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The sun is just starting to rise as A-shift stumbles out of their 48 hour shift and into the parking lot. Tendrils of orange lick at the edges of the tarmac, bathing it in the kind of bright light that signals a chilly winter’s warning.
For a second, they stand as a group, stunned, squinting blearily at the sun like they’ve never seen it before. Then, quietly, they murmur quick goodbyes and separate, scattering into their own lives.
Eddie throws his bag in the trunk, waves at Buck as he backs out the Jeep, and drives.
He’s not entirely sure where he’s going. This would normally be when he’d be rushing home, trying to get a glimpse of Chris before he goes to school, but like so many times these past months he’s found himself a loose end. He should be going home for a proper sleep - he knows that’s what the rest of the team will be doing - but he’s jittery, full of energy despite the tiredness in his bones. His fingers tap against the steering wheel in an irregular offbeat rhythm. The sun glares through the windshield. He squints.
He takes a random right turn, trundles down random streets that seem to be mostly populated by boarded up stores and unemptied trash bins. A blinking neon sign catches his eye, and he turns into the empty parking lot of a store that appears to have closed down years ago.
He parks. Sits for a moment. Stares at the old clearance sale posters, pasted in the windows, advertising desperately - ‘80% off!’ they shout, their once bright inks faded over time. ‘Everything must go!’ ‘Only while stocks last!’. They’re peeling in the corner where the glue has come unstuck.
A strange recklessness comes over him. He lets his eyes rove around the parking lot, indulging in his own vigilance (wildly, he imagines Father Brian appearing from nowhere, tapping on the car window, asking to be let inside - ‘come here often?’ he thinks almost hysterically). He squares his shoulders. Clears his throat.
“I think - ”
The sound of his own voice shocks him into silence. He accidentally catches his eye in the rearview mirror. Immediately, he’s self-conscious. He licks his lips. Drags his gaze back to the posters in the shop window. ‘Now’s your last chance!’ they taunt.
Eddie swallows.
“I think - I might be gay.”
He garbles the words, almost chokes halfway through, finishes them off with a wince. They fall somehow - embarrassingly - flat.
He expected - he’s not sure. Some sort of cliché, probably.
But his life doesn’t immediately change, doesn’t burst into color. Nothing suddenly clicks into place. He is, to his disappointment, the same man who got into the car, who could do nothing but drive until he found some abandoned corner of LA.
The statement is subsumed by the silence of the car, as if it had never left his mouth.
All he can focus on, in that harsh early morning sun, are the cracks in the tarmac of the shitty parking lot he has somehow found himself in.
-
Eddie has made a habit of not thinking too hard about it. He doesn’t, as a rule, interrogate the unnamable things that roil under the surface of whatever he’s feeling, the things that, for the most part, serve only to make him confused and uncomfortable. It’s best, he’s found, to keep them locked down, to not allow them to breach containment.
This has worked great, for most of his life. Has allowed him, probably, to keep a level of sanity he’s not sure he would have been able to maintain otherwise.
But it has also meant -
It also means that now, when he looks back, asks himself how?, asks himself in a voice that isn’t quite his own are you sure?, asks himself when did it all start? - he falters.
-
It’s difficult to know when it begins.
-
Here’s the thing. Buck tells him it was a date and his heart starts pounding so loudly in his head that he barely manages to get through the rest of the conversation.
In the chaos, manages to get somehow snagged on Tommy’s gay?, forms a vaguely supportive this doesn’t change anything between us, pulls himself together enough to drag Buck into a hug, and hopes beyond hope it wasn’t obvious he just fumbled through one of the most important moments of his life.
He leaves in a haze. Looks for his car while decidedly not thinking about anything else. Climbs in and takes a breath. Tries not to panic. Turns the key in the ignition.
And, for the rest of the drive back, he lets himself fully - take it in. Lets comprehension wash over him like a wave. Like, Buck likes men. Is attracted to them. Has realised that about himself now, and is excited to take a leap. And, for maybe the first time, he thinks - he lets his thoughts unspool haltingly - there’s a world where maybe - he’s not sure, but maybe there’s a chance - he could consider that for himself too. Like, a leap. Like, men. Like, probably not. But maybe it’s better to be safe than sorry.
He feels inexplicably embarrassed, like he’s been caught copying his best friend. Wildly, he imagines telling the team, pictures despite his own better judgement Chim, or Hen, or even Bobby, laughing in his face - you couldn’t let Buck have something for himself, could you? You had to go and decide to be into men, too?
And it’s probably nothing. Nothing like your thirty-something best friend having a late onset sexuality crisis to provoke a few questions within yourself, right? It’s purely a reaction to his best friend discovering something about himself and, because they’ve been so close, so parallel, for so long, he’s projected that discovery onto his own life. It’s fine. Everyone does it.
So by the time he’s turned off the engine in the driveway of South Bedford Street, has parked outside the house where Marisol is patiently waiting for him, dinner cooked and ready, he’s shoved the question into the back of his mind.
And then when everything blows up - well, then it falls out of his mind completely.
-
So, it comes in stops and starts.
-
A few weeks before he finds himself sitting in a miserable parking lot at the end of a 48 hour shift, Buck knocks on Eddie’s door with a pack of beer and a hopeful expression.
Eddie opens the door. Frowns.
“Why did you knock?”
Buck doesn’t immediately respond. Instead, he pushes past him into the house, making a beeline for the kitchen and pulling open the embarrassingly empty fridge. Speaks into it. “Not sure you wanted company.”
That’s fair. Eddie’s been reclusive lately, tentative with his interactions ever since the front door swung shut with Christopher behind it. He hasn’t been going out much outside of his shifts. Hasn’t been inviting Buck over, he knows. Has found it almost impossible to do anything but sit in the quiet stillness of his house and live through the eternity of every minute that passes.
Buck, to contrast, moves like time is running out. He grabs two bottles, shoves the rest of the pack inside the fridge. Slams the door shut. Pops the caps off, strides over and passes one to Eddie. Sits on the couch.
“You wanna watch a movie?”
The whole thing takes seconds. It almost feels like a whirlwind has hit the place.
Eddie, abandoned by the still-open front door, is struck dumb. He feels slightly ridiculous, wrong-footed in the face of the sudden burst of activity.
His limbs feel heavy, like they’re made of stone.
Slowly, he closes the front door. Looks back over at Buck. He’s picking at the label of his bottle, suggesting a kind of nervous tension despite the determined set of his face. Something in Eddie’s chest pangs.
He shuffles across the floor, carefully sits down in the space next to Buck. The glass of the beer bottle is damp in his hand. He holds himself very still. “Sure.”
Buck reaches for the remote. “Okay, there has got to be something that you think I should have seen which I haven’t, because Chimney has been really on my back about my lack of cinematic education lately, just because I haven’t seen Star Wars - ”
Eddie lets himself slowly relax into the back of the sofa. “You haven’t seen Star Wars?”
Buck huffs. “Don’t you start too.” He turns on the television, navigates with practiced ease to Eddie’s account. Eddie resolutely doesn’t look at the profile next to his own, the little cartoon fish, the Chris!!!💥🪐🚀. “What do you wanna watch?”
Eddie swallows.
Buck leans his head on the back of the sofa, turns so that his cheek lays flat against it. Looks at Eddie gently. The light from the television set plays across his face, painting him in warm hues.
Eddie looks away. Balls his hands into fists so they don’t shake with the force of the wanting.
-
It’s not just because of Buck.
That seems important to note, especially in those dark hours late at night when he worries. Worries - that’s he’s wrong. That he’s projecting. That he’s reaching inside of himself for something that isn’t there, that he’s just allowed himself to believe he’s stumbled across the perfect situation - a situation in which all his mistakes can be made sense of, can be bundled up together into an easy explanation and resolved.
It’s for those nights that he allows himself to keep certain memories locked in his chest - a constant cycle of brief encounters, ready to be picked over and run through, again and again, until they drown out the doubts insistent on making themselves known. They thrum with potential: like he can use that rolodex of moments, snatched at and furtive and embarrassing, to prove something to himself.
Remember this, he thinks.
The glint of an eye. The flex of a bicep in the gym. Hollowed cheeks exhaling cigarette smoke across miles of desert.
This is who you are, he thinks.
A stranger’s hands clasped around a takeaway coffee. That second of getting caught in the sheer size of them, stark against the cardboard cup. The minute flex of fingers. His gaze quickly skittering away.
This is what you felt, he thinks.
A man on a call, sidling up to him with a dimpled grin and thanking him profusely for saving his kitchen. A hand just skimming over his arm and coming to rest on his bicep. The sudden warmth in his chest flaring tenfold when Buck marches over, takes his other arm in a loose grasp, and pulls him away.
Sure, he reasons. It might not all be about Buck. But a lot of it is.
-
(Another moment - so insignificant it shouldn’t bear repeating, but repeat it does anyway, round and round Eddie’s head, like a record stuck in place:
They’re cleaning the fire truck. Absentmindedly, Buck is calling behind his shoulder -
“Tommy, could you pass me the cloth?”
Eddie is blinking at him. Buck is looking up. He’s flushing.
“Shit, sorry. Eddie. Could you pass me the cloth?”
Mechanically, Eddie is reaching behind him, passing it over. Something inside of him is oddly hollow -
(And it plays again: “Tommy, could you pass me the cloth?”
Over and over and over.)
-
He tells a priest he’s straight. Buck breaks up with Tommy. He lets himself think maybe.
-
Months before, the kitchen faucet comes clean off in his hand. Water explodes upwards like a geyser. He shouts in shock, any sense of practicality leaving his body, and jams his hand over the water flow. Watches, stunned, as it spurts through his fingers.
Buck slides in from the living room. Takes in the sight: the broken tap, the fountain of water, Eddie’s shocked expression. Starts laughing. “Eddie. What are you doing?”
In an instant, he’s moving across the kitchen, coming to a stop beside Eddie. Gently, he nudges him out the way, crouches to reach the cupboard under the sink, and very easily turns off the stop tap. Water stops spraying upward.
“Huh,” says Eddie, dazed.
Buck is still lightly teasing as they finish up mopping later, something about you are a firefighter and what happened to I don’t panic you dolt, and Eddie is saying who even says dolt nowadays and Buck is saying well, for one, my neighbor Doreen, who is a very lovely lady, and Eddie -
Eddie is struck by the sudden and complete feeling of rightness. Like Buck belongs there. Like, in that moment, he’s the perfect image in front of him, leaning against the counter and smiling. The overhead light reflects off his cheek.
There’s almost something misplaced about him, looming huge in that intimate space, which makes the picture all the more right: that wonky smile, the crook of his elbow leaned against the side, his chunky knitted socks - which - Eddie blinks.
“Are those my socks?”
Buck flushes. “Mine were soaked.”
He shuffles his feet sheepishly and, sure enough, those are Eddie’s socks, the ones he washes and puts out to dry and stuffs into his drawer with all the rest, soft and comfortable on Buck’s feet. He finds himself momentarily transfixed.
“Eddie?”
Eddie startles, caught. Swiftly, he looks back up to Buck’s face. He falters.
Buck’s eyebrows are furrowed. “Are you okay?”
Eddie’s not sure what else to read into his expression - confusion - suspicion maybe? - and he doesn’t dwell on it. He opens his mouth to speak. Finds himself struggling for a response, an easy tease.
God, why was he staring at his friend’s feet, clad in his own pair of socks? What was that? What’s wrong with him?
-
It’s funny, sometimes. Looking back.
-
It’s a long time coming, probably, when he catches his gaze sliding over to Buck as they change at the end of their shift. He feels himself linger, eyes heavy with 48 hours worth of tiredness, and doesn’t look away as fast as he normally would. Instead, he takes him in. Stares at the line of his back, the curve of his arm, the solidness of his legs. God, he thinks. He’s beautiful. I think I -
He thinks - I think I -
He thinks - I can’t be wrong about this.
The sun is just rising as they leave, tendrils of orange beginning to bathe the parking lot in the kind of bright light that signals a chilly winter’s morning. They squint blearily at it together, like they’ve never seen it before.
Then, quietly, they murmur a quick goodbye, and turn in opposite directions.
Eddie throws his bag in the trunk, waves at Buck as he backs out the Jeep, and drives. To a shitty parking lot with shitty tarmac and shitty peeling posters where he clutches his steering wheel and speaks lamely to the void.
-
He leaves eventually, crunches his wheels over the uneven surface until he’s back onto the road. Bids a silent goodbye to the abandoned store, to the faded posters. Wonders if they ever managed to get rid of all the stock they’re shilling.
Somewhat inevitably, he ends up at Hen’s. The sun has fully risen now, high in the sky. He parks haphazardly, limbs jerky with barely contained adrenaline.
He takes the steps two at a time, stops in front of the door, and raises his hand to knock. In the process, self-awareness hits, and he pauses. Reminds himself that Hen is probably in the midst of a much-needed post-shift sleep, and won’t thank him for waking her up.
As he’s hesitating, hand awkwardly raised in an aborted knocking motion, Karen opens the door. She looks at him for a moment, eyes darting across his face like she’s trying to understand a particularly complex book.
After a brief pause, she nods. “I’ll go get Hen.”
She disappears into the house. Eddie waits on the couch, tapping a restless finger against its plush fabric. He hears footsteps, the click of a door opening, some quiet murmurs in the direction of the bedroom.
Hen is up and and out of bed impressively quickly, even if she still looks slightly bemused by life as she emerges into the living room. She frowns when she sees him.
“Eddie?”
He grimaces at her. “Hey.”
Whatever she’s about to say in response is swallowed by a yawn. “Sorry, sorry. Do you want a coffee?”
By the time they’ve both started on their second cup, Karen has left for work, kissing Hen on the cheek on the way out, and they’ve slumped side by side on the couch. Hen is eyeing the constant bouncing of his knee with what appears to be a low-lying but mounting concern.
His skin feels like it’s too small for his body. He talks into his mug.
“I think I have imposter syndrome. Like - gay imposter syndrome. Is that a thing?”
There’s silence for a beat too long. Eddie looks up.
Hen is blinking at him.
He backtracks in the conversation, realises too late her lack of context. His brain feels oddly foggy. “Oh. I think I might be gay.”
“Eddie!” she straightens almost comically fast, suddenly appearing much more awake. “Eddie! That’s great, congratulations!”
He can’t help himself. He winces.
Hen takes a long sip of her coffee. The steam fogs up the bottom of her glasses. “Well, I don’t like that expression,” she says lightly.
“I feel like - I don’t know.” He pauses, running a tongue over his teeth. Imagines he’s in confession. Reassures himself that Hen probably won’t issue him with Hail Marys when he’s done.
“I feel like I don’t deserve congratulations. Like it’s not - it’s not real.”
She hums. “You don’t think it’s real?”
“No, I do think it’s real. I think I like - men. But I thought - ”
He cuts himself off, coughs to relieve the sudden hoarseness of his throat. Mortifyingly, he can feel moisture pooling in the corner of his eyes. He takes a long sip of coffee.
“I thought admitting it to myself would make things change. Like things would suddenly make sense. Like I would be - better. But - ”
“You’re not? You’re still the same old Eddie?”
“Yeah.” He takes another sip, mumbles into it. “Same old Eddie. Stuck in the same old patterns.”
Hen hums again. The sound is oddly contemplative. He frowns at her.
“What?”
“What do you mean, what?”
“Come on Hen, give me your sage gay advice, or whatever.”
Her eyebrows raise sky high. “I don’t give sage gay advice, Eddie, I’m not your own personal Yoda. Especially with the amount of sleep I’m functioning on right now.”
He nods. “But you are thinking something.”
Hen begins to shake her head, a half-smile on her lips, but something in his face must resonate with her because she pauses. Her eyes flick back and forwards across his face askingly.
Eventually, she sighs, seems to take pity on the desperation wafting off of him in spades, and relents.
“Okay, okay - it’s just - you are still the same Eddie. So, if you were sad before, you’re still sad. It’s just, now you’re…” she grimaces apologetically. “You’re just - gay and sad.”
He snorts. “Alright, Hen, say what you really think.”
“No, I’m serious.” She puts her cup down, turns to face him fully. He feels suddenly nervous. “If you weren’t feeling happy before - I just don’t think it’s realistic to expect that acknowledging this part of yourself is going to suddenly fix that. It makes sense if you’re not happy straight away, even if that sucks. It’s not a cure, Eddie.”
Eddie stares into his cup. He feels childish in his dejectedness. “Because that would be too easy.”
“Eddie, look at me.”
And because it’s Hen asking, he does. Her face is painfully empathetic.
“It’s a good starting point, Eddie, it’s a really good starting point. I’m so proud of you. And it’s going to help you, I think, to sort out what you’re thinking, and how you’re feeling. But it’s not going to fix everything right away. And you’re not an imposter, okay? I promise.”
She clasps his arm then, stares into his face with such open affection it almost makes his eyes water. “Just. Let yourself be happy. The rest will come.”
And there’s something about her words - maybe it’s the genuine earnestness of her expression, that he trusts her opinion implicitly, or maybe it’s just that he wants them to be true - but he finds that he believes her.
He’s hit by an immediate relief, a wave of calmness crashing over him. It suffuses his bones, settles into them, assuages the nervous tension he’s been shaking with all morning. It’s almost shocking in its suddenness.
He is, in fact, so momentarily overcome by the moment that he almost misses Hen’s stifled yawn. He startles to his feet.
“Oh, shit, sorry, you should be sleeping - ”
Hen waves him off. “No, no, you’re good - ” Her words are contradicted by another yawn she doesn’t fully manage to swallow, and he laughs. She grimaces at him sheepishly. “Sorry, sorry, I know this is important - ”
“No, no, you’re good.” He gestures vaguely towards the door. “I should be going anyway - you know, get some sleep.”
“If you still need to talk - “
“No, no, it’s fine. If I need to talk - ” He flounders. “If I need to talk, I can go to Buck about it.”
She walks him to the door, gives him a hug. Grabs him by the arm before he goes, peers at him with an assessing expression. “Why didn’t you?”
“What?”
“Go to Buck about it.”
His face must do something interesting, because her eyebrows raise alarmingly quickly. Accusingly, she jabs him in the chest with her finger.
“You should be glad I’m dead on my feet, Eddie Diaz, because I don’t have the energy to deal with whatever that face means.” Gently, she pushes him down the front step. “Now get out of here, you crazy kid.”
He grins up at her. He feels remarkably light. “Bye, Hen.”
“Bye, Eddie,” she says, teasing. “I hope this hasn’t all been a very strange dream.”
-
He doesn’t go to sleep.
Instead, he gets home, and he calls Buck.
“Hello?”
Buck’s clearly just woken up, voice gravelly from sleep. Eddie is almost glad he doesn’t believe in any kind of fate, otherwise he’d probably have to be perpetually worried about the karmic justice he’d be due for destroying the sleep schedules of two of his favorite people in the same morning.
“Eddie?”
Buck sounds concerned. Eddie doesn’t know where to start.
“I didn’t tell you. I talked to a priest.”
“Oh-kay?” The sound of rustling. Buck turning over in bed. “Why? Should I be worried?”
“Worried?”
“I don’t know. You don’t normally talk to priests. Thinking of - I don’t know, taking up the cloth?”
“Buck, what?”
Buck huffs out a laugh. “I don’t know, you wake me up and start talking about priests, then have the nerve to start acting like I’m the one who's being weird. It’s rude.”
“Yeah, okay.”
A pause. Eddie clutches his phone.
“He told me I should be finding joy.”
“Who?”
“The priest, Buck.”
“Oh.”
“And - I was just talking to Hen, and she said - she said something similar. That I should - let myself be happy.”
He pauses. He can hear Buck breathing down the phone.
“So that’s two people. And I guess I was just wondering - I guess I just wanted to know if you thought so too.”
Silence. “Eddie.”
He can hear rustling. Buck sitting upright in bed. “Eddie. Are you asking me if - if I think you should be happy?”
Eddie doesn’t reply.
Buck must take his silence for an answer, because he speaks again, sounding truly bewildered. “Eddie - when have I ever - of course I think - ” He breaks off.
When he comes back, he sounds vaguely upset. “If that’s what you’re asking me, Eddie, of course I want you to be happy. That’s all - ” He laughs breathlessly. “Really, that’s all I want.”
Eddie nods, even though he knows Buck can’t see him. There’s a hitch in his throat. “It’s selfish.”
“I think you’re allowed to be a bit selfish, Eddie, come on.”
Eddie hesitates. Grips his phone. Makes up his mind.
“Can you come over?”
-
Eddie makes them both coffee. It’s his third cup of the morning: he can already feel a slight tremor starting to make its way through the extremities of his body.
Buck sips at his slowly, frowning at Eddie with something bordering concern.
Eddie, for his part, hasn’t said much at all, has busied himself with grinding the beans with the fancy machine Buck insisted on buying for him, taking the cups out of the cupboard, pouring the perfect amount of creamer. Is now staring into the surface of his drink like it contains the secrets of the universe.
“Eddie,” says Buck.
Eddie looks up.
“What’s going on?”
Eddie opens his mouth, presumably to answer, though he genuinely has no clue what’s going to come out of it. And is, immediately, incredibly, in a moment of complete luck, of divine intervention - a stroke of fate, if he believed in such a thing - distracted by the ping of his phone.
“Oh shit,” he says. “Chris.”
Buck straightens. “Chris?”
“Yeah, he’s been sending me - I don’t know, facts? Nothing else. But just - here, let me…” He pulls his phone out of his pocket, navigates to their chat with shaking hands.
“Okay, okay, let’s see - did you know that - that salmon commit the smell of their freshwater birthplace to memory, so that - ” Eddie swallows. His throat is suspiciously hoarse. “So that - when they leave for the ocean, they can remember their way home?”
Buck looks surprisingly tickled. “I did know. I told him that.”
Eddie blinks. “What?”
“The first time we went to the aquarium, I told him that. He told me - ” Buck lets out a humorless laugh. “He told me it was funny.”
Something pangs in the middle of Eddie’s chest.
“It is.”
“You should reply,” Buck says. He seems to be studying Eddie from behind the steam of his cup.
Eddie, for his part, can only stare at the message. He resolutely doesn’t think about Chris, sat alone in his room in Texas, typing the words out. About him choosing to press send. About salmon finding their way home. About what that implies. “With what?”
“I don’t know. Whatever feels right, I guess? Send him your own fact? Or - I guess - something you want to say to him? Now you know he’s reading?”
Eddie’s hands hover over the keyboard. Haltingly, he begins to type.
Buck cranes his neck. “What are you writing?”
Eddie angles his phone away. “Nothing.”
“I’m sure.”
And Eddie looks at him. The tilt of his head. The glint of mirth in his eyes. Makes a split-second decision: chooses something close to happiness.
He finishes off the message. Hits send. Shoves his phone in his pocket. It settles as an almost comforting presence.
Buck raises his eyebrows. “What did you say?”
“I said that - I’m glad. That it makes me happy. That salmon can find their way home.”
He stalls for a second. Looks into his cup, then back up again. “That - I’m glad you told him that. That I’m glad…” He swallows. “That - I’m glad he has you.”
Silence.
A quiet: “Really?”
“Yeah.”
Buck blinks at him. Looks aggravatingly blindsided. Eddie feels unbelievably fond.
“Yes, Evan, really.”
Buck ducks his head, bashful. Eddie smiles, leans his side against the counter, tucks his chin to try and make eye contact, and -
Buck is lifting his head, and Eddie is gently swaying forwards, and he’s not quite sure what happens, must misjudge his positioning, or the amount of space between them, because, almost by accident, somewhere amongst the sudden contact of nose and cheek and stubble - their lips brush.
It’s barely anything - a second of pressure, dry mouths gently sliding against each other in passing. It should be nothing, really. A non-moment.
Eddie freezes. Jerks back, scrambles a step backwards. Stares.
Buck stares back. His eyes are wide. He looks almost panicked.
There’s a moment of complete stillness, punctured only by the low hum of the fridge and the sound of their breaths, loud in the quiet of the room. Neither of them moves a muscle.
Buck’s eyes flick back and forward, skimming Eddie’s face. Slowly, deliberately, he reaches behind him. Goes to place the coffee mug he’s cradling down on the counter. Eddie follows the line of his arm.
The cup sets down with a clink. The sound echoes loud in his eardrums.
Just as slowly, Buck takes a step forward, like he’s approaching a nervous animal. Gently, so gently, he reaches up, places a hand on each of Eddie’s cheeks. He pauses. Eddie can feel his breaths coming in short bursts, ghosting his face. He swallows. Buck’s hands flex minutely around his jaw.
“Go on,” he croaks, almost whispering, as if speaking any louder could break the spell they had found themselves under.
Buck furrows his brow, leans forward, and kisses him.
Eddie’s not sure what he’s expecting. He’s almost braced himself for disappointment, is almost afraid he’s given himself false hope: like he’s about to expose the last few months’ realisations for fantasies, sustained purely through the force of the wanting.
It’s not that.
It’s not even what he’s come to know, come to expect, from his past relationships: not like how it was with Marisol, with Ana, even with Shannon.
It’s something entirely new.
Something sparks to life in him, and he surges forward, wraps his arms around the back of Buck’s neck. Buck lets out a surprised noise, parts his mouth in shock, and Eddie takes the opportunity to lick into its warmth. He can taste the coffee on his teeth. Buck groans, mouth opening wider, and steps forward, inadvertently propelling Eddie backwards. His lower back collides hard with the counter behind him.
“Sorry,” Buck gasps into his mouth, muffled, but Eddie finds he doesn’t mind the ache. It makes him feel grounded, like he’s real in his body despite the surreality of the situation.
The only way he can express this, express himself in this moment, is by groaning, low, but Buck, as always, seems to understand him perfectly, moving his hands to bracket Eddie’s hips either side against the counter, caging him in, pushing the lengths of their bodies against each other like together they could fuse into one complete, whole being.
Eddie loses the capacity to think - can focus only on the gentle pressure of Buck against him, the warmth of his mouth, the sound of their small hitched breaths, cacophonous and rattling in his ears.
Buck pulls back too soon. Their lips stick as they separate, tacky with saliva. Eddie licks at his absentmindedly, then, hesitating slightly, lets his eyes slide open. They settle on the man in front of him: pupils blown, hair mussed, biting on swollen lips with a slightly bashful expression.
If he looks closer, there’s layers beneath that - something searching, something guarded, something bordering on hope. He’s still holding Eddie against the counter.
Eddie takes a deep breath.
“I’m gay,” he says.
It’s - better, this time, whispered into the space cradled between them instead of the emptiness of an abandoned parking lot, safe amongst the familiarity of the hum of the fridge, of Buck’s chest pressed firmly against him. Not fully sitting comfortably, but on the right track.
“Okay,” Buck says, gently. Then he grins. “Thank you for telling me.”
“And I think - ” He tries to tamp down the smile curving at the corners of his mouth. “I think that - I think I want to be happy.”
Buck continues to grin. “I think we can manage that.”
“Yeah?” he says. He sounds breathless to his own ears.
“Okay,” says Buck. He doesn’t move away. “Top of your mind. What would make you happy? What do you want?”
It’s a no-brainer. “I want Chris to come home.”
“Then we’ll go see him. Bring him back right away,” Buck promises. “Hey - I’ll let him make me watch Star Wars. He won’t be able to resist, right?”
“He’s a teenager, Buck. I’m not sure that will work.”
“We’ll sort it out.”
Eddie smiles, nods. Allows himself to be swept up in it. “I want to - tell everyone. About me. I want to feel like - I’m being real. Being truthful.”
“Okay,” says Buck, nodding. Eddie can almost see the clipboard being written in his head. “We can do that.”
“And I want - ” Eddie breaks off.
Buck tilts his head. “What?”
“It’s going to sound cheesy.”
“Well then,” Buck smiles ever wider, like the cat that got the cream. “All the better.”
“I want - ” Eddie exhales through his nose, embarrassed despite himself. He grits his teeth. “I want - Buck, I swear, you can never bring this up again. I want - this.” He gestures between them. Buck’s cheeks are almost straining from the force of his smile. “Stop looking at me like that. I want - you.”
Buck, outrageously, pretends to think about it. Says, eyes glinting: “Well - you know, Eddie, I’m sorry, but I’m just not sure we’re compatible. I hardly know you - you know, we’ve barely spent any time together - ”
“Come here, you dolt,” Eddie says fondly, and kisses him through his squawk of indignance.
-
(“Dolt?” says Buck, some time after. “Who even says that anymore?”
“Your neighbor Doreen,” says Eddie. His hand slides over the plane of Buck’s back, tracks the ridges of his spine. “Apparently she’s a very lovely lady.”)