Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You can’t drop your new therapist because she forces you to talk about things you don’t want to talk about,” Buck laughs, seemingly completely unsympathetic to Eddie’s very legitimate frustration. “That’s, like, her entire job.”

“Well,” Eddie groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I just think she has the wrong priorities, and she won’t let me steer the conversation. She kept circling back to the idea that I ‘need friends’.”

“She might have a point,” Buck says, because he’s a traitor and a terrible friend and Eddie is going to pull his own hair out.

Eddie glares at him. “You know, I didn’t think she was right, but maybe she is.” Buck bursts into painfully fond laughter that does not immediately make all of Eddie’s irritation fade away, but might be a near thing.

Buck shakes his head. “You’re being dramatic. Think about it, though. She’s not entirely wrong. If you don’t count me—”

“Why wouldn’t I count you?” Eddie interrupts, frowning.

“Because I’m your best friend, I get my own category,” Buck says, and Eddie very charitably decides not to point out the holes in that logic. “If you don’t count me, when was the last time you made plans with someone? As in, actual plans you had to go out of your way to make, not just group functions you’re invited to by default?”

Eddie opens his mouth to respond, and—draws a blank. Buck grins in satisfaction, and Eddie rolls his eyes, his forehead creasing when he frowns at the ceiling and really concentrates and waits for some recent memory to suddenly hit him.

Infuriatingly, Buck may be onto something. Eddie does tend to only go out when the plans have already been made for him.

He may never be the one to reach out to people individually, but that’s not his fault, he’s a busy person—and he’s used to always needing to make sure Christopher won’t be home by himself. It’s just simpler to wait for opportunities to present themselves, rather than attempting to coordinate his own complicated schedule and find someone to watch his son.

Buck is still grinning when Eddie looks back over to resume glaring at him, which Eddie is not at all endeared by and he definitely doesn’t immediately fail to portray annoyance and break into a smile of his own.

“I know you’re going to say it’s because you can’t leave Chris by himself.”

Eddie wonders if he should be concerned about Buck’s ability to read his mind and how deeply inconvenient it is when he wants to win arguments.

“But—that’s not a factor right now, and hasn’t been for—” Buck winces, clearly hesitant to point out how much time has passed without Christopher giving any indication he’d like to return to L.A. any time soon, something that neither of them like to dwell on when they can manage to avoid it. “For a little while, so… it wouldn’t hurt to take advantage of all this extra free time you have, right?”

Eddie manages to contort his features back into a frown, even though he knows Buck is right. He would argue further, but—maybe all the therapy he’s been doing has finally started to wear him down into someone who talks about things, because he realizes he actually wants Buck to understand what he’s thinking, instead of just brushing off the concern like he would’ve a few months ago.

“It’s just—I don’t know. I have friends—but, like, it’s one thing to spend time with everybody all together. Then I don’t feel like I’m taking up anyone’s time or asking anyone to go out of their way for me. Even with—even without having to take care of Christopher first, it’s still—just not in my nature. It feels like asking for a lot, you know?”

“Eddie,” Buck says, his grin softening to something gentler when he reaches out and covers Eddie’s forearm with his hand. “It is not asking for a lot to spend time with you. And I would know better than anyone, for the record. I promise it’s not. You’re—I know you don’t think so, but you’re always great company, Eddie. Going out of your way to make time for people—that’s the entire point of having friends. You shouldn’t feel like that’s too much to ask.”

Eddie wonders if the fact that he finds himself believing him is proof therapy is working, or proof he believes anything when it comes from Buck. He decidedly doesn’t interrogate that thought any further.

“You’re probably right,” Eddie says, slowly, scoffing when Buck squeezes his arm and beams ridiculously like he’s proud of him.

“Maybe I should be the one getting paid,” Buck muses, almost immediately tacking on, “not that I want to be. Because I like spending time with you, I mean, I assume that’s obvious but—”

“Okay, you can stop trying to therapize me now,” Eddie teases. He doesn’t bother trying to mask how amused he is with how seriously Buck seems to be taking this, how even in his concerned rambling he still manages never to be patronizing or overbearing. “Although, last I checked, I go out way more than you do. Why exactly am I the one getting lectured about not having friends?”

“I have plenty of people I can confide in!” Buck argues, making a ridiculous tsk noise. “This is the key difference. You might have more friends than I do, but I have more people who I’m comfortable enough talking to about, like, the important stuff.”

“How do you know I don’t have deep life talks after poker games?” Eddie retorts, raising his eyebrows and grinning when Buck scoffs.

“Because your therapist wouldn’t be concerned about your lack of friends if you did, obviously.” Buck rolls his eyes and retracts his hand, and Eddie tries not to miss the warmth of his touch the second he loses it. Before he gets the chance to do something stupid like reach back, Buck claps his hands together. “I’m giving you therapy homework.”

“My actual therapist doesn’t give me therapy homework,” Eddie groans, bursting into laughter.

“Well, I am. As your only friend—”

“Okay, very provably false—”

Buck shushes him. “I think you should go out of your way to make plans with people. At least once a week, or something. I think you’ll be happier, if you have tangible proof that everyone does enjoy spending time with you. But if that’s not a good enough reason, do it to prove me wrong—or because your therapist will be proud.”

“And let me guess—” Eddie sighs. “You don’t count?”

“Obviously not.” Buck smirks, and it’s not endearing. “Because I’m in my own category. I just want to prove to you that people will want to hang out with you, you just have to give them the opportunity. Let them know you want to.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. The fact that he’s even considering indulging Buck and following through with these ridiculous demands feels like a testament to how good of a friend he is, frankly. Even if this is supposed to be for his own good, it feels more like he’s the one doing Buck a favor when he nods and gives in.

“Fine,” Eddie agrees, shaking his head and laughing under his breath when Buck cheers triumphantly. “But only because I want to prove you wrong. Not because I think it’s a good idea, or anything.”

“Of course not.” Buck beams at him, and Eddie almost does something stupid like blurt out how thankful he is that Buck cares this much, as if that’s in any way a new revelation.

-

Despite Buck’s insistence that Eddie should be making plans for himself, Eddie is reasonably certain Buck put Tommy up to this. They haven’t properly hung out in weeks, not since Tommy and Buck started dating, so it’s certainly out of the ordinary when Tommy randomly asks Eddie if he wants to go out for drinks after basketball.

(Basketball, Buck insisted very stubbornly, also does not ‘count’, because Eddie has a standing invitation and it doesn’t exactly involve a lot of talking or getting to know one another.)

Eddie almost says no on pure instinct, worrying that he shouldn’t take up Tommy’s free time that he’d probably rather spend with Buck and that he’s only asking because Buck told him to—but then he realizes he’s doing the very thing he’s meant to be working on.

It isn’t fair to assume he’s a last resort, a charity case—maybe Tommy just wants to catch up. They are friends, after all. Maybe he’s allowed to just take the offer at face value instead of looking so deeply into it.

God, it’s infuriating how often Buck is right.

This is how Eddie finds himself properly spending time with Tommy for the first time since he and Buck got together—which is a correlation Eddie doesn’t intend to place any importance on, but he can’t help but wonder if it does mean something when conversation between them doesn’t flow nearly as easily as it used to.

There’s just something off. They trade horror stories about working under Gerrard, an easy back and forth that feels as comfortable and safe as it does a little stilted. Eddie feels—strangely, inexplicably—like he’s walking on eggshells to try and steer the conversation away from any more sensitive subjects.

It’s certainly infinitely easier to talk about work than anything else going on in Eddie’s life, but even beyond that—Eddie notices that he hasn’t been looking for any openings to hear about Tommy’s life outside the job either.

Once he recognizes this and feels a bit like an asshole for it, he waits and waits for an opportunity to politely inquire about anything else, because they’re supposed to be catching up and the normal, friendly thing to do would be to let Tommy talk about his relationship—but Tommy never gives him the chance. Every time there’s almost an opening to breach a more personal topic, Tommy is just as quick to divert course back to either his job, or the military, or basketball, or anything else equally inconsequential that they have in common.

Convinced he’s just over-analyzing this, Eddie decides to take the matter into his own hands.

“You know,” Eddie starts as soon as there’s a natural lull in conversation, “Buck was telling me he brought you to that history museum he loves.”

“Oh, yeah.” Tommy blinks at Eddie like he’s caught off guard by the sudden subject change—which is fair. “Never really been my type of thing, but I didn’t mind it.”

Eddie nods along, although something dangerously close to bitterness coils unpleasantly in the pit of his stomach. Didn’t mind it is hardly a flattering way to talk about a date that your boyfriend planned and had really been looking forward to.

Eddie thinks about how excited Buck sounded when he talked about Tommy agreeing to go, how it meant a lot to him because they hardly ever found the time to go out and he was so pleased that Tommy was indulging him in something he was passionate about, that maybe they’d get a chance to learn a bit more about each other.

You’ve been dating for a couple months now and you’re still in the ‘getting to know each other’ phase? Eddie remembers Hen asking, to which Buck had just shrugged.

We’re not rushing into anything too serious, Buck said. Eddie hadn’t thought anything deeper of it at the time. He’s probably thinking too deeply about it now.

“Mm, that’s never really been my scene either,” Eddie says, carefully neutral, but he can’t resist tacking on— “Right up my son’s alley, though, so between him and Buck I’ve definitely learned to have an appreciation for museums.”

Tommy winces sympathetically, which is not at all the reaction Eddie had been expecting or looking for. “You’re probably much better than I am at faking interest, then.”

And—maybe, Eddie can admit, he’s being a little bit overprotective. It’s not entirely rational for him to be so offended on Buck’s behalf, to be so upset that Buck’s boyfriend has to fake interest in something Buck loves to talk about—but Eddie just genuinely can’t comprehend it.

Eddie has never needed to pretend, not with Buck. Buck is so effortlessly entertaining in how he thinks and articulates himself that Eddie is fairly certain he’d be captivated by just about anything as long as Buck was by his side to provide commentary.

Eddie manages to bite his tongue, to stop himself from saying something unnecessarily scathing about actually enjoying listening to Buck ramble. Because Tommy doesn’t mean any harm—he’s a good guy, and Buck is happy with him, and being a little blunt and not sharing all the same interests isn’t a crime. Besides, tonight is meant to be about Eddie’s friendship with Tommy, not Buck’s relationship with him. Eddie should really just mind his own business.

Eddie swiftly changes the subject, or—tries to. It’s like some sort of proverbial dam is broken, and mentioning Buck the one time has suddenly made Eddie painfully aware of how many of his anecdotes and tangents involve his best friend.

He’s telling a story about Buck attempting to speak Spanish to a patient on a recent call and butchering it so badly the woman thought he was speaking another language entirely—Eddie isn’t sure how exactly this came up, but it leads to another revealing interjection.

“I didn’t know Evan spoke any Spanish,” Tommy says with a polite, tight-lipped smile that Eddie isn’t sure how to read.

“Well.” Eddie laughs under his breath. “He’s not exactly bilingual, but he has the spirit. He picked up the basics when he lived in Peru, then forgot most of it when he never had to use it anymore, but. He certainly tries.”

“He lived in Peru?” Tommy’s eyes widen. “I know he moved around a ton before joining the 118, but—somehow that part’s never come up. Huh.”

And Eddie is—honestly, a little speechless. Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever met anyone who earns the descriptor open book more than Buck, especially when it comes to all his travels and past jobs—Eddie has heard countless stories about Buck’s time in Peru, and could probably list every place Buck lived in his twenties off the top of his head just from how freely Buck will open up to anyone who’ll listen.

There are probably dozens of strangers who could recite Buck’s entire moving history from memory, what with how often on calls Buck will start rambling about his own adventures to keep people distracted while they’re being looked over. And yet, Buck’s boyfriend of several months doesn’t even know where Buck lived before coming to L.A.?

It’s none of my business, Eddie reminds himself stubbornly, taking another swig and trying his very best not to do anything weird with his face. Buck is happy with Tommy. Tommy is my friend. Tommy is good for him.

It’s just—Eddie has seen Buck in a handful of relationships, and it’s becoming an undeniable pattern that so many of his partners have seemed not to care about all of him. Buck is a fun, easy person to be around—but that’s not all there is to him, and Eddie hates how often Buck seems to end up with people who don’t care to know every side of him. Buck deserves to be with someone looking for the same all-encompassing, unconditional love that anyone who really knows Buck knows he so desperately seeks.

Tommy definitely doesn’t seem to be looking for something like that. Tommy hardly seems to know Buck at all.

Eddie bites his tongue and manages to make it through the rest of the night without saying something he’ll regret, but he definitely holds off on asking to do this again next week, and Tommy doesn’t offer.

Tommy isn’t bad company by any means, Eddie just—he’s not sure if they really click as friends, at least not anymore. They got along easily at first, but now that they’ve run out of things to talk about Eddie’s leaving with a bitter taste in his mouth and the inexplicable desire to ask Buck what he even talks to Tommy about.

Buck texts Eddie later that night, asking if he had a good time, and Eddie scoffs. Because of course Buck is exactly as predictable as Eddie has always known him to be.

Eddie sighs. He isn’t lying, he’s just—he doesn’t want to make things awkward, least of all over text. And it’s probably nothing, he’s probably overstepping and making unfair assumptions and Buck is happy, so there’s no need to look for issues that aren’t there.

When Buck doesn’t immediately say anything, and he has too many spare seconds to overthink it, Eddie decides to flip the question on him.

Buck is usually quick to respond, and the bubble that indicates he’s typing appears right away and lasts for several seconds before disappearing, then reappearing.

Eddie frowns. Buck is not exactly a man of few words, so Eddie can’t help but wonder—well. He’s wondering a lot of things, none of which feel appropriate or called for to pry about, so he cautiously decides to drop it.

-

Eddie finds out that Buck broke up with Tommy two weeks later, which maybe isn’t as surprising as it should be. The surprising part is that when Buck brings it up during lunch at the station, he offhandedly mentions that it happened an entire week ago.

“You waited a week before telling us?” Hen asks, bewildered, at the exact same time that Eddie voices his own complaint.

“Buck, why didn’t you tell me?”

At least three different pairs of eyebrows raise in Eddie’s direction. It takes him several seconds to realize he’d said me while Hen said us, which hardly feels like the most important thing to discuss at the moment.

“I don’t know, it just—never came up.” Buck sighs, poking at his food with his fork and fidgeting in his seat. “It’s just weird because you guys all know Tommy, too. I didn’t want to make it uncomfortable or make you feel like anything has to change—”

Chim slaps at Buck’s hand to stop him from playing with his food. “Tommy is barely even a friend, we talk, like, once in a blue moon. You’re family. You’re not making anything uncomfortable by keeping us in the loop.”

Under the table, Eddie stretches out his leg just a little to press his knee against Buck’s. He nods reassuringly when Buck meets his eye, hoping that he’s effectively communicating you’re an idiot if you don’t think everyone at this table cares about you more than they’d ever be disappointed that you broke up with someone—which is a bit of a mouthful to convey through eye contact, but Buck seems to get the gist.

“Sorry.” Buck shrugs. “I just—I don’t know. I didn’t want to make it a big deal, because it was, like, as amicable as any breakup can be. I mean—I guess, I can’t speak for him, but—I think we’re on good terms, anyway.”

Eddie frowns. Last he heard, things had still been great between them. Although, he realizes just as this thought occurs, maybe it’s a bit telling that Buck didn’t mention Tommy once for an entire week and not a single person found that out of the ordinary. Maybe, things were still fine—but maybe they were never great.

Eddie shakes his head to snap himself out of it, realizing the normal thing to do would be to just ask Buck about this instead of analyzing it all inside his head.

“You were the one who broke up with him, though, yeah? Was that—did something happen?” He prompts gently, prepared to drop the subject if Buck looks even remotely uncomfortable but instead he just sighs.

“Honestly?” Buck looks directly at Eddie when he shrugs. “I think I just—there was nothing wrong. Nothing happened. And that’s—maybe that was part of the problem, honestly. Tommy’s great, he was really patient with me, when I needed time to, like, figure myself out. And I’m grateful, I’ll always be grateful, but I think—I tried to picture a future with him, and I just—couldn’t. Not that we’d ever even gotten that far, I don’t think that’s something he had even considered, but, you guys know how I am. And it didn’t feel right, dragging it out when—well, I think we both knew there was a reason everything still felt so… surface level.”

“Wow, maybe I should give your therapist a call,” Hen teases with a beaming smile on her face, making everyone burst into laughter and simultaneously reaching out and patting the back of Buck’s hand. “I’m proud of you, though. That’s a very mature decision to make.”

“Exactly.” Chim points at Hen, nodding enthusiastically. “You deserve someone who you can actually see yourself settling down with. Don’t be discouraged.”

Buck laughs under his breath. “I guess it’s just all starting to feel a little—cyclical. I meet someone, I go all in—I really feel like I’ve finally got it right this time. Like whatever I kept missing every other time doesn’t matter, this is the one. And then… here we are again.”

“Might I remind you, you’re still younger than I was when I met Maddie,” Chim argues. “And your dating pool just doubled in size.”

Buck scoffs, but his smile looks easier than it has all day. “Fair points.”

“My roommate is never going to believe you waited an entire week before telling us,” Ravi mutters under his breath. When everyone turns to look at him, he widens his eyes innocently and throws up his hands. “What? I know everything about you people, you can’t blame me for giving my roommate the cliffnotes. It’s impossible to tell any story about my job without, like, eight side-tangents about whatever the interpersonal drama of the week is.”

Buck catches Eddie’s eye when he bursts into laughter, and Eddie realizes two things in rapid succession.

First, he’s glad Buck broke up with Tommy, because he already seems more at ease, and maybe a break from dating for a while will be good for him. Second, Eddie won’t need to feel nearly as guilty the next time he vents to his therapist about being in love with him.

-

Eddie came out to all of the people he figured needed to know as quickly as he could, like ripping off a bandaid. So far, “people” has consisted of his two therapists and, well, just Buck, but—he’s working on it.

That particular revelation had been—honestly, the last thing he needed to add to his plate at the moment, but Frank had just so happened to push the right buttons and it had all come tumbling out of Eddie in fragments over several sessions that left him bereft and distraught and angry.

Misguided anger, at himself more than anything else, for wasting so many decades suppressing discomfort and convincing himself that if he just kept trying, eventually he’d feel the way he was supposed to and he’d stop having to carefully instruct himself on how to act and feel and think, that he’d simply be the person he knew he needed to be. The type of man he needed to be to raise his son, to provide for his family.

Only to be left with nothing to show for all that effort, because he ended up hurting Christopher anyway.

Frank had referred him to Dr Rutherford—a therapist from outside the department who specializes in both late-in-life sexuality exploration and grief counseling—when it became clear Eddie had much more to work through than Frank was equipped to help with. He still talks to Frank every once in a while, whenever a call hits dangerously close to home and Buck convinces him to make an appointment instead of just trying to ignore the unpleasant memories it dredges up, but he sees Dr Rutherford once a week.

Eddie had absolutely dreaded starting over with a new therapist, but he wound up finding it significantly easier to get everything off his chest to a complete stranger who didn’t already know the rest of his team, and didn’t have years of history picking apart his brain and politely allowing him to sidestep talking much about his repeatedly disastrous attempts at dating.

He found himself being honest in ways he didn’t even know he could be. Once he actually said the words out loud for the first time—once he stopped shying away from referring to himself as gay—everything else felt infinitely less daunting to admit. It also stopped feeling so inconceivable to ever move forward—and to begin working toward earning Christopher’s trust again.

What wasn’t easy to admit—to himself, or to Dr Rutherford—was the Buck of it all.

He spent the first few weeks dancing around the Buck-shaped elephant in the room as much as he possibly could, giving only the briefest details to try and avoid guiding Dr Rutherford to the obvious conclusion that Eddie wasn’t just prompted to re-evaluate his sexuality because of his best friend coming out—that there were some messier, more complicated feelings involved, too.

She knew, though, as soon as Eddie had described the relationship Buck has with Christopher. As soon as he’d explained Buck’s current role as a mediator of sorts, that Christopher has been texting Buck even while he still has yet to respond to Eddie once—and that Eddie had expected as much, that he feels no resentment whatsoever—it was like the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place for Dr Rutherford. That the amount of unyielding trust he has in Buck goes beyond anything that could be classified as simply friendship.

It sounds like Buck has been stepping into the role of co-parent and partner, Dr. Rutherford had concluded gently. And it sounds like that’s a role you want him to fulfill. 

Eddie had never put it into those exact words before, not until Dr Rutherford pried it out of him, but he knew somewhere deep down that he’s been at least half-in love with Buck for—well, longer than he can even be certain of. He thinks he probably has wanted to share a family and a lifetime with Buck for even longer, still. 

He doesn’t think there was any one specific moment. If he had to choose, maybe the day he changed his will to ensure the most important piece of his heart would be safe with Buck—that was probably the clearest sign of a line being crossed. But Eddie truly can’t pinpoint any distinct shifts, he thinks the love he has for Buck has just sort of—always been there, dormant, much like his attraction to men on a broader level. Something too complicated to let himself feel, to admit even in the privacy of his own mind.

Eddie thinks he might’ve loved Buck before he knew him, if that were possible. It feels so intrinsic to who he is, the way he thinks. It’s almost inconceivable there was ever a time before.

Talking about these feelings in therapy hardly gave him any more motivation to do something about them—not when every attempt he’s ever made at pursuing a relationship has ended in disaster, and certainly not while Buck is just about the only stable part of his life. He can’t do anything that would jeopardize that—for Christopher’s sake, above all else.

So, Eddie is trying. He’s learned that maybe, sometimes, it’s not a bad thing to let himself want. As long as he remembers all of the reasons why he can never, ever, act on that wanting.

It had been Dr Rutherford’s suggestion for him to come out to the people he wanted to know sooner rather than later, and to do it in casual, comfortable settings rather than allowing it to be a massive ordeal. Eddie had fully expected it to be this nightmarish, panic-attack-inducing serious conversation that he’d have to spend weeks meticulously planning and talking himself up to, but instead—it was actually pretty simple.

He’s told a total of one person, so far, but it’s a start nonetheless. He figures, anyone else, it’ll probably come up naturally in conversation eventually, so there’s no need to make a big deal out of it before it’s relevant.

Telling Buck was remarkably easy.

Buck always comes over on days Eddie has therapy. Buck comes over most days, but—he always comes over when he knows Eddie has therapy, knowing him well enough to know that he often needs company after.

It had been easy enough to slip into their usual de-briefing, to casually mention his session on that day had been with a new therapist instead of Frank, naturally prompting Buck to ask why the sudden switch. Eddie had explained as casually as he could manage that Dr. Rutherford specialized in working through coming out late-in-life, and Buck’s face had shifted into something unreadable for a moment before he’d crushed Eddie in a hug and whispered how thankful he was that Eddie told him.

The conversation hadn’t gone much deeper than that—Buck didn’t pry, and Eddie didn’t exactly have much to talk about that wouldn’t be incredibly revealing of what exactly prompted the re-evaluation of his sexuality.

He knows Christopher deserves to be the next to know, that his son deserves transparency if he’s ever going to trust Eddie again. But he’s not exactly eager to do so through a text from Buck, and Chris still isn’t answering his own texts and outright refuses to call while Buck is at Eddie’s house, and Eddie is really trying to give him the space he’s asking for and let him make his own choices—so he’s accepted it can wait. Eddie promises himself that as soon as Chris is willing to speak to him, he’ll talk about it.

He doesn’t plan to come out to anyone else in the meantime, but—well, it’s sort of an accident, when he does.

It’s one of the rare days that Eddie has off that Buck doesn’t, but since he happens to know that Hen is also on shift, it just makes sense in his head to reach out to Karen and see if he can come over. Eddie knows that Denny is at sleepaway camp, and Mara is still living with Chim and Maddie, and, well—Eddie knows a thing or two about the loneliness associated with spending your day off in a house that isn’t meant to feel so empty.

Karen responds quickly and enthusiastically, telling Eddie that he’s welcome any time and that she’s relieved she’s not alone in being bored out of her mind while her better half is at work—a parallel that Eddie very decidedly does not allow himself to think too much about or question.

And it’s not that Eddie came over with the intention of getting wine-drunk and venting about how pathetic he feels for missing Buck when he just saw him twelve hours ago, but—well.

Karen apparently mentioned to Hen that Eddie was coming over, in response to which Hen decided to send a picture of Buck sitting in the engine beside one of the B-shift probies with a frankly ridiculous pout on his face and the accompanying message He’s moping because he misses his partner :(

So, really, it’s not Eddie’s fault the conversation shifted in this direction. He blames Hen, his fourth glass of wine, Karen, and Buck’s pathetic doe eyes. In that order.

“I know you’ve been even more attached at the hip than usual, lately,” Karen says slowly, as if she’s attempting to console a child. Eddie is only mildly insulted. “I think it’s sweet. He knows you get lonely.”

“I do not,” Eddie protests, knowing as soon as the words leave his mouth that he doesn’t even sound like he believes them. “Buck is the clingy one.”

“Buck is clingy,” Karen says, a grin spreading across her face. “With you, specifically.”

Eddie’s brow furrows. “He’s clingy with everyone.”

“It’s different, though.” Karen shakes her head. “Actually—maybe you’re right. He is clingy with everyone.”

Eddie tries to gesture excitedly and nearly spills his wine. “Thank you!”

“But he’s affectionate with you,” Karen says, enunciating every syllable with purpose. “That’s the difference.”

“I still don’t know what the difference is.”

“He’s clingy,” Karen repeats.

“Yes, as we’ve established.”

Karen slaps Eddie’s knee. “I’m getting to the point, asshole. Buck likes to be around people, like—almost all the time. Because he’s clingy. But he’ll be all touchy and needy with you even when he doesn’t want to be around anybody else. Because you guys are affectionate.”

“Stop using that word,” Eddie complains.

He’s definitely too tipsy to make a compelling argument here, not when there’s warmth spreading through his chest as his brain provides him with at least a dozen snapshots of moments that prove Karen’s point.

“Why?” Karen narrows her eyes at him. “Because you know I’m right?”

“Because it’s not—it’s not like he does it on purpose,” Eddie says, stumbling over the words for reasons entirely unrelated to how much he’s had to drink. “It doesn’t mean anything to him.”

Eddie hears the words come out of his own mouth and then sighs, setting his glass down on the coffee table and then choosing very maturely to bury his head in one of the couch cushions instead of having to face the very knowing look he knows he’s on the receiving end of.

“It doesn’t mean anything to him,” Karen successfully fills in the blank, and Eddie can’t bring himself to do anything more than grumble in admittance. “But it does to you.”

Eddie frowns into the material of the pillow, then looks up in exasperation. “Fucking—obviously. You don’t see me being affectionate with anybody else.”

“I think you’re a lot more soft and mushy than you like to pretend you are,” Karen says, her tone once again very carefully even—Eddie is pretty sure she’s using her mom voice on him. “But, sure. You act different with Buck than I’ve ever seen you with anybody else. And—I mean, I’ve always had my guesses about whether or not that meant something, but—I didn’t think you’d admit that.”

Eddie lets out a long, drawn out sigh. “Unfortunately, this therapy thing actually kinda works.”

Karen bursts into infectious laughter, and despite his best efforts at remaining composed, Eddie quickly follows. He almost manages to forget the topic of conversation by the time he’s able to catch his breath, but he should’ve known Karen wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily.

“So… you’ve been talking about Buck in therapy?”

Eddie wipes his hand across his face and groans. “I’ve been talking about everything in therapy. Christopher, Shannon, my parents, my childhood, my time in the army, my job. Not to even mention all the other greatest hits, like the several times I’ve almost died, the time Christopher could’ve died in the tsunami, the time Buck almost died right in front of me, Buck—just, generally, Buck and Tommy—”

“You talked about Buck and Tommy in therapy?” Karen’s eyes shoot wide open when she interrupts, and Eddie lets out an even more long-suffering sigh. He definitely did not mean to say that one out loud.

“Can I say no and you can pretend to believe me?” Eddie tries, completely deflating and slumping back into the couch, only to shoot back upright as soon as he considers all the different assumptions Karen might be making. “Wait—not, like. I wasn’t bothered by Buck dating Tommy. Like—not in a homophobic way, or—is it still called homophobia when he’s bi? Is there a different word for that?”

“Eddie,” Karen waves a hand in front of his face. “I promise I did not even for a second think you were homophobic.”

Eddie lets out a breath of relief. “Oh, good. That would’ve been really awkward.”

“I don’t know if I believe you about it not bothering you, though.” She raises her eyebrows at him before taking a long sip from her wine glass. “I didn’t think you liked Tommy very much.”

“I like Tommy!” Eddie protests. “I was friends with him before Buck even really got to know him, actually.”

“You’re proving me right,” Karen deadpans. “You were friends with him. Then he started dating Buck. And then the next time you hung out with Tommy, Buck broke up with him a week later. And I’m supposed to believe that’s a coincidence?”

“It is a coincidence—wait, how do you even know that?”

“So it’s true?” Karen’s grin turns almost maniacal in her amusement. “Hen thought that was the timeline of events, but she didn’t actually know if it was true. You seriously expect me to believe Buck breaking up with Tommy had nothing to do with your—disapproval?”

“I didn’t tell Buck I disapproved of anything,” Eddie says truthfully. He thinks the part of his brain-to-mouth filter that had the capacity for anything but the truth dissolved at least an hour ago.

“But you did disapprove!” Karen says triumphantly, spilling a few drops of wine on her lap when she moves to point at him.

And something about whatever was left of Eddie’s resolve just—crumbles.

“I did,” he says, admitting it out loud for the first time. He tries to reach for a coherent, rational explanation of the very justifiable concerns he’d had while Tommy and Buck were dating, but instead, what comes out of his mouth is: “I thought I was going to die if I had to hear him say Evan one more time.”

Karen not only emphatically agrees, but insists she must’ve said the exact same thing to Hen after talking to him only once. “He seemed fine. But—Buck deserves better than just fine.”

“Exactly!” Eddie says. “God, it’s a relief to talk about this with someone who gets it. I mean, you know Buck. You know how badly he deserves a partner that will actually appreciate him. Whenever I explained this to Dr. Rutherford, she never believed that this was unrelated to the whole—being in love with him, thing.”

Eddie only realizes what he said when Karen drops her glass and the sound of it shattering on the hardwood floor jolts through him.

“You’re—”

“Oh no, let me go get something to clean the floor.” Eddie very maturely jumps to his feet and flees the room as quickly as possible, desperate for any excuse to avoid elaborating on what he just—blurted out unceremoniously.

“The floor can wait!” Karen yells after him, but he’s already halfway into the kitchen. Predictably, by the time he’s grabbed a roll of paper towel and a cleaning spray from beneath the sink, Karen has followed him.

“Eddie,” Karen starts, and Eddie realizes that her tone has shifted from amused to sincere, that she isn’t laughing anymore. “If you really don’t want to talk about it then we can pretend that didn’t just happen and I’ll never bring it up again. But—if you did have something you wanted to get off your chest, then—”

“I’m gay.” Eddie blurts out, because—well, he already said the somehow-scarier part of this equation out loud. He may as well backtrack to the part that, after several weeks of therapy, he finds he’s actually eager to talk about. “That’s—that’s actually the main thing I’ve been working out in therapy.”

“Oh, Eddie.” Karen crosses the remaining distance between them and pulls Eddie into a hug so tight he backs into the counter, and he wonders if he can plausibly blame the way his eyes grow misty on the wine. “Thank you for telling me. I know you didn’t really mean to, but—thank you for trusting me anyway.”

“I was going to tell you anyway, maybe not necessarily like that, but.” Eddie laughs, and when Karen pulls back from the hug and he notices she also looks a little bit teary-eyed, he feels a lump rising in his throat. “It’s—I mean, it was a lot to—come to terms with. But it, uh—definitely helped me put a lot of other things into perspective.”

Karen asks a bunch of non-invasive questions while they clean up the broken glass and drink a lot of water, and Eddie definitely only cries a tiny bit when he explains how much of a relief it had been to realize there was nothing wrong with him, that he was never broken at all, just—missing some pieces.

It’s very different from how coming out to Buck went, but Eddie thinks he’s equally grateful for both experiences. He’s also incredibly emotionally drained by the time he’s finished spilling his guts, which is why he insists that Karen should just tell Hen so he doesn’t have to.

“Don’t be stupid,” Karen complains immediately. “I am not outing you to my wife.”

“It’s not outing if I’m asking you to do it!” Eddie argues, then pauses, because he hears the sound of a car door closing outside and then the telltale jingle of keys in the lock. “Oh, perfect. You can tell her as soon as I leave.”

“You are not driving,” Karen protests, ignoring Hen’s befuddled stare as she crosses the threshold. “Hen will drive you, and you can tell her yourself in the car.”

“Tell me what?” Hen asks, glancing suspiciously from the empty bottle of wine on the coffee table to Karen and then Eddie in turn.

Eddie stares up at the ceiling and sighs. “Okay, fine. But you’re not allowed to make me cry about it too.”

“Why would I—Eddie, what?” Hen looks even more confused, and Eddie bursts into laughter at the same time that Karen shakes her head.

“She cannot make that promise.”

(Eddie does, begrudgingly, cry a little bit more when Hen tells him how proud she is and then tells him she knew there must’ve been a reason he seemed like he was carrying a lot less on his shoulders, lately. It’s only a small price to pay for being the happiest he’s felt in months.)

-

When Eddie overheard Chimney and Ravi talking about baseball and tentatively throwing out plans to go to a game, he’d asked to join them on a whim before allowing himself to overthink it. An annoyingly Buck-like voice in the back of his head was insistent that it would be fun, that he can’t remember the last time he went to a game without Christopher, and it could be a nice change of pace.

Begrudgingly, Eddie can’t help but accept that the voice was right—he’s actually enjoying himself quite a bit.

“I’m kind of still shocked you actually wanted to come,” Chim says, returning to his seat with a gigantic bag of popcorn and three brightly-colored slushies, passing one to each of them.

“Is it really so hard to believe?” Eddie raises his eyebrows, looking to Ravi for support only to be met with an equally unconvinced shrug. “Oh, please. What, have you guys been going every week or something? And now I’m intruding—”

“No, Eddie, that’s not what I meant!” The popcorn in Chim’s lap is jostled dangerously when he reaches over to clap Eddie on the shoulder. “I’m glad you came! I just wouldn’t have expected—well, actually, I do know you like baseball.”

“We’ve definitely talked about baseball before,” Eddie agrees.

“I guess I just assume by default that your days off are already accounted for.” Chim shrugs, and Eddie manages to grin around the all-too-familiar ache in his chest.

“Yeah, I’ve been trying to get out more, I guess?” Eddie sighs, the explanation almost juvenile when he tries to articulate it. “My therapist thinks it’s a good idea to make the most of all this time I have to myself, so.”

“Oh, fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t even mean—I meant by Buck.” Chim rushes to clarify, seemingly noticing that Eddie’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes and panicking. “It’s usually just safe to assume you have plans with Buck.”

Eddie chokes back a surprisingly genuine laugh. “Yeah, I guess that’s fair.”

“For what it’s worth, I had no idea you cared about baseball,” Ravi adds, taking a large sip of his slushie and then wincing in immediate regret. “Ow, fuck.”

“My thirteen-year-old remembers not to drink cold things too fast, and you can’t?” Eddie teases, making Chim burst out laughing.

“I didn’t even drink that much!” Ravi scowls, but he’s laughing too when he takes another exaggeratedly slow sip.

“To be fair,” Eddie adds, distantly recalling something Buck told him the last time they got milkshakes with Christopher. “The nerve that sends the pain signal to your brain is more sensitive for some people than others. If it’s ever really bad, you can press your thumb or your tongue to the roof of your mouth to get rid of it faster, since that’s where the blood vessels are that trigger your brain arteries to dilate.”

“Why do you know this much about brain freezes?” Chim laughs, shaking his head. “I’m the paramedic, and I didn’t even know all that.”

Eddie shrugs. “Buck looked it up a while ago.”

“And you remember?” Ravi asks, his eyes wide.

Eddie is saved from having to answer by a foul ball flying right over their heads and being caught by someone a few rows behind them.

During the few seconds of chaos around them, he tries not to let Ravi’s surprise bother him—it’s not weird that he remembers everything Buck tells him. It’s not like he has a photographic memory, like he could sit down and recite every random fact Buck has ever told him in chronological order—he just listens when Buck talks, so he tends to absorb the information whether or not he’ll ever actually need it.

“As Ravi was saying…” Chim turns back to face Eddie. “Buck has fun facts about, like, everything. It’s kind of impressive that you can keep up.”

“I only remembered because it was relevant,” Eddie argues, shaking his head when Chim narrows his gaze before turning to Ravi with a conspiratorial glint in his eye.

“I mean, I guess I do pay extra close attention to anything Maddie tells me.” Chim says with all the subtlety of a pitch thrown in the dirt while a team’s star player is up to bat. “But that’s different since she’s my wife, I suppose. What do you think, Ravi?”

“Please leave me out of this,” Ravi begs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Eddie takes a long sip of his blue-raspberry slushie and squints down at the pitcher’s mound, deciding that’s his cue to be incredibly invested in whether or not he’s going to strike this batter out. As the ball lands in the catcher’s mitt, a sharp intense pain shoots through Eddie’s forehead and he curses out loud before he can help it.

“Sorry, what was that, Dr. Brain Freeze?” Ravi goads, far too much glee evident in his voice. “Mr. Even my thirteen year old knows how to avoid brain freezes?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie grumbles, burying his head in his hands.

-

Eddie has always considered himself someone who knows how to enjoy quiet time. He wouldn’t use the word introvert, necessarily, but he’s always found a certain amount of comfort in silence, in sitting still and just being.

Without Christopher around, Eddie can’t stand silence anymore.

He can’t remember the last time his house felt so quiet. Eddie has grown used to the distant ambient sounds of keyboard clicks or Christopher’s desk chair rolling side to side or the muffled sound of him talking to his friends on the phone. He’s used to waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of Christopher’s footsteps down the hall, or the sound of pouring water from the kitchen or a toilet flush. It’s a force of habit to ask Chris to keep it down when it’s the day before a 48-hour and he desperately needs a good night’s sleep, to make him leave his switch in the living room so Eddie can be certain Chris will actually go to bed at some point.

Eddie isn’t used to silence meaning stillness. He’s not used to living alone—it’s the first time in his life that Eddie has ever had a house entirely to himself.

There’s something unsettling about knowing that while he’s at work, the house sits cold and empty and everything will be exactly where he left it when he returns. He’s used to coming home to the water pitcher mostly-empty or toilet paper rolls needing to be replaced. He’s used to having to nag his son to put his dishes away, about always leaving the tupperware containers he brought to school in the sink for Eddie to deal with.

Eddie doesn’t know what to do with the fact that he’s never felt more alone.

Buck always notices—because of course he does. Buck does the best he can to mitigate the feeling by spending a frankly absurd amount of time at Eddie’s house, even more so since breaking up with Tommy.

They don’t even discuss it, most of the time. Buck has stopped asking, and Eddie has gotten used to just assuming it’s a given that even when they leave the station in separate cars, he’ll find Buck’s Jeep in his driveway minutes later.

Buck fills the silence in all of the ways only he knows how—with laughter, with non-stop rambling about anything and everything that he thinks might hold Eddie’s attention, with movies that neither of them pay all that much attention to and they both know are just an excuse to sit together for a little longer.

They talk a lot about Christopher.

Eddie has forced his parents into a routine of calling him at least once a week, but Buck gets him updates much more often. He knows that Buck texts Chris on a daily basis, just random fun facts or interesting things he sees to keep a line of communication open any time Chris feels up to responding. He never pressures Chris to talk to Eddie, but Eddie knows Buck does talk to Chris about him—that Chris asks about him, too, even if he still never wants to talk to him.

Eddie isn’t sure how he could possibly survive any of this without Buck. He can’t imagine his parents putting this much consideration into giving Chris the space he needs to not feel smothered, while simultaneously making sure he never has a chance of forgetting how loved he is, that Eddie will welcome anything whenever he’s ready for it.

It’s a work in progress.

Of course, having Buck over doesn’t quite fill the gaping void in his home that Eddie is excruciatingly, agonizingly aware of at all times—but it’s a lot harder to dwell on that emptiness when Buck fits so effortlessly into Eddie’s home, smoothing over all the cracks with an unspoken certainty of belonging that Eddie wouldn’t trade for the world.

It becomes so routine that Eddie doesn’t even think anything of it until the pattern is disrupted.

Buck has a dentist appointment, of all things, and he tells Eddie that he’ll probably just head back to the loft after since there’s probably food in his fridge that’ll go bad if he doesn’t cook it soon. Eddie can’t come up with any rational reason to protest without drawing attention to the ridiculous fact that Buck has started needing excuses to cook meals in his own apartment, so he agrees he’ll be perfectly fine on his own for the day.

Coming home to an empty house shouldn’t feel nearly as out of the ordinary as it does, considering that even on a typical day, Christopher wouldn’t be home at this time. But it’s eerie nonetheless, the sound of Eddie’s own footsteps echoing somberly while he trudges down the hall to his bedroom and collapses into bed.

He’s grateful he showered at the station, because he doesn’t think he’ll manage to keep his eyes open for longer than five minutes and he’s hardly eager to. The longer he’s able to nap, the less time he’ll need to spend occupying himself in this awful, empty house.

Just as Eddie is a few seconds away from drifting off, his phone vibrates in his pocket buried under the covers. He considers ignoring it, assuming it’s probably just a non-time-sensitive message from Buck that he can reply to whenever he wakes up, but he sighs and fumbles to pull it out when it vibrates a second time.

To his genuine surprise, the messages aren’t from Buck.

Eddie is proud of himself for how quickly he agrees. And it only has a little bit to do with Buck not being around—though he likes to think he would’ve said yes anyway.

He still keeps in touch with the friends he made during his brief stint at dispatch, though not nearly as actively as when they were all working out of the same building—and even less so since May left for university. He can’t come up with a single reason not to accept the invitation and do some overdue catching up, so he doesn’t hesitate.

Maybe some small part of Eddie just wants a reason to get out of the house instead of wallowing in the absence of the two people whose company he always wants. But maybe being able to admit that, even just in the privacy of his own mind, isn’t such a bad thing either.

He shows up to the karaoke bar May gave him the address to and is relieved when he spots Maddie and Chim on their way in at the same time.

“Eddie!” Chim waves him over, holding the door open for him to catch up. “You made it!”

“You’re surprised to see me?” Eddie teases, laughing under his breath. “I thought this was a dispatch reunion—when exactly did you work there again?”

“I’m a plus one,” Chim grins smugly, lacing his arm through Maddie’s while she just sighs. “Speaking of, where’s yours?”

Eddie stops in the entrance and raises his eyebrows. “My… plus one?”

“You didn’t invite Buck?” Maddie asks, appearing genuinely surprised, and Eddie—what is with all of Eddie’s friends and equating himself and Buck to their spouses? “You know what, actually, good. Someone else gets a chance to win at trivia for once.”

“It’s trivia night?” Eddie resists the urge to frown—if he’d known that, he probably would have invited Buck. Karaoke and trivia is basically his ideal night out under any circumstance.

Maddie and Chim must’ve already spotted the group, and Eddie follows their lead over to a corner with two tables pushed together and a bunch of spare chairs dragged over.

“May didn’t mention that?” Maddie looks back over her shoulder when she notices Eddie lagging slightly behind, pouting when she sees his expression. “You could probably still text him. He’ll drop anything and come if you ask.”

“I—” Eddie stammers helplessly for a second, unsure how he’s possibly meant to respond to that in a non-revealing way. “He—has a dentist appointment?”

It comes out like a question, because Eddie is quite exceptionally terrible at lying to Maddie. She’s perfected the same wide-eyed probing look he’s powerless against whenever Buck employs it—and Buck probably learned it from Maddie.

Not that it’s a lie—Buck did have a dentist appointment, several hours ago. Eddie just doesn’t particularly want to explain why Buck needed to go home to his own apartment—why he hasn’t for at least a week because he’s just always at Eddie’s house.

Thankfully, he’s saved from having to elaborate by Linda rushing over to pull him into a hug, and then he gets dragged easily into conversation about how it’s been too long.

Eddie is still able to fit himself into the group surprisingly well—he boasts to Linda about how much his cooking has improved since the last time they discussed it, and it only makes him a little bit sad when he has to explain that he’s had a lot more room for trial and error when he’s not cooking for a thirteen-year-old.

When they divide into teams for trivia, May stands up and moves to sit next to Eddie without a second of hesitation. “Everyone else already has their usual duos, we’re both the non-regulars,” she explains, and Eddie has to admit he had been anticipating playing solo or just sitting it out. “Besides, it’s perfect. We have the exact opposite areas of expertise. I’ll cover any pop culture and technology stuff, and you’ll know all the, like, sports and old people stuff.”

“I am younger than at least half the people here!” Eddie protests, but he can’t suppress the smile spreading across his face.

“And yet, something tells me you’re still going to clean up in ancient history.”

Banter back and forth with May comes naturally, her dry sense of humor an easy match for Eddie’s own. Despite the teasing, he’s actually incredibly grateful for her ability to never let him feel like the odd one out.

And they do, in fact, make an excellent trivia duo. They win the first round by a landslide, struggle a bit in the second, and then come second in the final round which puts them comfortably in first overall. He might be the only one who hasn’t been drinking, which may or may not play a slight role in their success, but—Eddie isn’t going to be the one to point that out.

“Even when Buck isn’t here, it’s like I can still hear his voice,” Chim whines when the scores are done being calculated. “Be honest, Eddie. How’d you hide the earpiece where he was feeding you answers?”

Eddie gasps in mock-offense. “I have integrity. And you’ll get to see for yourself how shocked Buck is when you tell him that I won a trivia game without him.”

“What can I say,” May shrugs, grinning from ear to ear. “You can tell Buck that you’ve found a superior teammate. Maybe he was holding you back.”

“This is true, actually,” Eddie says, pointing at Chim. “See? Maybe it’s actually a disadvantage that Buck and I are always a team. We know too much of the same stuff anyway.”

“And yet, something tells me you’re not going to team up any less,” Maddie says with an eerily knowing smile, to which Eddie just rolls his eyes. He isn’t going to attempt to argue when she is right.

“So,” May turns to Eddie when everyone breaks back off into separate conversations. “You didn’t invite Buck tonight?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” Eddie groans.

May narrows her eyes at him in a way that reminds him an awful lot of Athena. “You’re not serious. You can’t just frogboil all of us into thinking your codependency is normal, and then act like we’re being weird when we acknowledge it.”

“Frog boil?” Eddie’s brow furrows. “Did you use that as a verb?”

“Like, if you drop a frog into hot water, it would just jump out, but if you boil the water slowly with the frog already inside, it doesn’t notice that it’s burning until—ugh, why am I explaining this? Stop changing the subject!” May shoves his arm. “So? Why isn’t Buck here?”

For some reason, Eddie decides that he may as well just tell May the truth.

“He needed to go back to his apartment to clean out his fridge,” he says, then sighs when May’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “And it would just be kind of embarrassing to ask him to come hang out with me on the one day he actually went back to his own place.”

“So he’s been… living with you?” May says very slowly. “That’s… normal.”

“He hasn’t moved in,” Eddie clarifies, because the distinction absolutely does matter. “He’s just been spending a lot—well, most of his time with me lately.”

May makes a face like she doesn’t completely believe him, but she’s apparently satisfied enough by the answer to change course. “Well, I’m glad you could bear to be separated from him for an entire night so we got to catch up. But don’t tell him that.”

The conversation steers back to much safer topics, from that point on. Tired of talking so much about himself, Eddie asks May all about university and happily listens to stories about her new part-time job, the fact that she’s considering a double-major, and the new friends she’s planning to rent a bigger apartment with next year.

Even though she still isn’t sure exactly what she wants to do with her life, she’s happy and clearly on track to figuring it out. Eddie, who was so lost and unsure of himself at her age that he’s still unpacking it in therapy a decade later, makes sure to tell her in at least a hundred different ways how excited he is for her.

Several hours of surprisingly not-that-awful karaoke later, Eddie offers to give Chim and Maddie a ride home when he can tell neither of them is planning on driving.

“It really isn’t a problem at all, I can Uber back and get my truck.” Eddie can tell that Maddie is absolutely going to protest again, so he tacks on— “You have a kid to get home to, it’s not like I have anywhere I need to be.”

Maddie frowns, then pulls out her phone. Eddie thinks she’s ignoring him and requesting an Uber anyway, but then she puts it back into her pocket after only a few seconds and sighs. “Okay, fine. But we both owe you one.”

“It really isn’t a problem,” Eddie insists. Chim bowed out of this debate several minutes ago—Eddie is pretty sure he’s at least half-asleep standing up.

Chim immediately collapses into the backseat and barely has time to put his seatbelt on before he’s curling up against the door and closing his eyes, and Maddie laughs fondly while settling into the passenger’s seat.

The three of them sit in comfortable silence for the first few minutes, before Maddie turns to Eddie like she’s going to ask something then stops. Amused, Eddie raises his eyebrows and gestures for her to just say it.

“I was just going to ask—Buck always says you hate driving.”

Eddie bursts into quiet laughter. “Okay, I do not hate driving. I don’t love it, but it’s—really not a big thing. I don’t go out of my way to drive when I don’t need to.”

“Fair enough.” Maddie shrugs. “I guess I just assumed, I mean—it made sense. Since you carpool with Buck all the time.”

Eddie glances over at her and sure enough, there’s that knowing flash of something in her eyes that tells him she’s absolutely doing this on purpose—that she sees right through him.

“Well,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “I think that might have more to do with the amount of time we spend together than my feelings on driving.”

Maddie’s face lights up in amusement. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m very aware of you being functionally roommates.”

Eddie tries to control the journey his face goes on in response, but he doesn’t think he does a very good job because he’s suddenly terrified of all the things Maddie might’ve heard from Buck over the last few weeks. Everyone is well-aware of the mess that is Eddie’s life, but no one has had a front-row seat to his efforts at breaking it all down and putting it back together quite like Buck has. As his big sister and the person who basically raised him, Eddie can only imagine what opinions Maddie must have on the amount of time and energy Buck puts into cleaning up Eddie’s messes.

“I’m really glad he’s been there for you,” Maddie says, startling him back to reality.

“You—you are?”

“Eddie,” Maddie’s expression softens, and she nods carefully. “Of course I am. You know—I know a thing or two about self-destructing, too.”

Eddie immediately opens his mouth to disagree, because their situations couldn’t be further from the same thing—because his implosion was entirely by his own design, the consequences of his own actions. He may not have meant for Christopher to ever get caught in the blast radius, but it was selfish to think he wouldn’t be. That Buck wouldn’t be, too.

“I know it’s not the exact same thing.” Maddie says, as if reading his mind—which might run in the Buckley family, Eddie wouldn’t even be surprised. “My point was just that—I know how completely terrifying it is to feel like all you know how to do is fail them. And when I had to face that, I ran away. So I’m really glad that you haven’t been alone, working through all of this.”

“You went and got help,” Eddie says, because it feels important to emphasize. “And, it was a mistake, Maddie. No one would ever have blamed you for—”

“Are you implying that you didn’t make a mistake?” Maddie cuts him off. “You weren’t trying to hurt him, Eddie. I know that. I think he probably knows that, too. He may just need some time to get there.”

“I—I do know that.” Eddie says. “I just—I don’t know how to prove to him that I really am trying—that things will be different. He still won’t even talk to me.”

“I think the only way to prove that is to forgive yourself,” Maddie says, and Eddie recognizes therapy-speak when he hears it, but he can tell she does actually mean it. “When he does decide he’s ready to talk to you, he’s not going to expect you to be perfect. He’s a teenager, no teenager thinks their parents are perfect. He’s just going to want to know that you’re trying. That’s all we can ever do, Eddie.”

He’s staggered, suddenly, by the fact that this is the first time he’s properly allowed himself to talk about how he’s dealing with Christopher’s absence to anyone who isn’t a therapist or Buck.

Despite spending so much time going out of his way to be more open, to confide in the people who he knows are looking out for him, he’s steered clear of talking too much about Christopher at all costs. Eddie thinks it’s always been the one area that felt unfair to burden anyone else with. It wouldn’t feel fair, not when he couldn’t imagine how anyone would ever understand the choices he made—not when he didn’t believe he deserved any understanding.

In a way, Eddie thinks, maybe it was just another form of self-punishment. If he doesn’t allow anyone to console him, he can’t even begin to forgive himself. But—Maddie has a point, too. If he can’t trust himself to do better, how is he meant to prove as much to Christopher?

The exception, of course, being Buck. But Buck is the only person in the entire world who Eddie trusts enough to burden with all of the messy, jagged, broken pieces of himself and still know, with complete certainty, that not only is Buck not going to be scared away—but that Buck will put Christopher first.

It’s all Eddie could ever ask for. It’s how Eddie knows there won’t ever be anyone else.

“You’re right,” Eddie says finally. The GPS on his phone tells him to take a left, and he realizes he’s only a couple minutes away from their house. “I know you are. It’s just—it’s been a process. I’m working on it.”

“I know you have been.” Maddie smiles warmly. “And for what it’s worth, I think in a weird way, all of this—I mean, god, not this, but—the therapy, having all the hard conversations. I think it’s been good for Buck, too. He seems a lot more… secure, I guess, lately? I know how much it means to him that you always let him in.”

And that’s—it’s one thing for Buck to promise Eddie is never burdening him. It’s one thing for Buck to choose Eddie, to choose Chris, a thousand times without hesitation.

It’s something else entirely to hear from possibly the most important person in Buck’s life that Buck wants Eddie’s problems to be his problems.

“Is Buck in love with me?” Eddie blurts out, so wholly jarred by the sudden revelation that he completely forgets to keep his voice down.

“What?” Maddie gapes at him.

“Am I still asleep?” Chimney asks from the backseat, apparently woken up by the change in volume, but Eddie’s brain is too filled with radio static at the moment to acknowledge him.

“That wasn’t a no!” He says to Maddie instead.

“It also wasn’t a yes!”

“You’re dodging the question,” Eddie observes pointlessly while his phone informs him that he’s turning onto their street now. “Oh, god. You do know something.”

“I’m so mad you didn’t wake me up for whatever this conversation is,” Chin grumbles, and Eddie—Eddie feels lightheaded.

“Well, good news, you can just ask him yourself!” Maddie says cheerily, gesturing to—Buck’s Jeep parked in her driveway.

“Why…” Eddie trails off, incapable of parking the car and forming words at the same time at the moment. “Why is Buck here?”

“He offered to come over and put Jee to bed so Mrs. Lee could go home earlier,” she says innocently, before sighing and rolling her eyes when Eddie continues to gape helplessly at her. “And I may have mentioned you were giving us a ride home so you’d need a lift to go pick up your truck.”

Great, Eddie thinks. He can’t even do the very mature thing and hide outside, because Buck is expecting him.

“I’m going to go inside now,” Maddie says, while Eddie continues to sit completely still and stare at Buck’s Jeep as if maybe it’ll disappear if he waits long enough. “If you’re not going to move, can I at least have the keys back?”

“Right,” Eddie shakes his head, then very methodically turns off the car and gets out. He still feels a little bit like he might not be fully inside his body, but he manages to follow Maddie and half-asleep Chim up to the doorway anyway.

Inside, Buck is standing by the door with a very sleepy Jee-yun balanced on his hip and a bright smile on his face when he sees Eddie, which is definitely not helping Eddie to think calm, rational thoughts. Buck explains to a concerned Maddie that Jee was asleep but woke up a few minutes ago and then refused to go back to sleep until her parents were home, because Buck made the fatal error of telling her they were close.

Eddie listens politely—which is, to say, he completely zones out and misses the rest of the conversation because his mind is busy replaying the fact that Buck might be in love with him on a maddening loop.

Because, in all of Eddie’s endless introspection in and out of therapy about his own desires, he’s never once even allowed himself to question whether or not Buck reciprocates. He’s never allowed himself to even consider what it would mean for the two of them if he did, because—well, Eddie already feels incredibly undeserving of everything that Buck does for him, the amount of love he’s constantly on the receiving end of. He doesn’t imagine how he could ever allow himself more, especially not with his history.

But—he can’t stop thinking about what Maddie said. I know how much it means to him that you always let him in.

Eddie can’t stop thinking about how far out of his way Buck has gone for him. How Christopher is Buck’s entire world, the same way that he’s Eddie’s. How they’ve been raising him together for years, even if that’s not something either of them has ever said out loud. The family that they’ve built, and even now, even at Eddie’s lowest, the family that Buck continues to fight for.

It was, honestly, very easy for Eddie to recontextualize so many of his own choices and realize why exactly the trust he has in Buck came so naturally, but he never once allowed himself to stop and think about what that meant from Buck’s perspective. It’s a line Eddie never let himself cross, because he knew there would be no coming back from it, once he did.

By the time Eddie mentally checks back into the conversation happening in front of him, Chim is nowhere in sight—presumably already asleep—and Maddie is watching fondly as Buck says an extremely drawn-out goodbye to his adorable niece, and Eddie is so in love with him that he thinks his heart might give out.

Eddie somehow manages to say goodnight to Maddie and Jee-yun and walk all the way to the car without such a thing happening, but once he’s back in the car and looking over at Buck under the dim glow of the streetlights, sitting across from him right where he belongs, he thinks it might still be a near thing.

“Hi,” Buck says after pulling out of the driveway, and Eddie finally snaps far enough out of his own deranged haze to notice that Buck is practically vibrating with excitement, that he clearly has been waiting to tell him something. “How was your night?”

“It was fun,” Eddie says, “it was really nice to catch up with May, especially. We won at trivia, May and I did.”

“No way,” Buck raises his eyebrows, then beams and reaches over for a high five when Eddie nods. “That’s awesome.”

Buck asks a bunch of questions about how everyone is doing, which Eddie happily answers, even though the suspense is killing him. He knows that Buck is just trying to be polite, to let Eddie talk about his day first, but there’s only so much of this he can take.

It’s a short drive from Maddie and Chimney’s house to Eddie’s, so short that Eddie doesn’t even realize they’ve already made it home until Buck is pulling into the driveway, which—

“Uh,” Eddie turns to look at Buck, and bursts into laughter. “The whole point of you picking me up was to go get my truck, remember?”

“Oh, fuck.” Buck buries his face in his hands. “I’m sorry, I completely—I was distracted, and it’s just habit, and—”

“It’s fine, we can get it in the morning.” Eddie undoes his seatbelt and gets out, quickly shaking his head when Buck moves to restart the car as if he’s going to turn around and get it now. “There’s no rush, Buck. It’s not going to get towed, relax. We’ll just make sure to go before the place opens.”

Eddie is prepared for Buck to argue, but instead he only hesitates for a second before nodding and getting out of the car.

Once they’re inside, they haven’t even made it to the living room before Eddie decides he can’t take the anticipation any longer.

“Can you tell me why you were practically bouncing out of your seat the entire drive now?”

Buck scoffs, but his smile doesn’t drop for even a second. “I was going to build up to it, but you’re so impatient.”

“You’re the one who looks like you’re going to, like, burst if you don’t just spit it out—”

“I was talking to Chris,” Buck interrupts, and Eddie completely freezes. “Earlier, uh, while I was watching Jee. He actually texted me first, like, I wasn’t the one who initiated the conversation, which was already—great, obviously.”

Eddie nods, encouraging him to keep going.

“And then he—he asked if I was at home with you, so I told him I wasn’t because I was babysitting,” Buck pauses just long enough for Eddie’s brain to fixate on the word home. “And then he asked if we’d both be home tomorrow night, and I said we will be, and then he switched back to complaining about how your parents keep making him go to church, but it was kind of driving me crazy that he never told me why he wanted to know if we’d both be home so I asked, and he said—he’s going to call you tomorrow.”

“He wants to—call?” Eddie’s eyes shoot wide open. His heart drops to his feet.

“Yes,” Buck is beaming at him again, and he grabs onto Eddie’s arm as if to ground him. “He wants to talk to you. He told me that he’s wanted to for the last few weeks but he was still really angry and the longer he ignored you the harder it was to admit that he wasn’t even sure why he was doing it because it wasn’t making him feel better, either, but—oh, and he wants me to be there for the call too, if that’s okay with you. And I asked him if it was okay if I told you all of this, I didn’t want to just assume and—”

Eddie is closing the already-small distance between them and kissing Buck before he’s even had a chance to fully process everything that Buck just said. He doesn’t even realize that it’s something he’s going to do until he’s already feeling the curve of Buck’s jaw beneath his hand and both of Buck’s hands have somehow found his waist and Eddie actually can’t be certain which one of them crosses the final millimeter of space and presses their lips together, all he knows is that he just couldn’t wait a single second longer.

Because Christopher only tells Buck things once he doesn’t mind Eddie knowing, too—because he thinks of them as a unit, but Buck still always asks before telling Eddie because he knows how important it is for Christopher to know that what he wants matters. Because Eddie can’t imagine anyone else ever understanding what his son needs the way that Buck does, and Buck called Eddie’s house home and Christopher wants Buck to be there too when he talks to Eddie for the first time in a month, and Eddie loves him, and Eddie loves him, and Eddie loves him.

Kissing Buck, for Eddie, feels like taking in fresh air after being underground for so long you’ve forgotten it was even possible to breathe so easily. He’s overwhelmed immediately by just how right it feels, like the two of them are magnets that after years of slowly gravitating closer, almost, not quite—have finally clicked into place.

Eddie thinks he might be shaking when he pulls back because he also might not remember how to breathe at all and they’re still so close that he can feel it when Buck takes a stuttering breath of his own, and for a moment both of them are completely still, staring at one another with matching deer-in-the-headlights expressions before a small stunned smile crosses Buck’s lips—and then Eddie can’t help the giggle that he lets out, and then both of them are laughing and still holding onto one another so tightly that Eddie actually isn’t certain he’d even still be standing if it wasn’t for Buck’s hands keeping him steady.

“I love you,” Eddie says, because he probably should’ve started there to begin with. “So, so much. And I’m not—I promise, that wasn’t, like, an impulsive thing, or—anything like that. I just—I can’t not say it anymore. I love you. I love how much you love Christopher, and I love how much he loves you, how much he chooses you. How much you’ve chosen both of us.”

Eddie gets to witness the exact moment that the words sink in for Buck, and the way his entire face transforms with it might be the most beautiful thing Eddie has ever seen.

“Eddie,” Buck says, his voice shaking. “Fuck, I’ve loved you for—so long, you have no idea, I—I promised myself, I didn’t need anything more than what we already have. And, honestly, it was easy because I already—you’ve already given me so much. It didn’t feel like—I don’t know, settling, or anything like that—because you know how much I’ve always wanted a family, and you gave that to me, and I could be happy for the rest of my life even if I was just your best friend.”

“You aren’t just anything,” Eddie says, brushing his thumb gently against Buck’s cheek. “You are my best friend. That’s not—that doesn’t change. You’re my best friend, and we’re a family, and I’m in love with you. I want all of that.”

“Eddie,” Buck says again, like maybe he’s still trying to make himself believe it. And Eddie—well, Eddie is happy to spend the rest of his life convincing him. “All of it?”

“Everything,” Eddie promises without even a moment’s hesitation. “Buck, this is it for me. I don’t—I still may not entirely trust that I deserve this, yet, but it literally only today occurred to me that this might be something that you wanted, and even when I don’t trust myself, I trust you.”

“You deserve—Eddie, you don’t have to prove you deserve love. You taught me that.” One of Buck’s hands moves from Eddie’s waist to his shoulder, and then he leans in and kisses him again—just a peck to the corner of his mouth, and it takes everything in Eddie not to chase him. “This is it for me too, if that wasn’t—if I didn’t already make that clear. I mean—we do have to, oh, God. Chris might hate this.”

Eddie’s stomach drops for a second, a wave of guilt rushing over him with the realization that he’s going to be forcing Christopher to adjust to even more change. He feels Buck grow tense beneath his hands, too, and he can only imagine the same worst-case scenarios flashing through his mind right now.

“He might,” Eddie says, because as much as he wishes it weren’t true, he wouldn’t be surprised if Christopher’s immediate response to the idea of Eddie dating Buck is disapproval. “But—we need to tell him anyway. And however he feels, it’s—fine. Whatever his concerns are, they’ll probably be fair, and we can—we’ll talk through it together.”

Eddie can feel the way Buck relaxes, watches some of the fear leave his eyes and the beginning of a smile starting to grow back on his lips. “You’re sure,” he says, “you’re willing to take the risk.”

“I am.” Eddie says, not a trace of doubt in his mind. “Chris might just—even if it makes him angry all over again, he’ll probably just need us to prove that we’re not lying about nothing changing for him. And I have no doubt in my mind that we will prove it, because we’re already—it’s like I said. You’re still going to be my best friend.”

Buck’s grin suddenly turns smug. “So what you’re saying,” he pauses for what Eddie can only imagine is intended to be dramatic effect, but Eddie decides to use the opportunity to press a quick kiss to his mouth and then marvel at how red his cheeks turn. “Okay—not fair. You’re saying I was right.”

Eddie’s brow furrows. “What are you talking about?”

“I told you!” Buck wraps his arms back around Eddie’s waist, his smile so infectiously bright that Eddie can’t help but beam right back at him even though he has no idea what he’s talking about. “Remember when your therapist told you that you didn’t have friends—I said I didn’t count, because I get my own category.”

“There is no way you’ve been holding onto that this entire time,” Eddie groans, even though he can’t stop smiling. “And she was wrong, for the record. I have lots of friends. I proved you both wrong about that.”

Buck pretends to consider it for a second, making an obnoxious hm sound and scrunching up his nose, and Eddie can’t decide if he wants to roll his eyes or kiss him. “Okay, yeah, maybe you did. But I still won.”

“There was a competition?” Eddie asks, then immediately realizes where this is going as soon as he sees the glint in Buck’s eyes. “Oh my god, do not. If you say something corny about how I’m your prize, I’m taking it all back.”

“But—”

“Do not,” Eddie covers Buck’s mouth with his hand. “You’re allowed one cheesy line per day. And I think we both exceeded that quota already.”

Buck raises his eyebrows, and Eddie moves his hand with a sigh. “Oh, so now there are terms and conditions.”

“Yes,” Eddie says, punctuated with a kiss. “There are.”

“I wasn’t shown these terms before signing, so negotiations will be held.”

“You can try,” Eddie teases, “but I happen to be incredibly stubborn.”

“You know, something tells me I’ll have a lot of time to wear you down,” Buck says, walking Eddie backward until his back is against the wall before kissing him again.

Eddie doesn’t make any further attempts at arguing, both because his mouth is otherwise occupied and because Buck is right, anyway. He has all the time in the world.