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“Good day?” Tommy asks the second he opens the door.
Buck doesn’t answer right away. He doesn’t lean in to kiss Tommy’s cheek like he usually would. Instead he slips past him, heading straight inside and then…then standing awkwardly in the middle of the hallway, like he’s not sure where to go. Not sure what he’s supposed to do with his body. He doesn’t quite belong here yet, even though he and Tommy have been seeing each other for a couple of months already.
This place isn’t his home - isn’t remotely close to it, honestly. It’s not Eddie’s place, or Maddie’s, or even the loft. Buck feels out of his depth here most of the time, like he used to do as a kid in his parent’s house. It feels like he’s taking up space that doesn’t belong to him, though he wouldn’t ever admit that to Tommy.
“Don’t even ask,” Buck groans, as he waits to follow Tommy into his living room.
“Okay,” Tommy laughs. “Well, at least it’s over with now. I was thinking-“
“I can’t stand Gerrard,” Buck blurts out.
He’s been holding in the words all day. All week. Since the second the prick walked into Bobby’s station acting like he owned the place. They’ve been bubbling and brewing inside of him. They’ve been growing like toxic mould, until the very thought of the man makes Buck feel crazy. Makes him feel angry, which is a pretty rare phenomenon for him.
Buck knows it’s worse for the rest of the team. Knows the racism hits them harder than Buck could ever comprehend, and knows the misogyny is a slap in the face to Hen when she’s ten times the firefighter Gerrard will ever be. But the blatant and egregious homophobia still feels like a kick to the teeth every goddamn time. It makes Hen, and Buck, and Eddie now, too, feel small and bitter and mad.
And there’s not a goddamn thing they can do about any of it. Believe him, they’ve tried.
“What do you mean?” Tommy asks.
His brows are furrowed and his mouth is twisted into that mean-looking frown he often wears; the one that makes Buck feel like a kid who’s done something wrong. He’s sitting on the couch, and there’s a space open for Buck to take but he doesn’t. He stays standing, with his hands clenched into fists where they’re resting on his hips.
“He’s awful,” Buck says. “Like, a really fucking bad guy.”
Tommy scoffs. “You’re joking, right? Gerrard is great.”
If this was a movie, Buck would hear a record scratch. Bet you’re wondering how I ended up in this situation, kind of vibes. And Buck is wondering too. Because what the fuck?
“He’s a piece of shit,” Buck declares.
Full stop. End of statement. No room to argue.
But Tommy recoils like Buck has just reached out and physically struck him. His mean frown turns into an angry one, and Buck has to temper down the instinct to backtrack - to fawn, and apologise, and brush it all under the rug. He doesn’t want to argue, he hates arguing, but. But this is the kind of thing he won’t let slide. He can’t.
“He’s a great firefighter,” Tommy argues. “He was basically my mentor.”
Buck almost scoffs, but he swallows it down alongside all the vicious words that are teetering on the very edge of his tongue.
“He’s a racist, homophobic, misogynist. He’s a prick.”
“Okay, well I don’t think that’s fair.”
“He’s made Hen be the person left behind for the past four shifts because - and I quote - ‘you can do the cooking, we’ll do the real work’.”
And Tommy honest-to-god laughs. Fucking laughs. And it sends Buck absolutely reeling.
Because who is this man? This man who kissed Buck, and who Buck kissed back? This man who he’s been on dates with, who he’s spent months getting to know, who he’s slept with? He’s certainly not the person Buck thought he was - not the person he’d portrayed himself to be. Buck doesn’t recognise him at all.
Buck feels sick, suddenly.
“Come on Evan,” Tommy says. “Lighten up.”
“He asked Eddie if he’d ever worked out in the fields.”
Buck had almost lost it at that one. After weeks of snide comments and scathing remarks, it was that which finally tipped Buck over the edge. The straw that broke the camel's back, as they say.
He’d marched over the second he heard the words come out of Gerrard’s mouth, all gleeful like he rejoiced in causing harm. Causing hurt. Buck had stepped in front of Eddie like his body could somehow protect him from the vitriol of their so-called captain. But a firm hand had come to rest on Buck’s hip, fingers squeezing tightly as Eddie pressed his chest against Buck’s back - whispered he’s not worth it in Buck’s ear before tugging him away.
Gerrard’s remark of ‘you should listen to your boyfriend’ trailed after them, and Eddie didn’t let go of Buck’s waist until they were safely shut inside the locker room.
No, Gerrard wasn’t worth it. But Eddie was. Hen, and Chim, and his team were. Are.
“What’s wrong with that?” Tommy asks, the corners of his mouth twisting as if he’s trying not to smirk.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Buck hisses, too furious to even try and hold back.
He might have bitten his tongue then, but he sure as hell won’t now.
How did he miss this? Has Tommy been like this all along, and Buck has just been blind to it? Or has he kept it so well hidden that Buck would never have noticed until now? Eddie was friends with him too, though that seemed to fizzle out right around the time Buck started dating him. Maybe he’d seen the signs before Buck, but he’s sure that Eddie would have given him a heads up if that were the case.
“Look, he’s just joking around,” Tommy insists, as if that makes it any better.
“It’s not fucking funny.”
Tommy actually, genuinely rolls his eyes. And then he’s sighing, shifting on the couch so his body is half turned towards Buck. It feels like some kind of stand off - like that old west theme tune should be playing in the background as both of them draw their weapons. Except Tommy’s weapon is, apparently, stupidity.
“Evan, that’s just how things were back then. He’s old fashioned.”
“Back then? Tommy, you were at the station ‘back then’ too,” he points out. When Tommy just shrugs, Buck feels his mouth drop open. “Oh my god, did you say shit like that as well?”
“Evan-“
“Did you make comments to Hen and Chim?” The demand tumbles from Buck’s lips before he can even process the gravity of the situation.
“It wasn’t a big deal a couple of decades ago,” Tommy answers, trying to avoid the question. So, yes. The answer is yes. He did.
“It’s always been a big fucking deal. Racism, misogyny, homophobia - it’s never been okay. Jesus, you’re gay, Tommy!”
“It doesn’t mean I have to shove it down everyone’s throats!” He yells, the volume startling Buck so much that he flinches backwards.
For a second, neither of them speak. It feels like neither of them are even breathing. Silence descends upon them like a storm cloud; Buck can feel the rumbling threat of danger in the atmosphere. Can taste the crackle of lightning in the back of his throat.
Whatever Buck had thought of Tommy - whatever he’d seen in him before this very moment - all of it fades away. Any attraction, any connection they might have shared…it all just disappears, as if it had never existed in the first place. And all that’s left behind is a man with cold eyes and a cruel smirk, and a heart two sizes too small. A man who Buck looks at and feels nothing for except contempt. Except disgust. Except shame that Buck had ever been interested in him at all.
“I’m done,” Buck declares. “I’m leaving.”
He doesn’t feel anything at all as the words leave his mouth. Not guilt, not regret, not anything. Tommy stands up to face him, arms crossed over his chest as he looks down his nose at Buck. As he looks at Buck like he’s the unreasonable one in all of this.
“You’re ending things over a difference of opinion?” Tommy asks in disbelief.
It’s Buck’s turn to laugh this time. He shakes his head, squeezing his eyes closed and pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and finger as he takes several deep, steadying breaths.
“This is so much more than that,” Buck explains. “And if you can’t see that…well. It’s proof that we never would have worked.”
Tommy shakes his head, letting out a sound that is both bitter and condescending. “Yeah, that’s not the only reason,” he says snidely.
And Buck doesn’t even care enough to ask what the fuck he’s talking about. He doesn’t care about anything except getting the fuck out of this apartment that has always felt more like a prison cell. Doesn’t care about anything but severing all ties with a man who he’d been so completely, unbelievably wrong about. A man who he hadn’t ever really known at all.
He glances around the apartment quickly, looking for anything of his that he might have left behind at some point. But it quickly becomes apparent that none of Buck’s belongings are here - he’d never forgotten a sweater or spare phone charger, he’d never left behind his emergency stash of ADHD meds. There’s no sign that Buck has ever even been here at all, and he’s glad for it. Because this isn’t Eddie’s place, with Buck’s hoodies, and sweatpants, and shoes all over the house. His oat milk isn’t in the fridge, and his cereal isn’t in the cupboard, and he doesn’t have any curly-hair shampoo in the bathroom. He doesn’t keep his spare set of car keys in the bowl by the door, and he doesn’t have a key that he needs to return to Tommy either.
Buck was only ever a guest here. At Eddie’s home, he’s family. At Eddie’s home he belongs.
Buck feels betrayed. He feels angry. But he doesn’t feel hurt. In fact, as the door slams closed behind him, Buck simply feels relieved. He doesn’t realise how tense he was - how tense he always seemed to be around Tommy - until his muscles relax. Until the mask he has to wear around him falls away, and he gets to unclench his jaw and his fists. He gets to exhale.
And it hits him, then, as he’s climbing into the jeep and driving away: he never really wanted Tommy at all.
Tommy had kissed him, and Buck had thought this makes sense, but he hadn’t thought yes. He hadn’t thought this is what I’ve been waiting for. A tiny piece of him had clicked into place when he finally understood that part of himself, but the rest of the puzzle pieces were still missing - there were still holes in the picture he was trying to put together. Holes that could only ever be filled by two people.
And when Buck pulls up outside their house without ever even making the decision to drive there, he knows that this is what he’d been wanting. This - these people - are what he’s been searching for for so long.
“Hey, I didn’t know you were coming over,” Eddie greets him, as Buck lets himself into the house using the key that he’s carried around for years now.
“Me either,” Buck says.
It only takes one brief glance at Buck’s face before Eddie is shifting over, making room on the couch for Buck to take a seat beside him. Buck doesn’t hesitate to fill the empty space, flopping down so close to Eddie that their thighs are smushed together and he can feel the heat of Eddie’s leg against his own. It settles Buck - brings his heart rate back down to normal for the first time since Gerrard had opened his mouth this morning.
Eddie doesn’t speak. He doesn’t pry, or ask questions, or demand answers from Buck. He simply sits beside him, the only noise coming from the TV quietly playing Top Gun: Maverick in the background. And it feels good…feels easy. There’s no pressure to perform, no pressure to always be on. Buck just gets to be himself around Eddie, because he knows that’s enough. He knows - somehow, impossibly - that there’s no version of him that Eddie would ever shy away from.
“I broke up with Tommy,” Buck announces.
He’s looking ahead at the TV so he feels, rather than sees, the way Eddie’s head whips around to look at him. Buck takes a breath, and then another, before he turns to meet Eddie’s inquisitive gaze.
“What happened?” Eddie asks, curious but not prying. Not pushing.
“Turns out he’s kind of a shitty person.”
Eddie snorts. He doesn’t mean to - Buck can tell by the way his hand flies up to cover his mouth, and his cheeks flush pink - but he does anyway. And it makes Buck grin, makes him feel lighter than he has done in, god. In months. If Tommy is an ash cloud, then Eddie is a breath of fresh air.
“Sorry,” Eddie apologises unnecessarily. “Just - what made you come to that conclusion?”
Buck sighs, wipes his hands on his thighs even though they’re dry. He’s almost embarrassed to tell Eddie - to admit that he’d never really had a clue who Tommy was. That, after all the time they’d spent together, his politics had never once come up. Buck had just assumed that they’d been on the same page because, hello, this is 2024. He’s not stupid enough to think the world has been cured of prejudice - he knows that’s not the case. But he simply hadn’t imagined that Tommy would have been one of those people. More fool him.
Buck is gonna make a questionnaire to hand out next time he meets somebody new. Get all the important information before he embarrasses himself like this again.
“So I went to his place after work, right? And I started complaining about fucking Gerrard, because obviously.”
“Obviously,” Eddie agrees with a teasing grin. Buck elbows him in the ribs to shut him up, and it earns one of Eddie’s soft laughs.
“And he started defending him? Saying the shit he said was just a joke, as if that would make it okay even if it were true,” Buck explains. “He said that’s what it was like back then. And I just - I asked him. Y’know. If he’d ever said that kind of stuff to Hen and Chim, or to anyone, really.”
“And?”
Eddie asks the question, but he already knows the answer. Buck can tell. It’s in the way his mouth is turned down and his body has gone tense, like he’s preparing for a blow. And Buck gets it, he really does, because it had felt like a punch in the gut for him, too. A hit that he’d never seen coming.
“He said it ‘wasn’t a big deal’, the fucking asshole.”
“Shit,” Eddie sighs. “I’m sorry, Buck.”
Eddie’s hand comes to rest on Buck’s thigh in a gentle show of support. It’s warm, and grounding, and Buck feels himself come alive beneath Eddie’s touch. Feels his nerve endings start to sing, and his heart start to race, and he wonders, for just a moment, how he ever missed this. Or, more accurately, how he ever managed to ignore it. Because it’s always been there - always been a steady humming, like a current beneath his skin - but Buck hadn’t known what it meant until now.
“I’m not,” Buck admits, through the haze of his desire. “I’m just glad I found out now, rather than six months or a year down the line.”
It might have been a little more difficult to untangle their lives if they’d been together longer. Buck would have done it, of course. He wouldn’t have even needed a second to think about it before cutting Tommy off. But if they’d had things at each other’s apartments or, god forbid, a place together - well. That would have made things exponentially harder. And Buck is just glad he won’t be wasting any more time on somebody as awful as him.
“I just - I should have known,” Buck chastises himself. “I should have seen it sooner.”
“I don’t know,” Eddie disagrees. “People are pretty good at showing what they want you to see, instead of who they really are. I didn’t notice, either.”
“But you stopped being friends with him months ago,” Buck points out.
Eddie shrugs his shoulders, and a strange look passes across his face. Fleeting; there one second and then gone the next. But Buck noticed it all the same - noticed the way something almost like guilt clouded his expression, before he shuttered it away like he’s always been so good at doing. Then he smiles at Buck…not happy, but not sad either. Just something in between. Something Buck can’t quite decipher.
“For different reasons,” Eddie tells him, and Buck wants to ask but he doesn’t. He doesn’t think Eddie wants him to.
“I just don’t understand why Hen or Chim didn’t say anything about it?” Buck wonders aloud.
Everyone in Buck’s life knows about Gerrard and the bullshit he comes out with. The security guard at his apartment complex, and the barista at his favourite coffee shop who knows Buck and Eddie’s orders off by heart. Christopher’s friend's mom, who Buck stands with in the parking lot when they’re waiting for school to end. For the life of him, Buck can not stop bitching about that evil man. So he has no idea why Hen and Chim never mentioned Tommy - never mentioned the way he must have treated them. If Buck were them, he would have made it everyone’s business.
He has no idea how they managed to stand by and watch Buck date him. He just hopes he hasn’t hurt them.
“You’re a big boy, Buck,” Eddie says. “I’m sure they knew you’d figure it out on your own, without them interfering.”
“I’m gonna text them.”
Buck pulls out his phone, adds Chimney and Hen to a separate group chat, and just sends one single text: sorry tommy was awful to you. i ended things with him<3
He locks his phone, placing it face down on Eddie’s coffee table. It’s late, they probably won’t reply tonight. And he’ll see them at work tomorrow, anyway. Buck will have plenty of time to grovel in person - to make it clear that he didn’t know, and as soon as he found out he shut things the hell down. Then he’ll give Hen a hug, and kiss Chim on the forehead even though he pretends he doesn’t like it, and Buck knows they’ll be okay. Knows they’re his family, no matter what.
“It’s okay if you’re hurting over this, you know?” Eddie says, his hand squeezing Buck’s thigh.
Buck laughs. “The thing is, I’m not,” he admits. “I think my feelings got kind of mixed up there for a while. He kissed me and I just…assumed I liked him, but. But I don’t think it was ever him I was interested in. Not really.”
He puts the words out there. A hint - a teaser for Eddie to figure out, if he wants to try. If he wants to sort through the complicated, tangled mess of feelings to find that the person hiding at the centre of it all is him. That Buck’s jealousy had never been about Tommy, but about Eddie. That Buck’s feelings - as confusing and scary and intense as they may be - were always for him. For Eddie.
Silence settles over them once again. Eddie’s hand is still resting on his thigh, and Buck has to fight the urge to reach out and take hold of it - take hold of this moment with both hands and never let it go. Instead he remains motionless, his eyes fixed on the TV where Tom Cruise is flying a rescue mission. Did you know he’s a Scientologist? Buck doesn’t say, because he’s already told Eddie a dozen times before. And yet he knows, without a doubt, that if he was to bring it up again then Eddie would still listen.
Eddie listens, and he cares, and he loves, and he is everything to Buck. Everything and more.
And Buck is so very glad that this day happened - so glad he was led to the truth. Because even if Eddie never feels the same, at least Buck knows now. At least he finally understands why he feels like he’s glowing every time Eddie looks at him; why he feels frantic every time Eddie looks away.
“But…but there is someone that you’re interested in?” Eddie asks, his voice barely even a whisper. For a moment he sounds like a kid in the school playground, and it’s so endearing that Buck could burst.
When Buck turns and looks at him, Eddie’s gaze is already fixed on Buck. He’s watching, waiting, with a hopeful gleam in his eyes. With the story of their life playing out across his face, so clearly that it almost steals Buck’s breath away.
“Yeah, Eddie,” Buck replies. “There is.”
Buck has spent a long time looking for love, and it has always evaded him. He searched for it in the empty eyes of his parents as they looked right through him. He searched for it in stranger’s beds as he travelled the Americas (in search of something or running from something, he still isn’t sure). He’d looked for it in Abby, and Ali, and Taylor, and Natalia. He thought he’d found it a couple of times. Then, for a while, he thought he would never find it at all. He thought maybe it didn’t even exist.
But as he sits on the couch with his best friend, he thinks: I know love exists because Eddie exists. Because I love him.
There is nothing Buck wouldn’t do for Eddie, nothing he wouldn’t give - or give up - for him, and for Christopher too. They’ve built their life together with shaking hands, still bleeding from all the broken pieces of themselves they’d spent so long trying to hold together. But somehow, someway, they’ve made something whole together. Something beautiful. Something real. They’ve bandaged each other’s wounds, and they’ve loved each other back to life, and there’s nowhere that Eddie could go that Buck wouldn’t follow.
Eddie takes Buck’s hand in his. He twines their fingers together, and Buck takes a moment to marvel at the way it feels - at the way they slot together so seamlessly. Like Buck’s hands were made to hold Eddie’s. Like they were made to hold each other.
And then Eddie raises their joined hands to his mouth, and he kisses each one of Buck’s knuckles.
“Me too,” Eddie whispers, and Buck can feel himself glowing. Feel himself falling even further in love.
Because Eddie is his best friend. He knows everything about him, and Eddie knows everything about Buck, and all of the ugly, scary parts of yourself don’t seem so bad at all when you have someone who refuses to shy away from them. When you have someone who loves you despite - or even because of - all the things you like the least about yourself.
There are no surprises here, nothing to catch them off guard. It’s just a steady, gentle love. One that Buck would have never found anywhere but right here, with Eddie. One that Tommy could have never even come close to.
“Oh my god,” Buck gasps suddenly. “Do you think he voted for Trump?”