which friend?”

Eddie purses his lips. “Connor,” he says, digging a nail into the tabletop, watching like he's daring it to leave a dent. “That new kid, just got put in their class this year?”

“Ah,” Buck nods. “Robotics club Connor. Mom's name is, uh. Sheila?”

“It's Shannon,” Eddie says through a grimace. “And she's really excited that her kid made a friend already, so she said Chris is welcome at their house anytime. She didn't even complain about the email.”

“Wow,” Buck says, and Eddie's mouth twitches when he reaches out a foot to get Buck in the shin. Buck sees him coming from a mile away, but he lets him get a kick in, just in case it makes him feel better. “She's gotta have the patience of a saint.”

“I've shortened them,” Eddie says, pointing a threatening finger. Buck grabs his wrist, brings it down to the tabletop, and then just—leaves both of their hands there, the pads of his fingers just brushing Eddie's pulse point. “They barely even have instructions anymore.”

“Uh-huh,” Buck nods, drawing out the sound obnoxiously, willing the stubborn corner of Eddie's mouth to go up just a little higher.

Instead of letting himself smile, Eddie rolls his eyes. “It's just our contact information, you dick. And Carla's. And like—a rough bedtime and morning routine, but I know that's me being a control freak, okay, I know—”

“You're not a control freak.”

“No, I am,” Eddie says, scratching his chin, focused on some arbitrary spot outside the kitchen window. Not for the first or the hundredth or the thousandth time, Buck wishes he could help beyond just sitting here and offering an ear.

Eddie always says it's enough, like a fucking saint, because Buck's always taking two steps forward and one step back these days, feeling welcome here then hesitating on the doorstep like they're going to turn him away. Eddie will wait a couple of minutes, then open the door if Buck's standing out there too long. He'll smile, incline his head, ask what Buck's doing out in the cold no matter what the temperature is, and Buck will mumble something about his hands being too full to get his keys out, a little ashamed of himself for a reason he can't quite pin down.

It feels like Eddie deserves more in return, for the way he leads everywhere. For all the doors he keeps open so Buck can follow through them, for saying things like our contact information, for leaning back and cracking terrible jokes over the firehouse breakfast so the loft feels like home again.

But he says this is enough. That Buck, here, is enough, and Buck can't find it in himself to correct him.

Still—

“You're not,” he says, a little chiding. “If you were a control freak, he wouldn't be at a sleepover right now.”

Eddie's hand turns over underneath his. Their palms curl together easily; Buck wonders, sometimes, why it is that they feel like they were made to fit.

“Fine,” he says, his eyes moving back down to the tabletop. Buck ducks his head trying to chase his gaze. “But I could also not be sitting in my kitchen staring at a wall because my kid is out of the house having fun with his friend.”

“We were going to watch a movie,” Buck says, remembering the snacks he abandoned by the front door.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, pursing his lips, his jaw working. “And I told him we don't mind, cause he's almost twelve, and I'm not gonna be the guy who chains his kid to him like that, but I kind of—” he inhales, a little shaky, and then finally, finally looks at Buck. “Sometimes I kind of want to.”

Buck realizes now why he's been playing a game of chase with Eddie's gaze. His eyes are a little pink around the edges, and clear - not like he's holding back tears now, but like he maybe cried a couple before Buck arrived.

“Eddie,” he says, leaning forward, the kitchen chair creaking under him. “I'm like—ninety-nine percent sure that's a completely normal thing to feel.”

Not that he'd know. He doesn't know anything about anything, really, but Eddie doesn't seem to realize that, because he tilts his head, considering as he rubs at the corner of his eye and makes a few of his bottom eyelashes stick together.

“I don't know,” he says, “I guess. It just feels like he's—”

“Slipping through your fingers all the time?”

Eddie squints. “Did you just quote ABBA at me?”

“Hey, man,” Buck raises his hands, carefully letting go in the process, “that's on you for recognizing it.”

Finally, finally, Eddie huffs a little laugh through his nose.

“I haven't seen that movie in forever,” he says, carefully unfurling his shoulders, leaning back in his chair. “I'm surprised you know it.”

“I went to see it with Sarah Howe,” he says, cringing at the memory. “She promised me a handjob, but we were skipping school, so the theater was full of old people.”

“Oh, cool,” Eddie says. “Thanks for ruining Mamma Mia for me forever.”

“No, you're not listening to me,” Buck replies. “I very much did not get a handjob, because there was this woman two seats over who was sucking on her dentures the entire time—”

Eddie gags, but the upset wrinkles by the corners of his mouth finally disappear. Buck doesn't mind embarrassing himself for that.

“And we kind of got into it as soon as they started singing, so,” Buck shrugs, “I've actually seen the entire thing.”

“Because you were angling for a handjob in the back row,” Eddie says, his eyebrows high.

“She offered,” Buck says, “and we were sixteen. What was I gonna do, say no?”

Eddie just looks at him for a second, his eyes light, swallowing a couple of times like he's sifting through answers. Like maybe he's about to tell Buck that say no is exactly what he should have done, and Buck is suddenly so afraid of that possibility that the memory, a kind of fond half-smudge kept somewhere in the back of his mind, sours.

But Eddie doesn't say it. Instead, he stretches his legs out under the table, trapping Buck's foot between both of his.

“Shannon really liked it,” he says, addressing his knees. Buck's ribs give a sudden, painful squeeze, digging into his lungs. “Back when—we were friends first, and then we dated for a while, and she only had like five DVDs, so we watched it a lot.” He bites his lip, bites down on what looks kind of like a smile. “Before it became too, uh. Topical.”

“Oh God,” falls out of Buck before he can stop it, and he has an apology ready on the tip of his tongue to follow it - but then Eddie presses the heel of his hand into his forehead and laughs from somewhere deep in his chest. His shoulders shake, and he lets his head thunk down onto the table, his voice going a little higher until it borders on a giggle.

Buck can't really do anything other than follow, because he's always following, and he laughs until his eyes start welling, blinking the wetness away so he doesn't miss a second of Eddie sitting back up, wiping his face, his cheeks a little flushed.

“Hey, uh,” he says, looking at Buck all bright and sparkling and warm, “you bring any beer?”

“I texted you,” Buck says, pointing a finger at Eddie as he gets up. “And you said you didn't have any special requests.”

“But you got me beer anyway?” Eddie asks, his eyes widening. Normally, Buck would tell him he looks like Chris when he does that, but today he swallows the thought.

“But I got you beer anyway,” Buck sighs, and is rewarded with a brilliant grin.

Eddie pushes his chair back with a scrape, then slides past Buck to fit through the doorway, going straight to the grocery bag. He plunges into it up to the elbows, emerging with a six-pack of that terrible peach lager he likes and a bag of sour gummy worms that he puts, for some reason, in his teeth.

“Thanks,” he manages to say around it, then makes a beeline for the living room.

Buck should unpack the rest of the stuff first. He should fix his shoes currently in a heap by the front door, and go grab the jacket he'd thrown over the back of his chair in the kitchen, make sure Eddie isn't left with a mess if he decides to head back to his own place tonight.

But then Eddie pokes his head into the living room doorway, a blue-green worm hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

“You coming?” he asks, pointing over his shoulder like Buck could possibly misunderstand what he's talking about, and Buck—Buck marches into the kitchen to grab his own beer, then lands on the couch so heavily he almost bounces Eddie off it.

He leaves the shoes behind.

They settle side by side, Eddie's knee pressed into Buck's, and clink their bottles together. For a few minutes, all they do is breathe, Eddie's body expanding on the inhale until the cap of his shoulder just brushes Buck's arm, and stare at the TV.

Christopher should be between them. He usually is, hugging the popcorn bowl and leaning into one of their sides, keeping up a running commentary. They do sit up together after he goes to bed, but that's—different. Eddie isn't this close, and Buck isn't usually so itchy about existing in this house.

The TV, still off, is more of a mirror, and Buck can't tear his eyes away from the picture they make, both of them with legs spread wide, their kneecaps together. Eddie has his head tipped back against the headrest, still just breathing, and Buck's parked his beer bottle in the empty space between his own legs so he can shred the label with both hands.

“You know,” Eddie says after a few minutes, “it does turn on, if you want. You might find something more interesting to look at.”

“Hilarious,” Buck says instead of the truth, which is that he thinks he could just sit here, watching the light change and slowly shroud them in darkness, all night. “I'm just trying to think of a movie.”

But he grabs the remote then, his leg pressing even more firmly against Eddie's while he leans forward. He pulls up Netflix without much of an idea, but he's got one by the time he navigates to the search bar, the thought exciting and terrifying in equal measure, stopping up the words in his throat.

It's—probably stupid. He's never hesitated picking a fucking movie for them to watch, because they'll spend half of it talking anyway, and Eddie's list is full of things they haven't seen besides, but.

But.

“I was thinking,” Eddie says. Buck looks over his shoulder to watch him open his eyes and blink at the ceiling. “That we could—”

And he stops as he straightens up, because Buck already has Mammia Mia pulled up on the screen. Eddie looks at it, long enough that the preview goes still, and then a slow, wide smile takes over his face.

“Yeah,” he says, his eyes on Buck heavy with something Buck can't figure out, “that's exactly what I was thinking.”

So Buck clicks play, and both of them lean back to watch Meryl Streep rock a pair of dungarees. Eddie doesn't move away, filling the Chris-shaped gap between them with his own body, bumping into Buck when he shifts.

Buck finishes his beer, and then another three, not looking too closely at why he's doing it, at why Eddie's head falls onto his shoulder for a minute when Slipping Through My Fingers comes on, at why neither of them are saying anything when they'd usually be squabbling about a plot point by now.

He just drinks, and forgets that he hasn't eaten dinner until he pauses the movie to go pee and wobbles into the coffee table.

Eddie, a little flushed but not remotely as tipsy, laughs. He has a leftover bit of sour sugar in the corner of his mouth; Buck's eyes fall to it and then refuse to move away.

“Careful, Buck,” he says, in a voice that makes Buck's limbs feel all liquid and loose. “Don't want to hit your head before they figure out who the father is.”

“They don't,” Buck says, and successfully makes his way into the hallway. “That's the point—”

“Don't walk into the table,” Eddie interrupts, all of a second before Buck almost does that exact thing.

The rest of the journey to the bathroom is, thankfully, uneventful, and Buck manages to use it and wash his hands without knocking anything over. There's a part of him that feels like he should splash some cold water on his face, maybe stare at himself in the mirror for a minute to set himself right, but whatever's making the world feel a little tilted probably can't be fixed with a few minutes of gripping onto Eddie's ancient sink.

He's fine. They're both fine, and he's going to prove it by walking back into the living room and taking a seat and—

“I'm sorry Chris isn't here,” is what falls out of him once he's back on the couch, now with Eddie's entire thigh pressed to his.

Eddie, who's leaning back against the headrest again, rolls his head to look at Buck.

“Me too,” he says, his smile a little rueful. For all that he couldn't meet Buck's eye an hour ago, he doesn't seem to be able to look away now, his chin tipped up just so. He's—closer than Buck's used to. “But I've gotta get used to it, right? He's old enough that I'm—I'll lose a part of him eventually, so. No point hanging around being miserable.”

Buck wants to say a million things: that he's pretty sure for every part of Chris that Eddie loses, he'll find another one; that Buck's going to be here every step of the way; that Eddie, with the sadness still playing about the edges of his face, isn't doing the best with not looking miserable, and that's okay.

But all of that is a little too close to the pit that opens in the bottom of Buck's stomach when he thinks of Christopher growing, changing into someone they'll both be endlessly proud of, no longer the kid who's come to rely on him. Buck has to—go home, maybe, take some time to make sure those feelings are buried, because he's not a father, he's not Eddie, and every little piece of Chris he's been privileged enough to hold in his hands has been a gift he didn't deserve.

So he breathes through it, ignores his head spinning a little even when he's sitting down, and bumps their shoulders together.

“Maybe you should get a hobby,” he says.

Eddie stares, his eyebrows drawing together in slow motion.

“I already picked up cooking,” he says.

“Yeah,” Buck sighs, “but that's not what I mean. You need, like—a you hobby. Knitting, or—no, wait, no, something that'll get you out of the house. Somewhere you can meet people.”

“Meet people,” Eddie repeats. Buck's the one who suggested it, so he's not really sure why his stomach lurches when Eddie says it like that. “I don't need to meet people.”

“But you could,” Buck says. He suddenly feels very, very drunk. “You could meet someone and then you could, like, go out. Hang out. When Chris isn't here. So you're not moping around the house.”

“I'm not moping,” Eddie says, his frown a little softer, and digs a knuckle right into the ticklish spot between Buck's ribs. “And I have plenty of people to go out with, if I want.”

Buck snorts. “Really.”

Eddie's hand on his ribs uncurls. His palm lands, open and warm, just above the dip of Buck's waist, and lingers there for a second that makes Buck breathless.

“Really,” Eddie says, scooting toward the other end of the couch, putting more space between them than there has been all night. “You're here, aren't you?”

He presses play before Buck can think of an answer.

“That's just parenting a preteen,” Hen says from her spot in the armchair, watching Eddie with soft, indulgent eyes. “It's normal, Eddie.”

“I know it's normal,” Eddie huffs, arms crossed over his chest. “Fucking sucks, though.”

Over his head, Hen raises her eyebrows in Buck's direction.

“Third time this week Chris has gone over to Connor's house,” Buck obligingly rats him out. “Eddie's doing really well.”

Hen and Eddie both snort at that, then cut themselves off at the same time when they remember how late it is.

Buck hasn't checked the clock in a while, because it feels like he'd be summoning a middle-of-the-night call he really doesn't want to go on, but it has to be past two in the morning, because the three of them are the last ones awake. Bobby had turned the lights down when he went downstairs, told them to get some sleep, but Eddie is full of pent-up energy that spills off him in waves, so the bunk room is the last place Buck wants to be right now.

“Maybe you should just look at it differently,” Hen says, closing the textbook in her lap with a thud. “Make sure the time you spend together is quality time, and when Chris isn't there, you might as well take advantage of it.”

Eddie groans. He rubs his hands over his face, then messes up his carefully styled hair when he digs his fingers into it.

Buck wants to—nothing. He wants to sit here with his feet just shy of touching Eddie, present in case Eddie needs a distraction or wants to talk it through. He wants to do that, and nothing else.

“Don't,” Eddie says, trying to frown at Hen except it comes out more of a pout, “tell me to get a hobby.”

Hen grins. “Not what I was thinking.”

Eddie tilts his head.

“Well, sometimes,” Hen says, enunciating, “Karen and I let grandma take care of the kids for a night, and we go on a date. If you even remember what those are.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. He blinks down at his lap once, twice, watching his folded hands. “That's worse.”

Buck feels cold, suddenly, a slimy, slithering kind of feeling like someone cracked an egg on top of his head.

It doesn't add up, somehow, that Eddie could be dating, that he should be. It feels like only yesterday that Buck was sending Ana away from Eddie's hospital bed to get a drink or a change of clothes or some rest; only yesterday that Eddie came up the stairs their first shift after the blackout, said “I'm single. No questions,” and went to pour himself a cup of coffee.

But it wasn't yesterday at all. Eddie's been single for over a year. He's clawed his way back into the light, he's come out, he's started inhabiting the world like he understands it a little better.

Hen's right. Eddie should see what's out there, and find someone who's at least as loving as him, at least as kind.

“It doesn't have to be serious,” Hen says, her elbows on the armrest as she leans closer. “Hell, maybe it shouldn't be. You just came out, maybe you should get to sample—”

“I don't need to sleep with a man to know I'm gay,” Eddie says, and the words echo off the rafters after he says them, a few long, agonizing seconds. It's long enough for the tips of Eddie's ears to go a little pink.

“That's not what I meant,” Hen says.

Eddie sighs. “I know,” he says, on a rush of an exhale. “I'm sorry.”

“Just take a minute to think about it,” says Hen as she stands up, raising her arms over her head until her back pops, loud in the hush blanketing the station. “It might be nice.”

She looks at Buck as she says it, for some reason, holding his eyes until he looks away. She's probably just passing the baton, silently telling Buck to keep poking at this until Eddie sees sense.

And he—should. Has to, as Eddie's best friend. Right?

“I'm gonna get some shut-eye,” Hen says, stepping over to them, leaning down to give Eddie a half-hug that he returns a little desperately. “You boys should, too. Morning rush hour stops for no one.”

“Night, Hen,” Buck calls out, waving over the back of the couch, and they both listen to her steps fade as she walks down the stairs.

Eddie folds his arms again and silently stares straight ahead.

“I don't have to date,” he says, ostensibly to no one, but Buck knows the difference between Eddie speaking to him and just working through his thoughts out loud.

“No,” he replies, and it feels inexcusably selfish, but Eddie gives him a look that quiets the voice down, if only a little.

“No,” Eddie nods. “But I've been—” he huffs, and looks down at his phone in his lap, “it's a stupid idea.”

“Eddie,” Buck says. He's familiar with the way Eddie is drumming his fingers against his thigh.

I'll tell you, they're saying. Wait me out.

“I've been thinking about yoga,” Eddie blurts, and even with the lights in the loft turned down, there is no mistaking the flush that rises into his cheeks.

Buck swallows his first reaction, which is surprise; then he blinks away the second one, which is to imagine Eddie in one of the poses that his on-again-off-again girlfriend back in Oregon used to practice before bed. Slowly, he folds his legs, moves closer on the couch.

“Okay,” is what he says out loud, so soft it feels a little revealing, but that kind of thing is and always has been safe with Eddie. “You've been thinking about yoga.”

Eddie looks up at the ceiling.

“Karen recommended this studio,” he tells the rafters, “and Frank actually—Frank said you were right.”

“You talk to Frank about me?” Buck asks, somewhere between delighted and scared.

Eddie levels him with a Look.

“Yes, I talk to Frank about you,” he says, unselfconscious. Buck, for some reason, shivers. “And he said you're right about me finding a hobby that's just for me, and now Karen made me think about yoga, but it's—”

He bites his lip, staring at his phone again. The screen has long gone dark, but he grabs it and flips it over anyway, then reaches all the way over to the coffee table to set it down. With his lap empty, he smooths his palms down his thighs, picks at a couple of pills on his knee. And the way his hands move—

Buck blinks.

“It is a stupid idea,” Eddie says, biting his lip. “I don't want the whole—they're like—culty, right? You have to do a whole thing where you pretend you're feeling like you're one with the earth, and they'll probably be trying to sell me stupid little towels or something, and they're going to have fucking—lemon water, I hate lemon water—”

“Eddie,” Buck interrupts, swallowing around a laugh, and reaches out to cover Eddie's hand before he realizes he's doing it. Eddie's mouth snaps shut, and his eyes meet Buck's a little disarmed. “Do you want me to come with you?”

And there's no getting used to the way Eddie's face softens, even though Buck must have seen it a hundred times by now. It's just for him, by some miracle, found somewhere between bullying Eddie into the car when he was trying to weasel his way out of therapy and walking into the Diaz house to announce he was taking them to see some horses.

But it feels different here, on the firehouse couch at three in the morning, months into Eddie being back where he belongs.

“I'm not five,” Eddie says, pulling a face.

“Could've fooled me,” Buck replies, reaching out to poke at the petulant scrunch in Eddie's chin. “Come on, Eddie.”

Eddie shifts, pulling an arm over his torso like he wants to cross his arms, but he doesn't wiggle his hand out from under Buck's touch.

“I don't need,” he starts, then sighs, tired. Already missing the sleep Bobby told them to get two hours ago. “I shouldn't need—I'm a grown man.”

“You're a grown man wanting to try something that's wildly out of your wheelhouse,” Buck shrugs, going for nonchalant even as his heart picks up in his chest, because Eddie is—Eddie.

Because Eddie listened to Buck's tipsy advice, took it to his therapist, and did something about it. He's just missing the last little nudge.

“Sure,” Eddie snorts. “And I'm—what? Gonna drag you along like the world's biggest security blanket?”

“You're going to ask me to come with,” Buck smiles, “because it's easier to go out of your comfort zone if you're doing it with a friend.”

The way Eddie's watching him is skittish, almost, like he's expecting Buck to make some kind of sudden movement. He doesn't want to tell Eddie that it's okay to ask for help, because Eddie knows, and also because it feels like it might come out shaped a little differently.

He would give Eddie anything he asked, without hesitation. It's just that saying it out loud feels a little impossible.

“Although, uh,” he shrugs, “fair warning, I'm not very good at yoga.”

Eddie cracks a smile. “You don't say.”

And then he leans forward to pick up his phone again, tapping in his password all old-man-like with a pointer finger.

“Hey Buck,” he says, swiping a couple of times, then turning the screen around to show Buck a website. “Karen recommended this yoga studio, and I've been thinking of going. You wanna come with?”

And Buck thinks it then, I'd follow you anywhere, always, but it comes out as:

“You bet.”

Buck hates yoga.

“Hey,” Eddie says next to him, looking around the locker room, “this place is kind of nice, huh?”

Nice is—not the word Buck would use. Stuffy, more like, with vaguely relaxing music coming out of tiny speakers wedged into every last corner and gold-plated locks on the lockers. The air feels damp, like they're in a fucking spa, and he's already sweating, and Eddie.

Eddie is already sweating, too, which Buck can see because his best friend is wearing the lowest-cut tank top ever made.

“Sure,” he replies, setting his things down with a little more force than necessary. He's not sure what it is, exactly, that has him wanting to zip his skin off and step out of it, but his entire body is alight with it like an unscratchable itch. He needs to take a breath, to go back outside where the fresh air is, but he promised.

“Buck,” Eddie says with a quick squeeze to Buck's elbow. “You okay?”

Buck looks at him, which he's been trying not to do. Eddie's hair is loose, falling into his forehead, and the strings of his tank sit right at the base of his shoulders, making him look exactly as broad as he is.

He looks really fucking good. Buck has known this for as long as they've known each other, because he's sucked a dick or two in his time and he has eyes, but he's not—attracted to Eddie. He knows what it's like to be attracted to someone, the insistent lick of heat up his spine, the fire in his belly and the tingling in his palms when he puts them on the person he wants, and this isn't that. Eddie's never felt like that.

He's always been warmth all over, a steady fire he set that first time he smiled at Buck outside the ambulance. Buck's been caught in his light from that moment on, but he doesn't want Eddie that way. Can't want Eddie that way, because Eddie is his best friend, and Buck wanting things has only ever ended in disaster.

“Buck,” Eddie says a little more forcefully. His hand moves up to its favorite spot, at the juncture of Buck's shoulder and neck. He always feels a little pinned when Eddie touches him there. “We can leave if some down dogs freak you out that much.”

“Look who's done his research,” Buck replies, rolling his eyes, but Eddie's touch still feels like it roots him to the ground, brings him to earth. His hand is warm on Buck's bare skin, and he rubs his thumb up and down the side of Buck's neck, so light he might not even realize he's doing it. “I'm fine, Ed.”

Eddie squints, over the top suspicious, but he must find whatever he's looking for in Buck's face, because he squeezes his shoulder and lets go.

“Okay,” he says, hesitating with his hands in the air for a second before he puts them on his hips. “I guess we should go in.”

They're early - even earlier than Eddie had planned for. They'd agreed on three o'clock, but Buck showed up at the Diaz house at two forty to find Eddie already dressed and packed and pacing the hallway all soldier-step, the way he gets when he's so deep in his head that he doesn't even realize he's moving.

Buck had lied and said the traffic was surprisingly light, but the truth is that he just wanted to give them a little bit of extra time.

As it is, they're the first ones to walk into the studio, waved in by the receptionist. It's smaller than Buck had expected, and the ceiling is surprisingly low, but the rest is pretty standard: neat piles of mats and blocks and straps in one corner, fake-looking potted plants in the other three, big windows covered with layers of wispy, see-through fabric.

Eddie goes straight for the mats, and chooses one that looks black, but turns out to have a giant peacock on the other side when he unrolls it. He stands there for a second staring at it, blinking like he's not sure how he's found himself here, then shrugs and drags it over to the far corner of the room.

Buck picks a mat that's some shade between pink and purple and follows, settling himself between Eddie and the rest of the room, shielding the side of him that the walls can't. Judging by the grateful look Eddie shoots him, he gets it exactly right.

It takes another ten minutes or so for more people to come in, a few of them alone, a few in groups and chatting among themselves quietly, barely loud enough to be heard over the music. Buck, sue him, had expected mostly women, and he's surprised to see a handful of men join the class, looking perfectly at ease - and not only at ease, but lithe, like they're used to bending themselves in half or twisting their lower and upper bodies in opposite directions. The extent of Buck's experience is the girl from Oregon whose name he can't remember because she insisted he call her baby bear, and he'd really only tried the poses because he wanted to get laid and she was a very hands-on teacher.

The point is, Buck's never felt more like a bull in a china shop. He's proud of his bulk, usually, because he worked damn hard to put it on, but watching everyone warm up makes him feel all rigid and clumsy and rough-hewn, an unworked lump of clay accidentally put on a shelf with all the pretty things.

“I feel like I'm in a juice press,” Eddie says on Buck's left.

Buck almost barks a laugh, but he just manages to cover it up with a cough. When he looks over, he finds Eddie lying on his back, staring at the ceiling with a deep wrinkle between his eyebrows.

He's put muscle back on since coming back to work, but despite the breadth of him, he doesn't look awkward at all. He looks like he belongs, here in the strangely squat room with a halo of peacock feathers around his head.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Buck asks, but he's smiling, the rest of the room forgotten when Eddie squints at him.

“The ceiling,” he says, raising a hand toward it. “It feels like it's coming down when I look at it for too long.”

Companionably, Buck lies down too, folding his hands over his stomach as he stares at the cream-colored paint and waits for something to happen.

“You know,” he says after a couple of minutes, “a juice press is like—the part that actually squeezes the juice is actually kind of pointy—”

Eddie snorts. In Buck's periphery, he's almost sure he spots a couple of people's heads turning toward them, but what matters is that when he looks over, Eddie's still watching the ceiling with a little grin in the corner of his mouth, at ease.

He opens his mouth to say something, probably to argue, but the room suddenly quiets down around them, and Buck sits up to see the instructor make her way to the front of the room, everyone else turning after her like sunflowers. Eddie nudges him in the side, and they follow everyone's lead and stand up, ready to start.

And Buck hates yoga.

The class is meant to be for beginners, so the first fifteen minutes or so are easy enough, even pleasant, more like the stretches Buck tries to get in when he has time after a workout. He moves through them relatively easily, though they have to hold them for so long he starts getting restless, and his eyes inevitably wander over to Eddie by his side.

He's intently watching the instructor, eyebrows drawn together the same way they do when Bobby's giving orders. He's actually managing to keep his chest up and his shoulders down, breathing carefully while he waits for the pose to change, and the picture he makes is—it's enough to make Buck want to turn away again, focus on what they came here to do instead of the way Eddie's muscles move under his skin.

After they warm up, though, it gets harder to keep up. Buck's pretty sure his body wasn't made to twist or bend in some of the ways the instructor asks of them, and he has less and less patience for the slow stretch and burn of muscle as he holds, holds, holds and tries his best to breathe. He forgets more than once to breathe into his stomach instead of his chest; next to him, Eddie's inhales grow deeper, more even, and something distinctly pinched in his face slowly dissolves, leaving him doing the corpse pose at the end of the class with his eyes closed and the hint of a smile on his face.

Buck, who absolutely cannot stay still for the two minutes they were told to take, rolls his head and watches him with something warm unspooling in his stomach, a feeling like he's inching toward the top of a rollercoaster already knowing what's waiting on the other side of the peak.

Eddie stays smiley as they roll up their mats and wait for everyone else to file out, loose-limbed and a little shiny with sweat. Buck wants to run his fingers through his hair and push it out of his face, which is not a thought he's ever had before, and it makes his face feel uncomfortably warm as he watches Eddie chat to the instructor.

They split up in the locker room, because Buck is dripping like he's coming off a marathon and Eddie has a thing about showering in public places. He packs up his things, promises to wait for Buck outside with a grin and a pat on the shoulder, and by the time Buck steps under the spray, his skin is thrumming, a little like the familiar flush of want, except it's not like anything Buck's felt before.

He closes his eyes while water runs over his face, and thinks about the dinner they're going to cook when they get back, about the laundry he has waiting at his place, anything that isn't the long line of Eddie's body as he stretches his arms above his head.

He doesn't want Eddie. It makes no sense for him to want Eddie, after all this time.

The shower he takes is cold enough to make his teeth chatter, but by the time he makes it outside he's flushed again. He expects to see Eddie leaning back against the Jeep, maybe eating one of the apples he'd packed like he was going on a field trip (“for nutrients, Buck,” he'd said with an eyebrow raised, and Buck couldn't really figure out a reply).

What he finds is—not that.

Eddie is leaning, but it's against the rough stucco of the building with one foot bent, all golden and squinty in his slouchy tank top like he's just stepped off the set of some street dancing movie.

And there's a man next to him, one of the guys Buck vaguely remembers setting up his mat on the opposite side of the room, bearded with hair that almost brushes his shoulders, so tall Eddie has to tilt his chin way up to look at him when they talk. He has a hand braced on the wall near - very near - Eddie's head, leaning into his space, and the way he's smiling leaves little room for interpretation.

Buck stands there, blocking the door, until someone pointedly clears their throat behind him. He shuffles out of the way, hitches his bag higher on his shoulder, and—doesn't know what to do.

Eddie's smiling now, so wide his eyes are almost squinted shut, biting his lip while he listens to whatever the guy has to say. Buck wonders if he can tell that he's being flirted with; if he realizes that if he turned his head and leaned forward just so, he could sink his teeth into the guy's forearm.

He probably does. Eddie's not clueless, and he wouldn't miss the signs just because this is a man, and—he's a little pink in the cheeks, too. The way his chin is lifted looks like a challenge.

Buck should leave. They came here together, but he could probably call an Uber, leave the car for Eddie and this man who looks like he fucking—moisturizes and oils his beard and works out religiously, going by the way his arm tenses when he leans a little closer, his bicep shifting in a way that makes even Buck’s mouth feel dry.

There’s no mistaking the way Eddie’s eyes are drawn to the movement, a little skittish but curious.

He has to go—

“Hey, finally,” Eddie says, and Buck turns around just in time to see him push off the wall. “Thought you drowned in there.”

“N—no,” Buck says, absolutely certain his face is bright red. “Just had to wait for the shower.”

The guy - Buck kind of wants to stop mentally calling him the guy, but his name is probably something stupid like Angus or Silas or Lennox - drags his eyes up to meet Buck's, and raises his head in what's probably supposed to be a greeting. Buck nods back, forgetting to blink, waiting for whatever-his-name-is to blink first, but he doesn't.

“Buck,” Eddie says, suddenly standing in front of him. Buck has no idea when he got there. “You okay?”

The guy's still staring. Buck's eyes are starting to burn, but Eddie is here now, his head tilted curiously, reaching out to put a concerned hand on Buck's waist. Whatever-his-name-is suddenly doesn't seem nearly as important.

“Yeah,” Buck says, tearing his eyes away. And he should just step out into the parking lot, keep his mouth shut, not say anything, but the words barrel through the barriers he puts up and right out of his mouth: “Friend of yours?”

Eddie's eyebrows shoot up. “That's Jeremy,” he says, waving over his shoulder, then takes a step and waits for Buck to follow. “He was in our class.”

“Right,” Buck nods, wrapping his hand around the strap of his bag until his palm stings. He follows Eddie, the familiar line of his back, the not-so-familiar swing of his hips that's so often hidden under the bulk of his turnout pants. The Jeep is all the way on the other side of the lot, by another building they'd thought was the yoga place but turned out to be a dance studio, and Eddie gains on him, turning around with his hands on his hips when Buck takes a minute to catch up.

Buck smiles and shrugs in apology, then unlocks the car so both of them can put their bags in the back seat. He keeps himself in check as he puts on his seatbelt, as Eddie fiddles with the radio, breathing with his foot on the pedal until they hit the first bout of traffic.

There, he starts bouncing his knee, and Eddie - warm, solid, concerned Eddie - puts a hand on his leg, and Buck just—

“He was interested,” he says, and immediately wants to bang his head against the steering wheel. “Joshua.”

Eddie snorts. “Jeremy,” he says, and slides his hand off Buck's thigh, his fingers dragging just a little. “I know he was.”

“Right,” Buck says, feeling like a broken record. “And you, uh.”

The traffic moves. Buck contemplates pulling over on the side of the road and running off into the distance.

This is none of his fucking business, and he doesn't understand why the memory of Eddie looking up at this man makes him feel like there's a ball of snakes writhing in his stomach, why his face is burning.

“I,” Eddie says, and in his periphery, Buck catches him stretching his legs out in the footwell, “wasn't interested.”

Buck swallows his first response, which is didn't look like it, because he's an asshole on a good day, but he's not that bad.

It's okay for Eddie to be interested. It's okay for him to date, and Buck wants that for him, except—

Except he has to convince himself of that, and it's not really working, and he's so immediately and viscerally ashamed of it that he has to look away from Eddie and pretend he's trying to change lanes. There's a bitterness at the back of his throat that might be bile, or might be more words he absolutely can't say, the kind of thing he's never, never wanted to aim at Eddie until now.

“I don't have to date,” Eddie says, and this time it's not a question. “And he was a little, uh—intense.”

Buck laughs. It doesn't come out tinged bitter, but the heaviness in his chest doesn't lift, either.

“I don't know about the whole leaning thing,” Eddie says, gesticulating. Buck rolls to a stop yet again, and this time he does turn to look, because it still feels like Eddie discovers a new facial expression every day, now that he's a little lighter. “Is that a thing? Like—is that how you're supposed to flirt? Just loom over people and talk about how you've been coming to yoga for ten years and you're very flexible?”

Buck chokes on a cough.

“It's, um,” he says, watching the way Eddie tilts his head in the sunlight, “it's meant to be hot. Makes you look bigger, or stronger, or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” Eddie repeats, his eyebrow raised. “Really? Because I didn't—” he blinks, then, just as Buck has to put the car in drive and look away from whatever expression he's about to make. “Anyway. Not interested.”

“Okay,” Buck says, and manages to sound normal. The steering wheel creaks in his grip, but he's almost sure the radio hides it. “That's cool. Just, if you ever need, like—help—”

“Nope,” Eddie says, reaching for the volume dial. “Not dating. And I'm definitely not dating Jason.”

“Jeremy,” Buck says, and breathes a little easier for reasons he's not going to look at when Eddie grins at him.

“Bowling,” Eddie says, for at least the seventh time.

“Yes,” Buck says with, he thinks, all the patience of a saint. “We're literally parked in front of the alley.”

They are. It's quiet, the middle of the day, and the bowling place only opened an hour ago, so they're sharing the parking lot with a lone pigeon and some candy wrappers.

“Bowling, though,” Eddie says, gnawing on his bottom lip. “Just the two of us?”

Buck can't exactly say that he's trying to get Eddie out of the house. They both know it, but in the few weeks since Christopher has started spending more afternoons with Connor, they've fallen into not really acknowledging that it's happening. Buck will just stop by and drag Eddie out on a hike, or join him at the grocery store, and he's almost sure that Eddie's glad to see him.

“I mean, I thought of inviting Chimney, but he makes me worse,” Buck shrugs, warming when he gets the laugh he's going for. “Watching him bowl four strikes in a row knocks the confidence a little bit.”

“So you decided to destroy me instead,” Eddie says.

“Hey, come on,” Buck replies, opening his door and hopping out onto the concrete, “you can't be that bad.”

Except Eddie, as it turns out, is that bad.

Buck thinks it’s a joke at first. He laughs when Eddie walks up to the line and stops before he swings, sending the ball straight across the lane and into the gutter, and he’s still going when Eddie’s second attempt results in a single pin knocked down.

But then Eddie turns around, and even under the muted, blue-pink lights of the alley, he looks bright red.

“First one's always a warmup,” Buck shrugs as Eddie slumps down next to him, reaching for his iced tea. He makes some kind of unidentifiable sound in response, looking up at the scoreboard where a big white 1 now sits next to his name.

Buck tries his hardest to tamp down on his instinct to be competitive, because this isn't another game he's going to hopelessly lose to Chim. The point of being here is to—

To get Eddie's mind off things. It's daytime, and Chris is at school, but that doesn't mean Eddie wasn't moping around the house looking at the pictures he's started putting up on the fridge recently. Buck is being a good friend, and good friends make sure Eddie doesn't feel self-conscious.

So Buck, naturally, bowls a strike.

“Wow,” Eddie says from behind him, his tone a little dry and a little something Buck can't put his finger on. “I thought you said you were average.”

“I said,” Buck replies, turning around, “that Chimney makes me worse.”

Eddie, thankfully, smiles a little bit, the shadows on his face deeper than usual in the half-dark. He watches Buck's points come in with his face turned up, tongue chasing after his straw a couple of times, and Buck stops in the middle of the step he was going to take.

He should be used to this by now - Eddie unselfconscious, loose, even silly - but something about it stops him in his tracks every time. It still makes his breath come in a little short when Eddie slumps down on the couch, puts on terrible reality TV, and does a live commentary with a bowl of popcorn under his chin; or when he bows a little to his elderly neighbor just to make her blush and tut at him. Last week, they got called out to a car accident, and Eddie had the little girl wedged in the backseat giggling in less than a minute, and Buck's never too far away from thinking about it, Eddie's blood on the asphalt and his bedroom floor glistening with broken glass, so to turn around sometimes and see him so light—

“Buck?” Eddie asks, setting his glass down. “You gonna let me bowl?”

Buck steps out of the way, flushing a little when Eddie surveys him with a raised eyebrow. He brushes a hand over Buck's waist as he passes, so quick it's barely there, and Buck breathes through the sensation it leaves on his skin.

Eddie's second round is slightly less disastrous than the first: he knocks down three pins with his first throw, and another three with his second. When he's done, he turns to the board with his hands on his hips, his head tipped back. Buck feels something warm squirm in the very bottom of his stomach, and kind of wants to stand next to Eddie and just watch the numbers until his eyes water, but he blinks the thought away and takes his turn.

He only gets nine, and tries to convince himself he didn't mess up his first throw on purpose, but the way Eddie's squinting at him tells him he's not doing a very good job.

“Buck,” he says, in that Tone he has that makes Buck unravel like an overlong shoelace.

“Okay, listen,” Buck says, a little too loud, echoing over the music. The single employee tending the shoe counter looks up at him from under her hat, blinks, then goes back to her phone. “Maybe I could, uh.”

“Keep bowling normally and ignore me playing like a five-year-old?” Eddie fills in, but he's smiling. “Don't worry about it, Buck. I knew I was terrible when I agreed to come.”

The back of Buck's neck feels itchy.

“We could get you a ramp,” he suggests, just to watch Eddie's entire face scrunch. “Or—oh, I can ask if they can still put the bumpers up? It's more fun if you actually hit the pins.”

Eddie's eyes spark. “Okay, you know what? Just for that—”

He marches over to the machine, grabs a ball, takes a couple of steps, and throws it straight into the gutter.

His second throw isn't any better: he actually attempts an approach, and the ball stays on the track all the way to the end and hits five pins, but his toe is over the line, so they don't count.

He runs a hand through his hair as he watches the dashes come in, his six points to Buck's twenty-eight.

“This game's homophobic,” he says.

Buck, who is in the middle of taking a sip of water, chokes so spectacularly some of it shoots out of his nose.

Even as he laughs, Eddie reaches for the napkin dispenser, passing him a couple. “Sorry,” he says, “that's—I think I picked it up from May.”

Buck dabs at his face. “How is bowling homophobic?” he asks, not entirely sure if he's supposed to be serious.

“Because I'm bad at it,” Eddie shrugs. “Which—you'd think, you know, considering it's all about balls—”

“Oh my God,” Buck says, but he's already laughing, his sides aching as he tries to keep his voice down. Eddie looks at him with pleased little sparks in his eyes, his lopsided smile carving a dimple into his cheek. “Hey, maybe you should pick this up as a hobby. Get better at ball handling.”

Eddie snorts, a sound so unrestrained it makes Buck's eyes sting a little.

“Take your damn turn,” he says, and then lingers by Buck's side, hovering as Buck makes a show of lining up his shot. He bowls a spare, and when he turns around to either brag or apologize, he finds Eddie leaning back against the table watching him, his head tilted, his legs crossed at the ankles. It makes it easy to imagine walking right up into his space, and maybe—hiding his face in the crook of Eddie's neck, just to know how it feels—

Buck shakes his head like a dog, hiking some sort of smile onto his face.

Eddie straightens up with a sigh, blinking at the bowling balls all big-eyed and biting his lip, and Buck has no idea what possess him to say it, but it spills out of him anyway:

“I could teach you.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow.

“I mean, obviously I'm not an expert,” Buck says, suddenly and unbearably self-conscious with Eddie just looking at him, “but I could help a little? I think I can spot a few of the mistakes you're making, and I remember when Maddie taught me I got better pretty much immediately—”

“Buck,” Eddie says, gentle. “Okay.”

He reaches out for one of the balls, a brilliant yellow and orange that shines against his black sweater.

“I do at least have my fingers in the right holes, right?” he asks, lifting the ball up to his chest.

“Y—yeah,” Buck says, swallowing against whatever is happening in the bottom of his throat. “Yeah, so you want—you're standing too close. You want enough room for four steps and the slide up to the line.”

“I don't think I'm going to be sliding,” Eddie says, but he follows Buck, watching the dots on the floor as he takes a few careful steps. “Okay, boss,” he says, “now what?”

“Now,” Buck says, trying to swallow again with his throat parched, “you're going to take four steps. You're left-handed, so you start with the right, and the ball's kind of like a pendulum, so you start with it in front of you, then let it swing back, and on your last step it should be swinging forward.”

The music from the overhead speakers feels like it gets louder, somehow, as Eddie looks between his hands and his feet, then sizes up the bowling ball.

“Four steps,” he repeats, and a soft, focused wrinkle settles in-between his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” Buck nods, moving to the side to watch Eddie's attempt. “On the third, you should be swinging the ball back, and then once it comes forward you let it go.”

Eddie bounces his shoulders a couple of times, cracks his neck exaggeratedly, and steps out. He's a little tentative about it, almost dancey, too slow to pick up any real speed, but he does swing his arm the way Buck taught him, and when he lets it go, it lands right in the center of the lane, sailing straight for a couple of feet before it swerves to the left.

Even so, Eddie knocks down six pins, and turns around grinning. The low lights make him look like he's the color of a bruise, and Buck stares at the white of his teeth in the half-darkness and aches, though he has no idea what for.

“Okay,” Eddie says, returning to the machine with a little bounce in his step. “Why did it go so far left?”

“You probably twisted your arm,” Buck replies, though it's a guess more than anything. The only one who ever explained the technique to him was Maddie, and she'd learned it from a high school boyfriend who wasn't all that good to begin with. “And I think you were a little slow. The longer it's in the lane, the more likely it is that it's going to go sideways.”

“I do know physics,” Eddie mumbles in reply, looking over the balls in front of him. His first one has already come back, but he decides for a different one this time, a swirl of a few colors that look like a rainbow if Buck squints. “Okay, so. Arm straight?”

And he tries it a couple of times, walking up to the line and swinging the ball, just not letting it go. Every time, he gets a little smoother, even sliding a little, though he ends that attempt squawking and trying to keep his balance. Buck jumps up to put a steadying hand on his elbow, waiting for Eddie to straighten up and get his feet under him, and when he does, they're—close. Close enough that Eddie has to lift his head a little to look Buck in the eye.

“You're, um,” Buck says, blinking, waiting for Eddie to pull away, except he doesn't, “you're still doing it.”

Slowly, deliberately, Eddie tilts his head. “Am I.”

“Yeah,” Buck says, not entirely sure when his voice went hushed. “Yeah, it's—come here.”

He takes a step back, up to the foul line. Eddie follows, keeping his eyes on his feet, and Buck's a terrible dancer on his best days, but this feels a little like dancing, Eddie caught in his gravity, or maybe him caught in Eddie's.

“Okay,” he says, standing with his heels on the line, the girl behind the counter now giving him a pursed look over Eddie's shoulder. “Pretend this is your last step, and you're about to throw.”

He gets out of the way, steps sideways and then behind Eddie to watch the way his arm tracks, and spots it easily enough: his wrist turning a little just as he's about to let the ball go, spinning it.

Eddie brings his arm back to his side, looking at Buck over his shoulder with his eyebrows raised.

“You're twisting your arm,” Buck says, coming to stand by his side, so close Eddie's bowling ball brushes against his thigh. “Just—keep it straight.”

Eddie laughs, a quiet thing that feels like it's just for the two of them to hear. “I don't know if I know how,” he says, wiggling his shoulder. “It just feels like that's the way it wants to go.”

“Is it—” Buck bites his lip, watching as Eddie cracks his neck, remembering the scar in his left shoulder he's seen more times than he can count, shaped a little like a star. “Does it hurt?”

Eddie smiles, the kind that softens his whole face. “No, Buck,” he says. “It doesn't hurt. I just can't throw straight.”

Buck's breath gets a little stuck on the way out, caught somewhere in the hollow between his collarbones as he watches Eddie's slow blink, the patch of pink light spilling over the bridge of his nose.

“We can fix that,” he says, with his tongue too big for his mouth, awkwardly bumping into his own teeth. “Just—here, reach back.”

Eddie does, an amused smile playing with the corner of his lips. And once he hits the back of the swing, Buck reaches out, his fingers careful right at the spot where Eddie's rolled-up sleeve rests in the crook of his elbow. He waits for a breath, for Eddie to flinch or pull away or say something smart, but he doesn't, and the warmth of his skin is dizzying even through the fabric, so Buck steps closer, bumps their shoulders together, wraps his hand around the back of Eddie's arm. From this close, he can see a little patch of stubble under Eddie's ear that he must have missed while shaving; if he stretched his neck a little, he could put his chin on Eddie's shoulder, could touch his nose to the skin there, probably furnace-warm—

“Now what?” Eddie asks, so close Buck could swear he feels the rumble of his voice.

“Um,” Buck says, trying to remember how to form actual words. “Try to swing it forward?”

He loosens his grip a little, but still feels bone and muscle move under his fingertips when Eddie does as he's asked. His forearm twists again, the ball then brushing against Buck's thigh as he lets it fall back.

“Okay,” Buck says, stepping close again. “It's right here.” Carefully, like he's touching something much more fragile than a man whose body he already knows, he slides his hand down Eddie's forearm. “You turn your arm right before you let go.”

Eddie clears his throat. Buck lifts his head just in time to watch goosebumps rise on his neck, there and gone. His pulse is strong under the soft skin Buck is touching.

“Maybe we can try throwing one together,” he says, so low it's almost a whisper, but he's close enough to smell Eddie's cologne, close enough to be heard. “Just from a stop. So you know how it's supposed to feel.”

“Right,” Eddie says, and clears his throat again. “Don't break my arm, though.”

“I promise,” Buck says, and they move up to the line. “Just—wait. I'll give you more room.”

His skin feels a little like it's alive, independent of his body, buzzing with an energy he can't pin down. His heart, too, has made its way up his throat, and he can feel it pulsing all the way in his tongue when he steps away from Eddie's side and stands behind him instead, his chest to Eddie's shoulder, his stomach to Eddie's back, as he leans far enough forward to reach Eddie's arm. He does have to hook his chin over Eddie's shoulder, then, and he shivers when their ears brush.

“Okay,” he murmurs, “whenever you're ready.”

Eddie takes a deep, deep breath, his back expanding against Buck's chest, and swings. Buck manages to keep his hold, and Eddie's forearm is a little straighter this time, causing the ball to land only a little right of center and arc back to the middle of the lane. It's too slow without a proper approach, and it swings across at the end, but it still catches two of Eddie's remaining pins for a total of eight.

For a couple of seconds, Buck stands with his breath trapped in his chest, still holding Eddie's arm, frozen in mid-air. The rest of the pins get swept up, and the machine must be making noise even across all that distance, the music must still be playing, but all Buck hears is the beating of his own heart in his ears.

Then Eddie straightens up, and his arm comes down, and the next thing Buck knows, he's standing three feet away, on fire or at least feeling exactly like it. He burns everywhere he and Eddie touched, a heat so intense it's painful, and his chest is suddenly heaving—

But Eddie turns around with a smile, holding his arms out to the sides. “Not so bad,” he says, tapping Buck's shoulder as he passes to the table to take a drink. This time, Buck can't look away from the way his lips wrap around the straw, from the little fleck of paper that stays behind on Eddie's bottom lip until he wipes it away with his thumb. “Now will you feel less bad about beating me?”

“You might still win,” Buck says, more than a little winded, closing his hands into fists to get back feeling in his fingers, or maybe to forget what it felt like to touch Eddie's skin.

Eddie looks pointedly up at the scoreboard, where he's still very much lagging behind.

Buck turns away before he does something inexcusably stupid, because his body is on edge the same way it is right before he walks into a fire, before he rappels off the edge of a building, before he leaps. Pulled back like a bowstring, but he can't let himself go this time for fear he'd hit Eddie.

So he bowls, and then watches Eddie get better and better with every frame, counting to four under his breath, keeping his arm straight. Buck can't take his eyes off the sliver of skin that peeks out just above his waistband when he bends to pick up a ball, the way his jeans pull across his thighs, the way his body adapts to something he couldn't do half an hour ago, effortlessly competent.

He gets a spare a couple of rounds later, and ends their first game with a strike. As soon as he realizes that he hit all ten pins, he raises his fists into the air and throws his head back, triumphant - and Buck congratulates him, but the whole time his eyes keep wandering down to the line of Eddie's throat, up to the hair he's messed up because he's run his fingers through it so many times.

And he admits it, then, watching his own feet where they blot out the dizzying pattern on the carpet: he is attracted to Eddie. He does want him. Wildly, unbearably so, because Eddie's not just hot, he's beautiful, with his eyes shining when he lets his arm drop, full of an ease that he had to fight for.

He's beautiful, and Buck's skin is burning like it's never going to let him forget, but—it's okay. He can be okay about it. He's met plenty of attractive people, and has managed to be friends with them just fine, and this is the exact same thing. Eddie doesn't want him - and, more importantly, Eddie is off-limits, a place Buck has never allowed himself to go, because there would be no point. This is the most important thing he's ever been trusted with, and it has to be, has to be, the one thing he doesn't screw up.

The lane resets for Eddie's bonus throws. He keeps standing there, one hand on his hip, watching Buck with his head tilted.

“What?” Buck asks, suddenly afraid he's become all jellyfish-like under the blue lights, see-through all the way down to his heart.

“Nothing,” Eddie shakes his head, a strand of hair falling into his forehead. “Just—I like this. Learning things with you.”

And he turns away to take his shot, not there to see the way Buck's hands curl into fists in his lap.

This is okay. He's okay.

He'll just—find a way to get over it.

“You're just dragging me along on an errand,” Eddie says, eyebrows drawn together over the rim of his sunglasses.

“Drink your coffee,” Buck replies, to which Eddie gives him a grin and an obnoxiously large slurp of his giant iced latte. “Also, it's for Chris.”

“It's for Chris and for you,” Eddie says, stepping out of the way of an older woman carrying a sapling in a plastic pot, her palm overflowing with soil. “He said he wants a surprise for his birthday, and you don't want to come back with something he won't like, so I'm here for a second opinion.”

And he grins, then, infuriatingly pretty, even messy-haired in a plain black t-shirt.

Which—Buck's been doing his best to keep those thoughts contained. Cross his heart.

“Right?” Eddie asks, knowing the answer, and he's still grinning when he traps the straw of his drink between his teeth.

“You're annoying,” Buck says, but Eddie laughs and bumps their hips together as he passes, heading for a bench full of brightly-colored flowers arranged under a sign reading Sunny Areas. Buck watches him for a while, feeling like he's sunk into the ground up to his ankles. There's a sales assistant wandering the aisles who pounces as soon as Eddie approaches, and he tilts his head as he listens to her, looking over when she points to another part of the garden center.

“Can I help you?” asks a tiny woman who pops up by his elbow, with a name tag pinned to her polo that identifies her as Tracie. Buck startles. “Sorry, just—you were looking a little lost,” she says. “First time?”

He almost says yes. It's his favorite place for plants, and he's been here a dozen times, but he watches silently as Eddie rounds a ficus display and disappears from view, and thinks this might be a first time for something.

“No,” he says, once he shakes it off, with Tracie blinking patiently behind her rectangular glasses. “No, but I'm not sure—I'm looking for something for my—um,” he blinks, swallowing back the word that offered itself, horrified, “for a twelve-year-old boy. He knows basic plant care, so it doesn't need to be the easiest, but I want something—I don't know.”

Tracie tilts her head. “Cool?”

“Yeah,” Buck nods, a little more at ease. It feels like Chris's taste in things changes from one minute to the next these days, and he's over things he used to love in a matter of weeks. Buck, selfishly, doesn't want him to lose his interest in plants, because they've shared it for years now, slowly filling the sunnier corners of Eddie's house with flowerpots. “Cool sounds good, actually.”

Tracie grins, the lanyard around her neck jingling as she turns on her heel and leads him toward the perennials. She's very thorough when she quizzes him about Christopher's level of experience and the light conditions in his room, picking up seedlings with a hum then putting them back down. Buck trails after her, his fingertips brushing against the tiny leaves, shiny and rough and silky soft. Every plant he touches is delicate enough that it slips right through his fingers, and it's a little difficult not to read anything into it.

Christopher's turning twelve in a few days. Already, he's at home less than Buck is used to, going from school straight to Connor's house or hanging out with his friends from robotics club. Last week, he asked for permission to go see a movie Eddie had wanted to go see with him, and Buck was on hand that time to distract him with beer and homemade burgers, but the momentary devastation on Eddie's face is difficult to forget - and the worst part, the part that makes Buck's heart twist in his chest when Tracie holds up the perfect plant, is that he feels it, too. But where Eddie sighs and goes silent for a while, Buck ends up at his usual, too much, too loud, trying too hard to hold Christopher's attention, to take Eddie's mind off things, to patch over the cracks forming in the life he's known.

It's not his place. He knows it isn't, because Chris is only his as far as Eddie's generosity stretches, but Eddie had come home from his session with Frank a couple of days ago and said, easy as anything, that their days looking different doesn't mean they're worse; that he's not losing Christopher, just figuring out what their relationship is going to look like.

And Buck knows that, too; has known from the very first time he came over to see Eddie moping at the kitchen table. The problem is that—

Somehow, improbably, he was already given a place in the Diaz family once. On his best days, he even forgets to question it, because Eddie's key has been on his keyring for years, and there's always room for him at the dining table, on the couch, under Eddie's roof.

But if things are changing, if the Diaz family is going to look different, then who's to say—

“There you are,” Eddie says, gently bumping into Buck's side. Buck blinks back into his body and realizes that Tracie is a few aisles over, already helping someone else, and he's standing in the middle of the garden center with a plant in his hands. “What's this?”

Buck looks down at it, a few curled purple-pink leaves in a mound of damp soil, fragile enough for him to kill with a touch.

“Um,” he says when Eddie leans into him, their sides pressing together as he peers into the pot, “it's a Black Dragon coleus.”

“A black—you got Chris a dragon plant?”

Something about his voice has Buck turning to meet Eddie's eye. He finds him with his sunglasses pushed up into his hair, smiling at Buck so wide his eyes have gone a little squinty.

“I didn't get it yet,” he says. His voice comes out a little weak. “You're here for a second opinion, remember?”

“Oh, well,” Eddie says, and just—puts his chin on Buck's shoulder, reaching out to run a fingertip over the curled edge of a leaf. “I really don't think you need it.”

And he pulls away, then, but Buck still feels the weight on his shoulder, Eddie's warm breath just brushing his ear. It's been like that, lately: Eddie will tap his hip, brush past him, bump their knuckles together as he passes dry dishes for Buck to put away, and the touch never quite fades. Buck's body is a map of the ways Eddie loves him, of the easy affection he gives because he knows Buck would never refuse it, and Buck's just—holding himself close, taking care not to bend the edges.

Because if the Diaz family is going to look different, there might not be room anymore. Eddie is more relaxed, is going out to try new things, and Buck's not even the same as always; he's worse. Eddie has stayed, is always staying, but that doesn't mean it's going to hold forever. It doesn't mean Eddie won't look up one day and realize that Buck is a black hole, greedily swallowing whatever Eddie gives him, barely giving anything back.

It's the kind of thing he should talk to Eddie about, probably, because Eddie's a goddamned talker now, in addition to the listener he's always been.

But talking about it makes it real, and Buck doesn't know how to lose him. He doesn't know where he'd even begin to learn.

“Hey, look,” Eddie says, apparently unconcerned, so Buck's thoughts must not be showing on his face. “I got something, too.”

He holds up another nursery pot with a single flower in it: small, fluffy, and a bright, sunny yellow.

“It's called a Teddy Bear sunflower,” he says, visibly struggling to keep his face serious. “And I got a seed packet so I can plant more, and I'm going to not kill them.”

And Buck relaxes, ready to meet Eddie right where he is, joking even as he curls a protective hand around the flower's shaggy head. Eddie makes this - everything - easy.

“Ambitious,” he says, just to see Eddie make a face. “But it sounds great.”

Eddie softens, then. “You think so?” he asks, staring somewhere into a display of violently purple flowers. “It's not—I don't know, stupid? I've never actually grown anything.”

“And you won't until you do,” Buck shrugs. There's a part of him that wants to tell Eddie he can do anything, and the fact that he's standing here is proof of that, but the thought of doing it makes him flush.

“Okay, Socrates,” Eddie says, laughing, as he sets his sunglasses back on his nose. “Hey, you want to get lunch on the way back? I saw this place—”

Buck has to jog to keep up, then, already nodding, letting Eddie's voice wash over him as they walk to the register. He can't tear his eyes away when he stands behind Eddie, watching him pay and smile at whatever the cashier says, moving with so much ease when he puts his wallet in his back pocket and gently picks his bag up off the counter. Buck feels like the exact opposite, wound so tight he might snap and recoil back on himself any second.

It aches, almost, how desperately he wants to keep this, this exact afternoon at the garden center and the tired post-shift mornings when they barely speak two words to each other, seamlessly moving around the kitchen without having to coordinate.

It's always been his favorite part of the day, of the week, getting to be with Eddie and Chris, but it aches now in a way it never has before, like the thought of losing it has given it sharp edges.

Like, for some reason, it's no longer enough.