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Eddie wakes up at two in the morning in the Buckley family guest room and immediately knows, despite the fact that Eddie hasn't shared a bed with him since the worst months of the pandemic, that Buck’s not asleep. The unnatural stillness of Buck’s body gives it away far more loudly than him tossing and turning ever could.
“Buck?” he asks, voice hoarse with sleep.
“I don't want to be here anymore,” Buck whispers.
“Okay.”
Eddie gets up, thankful for a job that's drilled into him the ability to wake up and get moving immediately. They're dressed and packed and sitting in the rental car in twenty minutes, Buck in the driver's seat, Eddie in the passenger seat.
“Got anywhere in mind?” Eddie asks.
“Yeah.” Buck shifts the car into reverse, backs down his parents’ driveway. “Will you text Maddie, tell her we went to the beach?”
The beach turns out to be in Maryland. Four hours away. At some point Eddie dozes off. He wakes up to Buck parking them at the boardwalk. It’s still dark out, but the sky has started going lavender in the east, a lessening of the darkness moreso than an actual light.
Buck’s out of the car almost immediately after throwing it in park, striding out toward the beach, hands shoved deep in his coat pockets. Eddie stares after him, disoriented.
Probably this whole thing was a bad idea, flying out with Buck for Philip and Margaret's 40th Anniversary Bash and posing as Buck’s boyfriend. But there had been such grim determination in Buck’s voice when he'd stood in Bobby and Athena's new backyard and told them all about the invitation. A man who knew he was headed to the gallows but happy to take the fall if it meant protecting Maddie and Chim. And Eddie couldn't let him do that alone.
He gets out of the car, pulling his jacket tight around him. They hadn't bothered to change out of their pajamas, and his cotton pants feel far too thin against the freezing November air.
The lavender to the east is stretching toward him now, chasing back the deep blue of night, makes it easier to see Buck, to follow after him.
He catches up to Buck a few yards from the water's edge. It doesn’t look too different from the beach in LA. Buck’s sitting in the sand, watching the waves come in and flow out. Eddie sits next to him. After 36 hours, after 8 years, it's second nature to sit too close, arm pressed up against Buck’s. There’s too much that didn't have to change to pretend to be Buck’s boyfriend. Eddie's trying not to think about it.
“Sorry,” Buck says after a long moment.
“Why?”
“For waking you up in the middle of the night and making you drive all the way to Maryland.”
“You didn't wake me up.”
“Eddie.”
“Buck.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Why here? I mean don't get me wrong, it's a,” he glances around at the dark, deserted, cold beach, “lovely spot.”
Buck snorts. “Maddie took me here once, after she got her license. When I…left, this is the first place I came. Just sat and watched the waves for, god, I don't know how long.”
They sit in silence for a long stretch after that, until scraps of pink start to chase the lavender up the sky.
“I just couldn't do it anymore,” Buck says abruptly, into the first breaths of dawn, as though Eddie had asked him a question. “Pretend. To date you,” he clarifies.
“Oh.” Eddie's not sure how to take that. It hurts, in a new way he doesn't recognize.
“Not—not there, not in front of my parents, not when everything felt so terrible, it—it—it hurt too much, on top of everything. Like here's the parents who will pretend to love you and here's your best friend who will pretend to love you—”
“I do love you,” Eddie cuts in. And he realizes as he says it he doesn't mean it the way he loves Hen or Chim or Bobby or even Pepa or Abuela. He means it the way he loved Shannon.
“Not the way—,” Buck goes on, oblivious to Eddie’s epiphany, “not the way I want you to. God, fuck, Maddie was right. Because I am. I am in love with you.”
“Good,” Eddie says faintly, trying to keep up with all the epiphanies.
“Good? Good?! Eddie are you even listening? I—I'm ruining everything! I'm the bisexual cliché, in love with my straight best friend, even though nothing was supposed to change and mmf—”
He cuts off abruptly as Eddie twists around and kisses him. For a moment, Eddie feels him sink into the kiss, into Eddie, which is nice given how cold this beach is. Then he abruptly pulls back.
“What—Eddie—what?”
“What, what?”
“What’s happening?”
“I'm kissing you.”
“But you're straight.”
“Now who's not listening? Did you miss the part where I told you I love you?”
“But that's like…like…like how you love Chim?”
“I can assure you, I have no desire to kiss Chim.”
“But me?”
“Yes, Buck, you.”
“Oh,” Buck says faintly as the first golden rays of light peek over the horizon, setting his face aglow. “That’s good then.”
“I think so,” Eddie agrees, leaning back in again. This time Buck leans in to meet him.