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"Hey, can I ask you something?"
He senses, rather than sees, Buck's shift to his left, the way his head comes up, his attention sharpening. Eddie doesn't look over at him. His eyes stay on the stretch of backyard in his field of vision. The demolition portion of the job is pretty much finished, the old rotting lumber from Eddie's sagging back deck stacked up to be hauled away, the floor joists still open to the raw earth underneath. They're both kicked back on the half-finished edge, beers in hand, feet dangling. The high midsummer sun beats down, and his shirt is sticking to him with sweat.
"Yeah, of course, anything," Buck says.
Eddie nods. He rolls his sweating beer bottle between his palms and doesn't speak for a moment. It's not because he doesn't know what he wants to say; it's not because he hasn't thought it through. If anything he's thought it through too much. Enough to know exactly how exposing the question alone is—to anyone, let alone Buck, who knows him better than anyone else in the world. If he says it out loud, there's no taking it back. There's no returning to a world where this is just a question that lives inside his head. It'll be something that other people know about him. That Buck knows about him.
He wonders if this was what it felt like for Buck, months ago, when he stumbled through a quiet confession in his loft and watched Eddie with frightened eyes for the three seconds it took him to jumpstart his brain and pull Buck into a tight hug. There's always going to be a world after he says it. And knowing how gently Buck would hold that knowledge still doesn't quite make the fear go.
"Eddie?" Buck asks, quieter.
"Yeah," Eddie says. He takes a sip of his beer, and his voice is hoarse, and he knows he's lost any chance he had of trying to make this sound casual. He could just drop it—Buck would let him—but he doesn't want to do that. "I was wondering. You and Tommy—how did you know?"
There's a soft intake of breath. "That I was into guys? Or that I was into him?"
"Either." Eddie shrugs tightly. "Both."
"Um," Buck says. Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie watches him duck his head, rub a sheepish hand over the back of his neck. "Well. I kinda only actually figured it out when he kissed me."
Eddie lets out a startled burst of laughter. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," Buck says. The amused chagrin in his voice is enough that Eddie can bring himself to look over at him. He's blushing, scruffy and a little sunburnt in a ratty LAFD Air Operations t-shirt that says KINARD across the back. Eddie has been trying really hard not to feel some kind of way about that since Buck turned up this morning, and only half succeeding.
"Sorry," Eddie says, and takes another gulp of his beer. "I'm not trying to, like…"
"No, it is, it's…I mean, in retrospect, it feels really obvious. You know? Like, when he came over after the basketball game—"
"After you broke my ankle," Eddie interjects, like he does every time the subject comes up.
"After I sprained your ankle, accidentally, which I still feel really bad about."
"As you should," Eddie says, grinning, feeling a little more like he's back on solid ground when Buck scoffs. "Okay. Go ahead."
"Anyway," Buck says. "We were just, you know, talking in the kitchen and, and—flirting, I guess, or at least I was kinda flirting, but I didn't really think about it like that. It didn't feel that different from—I don't know. I just thought he was nice and cool and I wanted him to pay attention to me, and he was, and…" he trails off, shakes his head, laughing. "And then he kissed me, and it was like—oh, okay, that's what all that was. That was the missing piece, you know?"
"It just clicked," Eddie offers, hoarse.
"Yeah. Exactly. It clicked, and everything suddenly made sense."
"Oh," Eddie says, and then he takes a drink of his beer, gazing out across the backyard. The bird houses that Chris and Buck set up while Eddie was in the hospital, the paint starting to fade now, the patio chairs stacked against the back fence along with the fresh lumber for the deck. He's not really seeing it, though. He's remembering a night in Buck's kitchen, years ago: a beer in his hand, watching Buck move toward him with that cocky tilt to his smile, an unnameable tension thrumming between them. It wasn't the first time, but it was the first time he remembers it feeling like that: sharp and electric, like he was on the verge of doing something reckless.
What would have changed, he's wondering now, if either of them had thought to cross that line? If he'd grabbed the front of Buck's shirt and pulled him into a kiss, would Buck have kissed him back?
The question is moot in any case. At the time, Eddie didn't know that was even an option, for either of them. And Buck's with Tommy now. He keeps saying it's not that serious, but it's been two months, and he's still walking around with that expression of gobsmacked joy half the time. They've been sleeping together for a while, which Eddie knows because Buck is incapable of discretion, especially when he's happy.
It was good, he told Eddie, afterward. It was like—it was new, and I felt like such an idiot about everything, because it's been so long since I had no idea what I was doing, but it was so good, and Eddie, who has heard way more about Buck's sex life over the years than any sensible friend would tolerate, had never heard him sound like that about it: thrilled and breathless, almost shy.
Eddie's not going to fuck with that, especially when he barely even knows what he's feeling here. Jealous, sure, a little bit. But he doesn't know how much of that is wanting Buck, and how much of it is wanting that. The breathless thrill of self-discovery he can hear in Buck's voice, every time, when he talks about it.
"Can I ask you something?" Buck says. It's quiet, and when Eddie turns toward him there's something careful in his face.
"Fair's fair."
"You're not just asking out of curiosity, are you?"
Eddie breathes out shakily, presses his lips together, and finally shakes his head. "No. Not just curiosity."
"Okay." Buck lets out a breath and nods, rubbing a hand against his jaw. "Listen, Eddie…"
"I'm not ready to talk about it," Eddie says hastily. "Not yet."
"Okay," Buck says again, gentler. He leans in just enough to bump his shoulder against Eddie's. "If you ever do want to talk about it, I'm here."
Eddie leans back against him, the solid warmth of his body a familiar comfort. There's a tightness in his throat, but it's not a bad thing, not entirely. "Yeah. I know you are."