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“This is my first confessional in 23 years,” He says, because it is true.
He pretends he is not nervous as he walks into the church. He pretends because he has to, because his hands start to shake, and his throat gets tighter, and his breathing comes out stuttered and strained. Because, all of a sudden, he is nine years old again.
All of a sudden, Los Angeles is El Paso, and Eddie is going through his First Holy Communion. He is nine years old, and his small hands are shaking on his knees in the dim light, nails digging into his skin through his pants.
“Bless me Father for I have sinned,”
I am living sin.
“This is the first time I’ve ever done this,” Eddie says, no louder than a whisper. “I’ve been arguing with my parents a lot. My father, specifically. My grades aren’t very good at the minute either.”
He goes quiet for a moment. His breathing seems so loud, and he’s certain the hitches are audible. The sun is leaking in through the gaps of the confessional, so bright that Eddie wonders if it’s divine. Like he is in between worlds, in a gateway from El Paso to somewhere beyond.
“It seems as though you’re holding back. There’s something else.”
“I’ve been thinking of things I shouldn’t,” He confesses, nails cutting through his Sunday bests. There must be crescents in his skin.
His skin is burning everywhere, all over, from his fingertips to his toes. He flinches his polished shoes away from the small sliver of divine light cast across the floor, in fear that it might make him burst into flames completely.
“What things?”
Eddie swallows. “Other boys.”
The priest goes silent for a long stretch, and with each second, it feels like Eddie might be descending directly to Hell in a confessional elevator. His skin burns, and he’s certain he’s crying, but he’s too scared to move an inch.
“Edmundo,” The priest says, “Thoughts are not what define our soul. Temptation is felt by many, but it is how we act on it that matters. You are being tested.”
“My mom says that men who think of other men are sinners.”
“Temptations such as these are to be resisted, always. Your mother is a smart woman.” The priest confirms. “But you are not a sinner. You can, and you will, resist these plaguing ideas. You seem like an intelligent boy, Edmundo, do you want to have a family someday? Do you want to make your family proud and become a strong man?”
That is what his father wants for him, so that is what Eddie wants.
“The devil has overtaken people who think those things and act on them. They have been dirtied, and have become mortal sinners. There is no deliverance for their souls. Do you understand?”
Eddie can feel the sharp sting of his nails breaking through his skin. His mom will be upset if he bleeds through his suit. “Yes, father. I understand.”
God's grace, he can tell from the burning light across the confessional and the heat under his skin, has been tainted and cracked when it comes to Eddie Diaz. He can taste it in the back of his throat. But it hasn’t completely shattered yet — and he won’t let it. He can’t.
He cannot look his parents in the eyes for a week. His father, he assumes, does not notice a difference. His mother thinks he’s insolent and moody. Eddie will accept God’s punishment for this over the alternative.
But he cannot go to their family church anymore without a rolling wave of nausea. He cannot look Father Solomon in the eyes either, for fear of him staring directly into Eddie’s soul until the moment the whole church burned down around them.
He tells his mother he frequents confessional at school — in their church because he’s growing up and making a place of his own. She believes him. For 23 years, she believes him.
At 34 years old, Eddie Diaz knows better. He is surrounded by people Father Solomon would’ve deemed dirty, and he thinks they are beautiful. Hen and Karen, Josh, Michael and David, May, and then, well — Buck.
Eddie Diaz knows that if there is a heaven and an omnipotent presence that watches over them all, he knows Buck would not be cast to damnation. Because Buck is the embodiment of light and of love and has as much soul as any person in the world could possibly hope to even touch.
Buck, who thinks about boys and kisses them, who has a huge and loving family and has escaped the claws of death itself and would forgive Eddie over and over even if he doesn’t deserve it because that’s the kind of person he is. Buck, despite all of this, still thinks he is not worthy of love or attention and exists every day to show people that he can be (that he is).
So, Eddie does not think homosexuality is a mortal sin. He just thinks that isn’t who he is.
Confessional 23 years onward is pointless, as it turns out, because it does nothing to guide Eddie or to soothe that burning under his skin. He hides, he feels the sharp knife of tears in his eyes, and he runs. All of that anxiety just to be a coward, to escape.
He’s on shift when he notices. He’s never noticed before.
Buck seems to glow sometimes. That’s something Eddie had noticed so many years ago, when Buck stands in the opening of the firehouse and the Los Angeles sun hits his skin and his hair and his eyes, and he seems radiant to touch. It’s a whole spectacle and not a new thought to Eddie, but he’d never really noticed the way in which he stared. Not just in observation, but something else. Reverance.
Hen is showing him the photos from their last Grant-Nash barbecue (hosted at the Wilson’s while Bobby and Athena continue to house hunt) and swipes onto a sweet one of Buck, Eddie, and Jee-Yun.
Buck has Jee lifted in the air above him with their matching Buckley grins bright on their faces, hands secured tightly around her little body to keep her safe. He’s all divine, and Eddie is just staring. He’s not even really the focus of the photo, stood to the side with his hands in his pockets and a small smile on his face, but his eyes look… well, it’s humiliating, to say the least.
He notices the way Hen pauses on the photo too, rather than the quick swipe-to-the-next after a few seconds that she’d done with almost every photo before. She’s dead silent, as opposed to their running commentary from before, and Eddie’s face burns.
He’s looking at Buck like he is salvation itself. Eddie’s starting to think that maybe it’s because he is.
Eddie does not deserve salvation.
It’s like something unlocks in his chest, something heavy and real and terrifying and exhilarating, and it burns right through his core. He knows Buck just as well as Buck knows him, and the hope blooms in his stomach. Hen eventually swipes onto the next picture, and Eddie laughs along hollowly at the ridiculous picture of Bobby and Chim. He needs air.
“That’s not what God wants for you, Eddie. He’s already forgiven you.”
“I don’t deserve to be,”
“So earn it. But in the meantime, stop punishing yourself.”
Shaving isn’t his frivolity, but it’s something he thinks he has to do. He’s not sure he’ll ever get the courage again, otherwise.
His skin is buzzing, but it doesn’t burn, and he knows exactly who is at his door. It’s Buck; it’s always Buck.
Maybe Eddie can have nice things, even if he still has to go a long way to heal himself. Maybe he can even just have this one nice thing standing right in front of him because he knows Buck just as well as Buck knows him, and everything else is inevitable. They are inevitable.
There’s a part of him that still believes he doesn’t deserve the taste of Buck’s skin, or the feeling of his hands on his body, or the hushedly whispered “I love you”s, but he can’t bring himself to care.
If Buck is divinity, then maybe being near him can make Eddie divine too.