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The thing is, Buck’s not technically homeless.
He could find a place. He would find a place. In fact, he has a folder labeled “Future Buck Palace 🏡✨” on his laptop. Subfolders sorted by neighborhood, walkability score, and how many feet away the nearest Thai place is. He has criteria. He has backups. There’s even a spreadsheet. Conditional formatting. Filters. Color-coding.
And still, somehow, he hasn’t followed through.
He toured a place with a view and industrial charm, immediately noting “Too loud, too lonely” in his notes app like it wasn’t a cry for help. Another had the exact floorplan of someone who’d never met a child. Mostly, though, he keeps finding reasons not to sign anything. Too big. Too quiet. Too not-Eddie’s.
So yeah. He’s been living on Eddie’s couch for three and a half weeks now.
Technically, it’s Eddie’s couch. It left with him to Texas and came back, like a piece of luggage that somehow became too important to leave behind. But now? It’s Buck’s couch. Buck’s couch in Eddie’s house. Or maybe Eddie’s couch in Buck’s house. The line is blurry, the seating is firm, and Buck is imprinting on it like a sad duckling.
“You sure you’re good out here?” Eddie asks, leaning in the doorway.
Buck throws himself onto the couch with a noise that’s mostly for dramatic flair. “This couch and I have been through things. It gets me.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow. “I’ve had my share of moments with that couch too.”
“And yet I’m the one still sleeping on it.”
That gets him a look. A loaded one. Which Buck absolutely does not overanalyze for the next six hours. Nope. Totally fine.
The house is a weird furniture chimera now. Eddie’s couch and Buck’s coffee table, Buck’s bookshelf, Eddie’s ugly-but-endearing lamps. It’s domestic in the way a shared storage unit is domestic: unspoken and accidentally intimate. Nothing matches, and somehow, everything fits.
Buck doesn’t want to think about what that means.
It’s not even the furniture that gets him, really. It’s the way Chris’s school folder ends up next to Buck’s keys. It’s Eddie grabbing an extra mug without asking when he’s making coffee. It’s being here. Not visiting. Just here.
The quiet gets broken by the familiar rhythm of crutches, and then Chris rounds the corner, smiling like the sun when he sees Buck flopped across the cushions like a human bookmark.
“Buck!” he says, grinning. “You’re still here!”
“Still here,” Buck confirms, scooting over so Chris can settle beside him.
Chris glances at him sideways, thoughtful. “I thought you’d have your own place again by now.”
And okay, ow . Buck shoots Eddie a look like, your child’s calling me out.
Eddie shrugs, expression unreadable. Not helpful.
“Yeah,” Buck says eventually. “Soon.”
It’s not the truth, and they both know it.
But Buck’s been lying to himself for weeks.
Lying to other people is the easy part.
He’s tired. It’s been a long day, and it’s late when they finally settle in for the night. Buck’s sprawled on the couch, feeling the weight of his body pull him down into sleep. He knows Eddie’s got his routine, and Chris needs the space for whatever else. So, he wraps himself in the blankets and lets the quiet settle in.
The next thing he knows, he wakes up warm.
Which, okay, not weird. The living room gets warm in the morning. The sun hits the windows just right. He has, like, four blankets. Whatever.
But this warmth is different.
This warmth is targeted.
Specifically, radiating from behind him.
He blinks into the soft gray light of the bedroom and immediately goes rigid.
Wait.
No.
Absolutely not.
This is not the couch.
This is Eddie’s bed.
And that is Eddie.
There is an arm around his waist. A whole arm. Holding him like he’s a body pillow. And Eddie—Eddie shifts in his sleep, dragging Buck a half inch closer like it’s muscle memory.
Buck stays completely, catastrophically still.
This is fine.
This is not fine.
He just sleepwalked into Eddie’s bed.
He freezes. Maybe if he stays still long enough, Eddie will think he’s furniture. Or dead. Either works.
Eddie stirs behind him.
Buck internally screams.
“Buck?” comes Eddie’s voice, low and hoarse.
“I—yeah,” Buck says, in a voice that can only be described as ‘suspiciously alert.’
There’s a beat. Eddie props himself up slightly, hand still very much around Buck’s middle.
“You okay?”
“Totally. Great. Normal morning,” Buck says. A beat. “I think I sleepwalked.”
Sleepwalked. That’s what happened. That’s the only possible explanation, unless teleportation is real and exclusively targets emotional crises.
Eddie doesn’t question it. Doesn’t even blink. He just says, “You used to do this as a kid, right? When you needed something.”
Buck freezes.
He didn’t expect Eddie to remember that. Some offhand thing he mentioned once, years ago, in the wreckage of some long night shift. He doesn’t even remember why he said it—just that he did.
“I—yeah,” Buck says. “Yeah. When I was little. If things were bad, or loud, or just—too much, I’d wake up somewhere else. Usually Maddie’s bed. Sometimes the closet.”
“You always ended up somewhere safer,” Eddie says quietly.
Buck stares at the ceiling. His chest tightens, and he wishes he had a better excuse for it than this is fine.
“I didn’t think I still did that,” he says. “I thought I grew out of it.”
Eddie doesn’t say anything at first. Then, softly:
“Maybe you didn’t need it again until now.”
That hits harder than it should, like a switch getting flipped Buck wasn’t prepared for. But now he’s here, and he doesn’t know how to make it stop feeling so much.
So he closes his eyes, breathes in the familiar smell of Eddie’s sheets, and tries not to think about why this feels so easy. And maybe too good to be real.
After a moment, Eddie shifts slightly, his arm brushing against Buck’s. Barely. But Buck feels it anyway.
“Go to sleep,” Eddie says, voice gentle. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
And for the first time in a long while, Buck actually lets himself stay. Because pretending he doesn’t want this? It’s getting harder to do.
It doesn’t happen the next night.
Buck makes a show of it. He checks every lock, fluffs every pillow, and wraps the blanket around himself, determined to stay put. He puts a glass of water on the floor next to the couch, as if that will keep him grounded in reality. Deliberate. Controlled.
And still, two mornings later, he wakes up in Eddie’s bed.
Again.
This time he’s facing the other direction. Less spooning. More “accidental face-to-face shared pillow” situation. Eddie’s lashes are right there. So is his breath. So is his stupid, perfect sleep face. Buck manages not to scream out loud. Barely.
He slinks back to the couch before Eddie wakes up. Makes a dramatic amount of noise in the kitchen to pretend he’s been up since dawn.
“Sleep okay?” Eddie asks when he walks in, clearly already dressed.
“Yeah. Great.” Buck smiles like he’s not slowly dying inside. “Couch and I are still best friends.”
Eddie hums like he knows exactly how much of a lie that is. Doesn’t call him on it.
It keeps happening.
Sometimes Buck wakes up mid-spoon, sweaty and horrified, halfway through the phrase this is fine, this is so fine. Sometimes he wakes up warm and calm, confused as to why that feels normal. Sometimes Eddie’s still asleep. Sometimes he’s up and making coffee, casual as anything.
Sometimes Eddie doesn’t say anything.
Other times, he does.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” Buck mutters, dragging himself out of bed, hoodie twisted, his dignity hanging by a thread.
Eddie hands him a mug of coffee as Buck stumbles into the kitchen. “You didn’t.”
“I must’ve come in late.”
“I heard you,” Eddie says, like this is a perfectly average thing to discuss while pouring cinnamon creamer into Buck’s mug. “Figured you needed sleep more than space.”
Buck stares at him, feeling a little exposed. “So you just let me sleepwalk into your bed like it’s a weekly tradition now?”
Eddie shrugs, unbothered. “More or less.”
Which is a sentence that should not carry emotional weight, and yet. Buck nearly combusts on the spot.
Because Eddie keeps letting it happen. That’s the thing. He’s not ignoring it. He’s just allowing it. Like Buck crawling into his bed at 2:34 a.m. with a guilty heart and cold toes is something he expected. Like he wants it there.
And if Buck were a stronger person, he would put a stop to this.
Instead, he just pulls the blanket up, settling in like he belongs.
One night, Buck wakes up to Eddie’s hand curled at the back of his neck, thumb moving in slow, sleepy circles. Not conscious. Not calculated. Just natural. Like it’s always been this way.
Buck doesn’t move.
He stays exactly where he is. Eyes closed. Breathing shallow. One hand clenched in the hem of Eddie’s shirt like a lifeline.
And then Eddie whispers, voice barely audible:
“You okay?”
Buck wants to answer. He really does.
But the truth feels too close to the surface. Too sharp. So he just stays still. Quiet. Lets himself be held.
It’s getting harder to pretend this isn’t happening.
Harder still to pretend he wants it to stop.
It happens again.
Because that’s what it does now. It just—happens.
One minute Buck is out cold on the couch, wrapped in his emergency throw blanket and the fuzzy comfort of late-night infomercials. The next, he’s blinking awake in Eddie’s room, standing just inside the doorway.
Only this time, Eddie is awake.
He’s propped up on one elbow, lit by his phone screen, watching Buck like this is something he’s seen before. Like this is just routine now.
Buck blinks. “Seriously?”
Eddie sets the phone down. “Hey.”
Buck rubs at his face. “Did I—?”
“You didn’t make it all the way this time,” Eddie says, calm as anything.
Buck scrubs a hand over his face. “Jesus.”
“You okay?”
“I mean,” Buck mutters, “other than the fact that my body has memorized the exact coordinates of your bed? Totally fine.”
Eddie shifts over. Lifts the blanket. Doesn’t even hesitate.
“You want to lie down?”
Buck hesitates. “Is that weird?”
Eddie shrugs. “It’s already happening.”
Buck’s too tired to pretend this is weird anymore. He climbs in. The sheets are warm. The room smells like Eddie and laundry and something faintly citrusy.
They settle in quietly.
“You’ve been doing this for weeks,” Eddie says, not like an accusation, just a fact.
“I know,” Buck says. “I wish I could explain it. I really do.”
Eddie hums. “You don’t have to.”
“I’m not doing it on purpose,” Buck adds, because apparently his brain is running its mouth without his permission. “I know it’s weird.”
“It’s not,” Eddie says, and he says it so easily it almost hurts.
They lie there in silence. Just two men in their thirties, not talking about the fact that one of them keeps unconsciously migrating into the other’s bed like a lovesick heat-seeking missile.
After a minute, Buck whispers, “Why do you think I keep ending up here?”
Eddie’s voice is quiet. “Maybe because it’s where you feel safe.”
Buck doesn’t say anything.
Mostly because if he does, he might say too much.
Buck’s not trying to confess his love this morning.
He was just going to drink his coffee like a normal man who only sleepwalks into his best friend’s bed four nights a week, and maybe avoid making eye contact until at least 9 a.m.
Instead, what comes out of his mouth is:
“I almost signed a lease yesterday.”
Eddie looks up from the frying pan like Buck just told him he was moving to Mars. “…What?”
Buck takes a sip of coffee, eyes still distant. “Studio apartment. Tall ceilings. Weird smell. Definitely not a place I could live in.”
Eddie frowns. “You didn’t say anything.”
“Didn’t sign it,” Buck says. “Felt wrong.”
There’s a long pause. Just the kind that sits between two people who have been extremely not talking about a very obvious situation for way too long.
Eddie turns off the burner. “So what feels right?”
Buck shrugs like a man hanging off the edge of a cliff. “You know. This.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow. “This?”
Buck gestures wildly at the kitchen. At Eddie. At the general air around them. “The you of it all. Us. I don’t know. Pancakes and coffee and accidentally living here for a month and a half? Not exactly platonic, right?”
Eddie gives him a look. The kind that says keep going, even though Buck’s already sweating through his t-shirt.
Buck blows out a breath. “Okay, yeah. Definitely not platonic. It hasn’t been since the second time I woke up in your bed and didn’t immediately throw myself into the sea.”
Still, Eddie doesn’t say anything. Just watches him. Calm. Devastating.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Buck continues, digging his own emotional grave with a soup spoon. “The sleepwalking. The staying. But you kept letting me, and I kept not leaving. And now I think I live here?”
He pauses. Rethinks.
“Emotionally, at least. Not legally. Legally, I’m still a transient.”
Eddie’s expression doesn’t change, but something softens behind it. “You’ve always had a place here.”
Buck nearly short-circuits.
“Okay,” Buck says, voice cracking just a little. “But can I claim a spot in the bed? Because at this point, it’s more my bed than yours.”
Eddie steps forward. “Our bed.”
Then another step, closing the distance until they’re almost toe to toe.
“You want a label?” Eddie asks, voice low and steady.
“I want a drawer,” Buck says, almost without thinking. “And maybe to kiss you. And also, I might be in love with you. And that feels like something I should probably mention before I start filing taxes from this address.”
There’s a long, silent beat.
And then Eddie says, very calmly:
“That’s good. Because I’m in love with you, too. And I cleared out the top drawer three weeks ago.”
Buck stares at him.
“I am going to die,” he says, completely serious.
“No you’re not,” Eddie says, smiling.
And then he kisses him.
Buck kisses him back, because what other option is there—leave?
Like that’s even possible?
Please. He lives here now. It’s probably permanent. Emotionally, at least.
Buck wakes up first.
He doesn’t move for a long time.
Eddie’s arm is slung across his waist like a very committed paperweight. Their legs are tangled. There’s a pillow on the floor. The comforter is halfway off the bed. Buck is pretty sure one of Eddie’s socks is wedged between his shoulder blades.
And he’s never been happier.
He stares at the ceiling for a few seconds, brain trying to remember how to function in a post-“I love you” world. It fails. Spectacularly.
So instead, he shifts just enough to nudge Eddie with his elbow and whisper: “Hey. You’re my boyfriend.”
Eddie groans into the pillow. “It’s too early for this.”
Buck grins. “Still true, though.”
Eddie mutters something that might be a curse or might be I love you too, but either way he tightens his arm around Buck like he’s not letting him go.
Which is fine.
Because Buck isn’t going anywhere.