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“Wait!”
Buck turned back from the door, looking back at Eddie.
“I want to tell you, it's just… really hard.”
“I know,” Buck said softly. “And I already told you, I’m here if you want to discuss it. I have always been here, and I’m not going anywhere. Just talk to me. Don’t shut me out.”
Eddie ran his fingers through his hair. He knew Buck was right, but it still pained him to talk about his feelings.
“It’s just… growing up in El Paso I didn’t have a choice of exploring that side of me. I had this idea of what I had to be, the picture of the perfect son. Straight A-s, star quarterback football player, dating the head cheerleader… You know, the American cliché. And then Shannon got pregnant and it was never a question that I had to marry her. It was only decent. I got her into this mess, so I must support her. Enlisting was the only way I could do that, that way the army paid for her insurance. And then there were my marriage vows, which I took very seriously.”
Buck listened to him earnestly. “So there was nobody else until Shannon died? Not ever?”
“There was no time or occasion for it. When Shannon left, I had to take care of Christopher, he had to come first. Then she came back and it was all so convenient. It has always been like that. I knew what was expected from me, and I did exactly that. For all my life. But then…” Eddie couldn’t look at Buck. “But then I met you. And I found myself drawn to you in a new and hella scary way. I kept finding myself staring at you.”
Buck could feel his heart racing like he just ran up ten flights of stairs. He was strongly attracted to Eddie from the first day. He wrote it off as jealousy at first, but it soon became clear that it was something different.
“You were everything I could never be, everything I wanted to be,” Eddie continued. “So free and careless and so full of life. And you are amazing with Christopher. I could never ask for a better friend. So I did what I always had done, I pushed this new feeling down, trying to forget about it. Because that’s what I’m used to. Ignoring things until they go away.”
“Only they don’t go away,” Buck said quietly. He had been down this road himself, and he knew it led only to suffering.
“They don’t. And then Shannon died and everything was falling apart. I had to think of Christopher, who just lost his mother. Everything I might have felt must take the back seat, I thought. For Christopher’s sake. And it worked well, I could be good, we could be friends and everything would be fine.”
“You are good, Eddie. You are always good,” Buck said quietly, squeezing Eddie’s hand reassuringly. “Go on.”
“Then there was Ana. And she was, I mean she is beautiful, and everyone kept nagging me about getting over Shannon and starting to date again. And I convinced myself that it was the natural thing to do, so I asked her out. But I felt… I felt nothing for her and it made me feel bad for her. Maybe that’s why Chris reacted so badly at first to me dating her because he could somehow feel that my heart was not in it for the right reasons. Kids are perceptive and Chris is a genius.”
“That he is,” Buck smiled. “I’m sorry if you felt pressured to ask Ana out. I had no clue of the inner turmoil you were in.”
“Of course, you hadn’t. I think I didn’t either. Not really.” Eddie sighed and tried to gather his thoughts. “And then I got shot. And you know the saying, about near-death experiences… exactly how many of those should I get before I start to realize what’s important in my life…”
“I wouldn’t mind if you didn't get much more. With that well falling on top of you and getting shot on the street… stop courting death so much.”
“The kettle is calling the pot black,” Eddie said with a faint smile. “If there was a picture beside ‘courting death’ in the dictionary, it would have your face on it.”
“I know what you are doing, changing the subject,” Buck said softly. “Thank you for telling me all of this. It means a lot.”
Eddie took hold of Buck’s hand playing with his fingers for a little while, his thoughts swarming around in his head.
“You mean a lot to me,” Eddie whispered, barely audible. “Christopher, and you. You are my family, Buck. I’m so tired of being afraid of what you mean to me. I’m so tired of running away from this feeling. I’m so tired of looking into the mirror and hating what I see. I’m so tired of being ashamed of wanting you.”
Buck’s breath hitched at those words, clasping his hand around Eddie’s.
“I’m so proud of you. You are my family too. You and Chris. Both of you are my entire world. You have me. You always had me.”
Eddie’s hands were shaking, but being this close to Buck helped his nerves. He took a shaky breath and looked up at the man, who was smiling at him radiantly.
“I’m not sure I can… come out or like… label myself as anything yet. And I don’t want to tell anyone. Is that okay with you?”
“I’m fine with keeping you all to myself for a while. Just you and me. You take all the time you need. And you know it’s not compulsory to identify as anything, right? You don’t have to call yourself anything if you are not comfortable with it. There is no pressure. Or you can always call it being Buck-sexual,” Buck said with a cocky grin.
That earned a snickering laugh from Eddie who tilted his head in disbelief.
“Buck-sexual, huh? Aren’t you a bit full of yourself?”
“Well, I have some other ideas of what I could be full with…”
Eddie buried his face into his hand as he could feel blood rushing into his face.
“You are an absolute menace to society.”
“Maybe. But I’m your menace now. No takebacks.”
However hard he tried to fight it, Eddie could feel his grin spreading on his face. Sometimes you just had to take that leap of faith. Even if it meant going against everything you had known before. Because sometimes the freefalling was worth it.
And Evan Buckley was absolutely worth it.