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Eddie gave up. He let it go. He let Buck go. He had to.
He spent that whole weekend in El Paso giving up on all those dreams he had been so foolish to let himself have in the first place, and leaving them under that unforgiving sky, buried deep in the dirt so they couldn’t find their want back to him.
It was for the best. Because maybe he didn’t know Buck anymore the way he thought he did; not if he didn’t notive just how much he was struggling to come back to life. He should have been the one to know, he should have been the one to bring him back into the light, put his feet back on solid ground - like Buck had done for him when he was so helplessly lost in the fears of his own head. Eddie should have been the one to save him, but he wasn’t.
Instead, it was a beautiful stranger who made his eyes light up in a way Eddie hadn’t seen in so long; or maybe ever.
And that was okay. It had to be okay, because Buck deserved to be happy, and as much as Eddie wanted to be the one who did it, there was always a part of him that knew, it never would be.
He needed to move on with his life, needed to find happiness somewhere else. Needed to forget the way those blue eyes shone like a beacon in the dark, forget the spilled wine that kissed one of them.
“Shit!” Eddie dropped the knife in his hand and rushed to wash his bloody hand underneath the sink.
He'd been frazzled all night since Buck sent him a picture earlier, asking what Eddie thought of his outfit for his date with Natalia.
The fourth date.
Of course, Eddie told him he looked great and told him to have fun, and sent probably way too many emojis.
But he hadn't been able to shake it. He couldn't not think about Buck sitting across from that pretty death girl, laughing, flirting.
He didn't understand. He left his feelings for Buck in the desert over a week ago, so why were they still there like a ghost haunting his every waking moment?
Eddie found the first aid kit in the bathroom, brought it out to the dining room table and wrapped his own hand with a bandage.
What did he need to do to make this go away? To heal the Buck-shaped wound he'd let spill all over him for so long.
Frank would have told him honesty. Which is what Eddie thought he did. He was honest with himself about how he felt about Buck, honest with himself that he couldn't feel that way anymore. Buck was never his to have.
"Damnit," he mumbled to himself because it wasn't about being honest with himself. He had to be honest with Buck too.
******
It was crazy. He was crazy to be in that restaurant. To be standing in the shadows of a corner, watching Buck in his blue button-up and his date in a low-cut black dress. He could turn back around and go home, suffer in silence until it killed him. Eddie was strong enough to withstand that pain.
But no. He'd come this far, and he wasn't going to back down now.
“Eddie, wh-what are you doing here?” Buck asked when Eddie stepped out of the shadow and was beside their table.
He ignored him first, instead placing his hand on the back of Natalia's chair
“Natalia, I’m sorry," he started, "this isn’t like me, but I need to tell Buck something.”
“Um, yea. Okay.” She sat back in her chair and looked between both men as Eddie swallowed the last of his pride, and replaced it with courage.
“I see you, Buck." He said to him, "I see you trying so hard to be loved, to be accepted for who you are exactly as you are, and I’m here to tell you, that maybe it’s her, but it has been me. I know what each of your smiles means, I know what you keep in that blue duffle bag in the back of your Jeep, I know that everything you do, no matter how asinine or stupid it looks on the outside, is done with a reason, with your heart. I know that being a firefighter is in your blood and your bones and that you were meant to save people. I know that you saved me. I watched you as I thought I was dying, and I felt peace, and I watched you; dead for three minutes and seventeen fucking seconds, and I felt terrified to be left in a world where you don’t exist. And if you’re not who you were before the lightning strike anymore, then I want to get to know who you are now. I want to spend the rest of my life getting to know every version of you no matter how many software upgrades or changes you go through."
Eddie was frantic, rambling a half-sensical version of the speech he’d practiced in his head on the way to the restaurant. He ignored the hot eyes, and the whispers of the patrons around them, of the girl sitting just behind him, his eyes only focused on Buck, and a look he most certainly did not know across his face. When the words were done falling out of his mouth, he could only stare and wait for the other man to make the next move.
But Buck seemed cold. Calculating his move as he drew a circle around the rim of his half-empty wine glass.
Eddie's heart beat like a breaking drum underneath his old t-shirt.
“Is that all?” he finally asked, and Eddie nodded.
“You couldn’t think of maybe a better time to have this conversation?”
“There were probably a hundred better other times, but I couldn’t keep putting it off anymore.”
“Eddie, I don’t know what to say to you right now.”
"You don’t have to say anything. Not now. Not ever. I just needed you to know that of all the beautiful, wonderful things I’ve seen in this world; you’ve always been the best."
Buck's head cocked at Eddie's last words and his eyes squinted like he didn't understand the simplicity in which Eddie said them, but he didn't say anything.
Eddie backed away and put his hand on Natalia's chair again.
"I'll let you get back to your date. And again, I'm sorry."
“No, you do you, man,” Natalia said and reached for a drink of her wine.
******
Eddie threw up.
When he walked in his front door, the adrenaline had left his body, and he realized what he had just done, he ran to the bathroom and threw up.
He brushed his teeth, took a shower, changed into his pajamas, and poured himself a glass of milk.
It was done now. He said it all, and Buck could do with it what he wanted, but Eddie was going to leave it once and for all; stop carrying it all around with him.
It was late, or getting there, and Eddie's head throbbed. He put his glass in the sink, turned out the lights and started to head to his bed, but a knock on the front door stopped him, and he knew who it was before he even pulled it open.
“Is Christopher home?” Buck asked on the other side of the threshold.
“No.”
“Good,” he barged past Eddie and into the house, “what the fuck were you thinking, Eddie? You come to my date to say all those things to me?”
“I let myself run out of time!" Eddie found himself shouting back, "and I told myself it didn’t matter anymore, and I tried to just leave you there, but I couldn’t; you followed me home, and I -I-”
“Have you been drinking? What the hell are you talking about?”"
"No, I haven't been drinking. I had a glass of milk. I guess I've just finally snapped." Eddie tossed his hands up in the air and his bandage started to come loose.
"What happened to your hand?"Buck asked, his voice gentler, but still slightly stained with frustration. "I noticed it earlier."
"I cut it slicing a mango," Eddie answered quietly.
"Was it deep?"
"It's fine. I know how to take care of a cut on my hand."
"Can I look at it anyway?"
Eddie sighed and sat down at the kitchen table. Buck dragged a chair from the other side to carefully sit across from him and unwrap the bandage. The first aid kit was still on the table and he dabbed the angry, red line with antibiotic before wrapping it up in gauze again.
"You keep saying "finally" and talking about time," he said as he cut the taupe linen and reached for the tape, "how long have you felt like this…about me?"
Eddie let out a shaking sigh, "a long time."
"Why didn't you ever say anything before?"
"How do you tell your best friend you're in love with him?"
Buck faltered with the roll of tape in his hand for just a second, "Uh, in love?"
"Are you mad at me?"
Buck set down the tape, but he didn't let go of Eddie's hand.
"I should be, shouldn't I? I was on a date with this perfectly, beautiful woman who is full of life and all these interesting layers, and I'm sitting there wondering if this is the date we're going to sleep together - butterflies and everything, and then you show up, in your laundry day jeans and ramble off this manifesto. I should be furious with you."
Eddie pulled his hand away, and looked down at a stained ring he couldn’t get off the table. He hadn’t felt so small and ashamed of himself since he was a little boy.
‘I’m sorry, Buck,” he said to him.
There was silence between them that felt like it went on forever before Buck’s rough voice sliced through the thick tension Eddie had created.
“I should be mad at you Eddie, but I’m not.”
“You’re not?”
Buck shook his head, “I figured you had to be really breaking down to do something as dumb as that.”
Eddie laughed.
“And I didn’t exactly hate what you had to say.”
“Really?”
“See, there's been this hole inside of me for as long as I can remember. It started out pretty big, but over time it got a little smaller and a little smaller, but it was always still there. Nothing I ever did, no job, no relationship, no good deed could fill it all the way in. And lately, the walls have been crumbling down, making this little hole bigger, but then, I’m with you and the walls stop shaking and the rubble gets picked up, and I didn’t know what it meant, or I didn’t pay attention to it, but it’s so obvious now, Eddie; of course you see me, of course you love me. I get it now.”
Eddie’s eyes squeezed tight, he bit down on his bottom lip and turned his head to look at the oven, to look anywhere but at Buck, but then Buck’s fingers were gentle on Eddie’s chin, forcing him to look, to let the hot tears fall down his face.
“Hey,” Buck whispered, “don’t hide from me anymore, okay? I want to see you, too.”
His thumb brushed at a tear, down Eddie’s cheek, and over his mouth, and Eddie reached for his wrist, pulled him in close so there was just barely an inch between them. They could take back the words if they wanted to; sweep them under the rug and let them rot until they were forgotten, but a kiss would be too real. It would be tangible proof of this confession, something they could regret if they had to, but would never be able to let go of. So, they waited just on the precipice, lips so close the slightest move would make them touch, and they studied the squint of each other’s eyes, the rhythm of their breath to make sure that was where they wanted to go.
But, of course, it was. How could it not be?
Maybe Eddie tipped first, or maybe it was Buck, but they finally, finally gave in to every misunderstood feeling, every questioned touch, every unexpected dream, every almost and all the maybes.
And there was no more hesitation when Buck's tongue slipped between the seam of Eddie's lips or when their hands left their polite posts at their sides and gripped cotton between their fists, brushed through soft and styled hair, teased at the tingling skin of bare arms.
Their knees knocked and their necks strained to get closer, closer, closer. If the chairs had been sturdier, Eddie would have dragged Buck into his lap just to feel every strong inch of him pressed against his body.
But there was time for that now, wasn't there?