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“Hey, Buck?” Christopher calls, the clicking of his crutches against the hardwood floors preceding his words. “What are all these?”
Buck turns from his spot in the kitchen, he had been helping Chris and Eddie move back into the house after finally returning from El Paso. Christopher appeared next to him, drawing Eddie from where he was crouched beneath the sink. In the boy’s hands were a stack of postcard photos and other paper keepsakes Buck had from his years on the road.
“Oh, that's all the stuff I kept from when I was moving around. Where’d you find these?” he asked. Last he checked, all the pictures were tucked away in a small box in his nightstand.
Chris shrugged a little, handing the papers over. “I was trying to find the old family photo album. Denny wanted to see a picture of Dad during his ballroom dancer faze.” Eddie squawks at his son's words, ruffling the boy’s hair with a huff.
“Well, I never, see if I ever share my childhood with you,” Eddie grumbles, feigning a put-upon tone. Chris rolls his eyes and sits down at the dinner table, watching as Buck flips through the old pictures.
“Sorry for snooping, Buck,” Christopher says, sounding more nervous than before. “I was curious when I saw you wearing a cowboy hat.” Buck snorts and places the pictures down to crouching in front of Chris.
“Don’t worry about it, kiddo. I haven’t looked at these in years. I don't blame you for being curious.” Christopher nods, relaxing at Buck’s gentle tone and kind smile.
“Can we look through them?” Chris asks, sounding hopeful. Buck shakes his head, and Chris huffs.
“Not tonight, Superman, we’ve got lots more unpacking to do.” Chris nods at his words and rises from his seat and gently bumps his head against Buck’s shoulder before leaving the kitchen to unpack the rest of his room.
Eddie peers over at the pile of pictures before Buck pulls them off the table. “Hey, you don’t have to show us if you aren’t comfortable. Chris will probably forget by tomorrow,” Eddie soothes, rubbing a hand on Buck’s shoulder.
The blonde shakes his head, sending a gentle gaze to the pile of papers in his hands. “No, it’s alright. Though, I’ll probably have to pick out all the ones that aren’t kid friendly,” he chuckles, face flushed pink. Eddie nods, pulling Buck in for a gentle hug and pressing a kiss against his temple.
Eddie wasn’t sure what to call the relationship he and Buck currently had, but he so desperately wanted to make the other man his in every version of the word.
“I can… I can show them to you first? See which ones are good for a kid's eyes?” Buck’s face is flushed with nerves, but Eddie just nods and smiles.
“Whatever you want to show me, carino,” he mutters, tucking Buck further into his arms. Buck might be 6’2”, but he curled into Eddie’s arms perfectly, tucking his face into the crook of Eddie’s neck so he could shove his face into Buck’s curls.
Eventually, Buck pulls away and shuffles back to his and Eddie’s shared room to put the pictures away while Eddie returns to organising the kitchen.
The rest of the day goes by, and nobody mentions Buck’s photos. However, Eddie’s skin buzzes at the opportunity to look at a new part of Buck, a part that no one’s ever seen before.
They eat the dinner that Buck makes with amble conversation and gentle laughter as Christopher re-tells a story about a man they saw while on the drive back from El Paso. “His car was painted all camo, and he said it was so the cops couldn’t see him,” the boy explains before falling over with laughter.
Buck laughs along with him, both delighted at the insanity of the situation. Eddie can’t help but smile at the scene, his two boys laughing and smiling in the warm light of his kitchen. Happy and safe at 4995 South Bedford Street, right where they were supposed to be.
Once Christopher is off to bed, Eddie finds himself at the sink, washing up the last of the dishes from dinner, when Buck appears beside him.
His cheeks are slightly red, and he’s fidgeting with the cuff of his hoodie as he leans against the counter beside Eddie. Eddie gives Buck a minute to compose himself, drying his hands off after placing the last few dishes into the dishwasher to run in the morning after breakfast.
“Do you…Do you still want to look through the picture with me?” Buck’s soft and terrified voice suddenly makes Eddie realize just how close to Buck’s heart he is, just how close to the real, true Evan Buckley he is in this exact moment.
He needs to tread very carefully because this, this , is something he cannot screw up. So he smiles, holds his hand out, and nods. “Whatever you want to show me, Ev,” he says, keeping his voice as soft and sure as possible.
Buck preens at the nickname before gently leading Eddie out of the kitchen, flipping off the lights as they go. It’s a slow shuffle through the now darkened house but Eddie knows these halls, there is a sense of soul deep familiarity that he never quite obtained in the House back in El Paso- even though he was only there for 3 months total he didn’t think he could ever replicate the homely comfort 4995 South Bedford provided.
Eddie stays silent as Buck leads them to the bed- the bed they’d been sharing since Eddie returned- and sits on his side as Buck moves to his nightstand and pulls out a keepsake box Eddie had only gotten glimpses at before.
It’s an old box, well worn with small carvings on the lid and the sides. He can just barely make out the scratchy words “property of Evan-” before Buck flips the lid open to reveal a large pile of papers.
The edges of the papers and photographs look worn out, but most of them look whole, though Eddie can see quite a few things are being held together with tape as Buck spreads the items across their bedspread.
Eddie lets his eyes rake over Buck’s life, skimming over the parts of Buck Eddie never got to know and would probably never meet. A sense of pride fills him when he realises he’s being faced with an important part of Buck’s story. These papers and photos were something the other man cherished and kept hidden away from people he deemed unfit to bear witness.
But here Eddie was, laying his eyes upon Buck’s well-kept secrets because Buck deemed him worthy. Yeah, Eddie’s ego was definitely inflated.
He shifts his gaze over to Buck, who is gently caressing corners of photographs, wound up in a faded past that slipped through his fingers almost a decade ago. Eventually, Buck’s blue eyes settle on Eddie, and he sighs.
“You aren’t going to love all these stories,” Buck starts, and Eddie nods along. He’d heard plenty of stories of Buck’s unsavory childhood, and he’d heard a few too many concerning statements pertaining to the man's 20s for him to think Buck’s time on the road was all sunshine and rainbows.
“I’m not going to judge you, Buck,” Eddie says, catching onto Buck’s insecurity. Eddie couldn’t judge Buck, one, it would make him the world's biggest hypocrite, and two, he loved Buck too much to judge him.
Buck smiles softly and reaches out to grab the oldest looking photo, with a clipping of paper alongside it. He takes a deep breath and speaks. “I ran away from home when I was 18. I dropped out of college, got into a motorcycle accident-” he passes the photo to Eddie with a semi-shaking hand. It’s a photo of Buck, who looks so young and soft, standing beside a sporty red motorcycle with a determined smile on his face.
“I tried getting Maddie to run away with me but… she just gave me the keys to her jeep and told me to leave without her…” he trails off, holding what Eddie can only assume is the letter Maddie wrote to him.
He’s not surprised when Buck tucks the taped-up paper back into the box, decidedly not handing it to Eddie.
“I kind of drove aimlessly for a while, hung out with a few people I met in hostels, fellow runaways,” Buck smiles as he hands Eddie a picture of Buck and a few other kids laying in a gas station bathroom with sleeping bags lining the floor. “Not the safest, but it certainly was freeing,” Buck chuckles as he hands Eddie another picture of Buck and a redheaded girl holding a random door over their heads.
“That was Camilla”, Buck explains, handing Eddie another picture of him and the redhead at the beach. “She convinced me to move with her to Virginia Beach and become a surfing instructor. Lucas-” his hand trails over another person with swirling curls and sunkissed skin, “Got me to start mixology because he didn’t want to do it by himself.”
Eddie chuckles, looking at the photos of Buck, Camilla, and Lucas at the beach. Snorting to himself at Buck’s boards and the words “DO NOT EAT” taped across the bottom.
“Me and Camilla were following around, but then she left, and then me and Lucas were kind of a thing? It all blew up pretty spectacularly when Lucas decided to join a gang… got my ass beat and I packed up my shit and left.”
Buck shrugs as he tucks the picture of a smiling group of friends back into the memory box. Eddie’s eyes widened at the new information. Just how many stories about Buck getting assaulted was he going to hear tonight?
“I moved out to Colorado after that, intent to stay as far as humanly possible away from Virgina when I started working construction.” Suddenly, a picture of Buck dressed in construction gear and staring confusedly into the camera is thrust into his hands.
His hair is longer and curlier, but less sun-bleached than it had been in Virginia. “How in the hell did you get to Colorado so fast?” Eddie finds himself asking, and Buck chuckles at his surprise.
“Living out of your car has its perks, Eds,” He says simply as he hands Eddie a photo of Buck and another construction worker doing the “I’ll never let go, Jack” pose at the top of a half-built house.
There are a few pictures of the “Construction site dog” that are passed between the two. Sassy was a blond lab who apparently got Buck through his year and a half in Colorado with “Most of his sanity”.
“Then… okay, not even Maddie knows about this, so you cannot tell her.” Suddenly, Buck is looking at him with wide and imploring eyes, and Eddie is completely incapable of denying the man in front of him.
“I swear,” he says without really thinking about what he is agreeing to. Could you blame him? It was Buck, he could never say no to Buck.
Buck sighs in relief as he pulls out a small folded up flyer for a club in Vegas. “I was an exotic dancer in Vegas for a year.” And suddenly, all rational thought Eddie has is thrown out the window in a spectacular fashion- seriously, glass is flying everywhere, and the rational thoughts are rolling down the street as we speak-
Suddenly, Eddie has a picture in his hands of a 20-year-old Evan Buckly in a sinfully tight baby tee that reads “Boy Toy” in pink bold font. “Jesus Christ, Cariño, Lo que no daría por verte bailar en persona. ” The Spanish slips out, and Buck’s face flushes at his words, whether it be the accent Eddie has when he speaks Spanish or the actual words themselves he doesn’t know, but he tucks the fact away to be dissected at a later date.
“It was the first all-inclusive club on the Vegas strip, everyone was welcome no matter their sexuality…” Buck trails off, smiling softly at a picture before passing it over to Eddie.
Eddie has to hold back a groan when he sees Buck with floppy curls and a bright smile wearing makeup and a goddamn bustier, linking arms with another woman with big hair, red lips, and a corset so tight Eddie has to wonder if she has all her ribs.
“I really liked working there,” Buck muses to the quiet room, handing Eddie another picture. This time, Eddie can’t hold back his groan as he takes in Buck in a pair of the shortest shorts known to man, standing at a pole and smiling at the camera like he isn’t making Eddie spiral into a pit of gay yearning the likes of which no one has ever seen.
“ Mierda, nena, no tienes idea de lo que... Quiero decir, oh Dios mío, ¿eso es...? Are those nipple piercings?” Eddie asks, pointing towards another photo of Buck and the woman with big hair in the dressing room, both with red faces and fruity margaritas in hand.
Buck’s face flushes to almost the same color as his birthmark, and he nods. “Y-yeah, I lost a bet with Dina, and I got them pierced. They still are, actually. I only put jewelry in when I’m going out without Chimney.” Eddie nods along dumbly, Chimney would absolutely make Buck’s nipple piercings a big deal- wait a minute, they are a big deal! Buck has nipple piercings!
Eddie gives himself a moment to windows reset before handing Buck the photo back, “I expect to see these elusive nipple piercings” Eddie says, voice far away and words not completely thought through.
Buck just snorts and rolls his eyes, handing Eddie a picture of him with lip piercings and a stack of cash in front of him like a fan. “My lips were pierced too, but I took those out after Dina’s newborn almost tore it out of my lip.” Eddie silently mourns the loss of Buck’s insanely sexy lip piercings before focusing on the man once more.
However, as he looks back at Buck, the man looks more nervous now, his gaze filled with trepidation and… grief?
“Buck?” Eddie reaches a hand out, gently squeezing the man's shoulder as he stares at the next set of pictures. “Hey, hey , what’s wrong?” Eddie tugs Buck into his arms when his baby blue eyes begin to water.
Buck doesn’t respond, instead, he burrows himself into Eddie’s arms, shoving the pictures away as he does. His shoulders shook with unnervingly silent cries- honestly, Eddie had never been able to get over how Buck’s tears were always silent, no matter the situation.
“Okay, carino , it’s alright, let it out, mi amor .” Eddie knows he’s laying it on thick, he’s toeing the already precarious line he and Buck have drawn between friendship and relationship. But he doesn’t really care, he’d shout his love for his best friend off the rooftops of LA if he asked him to.
Eventually, Buck pulls back, wiping his tears as he shifts his gaze away from Eddie and onto the pictures he’d pushed to the side. Eddie had a feeling he wasn’t going to like this portion of Buck’s story.
“When- when Dina left the club, I met a guy- a nice guy, and he offered me a job up in Chicago…” he trails off, handing Eddie a photo of him at age 21, standing next to a man whose face had been scratched out of the picture.
“He was older than me- way older, but he picked me- caught onto how desperate I was for love, I guess, and I was wearing rose colored glasses because I thought this 40 year old man was in love with me” he shakes his head and hands Eddie a clipping from a magazine that makes his heart drop.
“Young and needy, gimme a call,” the ad read, with a picture of Buck’s soft faces and beautiful curls, his birthmark on full display with his rosy cheeks.
“He turned into my manager,” Buck spits the word, and Eddie wants to burn the paper in his hands. “I was a call boy for a year… I owed the guy money, and… and I didn’t know how to leave.” He sighs, handing Eddie a new picture of Buck in a see-through tank top and tight pants. “He was never violent with me, verbally abusive, sure, but the clients I took were the ones who did the physical stuff,” he shudders, and Eddie suppresses the urge to pull Buck into his arms and keep him there forever to protect him from the awful, terrible world they found themselves in.
“Eventually, I ran away, got a new number, new licence plate, and took off… I drove from coast to coast for a year, living in my car or crashing on a friend's couch. I-I did some stuff to get money and a place to sleep that I'm not too proud of…” he looks away, clearly embarrassed, but Eddie just shakes his head.
He knew how Buck saw his body as a commodity and how sex used to be transactional and not for pleasure. Buck had drunkenly explained it to him one night before the ladder truck incident all those years ago. “Self-objectification” he called it, because “people are already going to want me for my body and nothing else, I might as well get a place to sleep out of it.”
Eddie liked to think he’d lovingly beat that way of thinking out of the blond, liked to think he’d shown Buck he had more value than just somebody to take to bed and nothing else.
“Anyways-” Buck shoves the photos away, clearly trying to put distance between himself and his years on the road.
“Hey- No,” Eddie grabs Buck’s hands, he can’t let this stew, can’t let Buck think he judges him for a past he can’t change or for things that weren’t his fault. “Don’t be ashamed of your past Ev, none of that-” he pulls Buck to face him, boring into his big blue eyes, “None of that, was your fault. You were just a kid and you found a way to survive, no one would judge you for that. No one important anyways” he smiles as he wipes away the remnants of Buck’s tears and Buck nods with a small sniffle, leaning into Eddie’s hands for a moment before pulling away and turning back towards the photos.
“I ended up in Montana,” he says, letting the conversation about Chicago fade as he passes Eddie a photo of him sitting on top of his jeep with a cowboy hat on- which shouldn’t be as hot as it is, but it’s Buck, so of course it’s hot.
“I started working at his “dude ranch”, the owners, this little old couple, needed people to take care of their show horses in the off season and… well the other ranch hands were nice and I didn’t need to sleep with any of them for a bed” he gives a rye chuckle as he hands Eddie a flyer for the ranch, probably from when they performed at a rodeo.
“Never rode a horse before but the guy’s bullied me into learning how to do Bronc riding” another picture is handed to Eddie of Bouck with the damn cowboy hat riding a rearing horse mid air. “I never could stay on for very long, I preferred riding out in the crick. It was a much calmer environment than rodeo sports.” he shrugs, handing Eddie a picture.
And if Eddie thought Buck in a bustier was heart-stopping, seeing Buck in a basically see-through white henley riding a horse bareback in a river stream with his curls plastered to his face from the water- this was a religious experience.
He stared for way too long at Buck’s strong thighs- though smaller than they are now- and how he sat with such surety on an animal that could throw him off at a moment's notice with nothing but a weak strap of leather in his hands.
23-year-old Buck would’ve put sexually repressed 23-year-old Eddie in a coma- a gay awakening, horn dog-induced coma.
“Noreen was the one that took all these pictures,” Buck explains, handing Eddie a picture of a girl with short but wild brown curls and more freckles than Eddie’s ever seen in his life. “We dated for a bit but it was better that we stayed friends, she got me these boots for christmas that said “Go sit on a cactus” on the bottom before I left for illinois, I think I still have them” Buck shrugs and eddie snorts at the image his mind conjures of the joke boots.
“Wait, why’d you go to Illinois?” Eddie asks. So far, Buck hadn’t traveled anywhere on purpose other than Chicago. Buck tilts his head at Eddie, confusion evident in his own eyes.
“To go to boot camp? Eds, I joined the Navy, remember?” Eddie, in fact, did not know Buck joined the goddamn Navy and now he had a picture of Buck with now much shorter blond curls in a pair of service dress whites at his boot camp graduation.
“I swear I told you, I got scouted for the SEALS, but I dropped out before the SQT cause I couldn’t turn off my emotions. And then I voluntarily separated from service, they let me go pretty easy, not sure why,” he shrugs, dropping a set of dog tags into Eddie’s comatose palm.
Buckley
Evan. R
9259108123USN
AB-
LUTHERAN
Eddie stares at the engraved metal in his hands, letting his fingers drag over the divots of Evan R. Buckley. How close was he to never meeting Buck? How close had he come to Buck dying overseas on some special ops mission, not knowing Eddie was waiting for him some time in the future?
“Lutheran?” he asks, instead of letting his inner monologue bubble out of his mouth like it so often does when Buck is involved.
Buck flushes and carefully pulls the two identical tags out of Eddie’s hands, placing them neatly in the box again. “I couldn’t leave it blank, so I told my CO to put down his religion as long as it wouldn’t screw with me getting blood transfusions” he hands Eddie a new photo of him in ABU’s, smiling next to a bomb sniffing dog.
“You wanted to work with the K-9 unit, didn’t you?” Eddie asks with a smile, knowing Buck’s affinity for furry creatures was something he’d had forever.
Buck doesn’t try to deny it, simply rolling his eyes and taking the photos back. “Yeah, yeah, judgy,” Buck teases, pulling out a new, larger stack of pictures. “After I left the Seals, I missed the beach, but I was never going back to Virginia, so I went to Peru”, Eddie balks at the statement.
“Don’t look at me like that, I was flat broke and California was out of my budget, plus, there was a good mixology school I wanted to go to in Peru so i went, got my degree, and started working at a beachside bar,” he hands Eddie a picture of Buck and three others laying on top of an empty bar with a sign above them that read in all caps “WE ARE CLOSED ¡VETE A LA CHINGADA!”
“That was a good year,” Buck says, handing Eddie another picture of just the beach with a beautiful sunset. “Got really into photography and didn’t get my ass beat nearly as often as anywhere else” he chuckles, letting Eddie riffle through the photos he took while living in Peru.
These pictures were different, Buck wasn’t in most of them, they simply captured the environment Buck lived in. They gave Eddie a stage for this chapter of Buck’s story, a lush, beachy background of Buck’s life through 2015.
“Dated a few girls, a few guys, became an ordained minister when Gay marriage was legalized-”
“ What! ” Eddie cuts in, eyes wide. Buck blinks at him for a moment before realising what he said.
“Oh, yeah, Gay marriage isn’t legal in Peru but ordainment is ordainment and I’d come up stateside every once and a while to marry gay couples who couldn’t find someone to marry them, coulda made a business out of it but, I liked seeing people happy” he smiles handing Eddie his ordainment certificate.
“How- how many couples did you marry?” Eddie finds himself asking, and Buck chuckles.
“About 15 or so, at least, that year. I did a few after I moved to California for the Fire academy. Which I have Ricky to thank for convincing me to go."He hands Eddie a picture of Buck on another man's shoulders with fireworks going off behind them, matching smiles on their faces.
“I helped his brother get married to his husband, and Ricky told me if I liked helping people so much, I should join the LAFD. I miss him.” Buck cradles a picture in his hands, it’s of Buck sitting beside Ricky’s hospital bed, matching smiles still as bright as they were on the beach.
“What happened to him?” Eddie asks as Buck carefully places the picture back into the box.
“Lung cancer, 15 years of smoking caught up to him right after we both moved to LA. He died 4 months before I graduated. He was a good friend,” he sighs, pulling out a new picture of a Buck with hair gelled to hide his natural curls and a coy smile on his face.
“Ah, the elusive Buck 1.0. Hen was right, you really were a twink.” Buck snorts at Eddie’s words, body lurching with repressed laughter as he smacks Eddie’s arm.
“Oh, shut it, Hen used to call me a scolded puppy-” he stops, staring at a picture with wide eyes. Eddie tilts his head, bullying his way forward and peering over his friend's shoulder to see what he is looking at. “I-I thought I threw this out-” Buck’s voice warbles, and it’s a picture of Buck and Bobby hugging- and it’s fucking adorable. Buck somehow looks small in Bobby’s arms, but they’re both smiling, laughing at whoever is taking the picture.
“Why would you have thrown it away?” Eddie finds himself asking before immediately wanting to grab his words and shove them back down his throat.
There was only one instance where Buck would’ve thrown away something that tied him and Bobby together like father and son, and that instance was the lawsuit when Buck sued Bobby for illegally holding him back from work- when the 118 turned Buck into their emotional punching bag because they all didn’t want to deal with their own issues.
But Buck doesn't say anything, doesn’t seem to notice Eddie’s spiral of guilt as he smiles down at the picture of him and his pseudo dad.
“I almost asked him to adopt me once, before you, I was drunk off my ass at Hen’s and Karen called him to pick me up and take me back to the frat house I was living in” Buck chuckles, running his fingers over the slightly worn out photo.
“My dad would’ve let me on the sidewalk, but Bobby took me back to his place because, and I quote, ' that house looks like it's got at least 12 fire safety violations on the exterior alone, ' which it did, but still, I thought it was funny.”
He shakes his head as he tucks the picture away and pulls out one last thing, “This picture is my favorite, out of all the places, all the people, this one is the best picture I have” Buck says as he hands the cherished photo to Eddie and his eyes water the moment he gets a good look at it.
It was of Eddie, Buck, and Christopher smiling at the beach barely 5 months after the earthquake when Buck insisted he drive Eddie to pick up his son from school. It was a “team bonding day,” which basically meant Bobby wanted to make sure his team wasn’t a bunch of hermits and actually saw the sun and other non-firefighters.
Buck had spent the day teaching Christopher how to surf, but this picture was taken after, while Buck and Eddie had huddled together, helping Chris build a sandcastle to beat Denny, Hen, and Karen.
Bobby had taken the photo, surprising the three by telling them to smile while immediately taking the picture. But somehow, despite the sun-flushed faces and mild surprise, it was a good picture, a picture Eddie had forgotten about the moment he got Christopher home and spent thirty minutes negotiating with the boy to take a shower with the promise of pizza and a movie night.
It made Eddie’s heart swell at the notion that this seemingly inconsequential moment for Eddie and Chris had been one of Buck’s favorite memories. Better than all the past relationships or jobs or beautiful places Buck lived, he chose the Diaz boys above everything else.
“Thank you,” Eddie whispers, cradling the photo with gentle hands. The Eddie in this picture didn’t have a damn clue how much Buck was going to intertwine himself into his and Christopher’s lives, and he was almost a little envious of his past self for having the ability to live through it all. To live through it all with Buck.
“Thank you for sharing this with me.” Eddie turns to face Buck fully, settling the photo into Buck’s keepsake box with careful but sure hands. “I might not’ve been there for all this,” he says, gesturing towards the box of memories, “But I’m so glad I got to be here for all of this.” He reaches a hand out to cradle Buck’s face again and smiles at the way Buck’s face goes a delicate shade of pink.
“Thank you for listening. If anyone was going to know about it, it would be you,” Buck mumbles, staring at Eddie through half-lidded eyes.
“Why me?” Eddie finds himself asking, the words slipping off his tongue like he has no power to stop them. He probably doesn’t, he never was able to hold back when it came to Buck.
“Because I love you,” Buck says simply, like he isn’t shattering Eddie’s worldview and destroying the tedious line they’d drawn between each other. “I’m in love with you, Eddie Diaz. Even if you aren’t in love with me, too.”
Eddie sputters for a moment before letting out a manic laugh, “You ass, you beat me to it.” is all he gets out before he’s dragging Buck into his arms and kissing him like his life depends on it- which in hindsight, it probably does.
Buck hums in surprise before melting into Eddie's arms, winding himself as close as he can without their bodies physically binding together.
Eddie would like that, stitching his atoms to Buck’s so there wasn’t an inch of space between them. How Eddie had gone 3 months without Buck beside him, he’ll never know. How he’d gone close to 8 years without having his lips on the other man, he’s even less sure.
They kiss until their lungs are screaming for air, and even then, they hold out till Eddie is certain his lips are turning blue. Buck huffs a little, his face red and lips slick with saliva. Of course, Buck was an amazing kisser, and he was all Eddie’s.
The thought made him want to kick his feet like a lovestruck teenager.
“I’m in love with you too, if that was made clear,” Eddie says, gently moving Buck’s box before dragging the man around to lay in his arms.
Buck hums softly as his head is pillowed on Eddie’s chest, lying on top of the man with their legs tangled together. “I dunno Eds, I might have to hear you say it for it to really sink in.”
Eddie laughs at his antics, and it’s a deep, rumbling sound that makes Buck’s cheeks go pink once again.
Suddenly, Eddie’s gentle hand is cradling Buck’s chin and pulling it up to face him. Brown meets blue, and Buck has to wonder how he spent the last 8 years getting anything done when he could’ve been staring into Eddie's beautiful brown eyes.
“Evan Buckley, I am head over heels in love with you and I have been probably forever. Eres el amor de mi vida. En este universo y en el próximo, nací para amarte. Para siempre. Always.”
Buck’s eyes water at the statement, and Eddie knows he understood what he said when Buck drags himself up to kiss Eddie once again.
Both their pasts were filled with pain and loss, and who knew what their future would hold. But right now, in the gentle lamplight of their bedroom on 4995 South Bedford Street, they were right where they were supposed to be.
Just Buck and Eddie, wound into the warmth of each other's arms. Forever. Always.