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“And then you said…?”
The silence hangs between the siblings. Maddie Buckley, expectant, mouth half-open and eyebrows raised. Evan Buckley, a slight frown on his face, mouth closed, expression not really decipherable. Which is weird, he’s normally an open book, or he has been one to Maddie.
Maddie needs to hear it. This is becoming unbearable.
“I don't… remember exactly?” Buck starts, frown trembling for a moment. “You know, it was just… just that I’m subletting his apartment while he isn't in LA, because he's my friend, and I care about him, and that I'm so sorry for ruining all those interviews. And honestly, I was kinda done with the loft, so the thing is…”
Jesus fucking Christ, Maddie is about to commit a crime against her own brother.
“And…?” Maddie prompts when Buck has finished his string of words that she doesn't really retain because what she's expecting to hear is absolutely nowhere in it.
Another silence. Now Buck just looks like a lost puppy.
“I don't know what you want me to say.”
That's it. That's his entire answer. His crush is absolutely fucking leaving town for who knows how long —maybe forever!— and Buck is not pouring his heart out to him about just how much he loves him.
It probably has to do with the fact that Buck doesn't know he has a crush on Eddie. Trust Maddie, she has already been trying to work on that for a while, also with zero results.
The work of an older sister is truly exhausting and never ending.
Buck likes Eddie. It's no secret. Even Buck's ex clocked it, which Maddie finds very funny though she won’t admit it in front of Buck, mostly because Buck doesn’t realize that’s the main reason why Tommy left him — I ’m your first but not your last’, was it? Come on, Buck. Everyone knows it. That’s it. Well, everyone except Buck and Eddie, apparently? Maddie can't say if Eddie likes Buck back, she sadly doesn't know him that much, but judging by what Buck says about him, he's very in love with her brother. You just don’t give the custody of your child to anyone , are we crazy here?
“Oh, yeah,” Chim says when Maddie suggests the possibility of them liking each other. “Their mutual crush can be seen from space, not that they do anything about it. It's been years.”
“Aren't you tired?”
“Of what?” Her husband inquires.
“About them dancing around each other for so long.”
“Oh, well…” Chim huffs. “It's their business.”
“But don't you just wanna—”
“Go apeshit?” Chimney completes.
“What? No,” Maddie thinks for a second. “Maybe. Kinda? I just want my brother to have no regrets, in case Eddie…” She leaves the sentence hanging and sighs.
She's just worried, to put it simply. There's a lot more going on in her head, but that's the summary.
“Look, Maddie,” Chimney sighs. “I love you so much, and your brother sometimes is as thick as one can be, but I don't think meddling is something we can or should do. They are adults, they should speak like adults. Without our help.”
“Maybe… maybe you are right,” she accepts defeat, at least for now. Perhaps Maddie can talk to Buck again, try to help him become aware of his feelings.
Just a little push. It cannot take more than that. Evan has zero impulse control, as soon as he knows he will go straight to Eddie and tell him, no more hesitation. She won't even have to do a lot, it might be…
It might be…
Maddie looks at her husband as he sets the table, Jee already on her highseat and clanking her utensils against the table as she often does. Chim, however… he has one of those faces.
The ones he makes when he's hiding something.
“Chim,” she clears her throat, looking at him pointedly.
“Hmm?”
“Is there a bet going on regarding Buck and Eddie?”
“A bet? No, no bets,” he answers, too quickly.
Maddie pins him with a look. She knows. He knows she knows. They've known each other for years. They are married, for fuck's sake.
“One more month and I win,” Chim finally admits.
“You are unbelievable,” Maddie deadpans.
“We can't meddle, that's the rule,” he explains, as if that made it better. “Not for making them confess sooner, nor for delaying it.”
“You are unbelievable,” Maddie repeats. “You and who else.”
“Just… Hen. Bobby knows but prefers not to be on it,” Chimney visibly cringes a little under Maddie's unforgiving eyes.
“Athena?”
“Athena would kill us and leave us to dry in front of the 118 if she knew.”
“And Karen?”
“Don’t know, I haven’t asked Hen…?”
Maddie looks at him for a few long seconds. Chim is immobile, on his way to seat himself at the table. Jee looks at him and laughs.
“Daddy!”
“Okay,” Maddie lets out the word quickly and is careful to not let her smile show.
“That’s… it?” Chimney asks, not daring to move yet. "Are you okay with this?"
“Sure.”
Chimney doesn’t move his eyes from her as he slowly, carefully, sits down on the chair.
“Maddie?”
“Hm?”
“What are you planning to do?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know yet,” Maddie grabs her glass and takes a sip of water. “For now, I just wanted to know who is in my corner.”
So Hen cannot intervene, she makes that very clear. The rules, however, don’t say anything about Karen.
“Let’s get those gays,” Karen says with some sort of weird (but voluntary) resignation. Absolutely no one is forcing her. Maddie even tells her she can just say no. But Karen hears none of it.
“Honestly? I’m tired of hearing how Hen complains about those two,” she ends up confessing.
They sit down, they talk, and they realize it might be a problem to get to Eddie since they don’t have a close relationship with him. Okay, so they have to work around that. Somehow. Moreover, Eddie is going soon, so they don’t have time to actually befriend him. You know who his friends are? Chim. Hen. Fucking Evan Buckley.
“I wish he was fucking Evan Buckley,” Maddie groans.
“You are talking about your brother,” Karen says, surprise tinging her voice.
“And I know what he needs better than he does, yes, thank you.”
Since Hen and Chim can do nothing to help nor deter their efforts —though Hen is being absolutely delightful by bringing them coffee and snacks while they talk—, that only leaves Buck himself. Bobby doesn’t count, that’s their boss, and neither Karen nor Maddie know him that well.
So the focus of their plan changes. It’s no longer how to make them both spend romantic time alone with each other so they move forward their relationship in a desirable direction. It’s how to get Buck to spend romantic time alone with Eddie without him suspecting it might be romantic time... and move forward their relationship in a desirable direction. Similar, but not the same.
One hour of brainstorming later and they are getting nowhere. Denny has given them various side-eyes during that time from his position on the coach, where he is playing video games. Hen is starting to run out of snacks.
“I don’t know. Maybe this really is stupid,” Maddie sighs. “We shouldn’t force them to do anything they are not ready to do, anyway.”
“We are not forcing them, we are…” Karen leaves her mouth open for a few seconds, thinking, “creating one last opportunity?”
“You make it sound so final! It’s not like they are not going to see each other again. I mean, sure, Eddie might not come back, but I guess they’ll call each other? Once in a while?”
“Or gradually lose contact!” Denny chips in from afar.
“Denny, to your room,” Karen doesn’t even bother to look at him. Denny sighs, gets his things and goes. “I sometimes forget he’s a teen,” she groans.
“Tell me about it, I had to deal with Buck’s entire adolescence,” Maddie rolls her eyes.
Is at that precise moment when Maddie receives a text from Buck that gives her a very singular idea.
“I’ve stress-baked beyond my eating capabilities. Do you want crumpets?”
“I don’t think Eddie likes baking,” Buck says.
He is confused. It’s 11pm. Maddie came straight to his half-empty loft, completely awake and with a sort of a... crazy air to her. He’s seen his sister like that before, it still doesn’t mean he isn’t scared.
“Have you asked him?”
“Not really, he just… Look, I really don’t think it’s his thing."
“Why not?”
“He… doesn’t seem like the type?” He has no better answer. “Did you need to come here to tell me that?”
“Yes. Also, you promised crumpets,” and she doesn’t elaborate further. “Baking helps you de-stress, right?”
“Well, yeah,” most of the times, at least. Today he’s still stressed after two batches of cookies, one lemon cake, one carrot cake, and a batch of crumpets that’s still hot out of the oven.
Eddie going away is affecting him more than he will admit out loud, and he’s afraid to evaluate exactly why that is. Sure, that’s his best friend going away, but he’s going after his son, his main source of happiness. He hasn’t been himself these past few months, he needs this on a core level.
And he has been trying, he’s trying, he will try. Buck is subletting his apartment, and that means Eddie might not be completely gone forever. Buck is supporting him in his choice to go, but also he has tried to make him understand that this, the 118, could be a forever home, if he desires to come back. At any point, for whatever reason, he can come back and Buck would never hold it against him, just as he isn’t holding the decision of going away against Eddie.
He’s being his best self for Eddie, and it hurts like hell. So he bakes and forgets himself between cups and teaspoons.
“If it helps you, it might help him,” Maddie continues. “He’s not having a good time, making this choice, isn’t he?”
“I don’t—”
“Buck.”
“He’s very sure of it,” he ends up saying.
“That’s not what I asked,” Maddie points out, and she’s right. “He’s made his place here, with you and the 118. No one could be okay after deciding to leave it all behind.”
And maybe, just maybe, Maddie could be right. She often is, anyway.
Buck knocks on Eddie’s door —his own future door? It’s very weird to think about it like that— carrying a backpack filled with his baking utensils plus some ingredients he thinks Eddie might be missing. He saw his fridge and pantry not so long ago, he really doesn’t think Eddie has bought a new bottle of vanilla extract.
“Buck?” Eddie seems a bit surprised at seeing him there, not because it’s Buck, but because it’s Buck at 8am on a day off. Eddie is still wearing a tank top and some sweatpants. His tussled hair indicates he hasn’t even combed it, and Buck has the slight suspicion he has interrupted breakfast. He even has a light stubble, sleep still heavy on his eyes.
It’s… kind of a heavenly vision. Don’t get Buck wrong. It’s Eddie. It’s his best friend. But Buck is bisexual, not blind, and has learned to admit to himself when a man is just… beautiful.
Yeah, beautiful. He could describe Eddie like that.
“I…” Buck has been rehearsing the words half the night, while he looked for the perfect recipe, while he made himself some coffee, while he drove to Eddie’s home. He doesn’t remember a single one of it. “I just… I… You know, this was—”
“Do you want to come in?” Eddie’s soft voice interrupts him. And yes, yes, he wants to come in, and he’s starting to think that maybe Maddie’s suggestion was well-intentioned, but he’s just a fool, and he can’t be trusted to try to comfort his best friend, much less with baking.
But, yes. He wants to come in. So that's what Buck does.
“I… I actually, uhm,” as Eddie closes the door behind him he finds his voice again. Not the words, but his voice has to be enough. “I thought that maybe you wanted to bake something? With me?”
“Bake?” Eddie echoes. “At 8am? With you?”
“It helps me de-stress. I thought maybe... maybe you could use some of that?" He barely stops to breathe. Or think. "I know it’s stu—”
“Why not?” Buck isn’t looking at him, but he can hear the smile on his lips. “Could be fun.”
...Oh. Oh, alright. Yeah. Fun.
Buck feels like he’s about to find out that baking can be stressful.
“Just let me finish my coffee… That backpack. Are you…?”
“Carrying my baking utensils, yes,” Buck admits. “I feel like I should have asked first.”
“You could have, and you haven’t,” Eddie shrugs. “No big deal. If you can’t show up at my house this early and ask me to bake with you, then no one can.”
That is… reassuring. Buck just stands there, surrounded by Eddie’s already many packed pertenences as his best friend walks into the kitchen, and then he remembers he can walk and follows him. The coffee cup is on the table, and Eddie doesn’t even bother sitting down, though by the position of the chair Buck can tell he was indeed sitting before he knocked.
The kitchen is in its bare bones, currently, same as the rest of the house. Buck saw it just a couple of days before, he knew the state it was in. Hell, he’s been helping Eddie pack away his life. But with the light of the early day, everything takes a more melancholic tinge. No pictures, no plants. Not many signs of anyone living there, currently, except for the coffee mug on Eddie’s hands.
“You can unpack everything you’ve brought while I’m back to being human,” Eddie lifts the coffee as if to stress the point. “You can tell me what we are baking, if you want.”
“Yeah, sure,” Buck leaves the backpack on top of the table and he opens it, starting to take out the bowl, the baking pan, the utensils, the cups, and tablespoons, and teaspoons, the vanilla extract, and everything else he brought. “It’s a chocolate wacky cake. It’s… uh, it’s very easy to bake. I believe you haven’t baked a lot, right?” Eddie makes an affirmative noise as he looks at Buck from behind the mug, still in contact with his lips as he leans against the kitchen counter. Right. Right. “It’s easy, it’s quick, it’s… delicious, actually. Do you want crumpets? I made some yesterday and I actually brought a couple, just in case you wanted some.”
“Your crumpets? Always,” so Buck takes out the small separate bag and extends it to Eddie without even looking.
When Eddie gets the bag he brushes Buck’s fingers, and honestly Buck’s brain should have not reacted like that . That feather touch on his own fingers felt… strange. His entire hand tingled, and that titillation traveled up his arm, bending on the elbow and then on the shoulder, and directly to his chest. There was warmth, in there, and on his face too, all of a sudden. Even his ears felt warmth.
Just a friend, Buck. Just a friend. ‘Don’t fuck this up,’ said a voice in the back of his brain, a voice that made him retract his arm and keep pulling out all the things he had brought.
On his end, Eddie had taken out a crumpet and was munching on it. “Damn, Buck. You are good.”
“Well, I’ve made crumpets enough times to know the recipe by memory,” Buck responds absentmindedly.
“It shows,” Eddie almost laughs, and Buck can still hear it.
“I've brought a bit of everything because I didn't know what…” Buck is unable to finish the sentence. He doesn't know what's left at Eddie's home, because Eddie is going. Eddie is going and what can there be left in the fridge?
“For a cake? I have sugar and some eggs,” Eddie says.
“We won’t need eggs,” Buck says, and when Eddie doesn’t answer he looks at him. The man exhibits a look of thorough confusion.
“For a cake?” He repeats.
“Yes, for a cake,” Buck nods slightly. “I called it wacky, right? I didn’t leave out that part.”
“But… no eggs?”
“Not needed,” Buck insists. “You really haven’t heard anything about wacky cakes, have you?”
And no, Eddie hasn’t. That much is clear.
“It’s very easy,” Buck says, he's echoing himself and he knows it. They have all the ingredients laid out before them. Some flour, Eddie’s sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt (Eddie also had that), apple cider, milk and powdered sugar, apart from the obvious cooking spray. Buck doesn’t know what kind of dried fruit Eddie would prefer, so he has brought nuts and raisins just in case, but also almonds because even though they aren’t technically dried fruit Buck tried them on the cake once and it tasted good.
It’s a simple cake, very difficult to fuck it up. Even as Buck assures Eddie the cake it’s going to turn out just fine, Eddie doesn’t look entirely convinced. Buck turns on the oven for preheating as Eddie reads through the recipe on Buck’s phone, because Buck wanted him to be sure he isn’t making this shit up.
“First we should prepare the baking pan, then?” Eddie asks.
“Yes, but that’s easy. I can do that while you start measuring the dry ingredients. Not the dried fruit,” he adds before Eddie can ask. “That’s the last thing to do before getting it in the oven.”
Eddie nods in understanding and he reaches for the flour package. Buck has the canning spray already in hand when he hears the unmistakable sound of a package ripping just a bit too much .
“Shit, sorry,” Eddie says, immediately, and Buck turns just to find a cloud of flour in the air and a little mountain next to the ripped package on top of the counter.
“It happens quite often,” Buck is quick to say. He doesn’t say that it only happens to him whenever he is really stressed. When he spends entire days baking and actually has to go back to the closest convenience store to buy more flour either because he broke his third package from the day or because he has actually run out. “I’ll help you clean, it’s fine. It’s okay.”
“I’ll… get the broom,” Eddie says.
They clean the mess in silence, only the hum of the oven heating up in the background. It’s not that much flour, overall, Buck has had worse accidents. He’s spilled liquid, stained sinks and counters, covered his entire kitchen in different types of powders, of course including flour.
It doesn’t take them more than a couple of minutes. Only when they are done Buck looks at Eddie again, noticing he’s slightly covered in flour that mostly concentrates on his hair and shoulders.
“Wait,” he doesn’t stop to think, he just reaches out to dust off Eddie’s hair. At least he’s not wearing any hair gel, or they would be having a funny situation with the white getting stuck—
Eddie reaches up and grabs Buck’s wrist, taking him by surprise. It isn’t a fast movement, more like a distracted one, and Buck was distracted enough himself or he would have noticed how close they were. Mere inches apart, their slight height difference more noticeable than usual, as Eddie’s head is almost imperceptibly tilted up.
Buck knows he blushes violently. It isn’t fun.
“You don’t have to…” Eddie starts saying, and it seems at that moment it registers just how close they are. Maybe is Buck’s blush, maybe is his own brain catching up, because he stops talking as the red color runs through his cheeks and ears.
Of course, Eddie and Buck are close. They’ve been physically close a great number of times. This still somehow feels different, in a way Buck can’t exactly pinpoint. Why are they blushing? They are friends. They are best friends, in fact, and being best friends is the best that could happen to him. He wouldn’t change it for the world. Eddie is… Eddie is…
Eddie opens his mouth to speak and Buck, shit, fuck , Buck can only look at his lips, slightly chapped and perfect, and—
And he has a problem.
Buck frees his wrist from Eddie’s —not even slightly strong— grip, taking a couple of steps back.
“We should… start, right? The oven has been on for, what? Almost ten minutes?” More like five, Buck knows, but he’s exaggerating on purpose. “We are wasting electricity here.”
“...Yeah. Yes, of course, let’s just…” Eddie doesn’t finish the sentence as he turns around and focuses on the fragile flour package and the one and a half cup he needs of its contents.
They bake mostly in silence, and it’s… not uncomfortable, per se. There’s a kind of tension in the air Buck cannot describe. They speak, Eddie asking questions about the recipe, and Buck giving recommendations. Eddie chooses the nuts for the filling, and Buck thinks it’s a perfectly good choice, so Eddie stirs and combine all the ingredients together and soon pours the chocolate batter into the pan. Buck takes it inside the oven, quick but careful. For what he saw and smelled, Eddie has done a wonderful job, and the consistency seems perfect.
“Now we leave it for about twenty-five minutes,” Buck says. “Though depending on the oven it might take a bit more. It's a matter of keeping an eye on it.”
“Make sense. Should we watch TV while we wait?” Eddie suggests. And Buck has no better ideas and a lot of thoughts to drown or push or keep away, and he has nothing left to bake to help him with that, so he says yes.
It's when they are sitting on the couch when Buck pulls out his phone and texts Maddie.
Not even 9am and Buck is already messaging her. That must be payback for showing up in his loft at 11pm—
‘I think I'm in love with Eddie.’
“Holy shit,” Maddie almost jumps out of the bed and throws away her phone, but she manages to keep some semblance of composure. No one is looking at her, but she needs to keep it for whatever is coming her way.
“Maddie? All okay?” Chim asks from somewhere in the house.
“All good! Don't worry!” She knows he will worry anyway, but she doesn't care right now, not when her little brother is having the fucking realization. It's been a long time coming.
Buck is still writing.
‘Don’t laugh. I know you are laughing,’ she is not, in fact, laughing, but Maddie feels ecstatic. ‘We are sitting on his couch watching TV while the cake's in the oven.’
Maddie starts writing there. ‘Wait, you've already baked together?’
‘I might have gone to his house at 8am to bake.’
Damn, he really is impulsive.
‘Oh, wow,’ Maddie sends that message, because what else? Her brother, actually listening to her, maybe listening to her a little two well. She can't believe it has worked? Well, not entirely, not yet. ‘Are you going to tell him?’ She writes next.
‘No way,’ and Maddie's hopes plummet to the underground. ‘He’s my best friend, he's straight, and I don't want to ruin shit.’
Okay. Okay. Maddie cracks her knuckles.
‘Are you sure he's straight?’
‘He has only dated women,’ and oh, beautiful answer, little brother. Because that says everything you need to know about a person's sexuality.
‘And that has gone… how well, for Eddie?’
Maddie is actually proud of herself. She's doing a wonderful job and she knows it.
‘He’s not been very lucky,’ Buck admits, and that's music to Maddie's ears. Eyes. You can't see music. Whatever.
‘He doesn't sound very interested in women if you ask me,’ she writes. ‘Maybe he's just not ready to say it out loud.’
‘And what do you want me to do? Let's say you are right. I tell him I have a crush on him and expect him to just accept everything he's “not ready to say out loud”?’
Okay, yeah, maybe she had been too hopeful there.
‘Don’t focus on that. He might not have the most awesome reaction ever, but do you really think he'll hate you? Or will stop being your friend?’
It takes a bit of time for Buck to answer.
‘He’s not like that.’
‘Exactly , ’ there, Maddie, there it is, you are doing great again. ‘Your friendship is stronger than that.’
‘Why are you so invested?’
‘You know I want you to be happy,’ she answers, and at that moment Chimney appears at the door and looks at her, a slight frown on his face.
“What are you doing?”
“Talking to my brother,” for now, Chim doesn't need to know he might be close to losing his bet.
She writes, ‘And anyway, do you want him to go to El Paso without knowing how you feel?’
‘He’s not going to stay for me, if that's what you are saying.’
‘No, he's not. But he might be back for you.’
Buck doesn't answer to that, but the application shows he has read it. Maddie wants to think her work there is done.
“Buck is awake? At this hour?” Chimney is asking. Maddie just makes an affirmative noise. “What, has he even caught a wink tonight?”
“I hope he has,” she smiles softly and leaves her phone to the side. “If he's exhausted he might even burn down the kitchen.”
Chimney gives her a puzzled look, but Maddie doesn't clarify. He doesn't pry, mostly because Jee is calling him from another room and he's fast to go to her.
Now, it's just a matter of time. She's sure of it.
The oven beeps over in the kitchen and Buck goes to check the cake because he cannot possibly sit still next to Eddie for another second.
The cake is doing good, maybe it needs about five more minutes. He takes the powdered sugar and distractedly sprinkles the chocolate cake before leaving it inside again. That’s one less thing to do. Buck turns off the oven and just lets it cook with the heat that's already inside, and thinks he can take a few more seconds before going back to Eddie. He needs to, or he will combust.
What Maddie says makes sense. He really doesn't know about Eddie's sexuality, he has just... always assumed, and Eddie hasn't said otherwise. He's only dated women, and even the most promising ones have given him new traumas, which is honestly worrying because some of them were absolutely perfect. Ana was perfect. And yet, they broke up. He might be bisexual, or he might be just gay with a lot of internalized homophobia. Not that Buck doesn't have a bit of that too, even nowadays. He's working on it, and that's what matters.
But it would fit, wouldn't it? Some people talk about catholic guilt, something Buck has never had, but Eddie? Eddie, and his catholic family? That Eddie? He really might be closeted. Very closeted . He’s—
No, no. Buck has to stop himself. Again, he can’t just assume. He shouldn’t, it’s not fair, but Maddie is still right. Buck needs to tell him before he goes. Buck knows now, and he can’t keep it inside, that’s why he has messaged Maddie. Maddie, who told him to go bake with Eddie in the first place. Bless her, curse her, Buck is doomed either way.
“Buck? All good there?” Eddie asks, still in the living room.
“Yes… yes!” He repeats, his voice stronger. He’s confident, he has to be. “It needs five more minutes. Maybe.”
Sure, throw in a ‘maybe’ , that sounds really trustworthy.
“Do you need help with the oven?” And if Buck’s not mistaken —he often is, but come on— that’s Eddie’s voice coming closer, and— yep, there he is. He leans on the door frame, can he stop doing that? It doesn’t help Buck’s case, not at all, and it’s not just the attitude. Eddie’s never looked less put together and the only thing Buck can think about is how much he wants to kiss him senseless.
He realizes he's been suppressing this attraction for so long, and has come out in such a random moment that Buck, honest to God, doesn’t know what to do with himself.
And he’s sure he is making a poor attempt at hiding his inner turmoil, because Eddie frowns and takes a couple of steps towards him. “All good?” He asks again.
“Yeah, sure, no, I’m…” Buck says, intelligently. ‘I can’t say anything, how could I say anything? He’s going, and Maddie has made me delusional, he’s straight, or maybe he isn't, but this is stupid, I’m stupid. How could I crush on my best friend, haven’t I learned anything from the movies?’
Maddie’s voice says in his head, ‘It usually ends well in the movies’.
Shut up, Maddie. Buck doesn't get to be hopeful. Buck thinks he can't get any more stressed, but Eddie is standing in front of him, not as close as before but still too close for Buck to not feel a buzz in his skin, almost like an electrical current that traverses him from head to toe. It wants him to act, to do something, to close the distance, to run away, but never just stand there.
“Hey, what’s…” Eddie closes the distance and reaches out to Buck’s hand, why is he— ah. “Powdered sugar?”
“From the cake. I added it,” Buck says, his voice trembles a bit and he finds his throat horse. Eddie’s touch is burning him. He can’t pull away. He’d love to burn more. It scares him.
“Oh, good,” Eddie wipes the powder with a finger and takes it to his mouth. He arches his eyebrows and smiles. “What? It’s good,” he says after leaving it clean, not that there was much powdered sugar in it to begin with.
Still, what the actual fuck. Something breaks in Buck’s brain at that moment. What does the world want him to do? Stay there? Combust? He could combust, but he doesn’t want to ruin Eddie’s place. The cake was good, it didn’t deserve to be ruined by Buck’s sudden gay panicking.
He's a firefighter, and he's used to run head first into danger. Sometimes even too recklessly. This time? He could run. He could hide. His half-broken, beaten self-preservation instinct indicates that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
His heart, encouraged by a voice that sounds like Maddie, says otherwise.
Jesus fucking Christ, to hell with it.
Buck leans forwards as he cups Eddie’s face with his right hand and kisses him as hard as he dares.
He blanks. He plainly blanks. He doesn’t know how long he’s been kissing him, but there’s an explosion on his chest, that... pure, unadultered, warmth, something that tells him this is right. This is okay. Buck is not a worse person for wanting this, though maybe he should have asked first. He's reckless, he's probably fucking everything up, but he. Wants. This.
He’s always been better with actions than with words, anyway.
Eddie separates, breathing hard, and he looks into Buck’s eyes. There’s a hint of confusion, a bit of surprise, but there’s no… rejection?
It lasts a second, as Eddie leans in again and kisses him back.
“And then you said…?”
Maddie leans forward over the dinner table, towards Buck. She needs this update, work has been too stressing. Buck seats relaxedly in his chair, expression neutral, head leaned to the side as he observes his (currently) unhinged sister.
Yes, said sister is very aware she looks quite unhinged. She feels quite unhinged, thank you.
“Nothing,” Buck shruggs. “We ate some of the cake, which was amazing by the way, and Eddie insisted I took half of what was left. I'm going back to help him move the furniture tomorrow, and then that's it. He's gone."
Maddie can’t believe what she’s hearing. All that work, and for what? Sure, okay, it was a small victory her brother had finally acknowledged his feelings. Maddie would pat herself in the back for that. But no confession? No kiss? They just fucking baked for about thirty minutes, ate cake and said goodbye to each other?
Maddie expected something more, call her delusional. Buck refused to tell her more through the phone, so they are hanging out at her house hours after the baking session. When he could be with Eddie.
She was so close. She was so, so close.
“You didn’t tell him?” Maddie tries again. She has to.
“I think it would be kind of a burden right now. He has a lot going on, and he needs to focus on Chris and what’s best for him,” Buck sighs. “We’ve promised to video call every day, though. And Eddie is pretty sure he’ll be back at some point. I can live with it.”
He can live with— well, he might be able to live like that, but Maddie can’t!
“If… If you are sure about it,” she says instead, because Buck is old enough to make his own choices. He’s been, for a while. Maddie sometimes forgets it.
“I am,” her brother smiles, and it’s a sad smile. But he doesn’t look defeated, not at all. There’s a new strength in him that Maddie hadn’t seen until now.
He will survive this crush.
…Though Maddie needs some new plans to get them together as soon as Eddie comes back from Texas. She should call Karen, later.