Chapter Text
The timer dinged from its place on the counter next to the stove. Buck wasted no time in grabbing the oven mits and pulling the bread pan out of the oven, setting it on top of the stove to cool. He moved to place his hands on the edge of the counter next to the stove and leaned on it as a sigh escaped him. He looked down at the loaf of pumpkin bread he just made before glancing behind him at the three other bread loaves cooking on the island behind him. He took a moment to rationally think that what he was doing was not sane before shaking his head and setting out to find the ingredients for another.
He was just noting the light weight to the bag of flour when there was a knock on his door. He brushed the flour residue off his hands before making his way to the door. Opening it, he was surprised to find his sister on the other side. “Maddie?”
Maddie smiled back at him, small with some worry in her eyes. “Hey, Buck. May I come in?”
Buck backed away from the door but held it open for Maddie to come in. “No Jee?”
Maddie shook her head as she stepped into the apartment. “Chim is taking her out on a daddy daughter date.” Her eyes landed on the kitchen island and the loaves sitting on it. “I thought since I had a free afternoon I would come visit you.”
He knew it was deeper than that. He moved to the kitchen to begin baking again as he responded. “You mean check up on me.”
Gesturing to the state of his kitchen, covered in baking ingredients and fresh bread, she replied, “I think I have reason to be worried.”
Buck shrugged as he scooped the little flour he had left into a clean mixing bowl. “I don’t think it’s that bad.”
She gave him a look and pointed to the fridge. “If I open that fridge, how many more baked goods will I find?”
He glanced at the fridge behind him and winced slightly at the thought of her checking. There was more in there than he cared to admit. “Fair point.” He turned back to the mixing bowl, looking at its contents but not adding anything else. His hands rested on the counter’s edge and he leaned into it. “I just need to keep my hands busy.”
There was sympathy in her look she gave him. He knew she still thought this was about the break up. In a way it was. It was the start of him finding something to keep his mind and body preoccupied. Keep him from calling the one person he knew he shouldn’t. But now? Now he was trying to keep his mind from going somewhere else. Somewhere he wasn’t quite ready to touch and make real.
“There are other things.” Maddie suggested, taking a seat on the bar stool. “We can talk about it.”
He shook his head. Talking would bring it into reality and he rather liked the makeshift bubble of denial he had around him. In it, he could almost imagine he wasn’t being left behind. That he didn’t just realize something that shook his entire world and turned it upside down. That he was fine. It was fine. “I’m fine, Maddie.”
“Clearly you’re not,” she said as she gestured around her. “Anyone who’s fine wouldn’t bake five hundred loaves of bread.”
He winced at the call out. “I just need to keep busy for a while.”
“Listen,” Maddie reached out across the counter to touch her brother’s hand. “I know Tommy breaking up with you was hard but baking your feelings isn’t going to help.”
It wasn’t like the break up didn’t still hurt. Tommy awoke a part of him he knew was missing but could never name. He was the start of self discovery and Buck thought he was growing to love him. It wouldn’t be something he got over easy but it wasn’t what was driving his emphatic baking.
Buck pulled his hand away from his sister’s grasp to cross his arms over his chest, backing up to lean against the counter behind him. “I know that.”
“Then let’s talk about it.” Maddie pulled back as well, sitting up straight. “Talking may help.”
He paused. Talking about it, making it real, was something he still wasn’t ready for. The words couldn’t even begin to form in his mind. Not that he was trying hard to put them together in the first place. He shook his head. Stuttering slightly he stated, “I can’t.”
The sympathy on Maddie’s face grew and Buck had to look away. “I know it’s hard to talk about but I know it will help.”
“It’s more than that, Maddie.” He wanted to walk away from this conversation. He knew if anyone could pry the truth out of him, make him turn and face what he shoved far down the minute it appeared, it would be his sister.
“Then tell me,” She said, tilting her head to attempt to catch his eyes. When he just shook his head she added, “Did something else happen with Tommy?”
He turned to look at her then, seeing concern on her face. “No.” When the concern only deepened he quickly added, “I swear I told you everything.” She was still frowning like she didn’t quite believe him and Buck felt something prying open in his chest. “It’s… it’s not just about Tommy.”
“What is it about then?”
Silence fell as he tried to find the words. He brushed the surface of the lock he placed around them in his mind and scraped up a small part of the truth. “I just,” he started, pausing to take a deep breath. Stuttering, he let the words cascade from his lips in a rambling mess, “I realized something but it’s too late to do anything about it and I don’t want to think about it or talk about it and make it too real because then it would mean I have to face it and it’s just too much.”
Maddie took a moment to seemingly absorb his words before responding. “What did you realize?”
Buck opened his mouth to respond, but quickly closed it when the words wouldn’t come. He let the silence stretch again, moving his eyes from his sister’s gaze down to the flour left in the bowl. He took a moment, gathered all the courage he could muster, and opened his mouth again. “I… I think I fell in love with someone else.”
Maddie’s brows furrowed together. “Who?”
Taking a deep breath he looked up at his sister’s confused face, locking eyes with her so she knew he was serious. He swallowed before speaking it into existence. “Eddie.”
The confusion on her face shifted to shock for a moment but quickly melted away into something he couldn’t quite name. Maybe pity? “Oh.”
He nodded his head, looking away. “Yeah. ‘Oh’ is a good way to put it.” After all, it was the first word he thought as he sat on that couch with the reality of his feelings smacking him in the face. ‘Oh. I’m in love with my best friend.’ It only took losing him to realize.
She cleared her throat and adjusted her seat. “What made you finally realize it?”
His eyes quickly moved back to his sister’s face. She had a small empathetic smile on it. “What do you mean ‘finally’?”
Maddie pouted her lip and tilted her head before replying. “Well, I mean, it kind of makes sense.” Her smile grew slightly. “I mean, I’ve only been teasing you about him since I met him.”
Buck groaned. “You can’t tell me you knew I liked him from the beginning.”
Maddie laughed but shook her head. “No, I didn’t. But in hindsight it is pretty obvious.”
Looking back on it, Buck unfortunately had to agree. He and Eddie had just clicked and bonded quickly. Then, once he met Christopher, Buck was lost to it. He hadn’t thought that their closeness was anything more than the familial bonds of close friends. Not until it was ripped from him.
“I guess it was.” Buck sighed a heavy, sad breath.
Maddie’s concern returned. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
And trust Maddie to be able to see through the walls he made around this discovery and the reason for it. He might as well have built the walls with glass. He swallowed again before answering, “Yes.”
“Does it have something to do with how you realized you’re in love with him?”
Hearing the words aloud, from someone else, made a hard lump form in his throat and he swallowed around it. He couldn’t help but replay the moment Eddie said he was leaving. That Chris wouldn’t be coming back and neither would Eddie.
Buck hadn’t ever thought Christopher’s move to El Paso was permanent. He thought that, after some time, Eddie would go down, make amends, and bring him home. Now he was facing the reality of losing both of his boys and it stung. He could feel his eyes tearing up as he nodded back at Maddie.
She got up from her seat and walked around the island to rest her hand on Buck’s shoulder. She moved to make eye contact with him, eyebrows raised in concern. “What happened?”
He took a stuttering breath before quickly letting out the words. “He’s leaving.” With the sentence, tears finally began to fall. He hadn’t cried since finding out. He had just shoved all thoughts of it behind a locked door, baking to keep himself from finding the key.
“Oh, Evan.” Maddie pulled him into a hug as he finally broke apart. She comforted him through it with light brushes against his back and quiet murmuring of words he couldn’t hear.
At some point between his breakdown and wiping the tears away on his sleeve, they had moved to the couch. Maddie was still rubbing his back as he pulled himself back together. “I’m sorry.”
Maddie shook her head, moving the hand that was rubbing his back to rest on his leg. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.” As silence enveloped them again, she broke it to ask, “Do you want to talk about it?”
The instinct to recoil from the topic, shove it all back into its box, padlock it, and throw away the key was strong. However, underneath that he could feel the relief of finally letting it out. The anxiety and weight of holding it in had lifted a bit. Maddie was right that talking would help, and so he agreed. “He’s moving back to Texas.” He swallowed around the lump that was still there. “To be closer to Chris.”
Maddie’s eyebrows furrowed again. “Can’t he just bring Chris back here?”
Buck laughed, sad and weak. “I don’t think he wants to pull Chris from the life he has started to build there.” A small smile claimed his face as he shrugged. “I can’t blame him for that.”
“But have you told Eddie how you feel?” At Buck’s physical recoil Maddie quickly added, “About Chris leaving? About bringing him back?”
Buck relaxed back into the sofa with a sigh. “No. It’s not really my place.”
Maddie’s face scrunched up in something between disapproval and frustration. “Your feelings still matter, Evan. Especially with how close you and Chris are.”
Buck shook his head. “I don’t want to put any more strain on their relationship by adding my own feelings into it.”
“But,” Maddie started before he cut her off.
“If he drags Chris back from Texas because I miss him and want him home and then Chris hates him for it,” Buck runs a hand down his face as he takes a breath. “I’ll never forgive myself for it.”
Maddie opens her mouth to protest but pauses. She sighs instead and asks, “So what do you plan to do?”
“Nothing.” Buck shrugs against his sister’s disproving look. “Help him find a place in El Paso. Help him pack up and move. Keep in touch from a distance.”
“Buck, That’s not,” She starts, but is interrupted once again.
“It’s all I can do, Maddie.” He runs his hand through his hair in frustration. “It’s not like I can tell him how I truly feel!” Sympathy crosses her face again as he continues. “Even if Eddie wasn’t straight, if we even had a chance, I can’t tell him to stay. Being away from Chris is killing him.”
“You matter too,” Maddie insists, grasping his leg again.
Buck shakes his head as his heart breaks. “Not enough.”
Maddie continued to try and convince him to talk to Eddie for the rest of the afternoon but Buck stayed firm. He had made up his mind. When the sun started to set, after promising not to say anything about Eddie leaving or his feelings about it, Maddie left, taking three of the bread loaves with her.
Buck went back to the kitchen after she left but he no longer felt the urge to bake. He quietly wrapped up the cooled loaves left out and put them away. He removed the flour from the mixing bowl back into the bag. He packed away the ingredients, washed the dishes, and cleaned the counter before heading up early to bed.
It’s only after he’s in his sleep wear and under the covers with the lights off that he let the conversation flow back over him. He broke down again, gripping the pillow tight, as he let out what he had held back since Eddie’s admission yesterday. Eventually, tears still wet on his cheeks, he succumbed to sleep.