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“Next up, we have Firefighter Eddie Diaz!” Ravi’s voice booms through the speakers.
Buck whoops supportively from the crowd as he watches Eddie walk through the red curtains while Salt-N-Pepa’s Whatta Man blasts through the venue at full volume.
“Eddie is a very proud father to his fifteen year old son, Christopher, and--I can also personally attest--he is a very loyal friend. Eddie has been with us at the 118 on and off for the past eight years, taking time off for side quests as an uber driver in Texas and a social media liaison at Metro Dispatch.”
“I heard he went viral on twitter!” Harry uses his own microphone to chime in enthusiastically.
Buck barks with laughter as Eddie sends Harry a death glare from his center stage spotlight.
“Prior to joining the 118, Eddie was a combat medic in the army,” Ravi continues. “But don’t mention that in front of his best friend, Buck, because he won’t let you hear the end of it. Did you know Eddie has a silver star, Harry?”
Buck scowls. What the fuck? Why is he getting dragged into this?
“A silver star? Wow,” Harry says, like they fucking rehearsed this. “I didn’t know that, Ravi. I heard he has a Medal of Valor, though. Is that right?”
These fuckers. Of course Harry knows that. They all got one for saving his parents from a capsized cruise ship.
“That is indeed correct,” Ravi responds. “You know what else I heard about our good friend Eddie here?”
“What’s that?”
“He goes by the nickname eight pack,” Ravi declares. “Come on, show us those abs, Eddie.”
“Do I have to?” Buck hears Eddie ask over the cheers of encouragement from the crowd.
“FLEX YOUR BICEPS!” a woman’s voice calls out from the crowd, and Buck watches Eddie sort of freeze like a deer in headlights on the stage.
“The people want to see what they’re bidding on, Eddie,” Harry teases. “Remember, it’s for charity.”
Eddie recovers his composure quickly, rolling his eyes. “Abs or biceps? You’re not getting both.”
And—oh. He’s going along with it. Confidently. That is simultaneously so unlike the Eddie that Buck knows, and exactly like the version of Eddie that only Buck knows.
It’s objectively very hot. Objectively.
“Oh, our boy Eddie is playing hard to get! What do you reckon everyone? Abs or biceps?” Harry asks the crowd. “Claps for abs!”
A cacophony of deafening applause erupts from the surrounding stage as people cheer for Eddie to take his shirt off.
Buck wolf whistles, and Eddie uses the sound to source him immediately in the crowd. Just to be a little shit, Buck does it again, and Eddie shakes his head fondly with a look of determination in his eyes that promises to get Buck back for this later.
“Now let me hear it for the biceps!” Ravi prompts.
There’s an even louder response this time.
“Biceps it is, Eddie,” Ravi declares. “We might have to find you a new nickname.”
Eddie laughs a little at that, and then makes a very performative display of flexing his muscles, causing the crowd to scream like fans at a Justin Bieber concert circa 2010.
This is ridiculous. So ridiculous. But Eddie doesn’t seem uncomfortable, so Buck feels absolutely no remorse over enjoying the show.
“Absolutely hate pumping weights next to this guy at the gym,” Harry comments. “Look at that.”
He pokes at Eddie's bulging muscle, but his finger doesn't even make a dent.
“If you wanna see these guns up close, we’ll be starting the bidding at one hund--”
“TWO HUNDRED!” someone shouts before Ravi even finishes his sentence.
Eddie, for some inexplicable reason, looks surprised. Like he didn’t expect anyone to bid on him.
Buck knows that Eddie doesn’t have the greatest confidence in his dating abilities, but he has to at least know how stupid hot he is.
Objectively. And especially right now, biceps bulging in his white slim fit rib tank.
Buck has always thought of Eddie as more of a black tank kind of guy, but this works too. Eddie can make pretty much anything work. A hazmat suit. A werewolf costume. A traffic cone, probably, if the occasion ever called for it.
The white is fresh. Alarmingly more see through than black. Not that Buck is trying to see through. But maybe other people might be! Not him, though. It’s purely an objective observation for him. He is not conducting any sort of visual investigation of his best friend’s eight pack.
“You should bid.”
Buck doesn’t even realize he’s in some sort of Eddie induced trance until the sound of his sister’s voice makes him jump.
“On who?” he asks, without fully even registering her question.
“Eddie,” Maddie says simply, like it’s the obvious conclusion.
“What?” Buck frowns. “Why would I bid on Eddie?”
“For charity!” Maddie replies, but her shit eating grin implies to Buck her words have a completely different meaning than their literal one, and he should not be taking them at face value.
It reminds him fleetingly of Hen—eight years ago, in the back of the engine on the way to Eddie’s first call—suddenly hyper-invested in the firefighter calendar she had previously described as “an idiotic, reductive, sexist calendar that insults the dignity of this organization and furthers the myth that all firefighters are male.”
“I’m selling myself for charity, Mads,” Buck points out, generously deciding to go along with pretending Maddie has no ulterior motive here. “And I can hang out with Eddie for free whenever I want.”
“So you’re just going to let someone else swoop in and steal your man?”
“He’s not my–-” Buck clears his throat. “No one is swooping anything.”
“Really?” she asks dubiously. “You’re telling me you’re not going to get all jealous and territorial when some other lucky bidder gets to go on a date with him?”
Where the hell is this coming from all of a sudden? He knows his sister has teased him about his close relationship with Eddie before, but she’s never been quite this blasé about it. Despite the playful lilt in her voice, there’s something almost suspiciously sincere underneath it. Like she’s serious.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Buck fires back. “It’s just for charity. It’s not like he’s going to get married to whoever wins the bid.”
Maddie’s eyebrows knit together. “I don’t remember saying anything about marriage.”
Buck belatedly realizes that by not prioritizing denying the jealousy allegations, he may have accidentally implied he’s not threatened by someone else winning the bid… because Eddie would still marry him anyway. Which is so not what he meant!
He is not…the competition. He is not even in the race. There is no race. Even if there were, Buck would not be qualified to participate.
“Not that it would matter if he did,” Buck rushes to add. “I wouldn’t be jealous.”
Maddie hums, like she doesn’t quite believe him, but then just says, “Okay.”
“I mean it,” Buck presses. “Eddie and I aren’t–-”
“EIGHT HUNDRED!” Maddie cuts him off, raising her paddle.
“Wait, what are you doing?”
“EIGHT-FIFTY!” someone else in the crowd calls out.
“NINE HUNDRED!” Maddie shouts.
“Maddie, what are you doing?” Buck repeats frantically as the same woman from the crowd calls out, “ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS!”
“Putting an end to this nonsense,” Maddie declares. “ELEVEN HUNDRED!”
“What non--Where are you getting all of this money?” Buck cuts himself off incredulously.
“Jee and Nash don’t need to go to college,” Maddie replies dismissively. “I’m sure they’ll be fine as firefighter legacies. FIFTEEN HUNDRED!”
Buck missed the previous bid, but he’s pretty sure that $1,500 is significantly higher than what the other woman had just offered. Maddie is apparently so desperate for this date with Eddie that she’s just throwing her money away.
Well, technically it’s for charity. But still.
“We have fifteen hundred dollars on the table, ladies and gentlemen,” Ravi says. “Can anyone beat it?”
Buck doesn’t have a paddle, but he almost throws his hand up anyway just to stop this madness.
The woman who had been bidding most heavily against Maddie hesitates, but eventually throws her paddle up. “FIFTEEN FIFTY!”
“SIXTEEN HUNDRED!” Maddie counters immediately.
“Maddie!” Buck hisses.
“Firefighter Diaz is a hot commodity tonight, currently sitting at a sixteen hundred dollar bid,” Harry says into the microphone.
“Our highest of the night so far,” Ravi tacks on.
“Again, that’s sixteen hundred dollars, ladies and gentleman,” Harry continues. “Do I hear any other offers? Ma’am? No? Okay. Sixteen hundred dollars! Going once…Going twice…”
“SOLD!” Ravi declares. “To the lovely Maddie Buckley-Han, for a very charitable one-thousand-six-hundred dollars.”
“Now, y’all may recognize that last name,” Harry says, grinning. “That’s because Eddie here has just won himself a date with his Captain’s wife. Thank you for your donation, Cap.”
Oh, Harry’s gonna get latrine duty for at least a month for that comment.
“Not only that,” Ravi chimes in, “but Maddie also happens to be the sister of Eddie’s aforementioned best friend, Buck. You decide which is more important, folks.”
For the first time since she placed her very first bid, Buck manages to peel his eyes away from Maddie and focus on Eddie, who seems extremely unsettled about how the auction unfolded, and even more uncertain on how he’s supposed to feel about it.
To Buck’s knowledge, Maddie and Eddie have never hung out one-on-one. He’s not sure what they would talk about if they did—Or he is, because they have one very obvious thing in common. And maybe that’s what scares him.
“PUT A SHIRT ON, DIAZ!” Chimney heckles from the crowd, hands cupped around his mouth to project his voice.
Harry shoves his microphone in front of Eddie’s face so that he can publicly respond.
“I have a shirt on,” Eddie says flatly.
“COULD HAVE FOOLED ME!” Chimney yells back.
Eddie rolls his eyes and walks off the stage. Buck immediately turns back to Maddie, distressed.
“Why would you do that?” he demands.
“Relax,” Maddie placates him, patting his chest a little patronizingly. “It’s not like we’re going to get married.”
𓆩❤︎𓆪
Eddie’s starting to think this whole thing may have been a trap. A very deliberate, very elaborate trap.
Chimney’s insistence that Eddie strut down the runway and parade himself around for charity had already felt like an abuse of power in his role as Captain of the 118. But Eddie’s beginning to suspect the whole thing had less to do with team spirit and more to do with Chimney faithfully executing his role in whatever master plan his wife had roped him into.
Because Maddie Han is definitely scheming something. And Eddie has the distinct feeling he is about to be debriefed.
They’re sitting in a cute little booth in an ice cream parlor Maddie chose—striped, pastel walls, string lights, chalkboard menu with whimsical fonts. It smells like sugar and dairy and impending emotional vulnerability that Eddie is not sure he’s prepared for.
Maddie sits opposite him, serenely scooping chocolate ice cream out of a cup with a tiny spoon like she didn’t just drop sixteen hundred dollars to get him alone. Eddie's own cup of mint chocolate chip ice cream melts into soup in front of him, long abandoned.
He narrows his eyes at Maddie suspiciously as she continues to sit there in amicable silence, seemingly conducting some sort of psychological warfare on him.
“Why did you bid on me?” he blurts.
He’d been dying to ask her during the entire car ride over, but Eddie is nothing if not an expert in self restraint. Years of Catholic guilt and military training had somehow prepared him for this exact scenario.
“We never get to hang out one-on-one,” Maddie answers with a shrug. “And you’re very important to a lot of people who are very important to me. So I figured it was about time we did.”
“You spent sixteen hundred dollars,” Eddie reminds her, because that feels like a key detail.
Maddie shrugs again. “I was feeling charitable.”
“Uh huh. But you know we could have just done that for free, right?”
“And yet in the eight years that we’ve known each other, we never have,” she counters smoothly. “Why is that, Eddie?”
“I didn’t know you were interested,” Eddie mutters. He directs his words more to the table than to her, deliberately avoiding her scrutinizing gaze.
“Really?” Maddie asks, clearly skeptical. “Because I think you did know, and you’ve been deliberately avoiding me.”
“Why would I be avoiding you?” Eddie says, aiming for confusion and landing somewhere in the vicinity of obvious deflection.
“Now that,” Maddie says thoughtfully, pointing her tiny spoon at him like a very polite weapon, “is a good question. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I always assumed the answer was that you weren’t ready for the inevitable discussion we’d have to have. And I didn’t want to push, so I let it slide."
Damn it. So much for Operation Feign Ignorance. Do all Buckleys come pre-installed with human lie detector software? Or is Eddie just that transparent?
“But you’re pushing now,” he states evenly. “Does that mean you think I’m ready?”
Maddie tilts her head. “Are you?”
“Maybe,” Eddie offers, non-committal. “But what if I’m not?”
“Well, we could talk in hypotheticals,” Maddie suggests.
Eddie considers that for a moment.
“Okay,” he agrees.
Maddie waits for him to start. Eddie contemplates his choices here, trying to decide how much he’s willing to reveal. He thinks that maybe it’s time to come clean. Looking into her eyes, so much like her brother’s in everything but color, Eddie thinks that maybe Maddie is a safe and easy option to do that with.
“Hypothetically… Say I wasn’t interested in dating women anymore,” he starts, voice a little shaky with the admission. “Or that I never really was. What would you say about that?”
“Hypothetically?” Maddie asks. Eddie nods. “Hypothetically, I’d say that’s been sort of obvious for a while. Even to someone who knows you as little as I do.”
“But--hypothetically,” Eddie presses on. “Buck knows me better than anyone. And not so hypothetically, he keeps trying to set me up on dates. With women.”
Maddie nods thoughtfully. “Right. Okay, I think I see the issue here.”
“You do?”
“In this very hypothetical world,” Maddie emphasizes. “I would say the issue is that my brother is in a deep, deep denial about how much he loves you.”
“But, uh, if he hypothetically…loves me.” Eddie swallows. “Why does he keep trying to make me date other people?”
“Well, hypothetically, he might be getting a little sick of people calling the nature of your relationship into question,” Maddie says sheepishly. “And I think his very flawed logic has led him to believe that if he can prove that you’re straight, and happy in a relationship with a woman, people will stop questioning that.”
Okay. That’s—Huh?
“What people?” Eddie asks, confused.
“Hypothetically, I might say his ex-boyfriend.”
“Tommy?”
“Hypothetically Tommy,” Maddie corrects. “And hypothetically maybe me a little bit.”
“What did you say to him?” Eddie practically accuses.
“Just that it wouldn’t be so crazy if he were in love with you!” Maddie answers. Then, after a beat, adds, “Hypothetically.”
“Right. Hypothetically. Of course,” Eddie plays along. “And, hypothetically, his response was…?”
“Something about not being a stereotype who is hopelessly pining after his straight best friend,” Maddie fills in. “Who, at the time, had just moved across the country.”
“Right,” Eddie mumbles, taking it all in.
“Hypothetically, Eddie,” Maddie starts again softly. “I’d say that Buck doesn’t want to dream about something he doesn’t think is a possibility. And I think if he knew you were an option, his response would be very different.”
Eddie nods, doing his best to process the influx of information.
“So, hypothetically,” he begins tentatively. “Does that mean you think I should make a move?”
𓆩❤︎𓆪
“I mean--it’s not like I think Eddie would make a move on her or anything, but isn’t it a bit weird that they’re on a date?” Buck asks.
“It’s not a date, Buck,” Chimney says with thinning patience as he packs up the table and chairs from the auction.
“Are you sure?” Buck presses, following Chim around backstage without contributing anything helpful to the cleaning up process. “Because Maddie made a really big point about it being a date.”
Chim stops in his tracks. Buck is so hot on his heels that he almost stumbles into him.
“That’s when it was supposed to be you and Eddie,” he explains, index finger pointed at Buck.
“How do you know that?” Buck frowns. “You weren’t even there.”
“Believe it or not,” Chim counters, “married people talk.”
“About my love life?”
“So you admit Eddie is part of your love life?” Harry asks, as he and Ravi walk in carrying stacks of chairs like they’ve arrived specifically to witness Buck's humiliation.
“Sorry, who invited you into this conversation?” Buck asks rhetorically.
“Answer the kid’s question, Buckley,” Chim orders, hands on hips.
Buck glances around. Somehow, in the last thirty seconds, he’s been tactically surrounded. Chim in front, Ravi to the left, Harry to the right. The latter two are still each holding a stack of chairs, and all three of them are looking at him with a deeply irritating amount of interest.
“There is nothing romantic between me and Eddie,” Buck stresses, for what feels like maybe the millionth time in his life. “Eddie is straight. He likes women.”
“But hasn’t looked at one in over a year,” Ravi points out mildly.
Buck suddenly regrets ever making the effort to befriend him in Eddie’s absence.
Come to think of it, enthusiastically encouraging him to become friendlier with Eddie when he got back had also been a catastrophic error. Truly baffling judgment on Buck’s part. He might as well have hand-delivered ammunition to Ravi and said, Here, use this against me later.
“He stares at you constantly, though,” Harry adds. “Like. Constantly.”
Buck doesn’t remember signing up for a tag team roast, but apparently it’s buy-one-get-one commentary night. He’s not sure he’s a fan of Ravi and Harry’s new dynamic.
As a matter of fact, he’s going to add helping Harry get into the academy and personally training him into prime 118 material to his ever-growing list of regrets and terrible life decisions. Because he didn’t just create a firefighter; he created a menace with insider knowledge.
“Again, no one asked for your commentary,” Buck says tightly.
“That was quite literally my entire job tonight,” Harry argues.
“Job’s over. Clock out.”
“Why? You don’t wanna hear my thoughts on the way you look at Eddie?” Harry doubles down, smirking. “Or how you keep pointing out that he’s straight but never deny that you--”
“I will call your mother,” Buck threatens, pointing a warning finger.
Harry holds his hands up in surrender and backs away slowly. Ravi snorts and follows him out. The two of them whisper as they go, in a way that Buck assumes is almost certainly about him, but he decides it’s probably better for his own mental well-being if he doesn’t confirm or deny that suspicion.
“I’m not worried about Eddie going out with Maddie,” Chim says, once it’s just the two of them alone again. “But why exactly are you so worried about your sister spending some quality time with your best friend? What have you got to hide?”
“Nothing!” Buck replies, maybe a little too quickly for it to be believable. “And I’m--I’m not worried. Maddie loves you. Eddie’s our friend. It’s not like anything would happen.”
“Well, yeah, there’s that,” Chimney acknowledges. “But there’s also the fact that Maddie isn’t the Buckley he’s obsessed with.”
𓆩❤︎𓆪
“I’m not obsessed with him,” Eddie protests indignantly.
They’re strolling now, side-by-side, down a strip of shops with bustling nightlife. Eddie’s never been to this side of town, but Maddie apparently comes here occasionally to venture the thrift stores, find a recommendation for her book club at the local book store, or catch up for coffee with her friends.
There are also quite a few nice places to dine, which is where most people are tonight. There was a busy restaurant a few blocks back that looked so good, Eddie even wrote down the name. He’s thinking about maybe taking Buck there for a date soon.
“Hey, it wasn’t a criticism!” Maddie laughs. “And I did say it hypothetically goes both ways, so there’s really nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“There are a lot of things that are embarrassing about being a grown man with a crush on his best friend,” Eddie says, refraining from hiding his head in his hands in embarrassment.
“Oh, Eddie, I think I’m insulted for you,” she says, offering him a modicum of pity. “I can’t believe you would attempt to trivialize your own epic love story by calling it a crush.”
“A hypothetical crush,” Eddie corrects.
“Nuh-uh,” Maddie teases, eyes alight with glee. “That’s not what you said.”
“The hypothetical precedent had been set,” Eddie argues weakly, despite knowing the pretense is already long gone.
Maddie has been so easy to talk to, and Eddie feels completely comfortable opening up with her, despite the predominant topic of the night being something he couldn’t even admit to himself for the longest time.
He knows that she’s Buck’s sister, and that her loyalty is to Buck, but somehow knowing that is only more encouraging. Because if she’s rooting for them, Eddie must be doing something right.
“No, you love him, and one of you needs to do something about it before you give me more gray hairs,” she declares. “Seriously, I can’t bite my tongue any harder, Eddie.”
Eddie chuckles at her antics. He can kind of see where Buck got his own flair for the dramatics from.
“Alright, what do you suggest I do?”
“Tell him,” she implores.
Eddie scoffs. “Easier said than done.”
“No, I’m serious! You don’t even have to explain,” Maddie tells him animatedly. “You just have to say the words I’m gay and I’m in love with you, and just wait for him to work the rest out.”
Eddie’s brows furrow together in confusion. “Wait?”
“He might need to buffer for a minute,” she elaborates. “You’re going to need to be really clear about the gay part, because he’s tried very hard to convince himself that you’re straight.”
“You don’t think the ‘in love with him’ part would cover the gay part?” Eddie asks.
Maddie purses her lips in thought for a second. “No, I don’t think so. He would somehow twist that into a platonic love and you two would end up in some sort of queerplatonic marriage.”
Eddie’s eyebrows lift. “We’re getting married now?”
“Well, aren’t you?” Maddie smiles at him knowingly. Then, after a beat, she slaps his arm lightly as a realization seemingly hits her. “Hey, if you’re the other groom, that means I won’t have any real competition for Buck’s best person.”
Eddie laughs. Just quietly, he thinks that Chris would give her a run for her money. But he’s got dibs on his son anyway. You know, for his and Buck’s hypothetical future wedding.
“I think we should probably go on a date first,” he decides carefully, like he’s proposing a reasonable, non-life-altering compromise.
Maddie tips her head back and groans with theatrical despair. “Eddie, you have been dating my brother for almost a decade,” she grumbles. She drops her head again, loops an arm through his, and leans into his side. “Not to be insensitive about your later-in-life sexuality crisis,” she adds, patting his arm, “but could you maybe hurry it up a little?”
Eddie immediately points an accusatory finger across his body at her. “Hey, you and Chimney had a child together and still had to be told by your accountant that marriage was the next logical step.”
“Okay, touché,” she concedes. Then she sobers, just slightly. “But seriously. Tell him. And don’t be thrown when he automatically denies that he loves you too.”
Eddie blinks. “Denies--”
“It’s a defense mechanism,” Maddie explains gently. “Self-preservation. If he admitted he was in love with you and thought you could never love him back, it would destroy him.”
“I don’t want to destroy him,” Eddie whispers brokenly.
“Then don’t,” Maddie advises, just as softly. “Let him know you’re an option before he self-destructs.”
She pauses, then adds, “Or breaks your ankle again.”
𓆩❤︎𓆪
Buck is sort of bored.
Gretchen—the lovely old lady who spent a respectable grand on Buck at the auction—had asked if they could schedule their date for the following day. She wanted to enjoy it properly, she’d said, without exhaustion ruining the experience. She had been so sweet, and Buck had agreed easily. But now he’s home alone, and he’s bored.
Sure, there are plenty of things he could technically be doing. But every time he goes to start something, his mind gets distracted thinking about what Eddie and Maddie are doing at that very second, and he abandons the task in favor of spiralling.
Fortunately, after a few hours of pathetic stirring and pacing, Buck is put out of his misery by a knock at the door.
“Oh thank God,” Buck breathes to absolutely no one, sprinting toward it like rescue has arrived.
He swings it open and is surprised to see Eddie standing there, cheeks faintly flushed, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet like he’s working up to something.
“Hey,” Buck says, a little breathless. “How was your night with Maddie?”
“It was good,” Eddie replies, stepping inside. He takes his jacket off and places his keys and wallet in the bowl in the entry way, like he’s planning on staying for a while. “Your sister’s great, Buck. Not sure why we didn’t do that sooner.”
Well, Buck knows that Maddie’s great. This isn’t news to him.
“What did you guys talk about?” he asks, trying to play it cool and not give away the fact that it’s quite literally been the only thought on his mind for the past few hours.
Eddie shrugs. “You, mostly.”
Buck laughs. Eddie does not. Which causes the laughter to die in Buck’s throat, rather abruptly, when he realizes that it was not a joke and Eddie is dead serious.
Buck swallows nervously.
“What, uh,” he tries again, “what did she say about me?”
“She thinks you’re in love with me,” Eddie says casually.
“What? I can’t believe she’d--” Buck inhales sharply. He might be on the verge of a panic attack. “I’m not.”
“She also said you’d say that,” Eddie continues, seemingly unfazed about these wild accusations.
“Eddie, you have to understand,” Buck stresses, “Maddie’s got this idea in her head and she–-I told her it wasn’t true. But she didn’t--Eddie, I’m sorry if she made you uncomfortable. Or if I–-”
“Buck. Relax.” Eddie holds his hands out, like he’s trying to calm a particularly skittish horse. “I’m not uncomfortable. I just want to clear some things up.”
Buck nods vigorously, forcing himself to exhale deeply. “Okay,” he agrees, trying to lower his heart rate before he sends himself into cardiac arrest.
He takes another deep breath. In. Hold. Out.
“I’m not straight,” Eddie says simply. Buck thinks maybe he misheard. Or misunderstood. He thinks maybe he needs to take some more deep breaths so that more oxygen can get to his brain and allow it to function properly again. But then Eddie adds, “Actually, I’m gay. And I’m in love with you. So… If that changes anything for you, let me know. Okay? Great.”
Then Eddie has the absolute audacity to smile, clap Buck on the shoulder and just…leave. He just…casually walks into the kitchen like they’d been discussing which take-out food to order.
Meanwhile, Buck stands frozen to the spot, like Eddie had decided on Chinese food, but had said it in Mandarin so that Buck couldn’t understand.
Okay, Buck might be getting a little lost in the take-out metaphor. But that’s sort of the point. He’s lost. He does not understand what’s going on right now.
“You’re GAY?!” Buck yells, approximately thirty seconds too late and in entirely the wrong direction.
He’s not even facing the room that Eddie is in. He genuinely hasn’t moved since Eddie last spoke. It’s possible he’s forgetting to breathe again, too.
“That’s what I said, yeah,” Eddie calls back casually.
Buck thinks he can hear Eddie opening the fridge and maybe getting a mug out of the cabinet. Sure enough, when Buck eventually does spin around, comically delayed, Eddie is pouring something from a carton into a mug. It’s juice, of all things.
Weird way to drink juice, but Buck’s not going to judge. He’s got more important things to think about right now, anyway. His brain doesn’t have the capacity to analyze Eddie’s method of beverage consumption.
“You’re not gay,” Buck says, finally following Eddie into the kitchen.
“Sounding a little homophobic there, bud,” Eddie smirks over the rim of his mug.
Buck doesn’t even have time to explain to Eddie that he’s an ally. Again, more important issues at hand.
“You can’t be gay,” Buck decides. “Because if you’re gay, that means you’re not straight.”
Eddie nods, amused. “I’m told that’s how it works.”
“And if you’re not straight then that means I’m in love with you,” Buck declares, before he even really registers the words falling from his mouth.
Did he just say that? Fuck.
He wants to panic. He's going to panic. But he doesn't yet. Because, somehow, the words Buck has been burying so deep he wouldn’t even admit them to himself—terrified they’d detonate his entire life and ruin everything—don’t seem to have any visible effect on Eddie at all. And that prevents the panic from consuming him, just for a little while.
“That seems to be the case,” Eddie agrees.
“But I can’t be in love with you because--”
Buck cuts himself short as his whole world suddenly refocuses itself. Because Eddie was straight. He couldn’t be in love with Eddie because Eddie was straight. That was the rule. That was the excuse. That was the safety net that kept Buck from being the cliché bisexual pining after his straight best friend.
But his best friend isn’t straight. Which means Buck’s flimsy excuse has sort of fallen, and his entire defense system has just collapsed.
“Because?” Eddie prompts.
“Um,” Buck swallows. “I can’t--I can’t actually think of a good reason.”
“Okay, well, I’m not sure if you maybe blacked out after I said I was gay, but I also mentioned that--”
“You’re in love with me,” Buck cuts him off with a loud gasp.
Eddie grins. It’s the brightest smile Buck has ever seen. “I’m in love with you.”
“And I’m--I’m in love with you,” Buck repeats, a little giddy. There’s a very good chance he might cry. “We’re in love.”
“Yeah,” Eddie agrees easily. “And apparently we were the last people to know about it, because--”
Buck doesn’t let Eddie finish his sentence. He kisses the words right out of Eddie’s mouth.
The kiss tastes of orange juice and mint chocolate chip ice cream, which can’t have been a pleasant combination on Eddie’s tongue, but is the sweetest thing Buck has ever tasted.
Buck doesn’t even like mint chocolate chip ice cream. But he loves Eddie. So, who cares? Orange juice and mint chocolate chip is Buck’s new favourite flavor. In fact, he thinks it tastes a lot like forever.
“By the way,” Eddie whispers, pulling back from the kiss without fully detaching their lips. Buck can feel Eddie's breath, hot against his skin. “Maddie says you owe her two thousand dollars.”
Buck lets out a breathy chuckle. “She only bid sixteen-hundred.”
“She’s charging a four hundred dollar emotional trauma fee,” Eddie informs him. Buck feels the smile stretch across Eddie’s face before he even sees it. “Apparently the going rate is fifty bucks for every year of torture we forced her to endure.”
“Worth every cent,” Buck says.
And as he kisses Eddie again, he thinks it was worth the wait, too.