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Eddie stares into the nearly barren refrigerator—the ceramic fruit magnets and family photos seemingly never have been replaced since Buck took over the lease. He thinks absentmindedly that it’s unlike Buck to have the house decorated so impersonally. He pushes the thought away, afraid of the idea that Buck maintains the idea that the house is still less belonging to him than it is to Eddie; “still” as if it wasn’t already his all those years ago in early mornings before zoo trips or nights after hard shifts with mugs of hot chocolate grasped between their trembling fingers.
It’s also unlike Buck to have such an empty refrigerator. Typically, there are containers stacked to the top of his prepped meals for the week, fruit for visits from Christopher, and meat and vegetables for his dinners at home. Now, reusable glass bottles of orange juice stare burn into his gaze, looking brighter than any worldly object ever should. Buck’s water filtering pitcher is pushed to the back, nearly empty.
Front and center, however, sits Eddie’s favorite juice. Juice that Eddie has never seen Buck willfully drink over water or soda or coffee or another variation of juice. Juice that Buck knows is his favorite.
The cold air of the fridge makes his skin crawl with goosebumps, but he continues staring. It’s alluring in a way he can’t quite explain, capturing in a nature he’s never really experienced. The scent of cleaner Buck’s used for the fridge burns at his nostrils, twinging his nose, but he continues staring. The juice, the juice, the juice. It sets something within him alight, but he can't seem to put his finger on it. His interaction with Father Brian comes to mind.
Deep down, he knows what the quiet whirr of Buck’s refrigerator is attempting to speak to him. And, if it were something he believed in, he’d think the fates themselves set up the fridge as a message for Eddie. The bleached white of the refrigerator’s walls burn his retinas the longer he gazes into the appliance, but he hardly recognizes the sting in favor of watching the juice as if it holds the secrets to the universe—secrets he doesn’t believe in.
There are no secrets; life is short and meaningless, and it is up to you to find the meaning behind your own existence. Something about this juice, though, is screaming reason, meaning, importance. White blurring at the edges of his periphery, he aches to reach out, to follow the light that this refrigerator is offering up to him. His fingers twitch on either side of his body, and he tells himself that he’ll do it.
And then he doesn’t.
“Eddie?” Buck says, peeking his head around the door frame, worry and confusion written into his expression. “Why is the fridge open?”
Eddie’s head snaps to Buck’s face as if he’s been caught in the act. In the act of what, he’s not sure, but in the act of something—something wrong, something shameful. He lifts a hand to slam the door shut. In the subconscious of his mind, he knows there is a metaphor inscribed somewhere in that, but he can’t seem to find it.
“I—uh. Nothing.” He must look insane, his eyes wide, his expression flighty like a bird with a broken wing backed into a corner and looking for an escape. “Sorry,” he continues, his eyes falling to his feet, suddenly aware of the amount of time he’d spent staring into the empty abyss of the fridge. “I zoned out.”
“Uh, ok,” Buck laughs, eyeing the closed refrigerator. Eddie is irrationally afraid of what he will find. “Are you ok?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Perfectly normal,” he replies, avoiding the attention of Buck’s gaze, his face reddened. He uselessly busies his hands with a dish towel strewn across the side of the sink.
The juice, the juice, the juice.
In Eddie’s periphery, he watches Buck nod as if he knows it’s not true but isn’t going to push, his lips pouty like they always get when he feels that Eddie is struggling. He appreciates the sentiment, loves the trust Buck holds for him, but a part of him wants him to push, needs him to push. Maybe it would be easier if he pushed. Perhaps that’s what it would take for Eddie to face the revelation he’s spent a lifetime building up to. In an unexplored fragment of his mind, he knows what this revelation will be, knows that the truth has been growing and growing since childhood, the process getting the barest hint of a jumpstart at the sight of Evan Buckley.
“Is that my shirt?” Buck asks suddenly.
“What?”
“My shirt,” he points. “You’re wearing my shirt.”
“Oh, um,” Eddie stammers, glancing down at the worn, oversized t-shirt that he realizes does, in fact, belong to Buck. He’s still sleeping on the couch, but he’s been keeping his clothes in the master bedroom closet and dresser, so it was bound to happen eventually, but he never imagined Buck’s shirt hanging loosely over his frame would make him so flustered. “Yeah. I guess I accidentally grabbed it this morning.”
A beat passes of silence then a heavy footstep echoes dramatically bringing Buck closer to him. “Eddie.”
Eddie inhales a shaky breath, digging his nails into the rough texture of decorated cloth. “Buck,” he breathes out. “I’m…” he starts, but he doesn’t quite know what he wants to say. “I’m ok,” he decides on, though that’s not precisely it. But he’s getting closer, and the closer he gets to finding the words, the closer he becomes to that statement simultaneously being true.
“Ok, Eddie,” Buck concedes, a small frown forming alongside the saddened crease between his eyes. “I’m here for you. Always.”
“Hey!” Buck calls out cheerily to Eddie where he stands on the porch, his shoulder pressed into a post, his arms crossed over his chest. He’s smiling fondly watching Buck scrub down his truck with a sudsy sponge. “Can you get me something to drink?” he yells. “It’s getting hot.”
Eddie nods, unfolding his arms and heading into the house. He walks past the living and dining rooms, the sound of Chris playing video games with his friends ringing out through the house, and he enters the kitchen.
The refrigerator hums with exertion as it keeps up with its retention of cold while combating the California heat. It feels almost taunting. Its struggle against the heat feels oddly reminiscent of his own life.
Maybe he’s thinking too hard about the fridge.
He opens the fridge to find the same bottles of orange juice that have sat there for at least the few weeks that Eddie has been back to Los Angeles. The water pitcher is in need of a refill, so his options are stuck between orange juice and Buck’s diet sodas. His increasingly obsessive orange juice stare sessions are safe from Buck for the moment at least as he’s outside covered in soap and soaked much more thoroughly with water than he should be given the simple task.
He pries his eyes away from the almost glowing sight of the orange juice; the overhead light of the fridge glows directly into the nearest glass, and Eddie feels as if he’s a moth drawn to a flame. And like a moth, he can’t tell if the light that attracts him will burn at the touch.
“Dad? Why are you just standing there with the fridge open?” Chris asks, nearly startling Eddie off his feet.
“It’s, uh, hot outside,” he deflects once he stabilizes his breathing. “Do you need something?”
“I just wanted an orange juice,” Chris tells him, his sarcastic, teenage cant at an all time high. “Can you hand me one? I need to get back before the next game starts.”
Eddie hesitates for a split second before he reaches for the glass. In a senseless part of his mind, he’s amazed to find that it doesn’t burn. He hands the bottle to his son who murmurs a thanks in response.
He’d do anything for that kid. Even something as ostensibly trivial as taking a juice from the fridge.
Eddie heads back outside, a can of diet Coca Cola in hand. Buck’s ridden himself of his sodden shirt by the time he does, leaving him in only a pair of green, cotton shorts and tennis shoes. He should look stupid—and if he’s honest, he does—but Eddie finds himself utterly incapable of thinking so.
“Here,” Eddie says, pressing the cold drink into the skin of Buck’s bare shoulder. Buck jumps at the cold touch before he turns to find Eddie. He smiles softly, thankfully.
“Thanks,” he grins, cracking the can open with his wet hands. He chugs about a fourth of the drink down in one, his Adam’s apple bobbing obscenely as he swallows. Eddie hopes the way his face flushes is explicative of the heat to anyone there to witness. “You ok?” Buck asks following the dramatic gasp of breath he lets out once he’s finished a good part of his soda.
“Yeah,” he replies, the words falling out of him a bit too quickly. “I’m great.”
The grocery store is fairly quiet given the time of day; the time of day being eight in the morning, which is far too early for Eddie to be functioning on a Saturday, but it’s their first day off shift as well as unburdened by appointments and other various errands.
Buck takes the lead, being more so a morning person than Eddie. Eddie languidly pushes the shopping cart behind him, his forearms holding a majority of his weight where they’re pressed into the handle. And if Buck stands still, looking over the different types of pasta for even a moment longer, he and the cart might find themselves on the ground.
“Which shape do you think Chris likes more?” Buck asks, holding up two boxes of the same brand.
Eddie blinks lazily up at him, squinting at his options. “Buck, those are literally the same thing.”
“What? No, they’re not. Size and shape is very important, Eddie,” he rolls his eyes, flipping the boxes back around to decide for himself. His brows furrow as he mulls his decision over, clearly taking things Eddie couldn’t begin to imagine into account. It’s endearing, how much he cares about the smallest things when his family is involved. Though, it is a bit too early for such consideration.
“Pros and cons then,” he waves a hand. “Go on.”
Buck watches him for a moment, his mouth slightly agape. His face scrunches up as if he’s fighting off a thought, and then he obliges with his eyes unfocused on the boxes before him, “Well, um, it depends on what sauce we’re having with them, but this one is good at soaking up the sauce, which can make it taste better, but I think he might like the texture of this one more because sometimes he doesn’t like when foods are too soggy.”
“That one then,” he says, pointing at the second one, “and make a thinner sauce to go with.”
Buck thinks for another moment before he sets the first box on the shelf and sets the chosen pasta into the cart. “Ok!” he says cheerily, pulling his handwritten grocery list out from his pocket alongside a small pencil that Eddie can only imagine came with lottery numbers. He messily scribbles a line over the words “pasta shells.” “Now we need… fruit!”
Buck guides him through the store by the front of the cart, and Eddie follows blindly, thinking both fondly and bitterly about the uncomfortable, leather couch waiting for him at home. Eddie can hardly wait until he can convince Buck to switch out his horribly stiff couch for Eddie’s nicely worn one.
“Do you still have juice at home?” Buck asks, standing where the oranges and apples sit side by side. Eddie doesn’t respond for a moment, his eyes glued on the oranges arranged abnormally perfectly in the wooden display. “Do we need to buy more oranges?” he reiterates, turning to face Eddie.
“Oh, um. I think we’re… ok,” he says, nodding like an idiot, his bottom lip jutted out. He says this as if he hasn’t been avoiding the hand squeezed orange juices front and center of the refrigerator for days now. His skin buzzes at the thought of the juices.
“You haven’t been drinking them as much,” he points out, and Eddie squeezes his own bicep between his fingers at the words. Buck’s eyes follow the movement. “Do you want something else? Apple or grape or…?”
“No,” he tells him irrefutably. “I… love… orange juice!” He flinches as the words come out.
“Ok…” Buck says, ending off with an awkward laugh at Eddie’s weirdness. “No juice then.”
The juice, the juice, the juice.
The warm summer wind is blowing through the bay doors, contrasting with and fighting against the air conditioning of the station. It’s Eddie’s favorite weather, though it’s not exactly anyone else’s. Buck hates the way the wind and his sweat messes up his hair, and Hen just generally hates the heat despite being born and raised in it; Chimney finds a way to complain about any type of weather, though especially warm weather. Eddie, on the other hand, loves the dry heat that California has to offer in comparison to the humid summers of Texas.
He’s spread out in one of the lawn chairs they keep on the roof, sun damaged and closer to being trashed than being new. It creaks beneath his weight when he shifts to a more comfortable position. Sweat is beginning to form along his hairline, but it’s already formed on his back and on the underside of his thighs. His eyes are squinted shut as the hot, midday sun beams down on him, and he loves it—doesn’t even mind the way his skin is sticking to the plastic of the chair.
“Hey,” a voice comes behind him. Eddie peaks one eye half open to look at the owner of the voice as he circles around his chair. He hums in response as he takes in the towering frame of Buck standing over top of him.
“Hey,” he echoes, opening both eyes as Buck shades his face from the blaring sun. “Whatcha got there?” he asks, gesturing to the two bottles grasped between his fingers.
“Juice,” he says simply, holding it out for Eddie to take. Eddie takes the dewy drink from him hesitantly as Buck reaches for the chair closest to Eddie’s, pulling it beside him. “Brought some of them to the station the other day, but I don't think you noticed them in the fridge.”
“Guess not,” Eddie murmurs in response, spinning the unlabeled bottle around as if in inspection. Buck twists the cap off of his bottle, and Eddie takes it as his cue to open his own. He takes a sip, and he feels suddenly ridiculous for his avoidance of the drink.
It’s just juice.
It was never about the juice.
“That night you and Tommy broke up,” Eddie says suddenly, like the words themselves are possessing his very being. “You came over and I was in my underwear. Remember that night?”
Buck scoffs humorously and says, “Of course I remember that night. Kinda hard to forget your first boyfriend dumping you ‘cause—” he cuts himself off, shaking his head. Eddie decides not to push on whatever that was. “I remember.”
“I saw a priest that day.”
“A priest? Do—do you do that often?”
“No, I haven’t stepped inside a confession booth since I was a kid. Well, until that day. I just—I needed some guidance, I guess, so I saw a priest. I ran away, like, five minutes in, but he recognized me in a juice bar a few days later.” Eddie pauses, taking in a sharp breath before he continues, “He noticed that I wanted to buy juice but decided against it at the last second. He dug a little too deep into that, and told me that I ‘don’t feel worthy of joy.’ Which, yes, I realize now was definitely true, but… he told me to do something that brought me joy, something—frivolous,” Eddie laughs. “That’s why I was in my underwear. That’s why the mustache was gone. I was doing something frivolous. But then you showed up, and I thought, ‘Oh. That’s it.’”
Eddie turns to face Buck, his face already tinged with red—red that he’ll soothe later with the aloe vera lotion he keeps for Chris and their beach days. His face is open and anticipatory. Eddie’s fingers twitch around the juice in his hand, dampened by the condensation. Somewhere deep inside—in the pit of his gut or the flesh of his heart—he finds the courage to take the joy that he now knows he deserves.
“I was doing something frivolous, but you, Buck, are the joy I wouldn’t let myself have.”
Buck’s mouth opens and closes respectively, a small wrinkle forming between his eyes as if he can’t believe what Eddie is saying. Eddie thinks he should be anxious, palms sweating and heart racing, but he feels none of that.
It’s Buck.
“Eddie,” he says like it’s sacred, like it’s holy, like he’s cradling the name in the palm of his hand and grasping it with careful fingers. “I—I don’t—”
“That’s ok, Buck,” Eddie tells him, and he means it. Eddie’s maybe not perfectly content with solely being Buck’s best friend, with watching him move on from him and Christopher and settling down with someone else, but he would be. If that was what it would take to keep Buck where he belongs, watching Eddie’s back and letting Eddie watch his, then he would be.
“No, no, Eddie. I don’t—What are you saying right now?” His eyes are a bit frantic as he leans forward, inching closer to Eddie. “Because if I’m getting this wrong, if you’re not sending the signal I think you are…”
“I’m definitely sending that signal, Buck. I think I’ve been sending that signal for a while now actually.” His eyes are flashing between confusion and fear and disbelief. Eddie can’t let that be. “Do you want me too, Buck?” he asks, his voice an octave lower, his gaze tilted at him through his lashes.
“Eddie,” he says again, his flush deepening. He looks away for a moment before his eyes are drawn back as if he can’t bring himself to fully take his eyes off of him. “Of course I want you, Eddie. God, and everyone knows it too.”
“Well, it wasn’t obvious to me, if that helps.”
“I’m not sure that means much.” Eddie gives him a look. Buck holds up his hands with a smile. “No offense, but we’ve always been a little dense about each other, don’t you think?”
Eddie laughs. “Yeah, I guess we have.”
“I don’t want it to be like that anymore,” he confesses quietly. “I want us to be a unit. A—a family.”
“I want that too,” he tells him. Then he sets down his drink and grabs one leg of Buck’s chair to pull him closer. Buck seems flustered by that, but he only looks to Eddie for his next move. “Can I kiss you?”
Buck nods quickly, setting his own down beside Eddie’s before he leans closer, eagerly awaiting Eddie’s touch. Eddie grins at his keenness and presses a sun warmed hand into the space between Buck’s knees, his fingers dancing along the seam of his work pants. “Can you use your words, big boy?”
Buck’s hips cant as if they’re going to meet something when they do, and he whines a little under his breath. “Please kiss me.” It’s breathy and urgent and the hottest thing Eddie has ever heard in his life.
He pushes forward without any further pause, pressing his lips to Buck’s. Buck groans appreciatively into Eddie’s mouth and wraps a hand around his middle, splaying his warm fingers across Eddie’s back. Eddie brings a hand to cradle one side of Buck’s face, his slight stubble scratching at his palm.
They kiss for a moment or two, soft and unhurried but nonetheless ardent. Eddie is the first to pull away, putting distance between them before they lose themselves to each other’s touch.
“Hey,” Buck whispers, his breath tickling Eddie’s face in the close range. His eyes flutter open sluggishly, half lidded as if he were just waking up or tipsy.
“Hey,” Eddie resounds, pressing their foreheads into one another’s. “Was that ok?”
Buck’s soft smile stretches into a grin, and he laughs softly into the space between them. “Better than ok. Phenomenal even.”
Eddie snorts even as he blushes at the sentiment. “You were alright, I guess,” he snarks, pulling away, his cheeks flushed deeper than can be attributed to the warmth of the sun.
Buck bares his teeth in his next smile as his hand wanders along the curve of Eddie’s spine. His blunt nails scratch the surface of his shirt, the feeling of his thick fingers sending a shudder through Eddie that he clearly picks up on, if the cocky tilt of his head is anything to go by.
“We should probably head back downstairs,” Eddie says, which, if you ask Eddie, is an extreme show of self control. “Chim’ll send Ravi up here if we stay much longer. I think he’s been afraid of catching us like this for longer than we know.” He leans against the back of the creaking chair, his head tilted back while his eyes follow Buck’s face; it’s a gaze, definitely, yet the way he’s watching him now feels no different to how he would have in the past. It’s incredible how he never acknowledged how handsome Buck is before.
“Do we have to?” Buck groans, his face twisting petulantly. “Maybe we should just…” he continues, leaning across the armrest of his chair, leaving only an inch or so between them, “…kiss some more?”
“Don’t you think you’ve been caught on a roof one time too many as it is?” Eddie teases, dodging his advancement.
Buck rolls his eyes and backs away, though his smile never falters. “Asshole.”
A beat passes, their eyes glinting in the sun with the smiles spread across their faces, then Eddie says, “Well, I suppose you wouldn’t want to go to dinner with me tomorrow then. You know, if I’m an asshole.”
“Oh, shut up,” he says, smacking Eddie’s knee playfully. “Of course I want to go to dinner with you. You gonna pick me up at eight? Bring me some flowers? Open the car door?”
“Well, for one, we live together. But yes, I will bring you flowers. And I’ll open your car door if you want, but you’re still driving. Us dating doesn’t change that, I’m afraid.”
“Passenger princess.”
“Call me what you want,” he shrugs. “You’re the freak that likes driving.”
“Well—”
“—do not say that you’re a freak who likes a lot of things,” Eddie interrupts, and Buck’s mouth snaps closed so abruptly it’s almost comical.
“You don’t know what I was going to say,” he grumbles.
“Then how did I guess?”
“You know—” Buck starts but is promptly cut short by the alarm sounding off, echoing through the building and up to the roof where they’re now sitting.
“I guess I never will,” Eddie jokes, pushing himself to his feet.
“Who was on the roof earlier?” Hen asks later that night as she jogs up the stairs, returning from her nightly call with Karen and the kids.
Buck and Eddie share a look, and Buck confesses, “Eddie and I were.”
“Oh, well, you left your drinks,” she tells them, glancing cautiously over at Ravi and Chimney who are focused on their respective hands of cards as she lays the undrunk glasses on the dining table. Then she approaches them from behind the couch, leans in between the two of them and whispers, “And, by the way, if you’re going to make out on the roof, at least move your chairs when you’re done.”
Buck flushes, and Eddie laughs, “Won’t happen again.”
It will, and it does. Over and over and over.