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It all starts with puppy dog eyes, as things so often do.
See, Eddie and Buck are way more than just (temporary) roommates—they’re also best friends. So naturally, if Buck puts on his tragic little puppy dog eyes to request that they celebrate the last weekend of Pride month with gay bar trivia, then obviously Eddie’s gonna be there with bells on.
Or at least with his tie-dyed “LA Pride 2024” tank top on (from when he tagged along with Buck last year because his boyfriend-at-the-time-who-shall-not-be-named bailed last-minute).
When the rest of their group arrives to the Starlight Spectrum Bar and Grill in their Ubers, none of which are driven by Eddie thank you very much, they’re similarly decked out.
First it’s Ravi, wearing a cropped shirt with color-changing sequins. Then it’s Hen in a rainbow LAFD shirt, Karen with her various accessories featuring crocheted flowers in shades of pink, and Chimney donning rainbow nail polish that Eddie can easily tell was done by Jee-Yun.
And yet, their fabulous flock is practically nothing compared to the rest of the crowd they see upon entering the bar.
There’s a gaggle of women with rainbow beaded friendship bracelets and bedazzled corsets, a family big enough to have their own reality show wearing matching shirts with a photo of the dads printed on it, and a group of 20-something boys with various colorful flags painted on their cheeks, to start.
On a slightly raised platform at the front of the room are two drag queens with microphones setting up.
The queen on the left, in a sequined hot pink jumpsuit and matching cowgirl hat, is announcing that they’re about to start. “If you’re here for queer trivia, we’re gonna get started in a few minutes here, but meanwhile, you can enjoy some of the Starlight’s specialty cocktails! I’m Sandy Eggo, and I recommend the Lesbos Lemon Drop!” She raises her glass in a ‘cheers’ motion towards the queen with big, bright purple hair, whose skin-tight rainbow dress and sparkly stilettos don’t slow her down as she dashes back over to Sandy Eggo.
“And I’m Loretta Lavender,” the purple-haired one says into her microphone, “And after you grab those cocktails, don’t forget to grab your answer sheets from me! Oh, and I recommend the Glittery Grapefruit Greyhound.” They clink their glasses together, and smoothly down half their drinks.
Sandy clears her throat, and continues, “Seriously, though, can we get some applause for the Starlight for not only hosting us for free, but also donating tonight’s proceeds to our friends at the local trans youth support services!?”
The room erupts in genuine cheers, and Karen voices what they’re probably all thinking: “Alright, then. Mandatory cocktails, everyone, let’s go!”
Chimney volunteers to grab the answer sheets and the table near the front that’s big enough for their group, as long as Hen gets him ‘something sweet.’
“Oh wow, these are all so—” Hen starts.
“Fruity?” Eddie asks, automatically scanning the list for the least over-the-top drink.
“I was gonna say sweet, but…” Hen trails off, raising an eyebrow.
Buck all but has sparkles in his eyes. Of course, he’s a sucker for a fruity drink as a treat. Ultimately, he and Ravi both get the same borderline-glowing pink monstrosity, Karen gets something called a Minogue Monaco, while Eddie plays it safe with a Born This Way Boilermaker.
At the table, Chim’s happy with the Sappho Sangria that Hen brings alongside her Ruby Rose Rita.
“Hope it’s alright I named the team,” Chim says, gesturing to the answer sheet in front of him.
Eddie’s busy taking his seat between Karen and Buck, so Hen and Ravi sitting on either side of Chim are the first to read what he wrote.
“You’re kidding,” Ravi says dryly.
“I was joking, Chim!” Hen exclaims.
“Did he really—” Karen starts.
“What? What!?” Buck asks, leaning across the table, clearly feeling left out.
Even though Eddie doesn’t exactly have a horse in this race, he starts to feel a bit left out too before Chim flips the paper around to show Karen, him, and Buck.
Under ‘Team name:’ Chimney has written ‘Station 1gayteen.’
“What does that—” Eddie starts.
Buck bursts out in laughter when he reads it, stopping Eddie in his tracks.
“I joked about it when we got here,” Hen explains.
Karen cuts in, “I believe your exact words, when you saw Buck was wearing the same cutoff rainbow LAFD shirt as you, were ‘station 118? More like station one-gay-teen,’ Hen.”
Chim cheekily shrugs. “Well, I thought it was funny. And so did Loretta Lavender when she asked what our team name was and I explained, so…”
Eddie makes a point of not chiming in, since he’s one of the few of the group who probably shouldn’t get a say in whether or not something is gay.
Instead, he focuses on Buck’s shirt that Karen mentioned. ‘Cutoff’ doesn’t really do it justice. It has the LAFD logo in rainbow, and it was originally a short-sleeve t-shirt before Buck absolutely sinfully butchered the sleeves and the sides. Eddie had noticed it earlier, how could he not, but he hadn’t realized just how much more of Buck’s body it shows than it covers when he leans forward.
He focuses on his drink instead.
Thankfully, before he knows it, he’s able to focus on Sandy Eggo and Loretta Lavender getting everyone’s attention with a reminder of the rules before they start.
Round 1: Queer Basics
The first round is always the easiest.
Okay, ‘always’ might be a bit much considering Eddie could count on one hand the amount of times he’s gone to bar trivia. Not to mention, this specific theme isn’t exactly one he’s the most well-versed on.
In fact, he doesn’t even need to say anything for the first few questions and instead he just watches in admiration as his friends confidently bounce answers around.
He almost starts to feel guilty for his lack of contributions, which is ridiculous because obviously he understands that LGBTQ+ history is valuable and people should know about it.
It’s just… Eddie doesn’t yet.
His attention is fully caught again, though, when he hears Buck say his name in some context he had been too zoned out to absorb.
“...just Eddie, that’s crazy.”
“Hmm?” He hums under his breath in Buck’s general direction, in a way that Eddie knows Buck will understand as ‘what?’.
Everyone else is looking between the two of them, all with different yet equally illegible expressions on their faces. Buck hums back twice in a way that Eddie knows means ‘what what?’.
“I missed that question,” he says quietly enough so that Chim and Hen, sitting closest to the front of the room, can still hear what the trivia hosts are asking next.
Karen lets out a single giggle, then crosses her arms while composing herself. Ravi just frowns with a furrowed brow.
“Oh, it was— uh. What percentage of the population is estimated to be queer?” Buck recounts.
“And I said that studies have claimed it’s 1-in-10 but I think it must be higher, and I used our group as an example,” Ravi explains.
“Oh?”
Karen continues, “And I said ‘half of us, right?’—” herself, Hen, and Buck, three out of six, makes sense, Eddie thinks. “—but then Ravi said…”
Ravi jumps in, “I actually date people of any gender.”
“Oh!” Huh. So four out of six, that’s statistically significant. Or something. Never mind the probably confounding factor of where they are right now.
“Except then—” Karen starts, but is interrupted by a scraping sound, which brings Eddie’s attention directly across from him—Chimney getting up from his chair.
Chimney chimes in. “I said that I don’t think it’s fair to call myself fully straight if I never checked. Plus mainly, before my heart was fully dedicated to Maddie, as it has been for approximately six years and seven months and always will be—” Chim rushes but also stresses that last part, “—I totally thought a guy was hot enough to wanna kiss every now and then.”
Eddie can’t even muster an ‘oh’ at what that does to the math. Now what Buck had been saying about ‘just Eddie, that’s crazy,’ makes sense.
“Hell, I said you were beautiful when I first saw you,” Chim casually drops in Eddie’s direction as he walks towards the front of the room to hand over the finished answer sheet.
Which is what makes Eddie finally realize the rest of the room is chatting again because he missed the round ending.
“Well then. I’m gonna get another drink. Anyone else?” Hen asks.
Eddie downs the rest of his beer. “That’s a great idea. I’ll come with.”
Round 2: Pride History
Hen convinces Eddie at the bar to try a ‘less boring hetero male’ drink this time. While they’re waiting, she checks in, probably more seriously than the situation (or lack thereof) calls for.
“Sorry if that was a lot—if it felt like all the gays were singling you out or something.”
Eddie smiles genuinely. “No, it’s alright, Hen. It didn’t.”
Hen returns his smile, clearly taking a second to figure out how to say whatever she wants to say next. “Y’know something funny…”
She glances briefly towards their friends before turning back to make eye contact with Eddie.
“When Chim said that—the thing about thinking guys were hot back then—Buck said that he did too. Except—”
“Except Buck is bisexual.”
“Exactly.”
Eddie doesn’t have strength to consider whether she meant Buck had thought guys in general were hot or that he specifically thought Eddie was hot, nor does he want to consider whether him thinking Buck was hot (or fatally magnetic or unbelievably breathtaking or objectively gorgeous) when they first met means anything.
It’s not like he was attracted to Buck. It’s easy enough to tell that, since the way he felt when he looked at Buck was nothing like the way he felt when he looked at Shannon (let alone Ana or Marisol). And he was obviously attracted to them. Right?
Because with Buck, it was like he had swallowed fire and was burning from the inside out, almost yearning or craving for something unknown. Easily confused with disdain at first, obviously. And that feeling never went away, Eddie just learned what it meant as it just became the new normal.
But with Shannon, with women in general, it was more like an automatic routine, like falling back into an old chair you know well.
Sure, he remembers Buck saying that he himself didn’t know until a guy kissed him, but surely Eddie already knows.
But Eddie doesn’t want to consider any of that.
And luckily, their drinks are ready just on time to hear Loretta announcing the next round theme and the team standings.
“...going into the second round, tied for first place we have the oh-so-colorful Rainbow Connection—” the reality-show-sized family politely applauds themselves. “Along with my personal favorite members of LAFD’s finest—” she winks at Chimney, “Station 1gayteen!”
Eddie pats Buck on the shoulder in congratulations as he takes his seat back down next to him. “Nice job, guys!”
He tells Buck that he’ll try to contribute more this round and Buck brushes it off as not a big deal.
He backs up the answer of Christopher Street, remembering somebody telling him about it once when he mentioned his son’s name.
Then he confirms that RuPaul’s Drag Race is the show that has the episode Hen is thinking of, he had just watched that one the other night with Buck.
And he’s actually the only one who knows the answer to the last question, which seems to have the rest of the room scrambling.
“It’s the LA Dodgers!” he whispers to the table, but with full confidence.
“Really? Post-Brooklyn, that late?” Ravi asks, not with doubt but more so with disappointment.
“Yep. Decades later, actually. Glenn Burke was his name—he wasn’t actually out while playing. I think it was the 80s, once he retired, when he came out. But yeah, it was the LA Dodgers that had the first openly gay MLB player.”
Chimney jots the answer down, nobody arguing with Eddie’s baseball knowledge.
Because of that answer, ‘Station 1gayteen’ maintains their first-place lead by one point, and Eddie celebrates by getting a round of tequila shots for the table.
Round 3: Queer Pop Culture
Eddie can smell the lime on Buck’s breath if he leans in close enough, and he lets himself wonder if Buck can smell it on his. He wonders if Buck would even notice such a thing.
Buck certainly couldn’t be noticing Eddie the same way Eddie has been noticing Buck tonight. Especially how Eddie noticed as Buck slowly licked the salt off his hand, confidently threw back his shot, causing his Adam’s apple to bob up and down, and smoothly wrapped his lips around the lime slice.
Much more relevant to the matter at hand is that Eddie doesn’t have any reason to be leaning in close enough to smell the long-gone lime in the first place.
He forcefully reminds himself of this fact and makes an effort to turn towards Karen on his other side, to actively listen to what she’s saying about the current question.
“Come on. ‘Pink Pony Club’? ‘Good Luck Babe’? They literally played ‘Hot to Go’ twenty minutes ago! Y’all would know Chappell if you heard her, I swear on my lesbian card.”
Eddie briefly wonders how one even acquires an official lesbian card, before realizing Karen is joking. Probably.
That tequila may have gone straight to his head.
Chimney excitedly makes the connection that one of the songs Karen mentioned is Maddie’s current favorite, so that’s the song title he writes down as they all turn back towards Sandy for the next question.
“ This app is often referred to as ‘the gay Tinder,’ though between you, me, and any fellow fluid friends out there, they’re not exactly for the same purpose, if you know what I mean. What is the name of this ‘dating’ app?”
She puts ‘dating’ in air quotes, earning some scattered chuckles from around the room, including Ravi and Buck, who then simultaneously say “Grindr,” sharing a private smile between them.
Great, now he’s back thinking about Buck. And Ravi. Being reminded of what they have in common. What Eddie didn’t even know the two of them have in common until tonight. Buck and Ravi, sitting directly across from one another, nursing their matching pink fruity drinks, probably staring into each other’s eyes, because Buck has nobody else to do that with right now.
Because Eddie doesn’t want to look at him ever since it started making his stomach hurt. Somewhere around Hen’s ‘Buck has always thought guys were hot,’ or Chim’s ‘how would I know for sure without testing,’ or even Buck’s ‘I didn’t know until he kissed me’ months ago.
Eddie does the extra tequila shot that Chimney had turned down.
No lime this time. He lets it burn.
The rest of the round flies by and before Eddie knows it, they’re on the last question.
It’s Loretta’s turn to ask it, and she takes a break from her strut around the room to place her free hand on the back of Chimney’s chair, and leans slightly around him to continue her lighthearted flirting bit that he’s clearly been enjoying.
“I bet that our reigning champs from station 118—excuse me!—1gayteen, probably know this one, folks, so make sure to step it up… What are the names of the two fan-favorite fictional firefighters who made history this year by becoming the first canon gay slow-burn friends-to-lovers on network television?”
She raises her eyebrows, seemingly targeted directly at Eddie if you ask him, before twirling around and giving another hint or two, clearly meant to lead the crowd to a Hotshots-related conclusion.
“It’s Sanchez and Jones,” Eddie offers to the table, almost on auto-pilot.
Sure, the others have watched episodes here and there, and they all crossed paths with Brad Torrence himself at one point or another, but Eddie’s the one who follows the show most closely. Or at least the most shamelessly.
Eddie notices Ravi’s glass is empty, or close enough to it, so he drags him to the bar this time to get refills for anyone who wants.
Except… “I should probably switch to water, man,” Ravi says as they approach the bar, like it’s an afterthought. “Last time I got a little too tipsy, I ended up—” Ravi cuts himself off.
He looks like he’s been caught in something, which makes Eddie tilt his head in inquiry.
“Um. Do you— I mean, did he— look, I realized it was a shitty thing to do afterwards, trust, but he just wouldn’t stop talking about you. And then there was the drinking game he made me play, because it reminded him of you—”
“Buck?” Who else?
Ravi nods. “I didn’t know what else to do, clearly he needed a distraction from missing you, and we were drinking and—”
Eddie instantly knows that he doesn’t want to hear the end of that sentence. All he can see when he blinks is that look that Buck and Ravi keep sharing tonight. And their matching fruity cocktails.
Unfortunately, he’s too distracted by those thoughts to adequately prevent Ravi from continuing.
“And Tommy was just there. I thought he might be a bit of harmless fun for him, y’know? And I honestly didn’t even realize that they left together until after the fact.”
And shit.
That… that might be even worse than the alternative conclusion Eddie had been jumping to.
“When was this?” Eddie hears himself ask.
“Just after you left.”
The thought of Buck hooking up with his ex-boyfriend as a distraction from Eddie leaving? That hits Eddie like a punch to the face.
Although, he shouldn’t assume it was just a hook-up.
What if they actually got back together? What if Buck has been somehow hiding that from him this whole month he’s been home? What if—
“Thanks for your patience, sweethearts, what can I get for you?”
They turn towards the bartender in sync, and only take a moment to gather themselves before ordering.
Ravi does not switch to water yet.
Round 4: LGBTQ+ icons
“Moving up to third place, we have the Twist and Shout T-boys,” Sandy gestures to the group with the various flags on their cheeks and rainbow button-covered denim vests. “And Station 1gayteen, I’m sorry, but you have in fact been bumped down to second place, dethroned by…” the suspense is surprisingly palpable, though maybe it shouldn’t be surprising since Eddie is more than tipsy enough to get just as invested in this as the rest of his team. “Our new leaders: the Argumentative Antithetical Dream Girls!”
Eddie chuckles to himself as the bartender comes back towards him with the finished drink.
Ravi is back at the table already; Eddie’s drink took the longest.
He decided on a Ricky Martini this time, because fuck it, why not?
“What d’ya think, good decision?” the bartender asks. He sips it to find it’s the sweetest one yet, but it’s actually… nice.
He relays just that sentiment, and they smile and nod in return.
“So… 1gayteen? What’s that about?” they ask.
“Ha, yeah. My team came up with it. We all, or, well, other than Karen—that’s Hen’s wife—all of us are firefighters together at station 118. And we’re also, or, well, most of us are… gay, so…”
“Ah. Hence, station 1gayteen. Clever, actually,” they respond, then tilt their head inquisitively. “Most?”
“Yeah, I guess I’m the token minority in that sense.”
“You’re— what?”
Eddie winces. Maybe that was insensitive? “Oh, sorry, I just meant that I’m— y’know.”
They stare blankly.
So he whispers, almost shamefully, “I’m… straight?” He doesn’t intend it to come out with an inflection at the end like a question, but for some unknown reason it does anyway.
“You… are straight.” Even when they say it in that confused way, it sounds more definitive than when he did.
Eddie hears Buck’s voice, calling out his name, cutting through the background noise, and he whips his head around instantly to see Buck waving him back over.
The bartender is still looking at Eddie with a weird look on their face. If the next round wasn’t starting, maybe he’d have the time to consider whether that look is full of doubt or of pity. But thankfully he doesn’t have the time.
“Sorry, I gotta…” Eddie trails off, turning on his heel to go back to the table.
He purposefully walks slower than necessary to hopefully get a chance to compose himself.
“Eddie Diaz,” Buck says teasingly, clearly well-meaning, “was that bartender flirting with you?”
And it’s probably unfair of Eddie to react the way he does, but he doesn’t exactly have a great poker face even while sober. Let alone now.
He hushes Buck.
Gestures with a finger to his lips and everything, and points to the front where they’re announcing the next question.
Sorry, but Eddie would rather think about Ellen or Elton or whoever they’re going on about than look at Buck. Because fuck the look with Ravi that Eddie misinterpreted, fuck the pink drinks; it’s so much worse when all he can think about is Buck and Tommy together.
It doesn’t even make any sense.
He doesn’t care. He can’t care.
Why would he?
Neither Eddie nor Buck have much to add on the first few questions, with Chim getting Taylor Swift, Karen contributing Jonathan Larson, and everyone knowing Madonna, obviously.
Then everyone is stumped on a question about an ‘iconic’ actress. Buck is fiddling with his hands on the table, like he knows the answer (because of course he does) but isn’t quite sure of himself. Eddie can’t help but feel bad about shushing him at the beginning of the round.
Sure, he needed to distract himself from the increasingly spiral-causing thoughts about Buck, but it was unfair of him.
Not that it’s unfair to be upset with Buck for maybe (probably) ((definitely)) getting back together with his shitty ex. But it is unfair that Buck doesn’t even know why Eddie is annoyed right now.
“Buck?” Eddie prompts, hoping it sounds like it’s second-nature as usual.
“I think it’s Judy Garland,” he answers.
“From the Wizard of Oz?” Chim asks, ever the discerning note-taker.
“Yeah, I mean, ‘friend of Dorothy’ is the only ‘code for gay’ that involves ‘an iconic early film character played by an iconic actress’ that I know of,” Buck says.
“Wait, I’m literally the one who taught you that, how did I not think of that?” Hen asks, likely rhetorically as she continues to work on her latest drink.
Eddie’s leg is bouncing as everyone around them moves on to the next question, except for Buck who keeps fiddling with his hands and biting the inside of his cheek.
Eddie clears his throat.
“So the Wizard of Oz has a code for gay?”
Buck nods. “Yeah,” he looks at Eddie dubiously, clearly trying to decide whether or not to go off on one of his annoyingly endearing tangents that Eddie purposefully draws from him. He apparently makes a decision as he continues, “There have been a few throughout history, more than we even know about, I’m sure. And because of the queer subtext in the Wizard of Oz, and I think there’s a line in the book about Dorothy having ‘queer friends,’ obviously intended to mean ‘strange,’ but it became a secret way to ask if somebody was queer or to tell them you are. Like, ‘are you a friend of Dorothy?’ I guess.”
Eddie wants to think of questions to get Buck to keep talking, but he can’t because Buck has slowly leaned closer to Eddie while talking, and Eddie has only closed the distance even more, the way he tends to do when he gets invested in a topic Buck’s explaining.
Now, Eddie’s heartbeat is syncing up with the warmth rhythmically radiating off of the man next to him as they’re practically pressed side-to-side, taking turns leaning to whisper directly in each other’s ears.
Buck continues. “I’ve read about others, like wearing specific colored hankies, or reading Walt Whitman, or—”
Wait. “Walt Whitman?”
Buck’s coarse voice rings in Eddie’s ear. “Yeah. The poet? I haven’t exactly done a deep dive on the validity, but I saw something online the other day that said that ‘do you read Walt Whitman?’ was like code for ‘are you a gay man?’ because—”
Like in a movie, a flash of a memory runs through Eddie’s mind.
A few weeks ago, when he came home from his LAFD recertification meeting, he found Buck curled up on their couch reading an unfamiliar book. Buck reminded him that Chris’s final project for Language Arts was about 19th century poetry, and said that he had taken it upon himself to do some extra research so he can give the best feedback possible. He asked in passing if Eddie was familiar with this one, the name was—
“Walt Whitman. But… you asked me that the other day?” At least Eddie’s leg has stopped bouncing, because he’s frozen.
“Eddie, what? I was just curious because one of the poems made me think of you. Anyway, it’s not the 1800s anymore,” Buck finally pulls far enough away that they each have their own personal space again. “Not to mention, you’re obviously straight. So I really have no reason to sneakily ask you… that.”
Right. Obviously. “Of course, I don’t know what I was thinking,” Eddie forces a laugh, face burning as he sips his drink.
“That being what, your fourth drink probably isn’t helping, huh?” Buck snarks.
And what the hell?
Eddie might be significantly tipsy, but it’s not like he’s sloppy.
And even if he was, it’s his right to be! It’s a weekend, his kid is off school for the summer and spending the night at a friend’s place, they’re out celebrating, and they’re probably about to win trivia. Who the hell is Buck to criticize that?
Or hell, maybe Eddie deserves it.
Instead of ruminating on that, he just scoffs, turns fully towards Chimney, and volunteers to bring the answer sheet up front as they’re wrapping up the round.
Round 5: Pride Flags
Eddie’s knuckles are white from how tight he’s gripping the edge of the sink.
He found himself wandering to the bathroom to hopefully steal a moment of silence, but unfortunately all it’s done is make his head spin.
He shouldn’t have come tonight.
He should’ve somehow known it’d be weird being the only straight one, even though he didn’t know that tidbit a few hours ago. He should’ve somehow predicted that learning that tidbit would lead to him overanalyzing how he thought about Buck when he first saw him.
Overanalyzing how he thinks now about his best friend having sex with other men. How he’s thought about other men his whole life. How his gut tightened and stomach turned when some of the 20-something fit guys on the ‘Twist and Shout T-Boys’ team took off their vests, and especially how he didn’t even spare the ‘Argumentative Antithetical Dream Girls’ a second glance. How he reacted when he just thought for a split second that Buck had been questioning him on being straight. Not to mention the look on the bartender’s face when he said he was the only straight member of ‘Station 1gayteen.’
What a fucking joke.
He forces himself to make eye contact with the mirror. The green and blue lighting cast across his face is starting to give him a headache.
It’s fine. Everything’s fine. He’s gonna go back to the fine table with his fine friends and do fine in the last round, then go home fine with being alone.
Except Buck lives with him.
Which is fine. He doesn’t have to be a catalyst for a sexuality crisis decades in the making, he can just be Eddie’s roommate. Temporarily.
It’s Buck, after all. How hard could it be to act fine around him?
He finds Buck standing, giving the table a slightly intoxicated and totally charming pep talk going into the last round.
Lesser-known fun fact: Eddie isn’t actually naturally competitive. At least not to the extent that some of the people in their group—namely Buck and Chimney, and sometimes Hen—can be. He just plays it up.
However, Eddie does support Buck in achieving all his dreams, big or small. Or tiny, like winning either the ‘Fun in the Sun Bucket’ or the ‘Sexy Self Care Package.’
When they take their seats, Buck pushes one of two freshly-filled pink drinks in front of Eddie.
“A peace offering,” Buck leans in to say with a private smile. “I didn’t mean to get on you like that. The drinks are for a good cause after all, right?”
It occurs to Eddie that even though Buck doesn’t know why exactly Eddie’s been so tense, he still wants to do something to fix it.
“It’s what I got earlier, I thought you’d like it. Pink Lady Pomegranate, they called it. Good, sweet but not overdoing it, since it’s just a fruit juice base and—”
“I love it. Thank you,” he answers carefully.
Neither of them points out that Eddie only tries the drink for the first time after saying that.
The final round is a picture round. Since they’re tied for first, as Sandy and Loretta had just announced, the pressure is on to properly identify as many pride flags as possible on the sheet in front of them.
Between Hen, Karen, and Buck, they get the most common ones labeled fairly confidently. Chimney comes in clutch with some gender identity flags. And Ravi explains what demisexual means when Eddie asks, and that might be the final piece of new knowledge he can handle tonight.
Eventually, there’s only one left that they can’t get, and they all try bouncing around ideas.
Eddie thinks about the flag next to it that Hen had immediately identified as the lesbian flag, with its shades of pink and orange. He thinks about the lighting in the bathroom dancing across his glazed eyes. He thinks about the stripes painted on the cheek of one of the boys at the table next to them who’s cuddled up with another boy. He thinks about things that he never lets himself think about, as has been a theme all night.
“Could it be one specifically for, um, gay guys? Like the lesbian one, but for men?”
“Yes, that’s it, Eddie!” Ravi exclaims, “Jot that down, jot that down, Chim!”
They end up winning by one point.
‘Station 1gayteen’ gets a round of applause from the room.
As Eddie could have predicted, Buck, Hen, and Chim are the most excited when the queens summon them up to take first pick of the prizes. Then Karen joins them, but Eddie remains a few feet back to watch on fondly.
After scanning the room, Eddie spots Ravi talking (flirting?) with the bartender from earlier.
Good for them.
“Eddie! C’mere, c’mere,” Chim urges, gesturing for Eddie to join their deliberation.
Eddie isn’t expecting Buck to throw his arm around him when he approaches, but he sees no option other than to go with it. They’re definitely all at least tipsy, but Buck and Eddie probably indulged the most by far.
“You, my friend,” Buck pokes him in his chest a little bit harder than necessary. “You and your gay flag got us that last point that made us win.”
Not Eddie’s preferred wording of how it went down, but sure.
“So you get to be the tiebreaker,” Buck declares, very seriously.
Eddie shrugs the best he can under Buck’s arm. “Sure, lay it on me.”
“We narrowed it down to two. Do we want ‘Sexy Self Care,’ with all those face masks and candles and tea and stuff we could all split—oh, and a voucher for a couple’s spa day I was thinking we could give to Athena and Bobby for when he’s fully recovered—or do we want ‘Fun In The Sun’ with the silly beach toys and lame grill supplies?”
It’s pretty clear Buck has a preferred choice.
And who would Eddie be to not have his back on that?
“Well… I’ve gotta vote for the first one.”
Predictably, Buck celebrates Eddie’s support by pulling away to instead fully grab him by both shoulders and shake him. “Yes, Eddie!”
Chimney lightheartedly rolls his eyes, and Hen and Karen just share a look between the two of them.
Sandy grins and picks up the basket from the table next to her. “Alrighty then,” her heels click as she closes the space between them. She carefully turns the basket around before handing it to Buck and Eddie and saying uncharacteristically quietly to just the two of them, “Have fun with this, boys!” She ends with a wink, before turning back around to get the runner-up teams their prizes.
+1
It’s not until they’re sorting through their winnings later that Eddie realizes what Sandy Eggo was implying.
They had given the couple’s spa day voucher to Hen and Karen in the end, as they giddily left together in their own Uber. Ravi had said something along the lines of ‘don’t wait up,’ as he stayed behind chatting with the bartender.
So that leaves Eddie, Buck, and Chimney in the back seat of an Uber, with the basket balanced on Buck’s lap in the middle.
“Woahh,” Chimney exclaims.
Before anyone can ask him to explain, he grabs the item he spotted from near the bottom of the basket, and holds it up with flair like he’s on one of those infomercial channels.
“Oh,” Buck says.
And… listen. It’s not like Eddie would claim to be anything other than vanilla, usually, but he still prides himself on having relatively worldly knowledge. Which is why he’d never admit the embarrassing amount of time it takes him to understand what it is that Chim’s holding.
It’s a small plastic case, labeled ‘His & His,’ with two rings in it. Except they’re bigger than normal rings.
Oh.
Eddie gets distracted by the feeling of Buck breathing, in and out, in and out, pressed against his side from ankle to shoulder.
Chim is smiling a mile wide, glancing between the two of them just once before very slowly lowering the set of cock rings back into the basket.
“I’ll just take…” he digs for a moment more before pulling out a bundle of assorted frilly sleep masks and fluffy socks, with a grin. “These!”
“Oh! How… cute?” Eddie comments unsurely.
He nods. “Very cute.”
It’s only another few moments before the driver is pulling up to their first stop. Buck tries to insist Chimney takes more prize items—a scented candle, the sample packet of CBD gummies, something. “No, no. By all means, you guys… enjoy,” Chimney says with something between a grimace and a smirk, before thanking the driver, turning on his heel, and making a break for it.
There’s a few minutes of silence, except for Eddie’s inner monologue trying to figure out a better way to phrase ‘speaking of His & His cock rings, did you really get back together with Tommy?’ to sound a little less… certifiable.
Because it’s not like Eddie would be personally affected enough to care about Buck getting with someone who treated him right. That’d be crazy.
But Buck getting with someone who dumped him for seemingly no reason? Someone who clearly never respected him or valued him the way he deserves? Someone who clearly was willfully ignorant to the unparalleled privilege of having the wonder that is Evan Buckley?
Yeah, Eddie’s gonna care.
“You’re thinking loud, man,” Buck breaks the silence.
Eddie’s fairly confident that he didn’t say any of that out loud, but okay.
“Eddie, what’s up?”
“It’s just… something Ravi mentioned.”
Buck waits a minute for Eddie to continue, and when he doesn’t, says, “You gotta give me more than that.”
By now, they’re pulling up out front of the house, which helps Eddie realize how to tackle this. That’s also when he realizes, as they climb out the same side, that despite Chim vacating his seat, Buck never slid over out of the middle seat. They just stayed pressed side-by-side that whole time.
After they wish the driver a good night and turn to walk in, Eddie speaks up. “Y’know, if you had… somebody else you wanted to spend time with, you don’t have to stick around here. With little old me.”
Buck furrows his brow. He moves like he’s going to unlock the front door, but instead turns around and fully blocks Eddie from entering, crossing his arms. “What the hell are you on about?”
“Ravi mentioned that you might have been seeing… someone? When I was in Texas? I just want you to know that it’s your place too, y’know, and just because you have some… temporary… roommates, doesn’t mean you can’t live your own adult life.” After all, if Buck doesn’t have the chance to date around, how is he supposed to find a better option than Tommy? And that’s the real goal here.
Buck’s face falls. “ Ravi said that?”
Eddie winces. “Not exactly that.”
With a sharp breath in, Buck uncrosses his arms to unlock the door.
He heads straight in, leaving Eddie to trail after him.
“Ravi doesn’t know anything about my love life, Eddie,” Buck says seriously while taking a seat on the couch.
Eddie makes his way to sit at the other end while Buck continues.
“The only thing he knows about, as far as I know, is a stupid one-time hookup. Months ago.”
Oh. So the whole ‘what if they’re back together’ thing really was catastrophizing. Great. Let’s move on.
“I had just moved in here, and it was hard to get settled into a new place. Your place, but without you. Work was different, adjusting to Ravi as my… anyway, we went out for drinks and he ran into Tommy.”
Eddie nods. “So you…”
“So I brought my ex home for an ill-advised one-night-stand, sue me,” Buck quips sarcastically.
Wait. Brought my ex home. “Here!?”
Buck’s gaze shoots up to Eddie’s and they significantly hold eye contact for the first time in this conversation. “Yeah?”
‘He needed a distraction from missing you,’ Ravi had said.
Eddie is fucking picturing it.
“You fucked Tommy. In this house.” Seeing Buck like this, practically folding in on himself on Eddie’s couch, isn’t helping with how inappropriately overinvested he is in his best friend’s life.
“Well—”
Eddie can feel the blood rushing through his head. He stands without thinking about it. “You brought Tommy back here, to our house, after he dumped you for no reason. Buck, what the—”
“It wasn’t for no reason,” he says shyly, looking down at his hands in his lap again.
That stops Eddie in his tracks. That can’t be right. “What do you mean?”
“The part I told you—that he said no to moving in with me—was true, but it wasn’t because of the Abby thing.”
Alright. Eddie takes his hands off his hips, unsure how they ended up there, and deflates a bit.
“He said he knew I would break his heart eventually. Because he was my ‘first,’ not my ‘last,’ and I’m ‘figuring myself out,’ or whatever.”
Now Eddie sits back down on the couch, much closer to Buck this time.
“Yes, it was as condescending as it sounds. In hindsight. But I don’t think I even fully grasped what he meant, y’know? Not until…” Buck trails off.
“Until?”
He looks directly at Eddie for a split second before looking back down. “He thought he was in competition.”
Competition? “With who?”
He chuckles dryly, shaking his head. “With you, Eddie.” He says it all resigned and heavy, like he’s breaking horrible news.
“That’s ridiculous,” Eddie feels his cheeks heating up. The blushing always gets worse when he’s been drinking.
“Yeah, that’s what I said!” Buck exclaims, also blushing furiously, but at least finally looking at Eddie again. “I was shocked when he said he thought I was, um, into you. I told him you’re straight, and that me living in your house wasn’t like that, but he didn’t believe me. And then M—”
When he thinks back on it later, Eddie won’t know where this came from. “That’s not what I meant.”
Buck tilts his head in that charming little curious way he always does.
“The competition thing, it’s ridiculous. Buck, you do know that when it comes to treating you right, to appreciating you, to knowing you, he could never even be in the same league as me, right? There would be no damn competition.” On some level, he knows how crazy he sounds. Some subconscious, deep, deep level. A level he’s never let himself access before tonight.
“You shouldn’t say that, Eddie. You don’t mean it.” Buck looks devastated, which is the opposite of what Eddie wants. Always.
“Hey, I mean it,” he says quietly, sliding a few inches closer to make himself unavoidable in Buck’s line of sight.
“You can’t,” Buck argues.
“Why not?” He didn’t mean it as a challenge, and he didn’t intend to sound petulant. Even if he does, a bit.
“You’re straight,” Buck says, rhythmic, like a mantra he’s rehearsed. Eddie gets the feeling.
Again, with no idea where it comes from, Eddie replies, “Yeah, see, you keep saying that.” But. “What was it Chim said? About not testing it?” Eddie hears himself say.
Buck schools his face, the confusion and hurt disappearing. It’s replaced by… caution?
Eddie just watches carefully, watches Buck’s furrowed brow, his eyes searching Eddie’s face, him licking his lips on reflex. And Eddie thinks… What if?
“Seriously, Buck. What if I wasn’t?”
He practically chokes. “Well, that’d be different then.”
“What would?”
“If you were technically… an option. Then I’d have a different reason to deny what they all were accusing me of, obviously.”
They? All? “Buck, what are you talking about?”
“Tommy. And Maddie. They can’t be right, Eddie, they just can’t. This whole time—”
“Right about what?” Eddie’s scared for a moment that his best friend’s ex-boyfriend and sister have been making accusations about Eddie while he wasn’t even in the state to defend himself.
“Me. Being in love with you,” he whispers the word but they’ve moved close enough together that Eddie couldn’t miss it.
Love.
It doesn’t not make sense.
It doesn’t sound all that far-fetched.
Eddie loves Buck, after all. Obviously. He just never considered, until tonight, that it might be in that way.
But it sounds like Buck has been considering exactly that, for who knows how long.
And the only conclusion Buck had come to? That it wasn’t possible because Eddie was straight. What a silly, inconsequential thing.
What if?
Instead of trying to voice all that, Eddie decides it’s time to try something new.
He somehow convinces himself in an instant that he has nothing to lose.
And Eddie, mentally pleading for strength, leans in to close the few inches between them.
He feels Buck’s sharp intake of breath before he feels their lips touch. There’s a split second where Buck is more shocked than participatory, but it’s only a second.
Then, he’s kissing him back.
It’s gentle, how they naturally fall into a rhythm.
And Eddie was right, the way Buck makes him feel is nothing like how women made him feel. This kiss is nothing like any other kiss of his life. No, kissing Buck feels like the end goal, like what his whole life was leading up to, rather than some perfunctory step in the obligatory process of sex, which was how it felt with women.
God, it feels amazing. It feels like what everyone has been talking about this whole time. He doesn’t have to force it, it just clicks.
It’s really only a few seconds, but electric sparks are sent all through Eddie’s body. He can feel it all over, and it propels him to gently caress Buck’s cheek where his hand somehow ended up.
“Please tell me that wasn’t just a ‘test,’ Eddie,” Buck breathlessly pleads, as they fall apart, eyes still squeezed shut like he’s trying to fend off potential pain.
Eddie continues to run his thumb down Buck’s cheek, to his bottom lip. He feels Buck’s shaky breath ghost over it as he just… feels.
He uses the second of silence to take in Buck’s entire face, and he decides he never wants to forget this half-ruined look. He never wants to forget how soft Buck’s lips feel under the pad of his thumb, or between his own lips. He never wants to stop.
“Buck, look at me,” he rasps.
Buck opens his eyes to meet Eddie’s. “Please—”
He can’t even let Buck finish his sentence, seeing those goddamn puppy dog eyes, looking up through his eyelashes… it does something overwhelming to the spark growing throughout Eddie’s body.
They fall back together, Eddie’s other hand curling around to the back of Buck’s neck so he can’t pull away again. Ever, ideally.
Buck finally grabs hold of Eddie in return, fingers tight on either side of his waist.
It’s the first time Eddie has felt small, in a good way, and if the growing tightness of his pants is to be listened to, then he immediately knows he has a thing for it. As long as Buck is the one holding him.
Eddie hopes he has a lot of firsts with Buck in his near future.
The fire in his stomach is brewing bigger than ever as Buck pulls Eddie into his lap, making Eddie mount him, with his big, strong, capable hands. Not to mention how the feeling of Buck’s broad, decidedly male body, underneath him, between his legs, results in Eddie’s first hard-on caused only by less than a minute of kissing.
There will be countless more firsts together, only just getting started tonight.
And next June, at Eddie’s first Pride as an out gay man, the team that gets selected to represent the LAFD in the parade?
Obviously, it’s station 1gayteen.