Chapter Text
“How’s my makeup?” asks the bride. Her face is covered in soot, and one of her eyebrows has been zapped off by 1800 watts of power. She looks, well, rough, but her personality might just be worse, so the 118 doesn’t feel too bad about it.
Holding back a laugh, Bobby grabs a handheld mirror and offers it to her. “Uh, well… I think they can probably fix that?”
The bride gaps, hands flying to her face as she sees the damage in the reflection. She balks at the unfortunate state of her makeup. Her friend attempts to pacify her. “Right… ‘cause we can just paint a new eyebrow on?” The bride winces as the fire captain seems to roll his eyes. “Right?”
Evan Buckley, ever the sympathetic man, attempts to placate her without giving his words much thought. “Yeah, I saw this makeup thing online,” Buck begins, attention turned to him, “and this woman made her face look like a skull. It was cool,” he offers nonchalantly.
The bride sighs, ignoring Buck’s words of wisdom. “We’ll just do a photoshoot after our honeymoon.”
Despite the conversation moving forward, Buck feels someone’s gaze on him, boring into his skull. Instinctively turning his head towards the source, he makes eye contact with Eddie, who seems caught somewhere between confusion and surprise.
Buck shoots him a look back that says, What’s the problem, man? When Eddie notices him looking, his eyes widen and he rips his gaze away like he’s been burned. Perplexed, Buck replays the past few minutes in his mind to figure out what could have caused this reaction from his best friend.
This time, his eyes widen. Sure, he’s been known to run his mouth without thinking in the past, but there are some parts of him, hidden parts, that he makes a lot of effort to keep hidden. He’s lucky, though—it was a relatively innocent comment on his part, easy to play off as another typical Buck idiosyncrasy. Hopefully, Eddie won’t think anything of it after today.
After all, if Eddie understood the secret meaning behind Buck’s words even half of the time… well, Buck would be in a hell of a lot of trouble.
***
It doesn’t come up again until a few days later. Christopher’s sleeping over at a friend’s house tonight; when Eddie drops this piece of information at lunch, Buck wordlessly follows him home after their shift ends to keep him company. Eddie doesn’t have to say it out loud—Buck knows he hates it when the house is quiet.
Eddie’s cleaning up after dinner, only fair since Buck cooked as he always does. As Eddie puts away the last dish, he notices Buck laying on his couch. His long legs dangle over the edge, and he’s got one arm under his head and one scrolling mindlessly on his phone. He looks comfortable in a way Eddie rarely sees him—in fact, only on that very couch.
There’s a lot of places Eddie could sit down when he comes to join Buck. The empty and very soft armchair, for instance. Still, he chooses to nudge Buck so he shifts down the couch and sits beside his head. It makes perfect sense, really—Buck came over so they could spend time together, so why would he sit so far away from the man? Really, it would just be rude.
He doesn’t expect Buck to scoot back up, plopping his head firmly in Eddie’s lap. They’ve sat side-by-side on the couch before, practically in each other’s laps, but he’s never quite had an actual, real, genuine lapful of Evan Buckley before. Eddie holds his breath, not sure where to put his arms, and watches Buck’s face. The man is deeply engrossed in whatever mindless drivel he’s watching on Instagram, gnawing on his lip, making it pinker. Suddenly, a bright light draws Eddie’s eyes to Buck’s phone screen, and he freezes.
Buck’s watching a makeup tutorial.
A moment passes where Eddie just watches Buck watching the video. It could be a coincidence, just something that he happened upon in his scrolling, but Buck’s watching intently and he doesn’t scroll past it. In fact, there’s this look in his eyes—something akin to longing.
Eddie builds up the courage to tap Buck’s shoulder. He gestures towards the screen. “Is that something you like?”
Buck’s cheeks flush, and he immediately looks embarrassed at being caught. “What? No way, man. Come on.” He laughs nervously, shutting off his phone. “That stuff just randomly pops up on my feed sometimes. Probably from Maddie stealing my phone.”
Eddie frowns at the obvious lie. Has he said or done anything to make Buck feel like he can’t openly enjoy stuff like this around him? If he has, he needs to fix it, now. “It wouldn’t be…” He clears his throat, afraid he’s gotten this all wrong. “Uh, it wouldn’t be weird or anything, by the way. If you did like it. That would be okay.”
Buck’s breath catches in his throat. His eyes widen, those expressive eyes that lay his soul bare. “Really?” He sounds so hopeful that it almost makes Eddie want to cry. He wants to track down every person who’s ever told this precious man that exactly who he is is not enough.
Eddie nods. “Really.”
Buck stares up at him, careful, watchful, as if trying to figure out if Eddie’s pulling his leg. He must see something that satisfies him, because he simply hums happily and thumbs open his phone, continuing to watch the video.
Eddie’s lost in thought. He’s almost certain that… it’s got to be somewhere, right? Absent-mindedly, he lifts Buck’s head so he can get up, laying it carefully on a couch cushion to replace his lap. Buck startles at the movement, and there’s a look of fear in his eyes for just a moment when he notices Eddie move to leave.
“Stay here,” Eddie orders, hoping that he sounds reassuring. “I’ll be right back.”
Eddie hurries into his bedroom, throws open his closet doors, and begins digging through the very back of his closet. It’s the part where he throws things he never expects to see again, the part he never dares look through—in this particular instance, he decides it's worth it. When he finds what he’s looking for, he quickly returns to the living room. In his arms is a large plaid bag, the front embroidered with the initial ‘S.’
He sets the bag down on the coffee table, and Buck sits up slowly, confused. The taller firefighter watches as Eddie unzips it before delicately overturning the contents onto the table. Buck gasps. “Is that…”
“Shannon’s makeup,” Eddie confirms. “I didn’t have the heart to throw it out. Figured I might as well keep it. I guess it worked out, since you guys are actually pretty similar shades.” I guess I have a type, he thinks without realizing what a thought like that means. Eddie grabs something pink in a pan and flips it over. “Oh, shit, does makeup expire? Everything expires, doesn’t it?”
Buck’s hand covers his, stalling his movements. Eddie looks up, and their eyes meet, and he’s pretty sure that, as cheesy as it is, his heart actually skips a beat. Buck’s eyes are wet, but there’s a smile on his face. He looks…
God, he looks…
“It’s alright,” Buck says, as if he can read the man’s thoughts. Except he’s not talking about Eddie’s near-epiphany. “I can’t do that, Eds. As sweet as this is, this is all hers, and I wouldn’t feel right…”
Eddie cocks his head to the side, genuinely mulling over Buck’s concerns. “I think she would like it,” he concludes, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “I know you didn’t know each other well, but Shannon was a kind person. She liked helping others. I think she would like helping you in this way, especially now that she can’t do that anymore.”
Buck swallows harshly, loud in the quiet room, and eventually nods. “I don’t know what to say…”
Breaking the emotionally charged moment, Eddie flops onto the couch dramatically. “You can start by telling me what any of this is.” He picks up a sealed blue tube that looks brand new. “Is this lipstick?”
Buck rolls his eyes, snatching it out of his hands. “It’s mascara, dumbass.”
“Oh, that’s the one for your eyebrows, right?” Eddie guesses. He actually knows that one, but the exasperated huff Buck lets out is cute, so he plays it up a bit.
Eventually, Buck feels comfortable enough to start rifling through the makeup. Eddie watches, entranced, as he works. He starts with what looks like a lightly-coloured lotion—tinted moisturizer, Buck explains—and lightly rubs it into his skin. It evens out his face, making his skin gleam brilliantly. Next, he experimentally dips a poofy brush into the pink pan, dusting it over his cheeks. Eddie has to hold back a gasp at the way it makes him look—like he’s flushed from a raunchy compliment. It makes Eddie’s stomach flip.
As Buck continues playing with his new toys, Eddie’s taken back to watching Shannon do her makeup before date nights, back to wrapping his arms around her waist, telling her she doesn’t need to do all that because she’s already beautiful. He understands now why she did it anyway, understands in the way Buck looks over the moon when he glances at his own reflection, the way Eddie always hoped he’d eventually see himself, the way Eddie’s always seen him.
Beautiful.
He kind of wishes he had the balls to tell Buck that. Maybe then he would see it even without the makeup.