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Where the state highway starts, I parked my car, and I got out and stared up at the stars. And as meteors dived and shot across the sky,
I thought about your sad, shining eyes.
“The leafy sea dragon lives his whole life in the same path of water at the same depth. Try to move him and he’ll die.” Buck tossed the shallots and grapes onto the sheet-pan and shook them in the olive oil with a smirk on his face. “Yeah, same leafy sea dragon.” He murmured to himself as the documentary continued, and he grabbed a gracious handful of salt. Wallowing in self-pity while cooking was one of Buck’s favorite pastimes, and with the added fact that he could make the Wilson family dinner, it was even better.
“Chicken, chicken, chicken. Where did I put the chicken?” Buck grabbed at the handle of his fridge and pulled it open with a fierce tug. The cold box was filled to the brim with ingredients, mostly for Hen, but a good amount for his own dinners too. With how the past three months had been going, he wasn’t looking forward to finding recipes to use it all for. He’d already scoured Reddit for ideas, and Maddie had a few family recipes she’d saved from their parent’s house. A good amount of his favorites had been given to him by Abuela, but with her gone, it almost hurt to make them. Eddie had gotten her recipe book when she passed, but Buck hadn’t worked up the courage to ask for it. Part of him was sad that he didn’t get it, but he pushed that feeling down. He wasn’t her real grandson, and he knew that. He was just her friend, an acquaintance who talked to her about the past, and about cooking. “Ah, chicken.” He grabbed the bowl he’d used to mix the chicken and seasonings earlier from his fridge and washed his hands before he tossed the meat onto the pan with the shallots and grapes.
After a final check of the recipe and a sprinkling of thyme over the whole tray, he slid it into the oven and set the timer for 25 minutes. He cleaned up, which only took him about 10 minutes, and after, he paused his documentary and picked up his phone to call Maddie. She must have been busy because she didn’t answer, and a couple minutes passed before she called him back.
“Hi Buck! What’s up? You on your way home from work?” There was a noise, which he guessed was her leaning away from her phone to check their shared calendar. She clicked her tongue before her voice was back, full and questioning in his ear. “You’re off today?”
“Yeah, just thought I’d call you while I waited for dinner to finish.” He put his phone on speaker and threw it on the bed as he changed from his running shorts into some sweats and threw on a shirt that didn’t have grape juice on it. Pulling a different t-shirt on, he listened as Maddie asked him what he was making.
“Sheet-pan chicken with shallots and grapes.” He sang the last word to hopefully lessen its impact, but he could practically hear Maddie’s expression.
“Grapes?” She didn’t sound convinced, and as he picked back up the phone, he talked to her about the health benefits and the texture vs. taste. He was probably boring her to death, but it was better than the alternative of staring at a wall while the food cooked. Back in his kitchen, his eyes landed on the calendar he had on his fridge. God, he was so boring. He was in his mid-thirties cooking on a Friday night, listening to a documentary about the ocean that was released 16 years ago. He was in his mid-thirties, at the height of his life, relating to a seahorse that didn’t like change and died if you tried to move it from its home. He was actually so pathetic. After the timer went off and Buck moved the sheet-pan to broil for 2-ish minutes, Maddie decided to give him a pearl of wisdom.
“Buck, for the love of God, please just call Eddie and ask for Abuela’s cookbook. Being on Reddit for recipes is not healthy.” Maddie’s voice had an extra helping of pity in it that Buck didn’t appreciate.
“I’m not sure I like your tone, young lady.” He said it in his sternest voice and Maddie’s laugh rang through the speakers like a bell. It made him smile, knowing he could still make Maddie laugh with his Dad voice. When they were younger, he used to do a mean impression of Philip Buckley and it would make Maddie snort from laughing. He hadn’t done it in years, now it just made him feel weird, something between depressed and disappointed.
“Buck, I’m literally begging you, please, call Eddie.” She must have put her phone down because her voice got muffled for a second before it was clear again. “Nash agrees with me.”
“Nash knows nothing! He doesn’t even know what a banana is. How would he understand the complex workings of a man who just found out he’s been in love with his best friend for 7+ years? How does he understand that the said best friend is possibly the straightest person to ever exist?” Buck pulled the tray out of the oven, set it on top of a potholder and continued to pace around his island while waiting for it to cool. Maddie had apparently been stunned speechless because she stopped talking and all he could hear were the silent coos of his baby nephew.
“Mads?”
“You’re really in love with Eddie?” She whispered, her voice hushed and teetered on unconvinced, like she thought he was messing with her or something.
“Yeah… it’s not a joke.”
He’d realized that morning, when he woke up from a dream where he had his hand on the thigh of a certain firefighter/paramedic, and when he had continued to spend two hours lying in bed crying. It had been a strange awakening, nothing like his gay one. No, more like a fucking bomb had gone off in his body and destroyed everything important.
“Evan-”
He grabbed a silver aluminum tray and emptied the contents of his sheet-pan into it, covering it with a good amount of aluminum foil. He waited for Maddie to continue, to say something life-changing, or maybe scold him. Maybe she was about to scream “I told you so!” because she really had told him so. “Hey, Mads, I know you’re processing, but I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”
“WAIT!”
He paused, listening as he grabbed the tray and packed it into the front seat of his car. He buckled it in for safe keeping and put his phone into the holder on his dash. “Yeah?”
“How did you realize?” Her voice was quiet again, whispering, and he wondered if it was because it automatically felt like something they shouldn’t be talking about. It was like gossiping, you knew it was a secret, so your body involuntarily got quieter. He’d have to look up if that was a thing when he got home.
“I had a wet dream about him last night.” Buck replied, figuring it was best to just keep it real. He’d never lied to Maddie, why start now? He heard her coughing, probably caught off guard, and then he clicked his screen, pulling up the call. “Listen, I’d really love to describe it to you in graphic detail, but it’ll have to be later. I love you, I’ll call you.”
She guffawed for a few short seconds before she came back to herself and yelled “I love you too!” before he pressed the end call button. With her off his phone, he clicked into Spotify and shuffled a random playlist he’d made. He didn’t really have a preference for what he wanted to listen to, and the drive to the Wilson’s wasn’t that long. Immediately, a song began playing over his speakers, the bluetooth connecting after the call dropped. Buck sighed as he pulled up to the stop sign at the end of his street and fucking ‘Boyfriends’ by Harry Styles flooded his car.
“Boyfriends, they think you're so easy, they take you for granted. They don't know they're just misunderstanding you.”
Buck stopped the song and drove in silence the rest of the way, kicking himself for hanging up on Maddie. If he hadn’t, she would have just continued asking about his feelings-realization and he really couldn’t think about that right now, but now he was alone with his thoughts. He’d always been living in a limbo all day, walking around like a zombie, trying to fill his day with activities so he didn’t have time to think about the big fat gay crush he had on his best friend. Hence the chicken and shallots and grapes. Hence the groceries threatening to spill out of his fridge. Hence the fucking headache pounding against his skull that he hadn’t been able to get rid of. Buck took a deep breath, held it, and then let it back out as he pulled into the Wilson’s driveway.
He grabbed his phone and slipped it into his pocket in case he needed to feign a call from somebody important to escape the clutches of his very dear friends. The door opened before he even knocked on it and Buck smiled at Karen, watched her eyes flicker down to the tray in his hands, and her face flushed with a smile.
“Buck.”
“Sheet-pan chicken with shallots and grapes. I swear it’s better than it sounds.” He ushered to the pan and she let him in, pointing him toward the kitchen. He walked in carefully, trying not to spill anything and he was just turning around to talk to her as his foot passed through the threshold. “I didn’t bring any sides. I bought some frozen vegetables at the store today and forgot to bring ‘em. And don’t ask me why I was shopping on a Friday. I know I normally go to the grocery store on Tuesday, but I had a weird dream and spent all of today freaking out so-” He turned around to place the tray down and his eyes caught an open wine bottle on the counter. He was about to move it out of the way and shrug it off when his eyes moved to the left and he saw Eddie sitting on a stool beside the bottle. He froze and pushed the food the rest of the way onto the solid surface so it wouldn’t fall when he fucking fainted. “Oh, Eddie. Hi.” He swallowed, his mouth suddenly tasted terrible and he was all too aware of the state of his hair, and his clothes. He hadn’t even showered, too afraid of what he would do with so much free time to think about… about the man right in front of him.
Eddie looked like he was staring at a ghost, and Buck had a creeping suspicion that his own face looked like that too. Karen just stood in the doorframe, hands over her mouth as she watched the absolute trainwreck that was happening in her kitchen. Buck’s fingers slipped off the aluminum, and he took a step back, except he underestimated how far away he was from the fridge and sort of slammed into it.
A curse slipped out of his mouth before he could stop it, and Eddie jumped to his feet, moving surprisingly fast for someone who had been drinking wine. Buck didn’t know how much of it was in Eddie’s system, maybe he’d chalk this all up to a drunk hallucination. He could only wish.
Eddie’s hand landed on Buck’s arm, stabilizing him as he found his feet again, and Buck hated the way his body tried to lean into the touch. He wretched his arm away before he could do something stupid and he backed up in the right direction this time, closer to Karen. “I’m fine. Sorry.” He didn’t know who he was apologizing to, maybe the universe for existing. If the emotion of embarrassment could have a body, it would probably look like Buck. He let a chuckle slip out of his mouth, but it wasn’t as self-effacing as he’d hoped.
“Anyway, I’m just gonna go. You two enjoy your wine night and-” He started toward the door, but fingers locked around the fabric of his t-shirt and he stopped. Of course it was just his luck that Eddie’s fingers were wrapped up in the crimson of Buck’s clothing, and his brown eyes were focused on him.
God, those fucking eyes.
“You had a bad dream? Are you ok?”
Oh, right, because when Buck had barged into the Wilson residence, he’d been telling Karen about how he’d been peddling around town on his tricycle trying to ignore a dream he’d had. And now Eddie was concerned because he knew Buck had nightmares, and normally Buck called him when they were really bad. Buck watched as hurt flickered across Eddie’s face and he almost bent over and heaved onto the ground in that spot between the dining room and the kitchen. He would have if he hadn’t had the sense of mind to close his mouth.
“Yep, just the normal run of the mill nightmare. Nothing to report. I don’t even remember it.” That was a lie. He remembered it like it was seared into his skin. He remembered it like a scar on his finger that had a great story that he hated to tell. If someone asked him to recount it down to the color of Eddie’s skin when Buck had bitten into it, he would know the exact number of the hue (#cb416b, but that wasn’t important right now).
Eddie’s eyes narrowed in disbelief because he had a brain, and Buck turned to Karen, begging her with his eyes to save him. She must have seen it because she walked over to the food he’d set on her island.
“Wow, Buck, thank you so much. When Toni gets home after picking up the kids and Hen from the pool, this’ll be great. Are you, uh, sure you can’t stay?” Her eyes danced from Buck to the food as she put it in the oven, and then her gaze found Eddie, and she looked like she was trying to threaten him with her face. Buck decided he couldn’t be in the house any longer.
“Ah, I’d love to, really, but I’ve gotta get home.” He pointed toward the door ambiguously and hoped no one called him out for being a boring hermit who had just lied and actually didn’t have any plans at all. Karen made a face like she was about to say something, but Eddie beat her to it.
“What plans do you have?”
Shit.
He had two options.
Buck could make up a lie and then actually have to go do said lie since Eddie had his location, or he could tell the truth and say he didn’t have anything to do. The latter required more explaining, but with Eddie being his best friend and Karen being a hardcore gossip, he figured the second one would do more harm than good. So he went with number one:
Lying™.
“I’ve got to go… listen to Harry Styles’ new album. I promised Maddie I’d give it a listen and I haven’t yet.” A lie that would place him at home and get Eddie off his back, because Eddie, as aforementioned, was straight, and Buck hadn’t met many straight men who were into H.S. The two just didn’t overlap.
Karen made another face, possibly judging his lovely, amazing, inspired, taste in music, and Eddie made a face that Buck would rather never see again in his entire life on earth, or in heaven, or ever. Buck was about to sashay his way back toward the door, Eddie’s hold on his shirt had loosened so he’d probably make it, when Eddie said something that stopped him in his tracks.
“Oh, yeah, what’s it called again? ‘Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally’?” Eddie actually looked pensive, like he knew what he was talking about, and Buck decided his time of departure just got moved up. His current ETA to his car outside was 0.4 seconds. He laughed, trying to sound genuine and made another weird gesture.
“Yep.” He popped the p and flashed a Buck 1.0 smile. “That’s the one.” He, for whatever reason, did fingerguns at Eddie and then turned around. “See ya around. I really gotta go. Enjoy the food, Karen!” His hand wrapped around the door handle and he pulled it open with a cringe on his face, waiting for someone else to interrupt him. But no one did, and Buck got out to his car with no problem. Well, with minimum problems. There was one minor thing. When he drove away and glanced back at the house, he saw Eddie standing on the front porch watching him leave, and he looked like how Buck had felt when Eddie drove away with that U-haul on the back of his truck.
He stood on the porch and watched Buck go with the same eyes that Buck had used when he watched Eddie leave for Texas.
He put on Harry’s album in the car and cried along to every lyric.
I came back for my clothes when the sun finally rose, and you were still passed out on the floor.
Buck closed the door behind him and backed up against it, sliding his body into a heap on the ground. With his head in his hands, he bent over and tried to force air into his lungs.
Damnit, breathe, Buckley.
He didn’t realize he was shaking until he tried to stand up and looked down to see his body trembling. He just needed food, that was it. He hadn’t eaten in hours, his mind so focused on distracting itself that food hadn’t made it into the equation. Pulling his body into the kitchen, he grabbed a Poptart from the back of his pantry and shoved it into his pocket.
He managed to get to the living room before he collapsed again, his couch grabbing his body before he hit the ground. He’d never changed it, just bought the exact same one in the same color. He would have kept the old one, but his daught… his friend’s baby had been born on it. Buck groaned and grabbed the remote, trying to kill his brain cells so he would never have to think again. It didn’t work, instead, his mind was rushing back through the call they’d had a few months ago, when that girl had given birth in the park. Her date had barely known her for 20 minutes and yet he was still there for her every minute of the delivery. He’d gone with her to the hospital after too. Buck had known Kameron for longer than 20 minutes, but it had still traumatized him a fair amount. He’d known his daughter for less than 20 minutes, and he’d given her away, just like the plan had always been. Some of him was human, something inside him knew that he’d handed away part of his heart that day. A part he was never going to get it back. He knew that he’d given his heart away to everyone, to his parents, to all of his exes, to Eddie. He would never get it back from any of them either.
When they walked away, and they always did, they took that part of Evan Buckley with them. He never saw it again.
Sometimes he wondered what it would feel like to have a whole heart, what it would feel like to have all of himself. Maybe he wouldn’t feel like shit all the time, maybe he wouldn’t be like a puzzle losing too many pieces. Maybe he’d be able to see what picture he looked like before the vital parts had been lost.
The documentary he’d been watching earlier wasn’t safe anymore, not since he’d related to the damn seahorse so he clicked onto Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The Final Show and let his mind get lost in the flashing lights and catchy soundtrack. He’d always admired Taylor, especially since they’d both come from the same state. Pennsylvania had produced two great things, Taylor Swift, and Maddie Buckley. After that, it kinda tapped out. He would too, if he was Pennsylvania. He’d be tired after a long run. Heck, he was tired, and despite the entertaining show, he felt his eyes flutter shut and sleep creep into the tips of his fingers. He fell asleep to the sound of heartbreak.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but when his eyes opened again, he was in his bedroom, and he dragged his hand down his face, wondering how he’d gotten there. He went to roll over, but his hand landed on something, and he pulled back with a silent squeal. His eyes sharpened to brown hair and tanned skin.
Eddie.
“Oh, great, another fucking dream.” He mumbled to himself, pulling his body out of bed and standing up on his feet. He let himself wait there a moment, trying to shake the sleep off, when he heard a noise behind him.
“Dream?”
He was too tired for Dream Eddie to be fucking testing him. “Yeah, Eds, this is a dream. Go back home, I’d like to sleep tonight.” He turned back around and saw Dream Eddie watching him, a confused look on his face as he glanced around.
“No, you’re definitely awake, and so am I. I mean, I might have fallen asleep waiting for you to wake up, but we’re both totally conscious right now.” Dream Eddie even went as far as to pinch his own skin, but Buck was rolling his eyes and didn’t even care that his own body had stooped so low.
“Oh my god, Mind, do you mind? I know you think it’s funny,” He pitched his voice to sound like a teenage girl. “Let’s make Buck have a sex dream about his best friend of 7 years and then make him realize he’s been in love with him ever since he first saw him putting his shirt on in the locker room!” Buck threw his arms up and turned around to walk to the bathroom. Maybe that would make him wake up, but the room was dark, and on his way, he bumped into the wall. “Shittt.” He groaned, leaning against it, content to just go back to sleep at this point.
“Buck, what the fuck are you talking about?”
Oh, right, Dream Eddie, he was still here.
Buck let out a deep breath, sighed against the paint on his wall, and turned back to see Eddie out of bed, staring at him with careful eyes. He looked so sad, Buck didn’t like the way this dream was going tonight. “God, please try to not look so sad, Eds. I mean, it’s better than me defiling you in my sleep, but I hate it when you’re sad. It’s bad enough that I make you sad when I’m awake. Doing it while I’m sleeping is just no good.”
Eddie’s eyes softened, and Buck let himself smile at that. He leaned forward and pet Eddie on the head, marveling that he could feel his hair under his fingers. “Good job, I love you.” Then he turned and walked into the bathroom, locking the door behind him and dropping to the ground in front of the toilet. On the other side of the door, he heard a soft knock and then Dream Eddie was standing in his fucking bathroom. He was about to complain again, maybe bash his head into the wall to get himself to wake up, when Eddie’s hands slipped onto his face and pulled him forward.
Buck realized two things at that moment.
One: He wasn’t, in fact, sleeping, and two:
Eddie was kissing him.
But when you fell asleep, I just tried to stay out of your way.
Buck whined into Eddie’s mouth and sat up against the bathroom wall, pulling Eddie down into his lap so his best friend was straddling him. Eddie complied, rolling onto Buck with premeditated ease. Buck’s mind was spiraling again, but not in the way it had been all day. Before, he’d been panicking under the thought that Eddie hadn’t wanted him. Buck had only woken up in the first place because somewhere between Eddie’s thighs, he realized Eddie hadn’t said a word. When he glanced up and he saw his best friend’s face, he’d blinked back into the world and curled up in the sheets, letting the tears fall. But now, Eddie was real, and he was here, and he’d grabbed Buck first. He was licking into Buck’s mouth and he wanted it.
“Eddie-” Buck broke off the kiss to huff his name against his lips, eyes open halfway to see the color deepen in Eddie’s cheeks. His body was firm all over, pressed into another body, and everything inside, and outside of him was hot. “Eddie, I-”
“No, don’t.” Eddie murmured, pulling back only a centimeter, not too far, not far enough that Buck was overwhelmed with the desire to pull him back. Just an inch, so they could both breathe, and think, and do other crucial human shit. “Let me go first, Buck.” He blinked, getting his thoughts in order, and Buck sank his fingers into Eddie’s belt loops, holding on for dear life.
“I realized a few months ago, well, when I got back from Texas, that I’m gay. And, it scared me, really bad, Buck. Every lesson I’d been taught my whole life crashed to the ground and I had to build it all back up one by one. I had to re-establish my morals, and what I believed in. I tried to go back to Church, to see if that was just something my parents had forced me into, or if it was something I actually believed. Abuela told me that if I was going to come back, I had to come back for the right reasons, and I realized that maybe I really wasn’t there for the right things. Then we lost her, and I sort of… compartmentalized myself.” Eddie nodded, like he thought that word worked best, and Buck just smiled, brushing a strand of brown hair out of his best friend’s eyes.
“I tore myself away from everyone, and everything, and it wasn’t until I was standing on that porch tonight that I realized… you’re the only thing that never changed. I changed everything about myself, I re-wrote every part of my story, but every page, every sentence about you was the same. You were the only thing I had that I didn’t resent myself for having.” He was crying now, and so was Buck, and their tears fell off their faces onto their shirts and they tangled up in the fabric between them.
“You’re what I believe in, Evan, and I’m sorry I’m telling it to you now. I’m sorry that I’m saying I love you in your bathroom on the ground after you confessed to fucking me in your sleep.”
They both chuckled, but Buck’s was more of a sob.
“I-I love you too.” Buck’s voice sounded absolutely wrecked, but he didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore, everything he cared about was sitting in front of him, in his lap. His world had always revolved around Eddie, and it had been a long time without the sun.
Eddie smiled and it was so bright Buck almost forgot about everything that had happened that day. The pain and torture the last 24 hours had put him through. Almost, because he whispered back, “move me, Eddie. Take me out of this water and keep me still so I don’t die.”
And even though he had no clue what Buck was talking about, and didn’t have the context of a seahorse, Eddie smiled and whispered back, “yes.”
“Oh my gosh, Buck. This is amazing.” Maddie shoveled more chicken into her mouth, barely chewing before she had more on her fork. Buck was just glad that the Sheet-pan chicken with shallots and grapes’ honor had been restored. He could rest easy knowing everyone liked the recipe, and that Eddie had promised to bring him Abuela’s cookbook when he came over again. “I’m afraid the Reddit users won this one. It’s totally worth you calling me during your psychological breakdown.”
Buck just shook his head and took another bite, but Eddie, from his place across Maddie at the island, turned to look at him. “I haven’t heard this story yet.”
Buck just waved him off, getting up to refill their wine glasses. The choice of drink was incredible. Eddie had brought it, apparently Karen and him had discovered the winery during one of their wine nights and fallen in love. “It isn’t really a story.”
Maddie was leaning forward anyway, ready to start, and when the words finally left her mouth, she was whispering. Buck interrupted her before she even finished her sentence. “Did you know that whispering when gossiping is an automatic social behavior?”
Eddie and Maddie just turned to him, with two different emotions on their faces. Maddie’s expression was confused, since the fact had come out of nowhere, but Eddie was looking at him with a smile, soft and interested. Like he always was when Buck spoke.
“Ok, go on, Maddie, continue to tell my boyfriend the story of how I was crashing out when I learned that I loved him.”
Maddie grinned and turned back to Eddie. “So he was watching this documentary about seahorses, or more specifically leafy sea dragons, and he called me and I-”
Buck just smiled and held Eddie’s hand under the table while they ate, and Maddie recounted the story like she’d been there. Almost every time they reached a part of the story that Eddie didn’t recognize, he would sit up a little straighter, and listen a little more. When they finally reached the end, Eddie turned to him with flushed cheeks and a smile.
“Now that will be a good story to tell at our wedding.”
Buck leaned forward and slid his mouth onto Eddie’s, and when his boyfriend sighed against him, Buck felt something strange in his heart. Like it was whole again, like the pieces he’d given to everyone had been filled up, and now he could see the whole puzzle. He had every piece. He smiled against Eddie’s lips and they both pulled away just as Maddie interrupted.
“Can you have this chicken at your wedding too?”
Listen to me, butterfly, there's only so much wine that you can drink in one life.
And it will never be enough to save you from the bottom of your glass.