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Eddie wishes it all came out at the club. Ha.
He wishes when Ravi asked him how he could be so bad at picking up women that he’d caught the look Eddie was giving him across the table and realized what it meant. He wishes the fact that he showed no interest in any of the women he and Buck pointed out to him that night made them both realize. He wishes it all went to plan.
He wishes Christopher wasn’t the only one that knew, because how the hell is he going to help him now?
He wishes—
The pain in his gut pulses again, deep and throbbing, and he wants nothing more than to curl up on his side, but he can’t move.
Eddie wishes he came out that night at the club like he wanted to. He would’ve watched Buck and Ravi eat their words about metaphorical chastity belts and it would have been funny. He would’ve watched Buck stutter like he does, his face going red as he thought about what this might mean for them. Ravi would give him an awkward congratulations and excuse himself, leaving him and Buck alone, and it would all, finally, make sense.
If Eddie came out that night, he would maybe, hopefully, be in Buck’s bed right now, not tied down to this one in Zane and Jade’s guest room and slowly bleeding out all over their nice sheets.
This is how it happened.
“So what are you gonna do?”
Christopher is halfway out of the car when he asks this, and it makes something in Eddie’s chest jostle loose. He laughs, dropping a hand on his kid’s head, who’s been very interested in his love life since coming back from Texas.
“Don’t worry about it. Go have fun.”
Christopher swings his legs back in and fixes his dad with a severe look over his glasses. “Dad,” he says in that teenager intonation that Eddie has gotten to know pretty damn well. “I’m going to worry about it. You already screwed up once.”
“Hey!” Eddie laughs again. “I did not screw up. There were— extraneous forces.”
“You mean the swingers.”
”Christopher.”
He just shrugs. “Well, they were.”
Eddie sighs and tightens his fingers around the steering wheel. Honesty is a good thing, he tells himself. It’s good that they’re being honest with each other.
“You should try again,” Christopher says simply, and he begins getting out of the car again.
Eddie grabs his overnight bag from the footwell and hands it to him. Christopher hooks it over his shoulders. “What do you mean?”
“Like— Recreate it, or whatever. You wanted to tell Buck that you’re gay at the bar, so why don’t you ask him to go back?”
The front door of the Wilsons’ house creeps open and Mara sticks her head out. At the sight of her, Eddie swallows down the urge to shove Christopher onto the sidewalk and pull the passenger door shut, but she just stands on the stoop waiting politely.
He sighs. “I don’t think he’s gonna want to go back, bud. And, you know, besides. Buck came out to me at his loft. I should just invite him back to the house, or something.”
Another shrug, because everything seems so stupidly simple to a fifteen-year-old. “So invite him over. Make him a chai tea, or whatever gay people do.”
“Okay— Can you go to your sleepover, please?”
“It’s not a sleepover, Dad. We’re not babies.”
“Can you go to your hangout with Denny so I can go home and wallow in self-pity?”
Christopher looks at him for a moment, all steady blue eyes and pink pursed lips. It’s times like these that he looks so much like his mother. Jesus.
What would Shannon think about all this?
No. Eddie is not going there. Not yet.
“You’re afraid that Buck doesn’t like you back.” Not a question.
Eddie squeezes the steering wheel harder. The leather creaks.
“No offense, Dad, but you’re being kind of dumb.”
Honesty is so good and healthy for their relationship, even when Christopher uses it to abuse his father.
Mara takes a tentative step down from the stoop, unable to wait for Christopher any longer, and something in Eddie’s chest kicks up.
“I know— I know Buck likes me,” he says quickly. “I’m not stupid, Chris. It took me a while to get here, but I know it’s a mutual thing.”
“So go tell him it’s a—” Air quotes, his crutches dangling midair. “Mutual thing.”
“Chris? Denny made pizza bagels,” Mara calls from the walkway.
“I’ll be right there!” Christopher calls back, then turns to Eddie with his eyebrows hiding up under the blond curl of his bangs.
“I just don’t know if he really wants a relationship right now, okay?”
“You won’t know until you try. You always tell me that.”
“Oh, so you do listen to me sometimes.”
“Dad. Ask him to come with you to the bar, or the club, or whatever. Tell him that you’re gay and in love with him, and if he doesn’t want to date you for some stupid reason, then at least you can go meet some other guy and have fun. You’re allowed to have fun, you know. You tell me that, too.”
Christopher tells him that he loves him and slams the car door in Eddie’s face.
Eddie is allowed to have fun, isn’t he? He doesn’t have to put all his chips on Buck if he’s not ready. Hell, Eddie doesn’t even know if he’s ready for another committed relationship. In the meantime, in between time, he can just…go have fun.
A whole new world has opened up for him, so why not explore it a little?
Buck lets Eddie down gently. He tells him that he’s glad he wants to get back out there and try again, but he fucked his knee on shift and wants to take advantage of their 48-off by sleeping, soaking in his hot tub, self-medicating, and sleeping some more.
Eddie asks him if he wants him to come over, cook him some food or do his laundry, or something, but Buck tells him no, his knee isn’t too fucked to do that, just fucked enough to not want to go out dancing.
Buck tells him to go have fun.
So that’s what Eddie does.
Eddie is very out of practice. In fact, he doesn’t have any practice at all. If Ravi thought he was bad at picking up women, he should see him try to talk to men.
“Uh, come here often?”
The guy is handsome, with big green eyes and soft red hair. A red beard that looks a little like Buck’s when he doesn’t shave for a few days. Tattoos on his neck that Eddie isn’t sure he’s totally into but doesn’t think would be a deal breaker.
The first clue that he made a mistake is the way the guy wrinkles his nose. Eddie poises himself to leave before he even opens his mouth.
“Sorry, man. Straight.”
The words are familiar to his ears, so familiar it almost makes him laugh, and he leaves the bar and the redheaded guy before he makes an even bigger fool of himself.
Another guy, this one shorter than Eddie, with no visible tattoos but a shock of pink hair and a bleached mustache. Promising, maybe? Or is he assuming things?
“Did you need something, dude?” the guy asks kindly, maybe a little drunkenly, and Eddie gives him a smile that feels like it’s all teeth.
“No, I just—”
“Hey, can I blow you in the bathroom? The girl I met on Bumble blew me off.” He laughs, hiccups, downs a shot that the bartender slides his way. “Blew.”
Eddie buys him a water and finds himself a standing table.
The minute his elbows hit the table, a beer is passed under his nose. He blinks at it, then lifts his head to find a girl standing across from him, beer of her own pressed to her lips. He blinks at her, too.
“Looks like you need it,” she says, motioning to his beer with hers.
“That bad, huh?”
She smiles, and her canines glitter under the strobe lights. There are gems embedded in her teeth. “We all gotta start somewhere.”
They touch the necks of their bottles together. “To liquid courage,” Eddie says, and takes a sip. The girl looks amused.
“What’s your type?” she says, and blue eyes and soft curls and a particular pink birthmark flash behind his eyes.
“Uh, I’m— I’m not sure. I haven’t really thought about it much.”
She nods like she understands. She’s wearing cat eye glasses and her ears are more piercings than skin and cartilage, and Eddie trusts her immediately.
“I’m gonna start pointing people out, give me a smash or pass.”
“A smash—”
“That guy.”
Eddie follows the tip of her long acrylic nail to a guy at a standing table of his own across the dance floor. He’s nursing a tumbler of something dark and watching people dance, eyes bouncing from one gyrating body to the next. He’s clearly looking to meet someone tonight.
And there’s clearly a confederate flag patch on the arm of his leather jacket.
“Oh, Jesus,” the girl says when she notices. “Yeah, I’d smash that fucker. Right in the head with a hammer. Eugh. Ooh! Him! He’s— conventionally attractive.”
She’s pointing next to a guy that just came out from the back hall leading to the bathrooms. He makes a beeline for the bar looking like he’s as familiar with the layout of this place as he is with the back of his hand, and Eddie only catches a glimpse of the back of his brown head. He’s in a maroon Henley, and on first glance Eddie thinks he looks like Tommy from this angle.
He takes a sip of beer and turns away. “I’ll have to trust you on that.”
The girl snorts. “Don’t trust the lesbian too much.”
She starts digging through her bag and comes up with her glowing phone. She squints at the screen and lights up. “My girl’s here! Fucking finally. Hey, it was nice meeting you—”
Eddie holds out a hand across the table. “Eddie.”
“Cam.”
“Can I get your number, Cam? Even if I fail spectacularly tonight, at least I can say I made a friend.”
“Aw, hell yeah!” Cam taps at her phone screen and hands it over, oversized plush case and dangling charms and all. While Eddie is putting his number in her contacts, a text from wifeeee comes through, saying, hey social butterfly u need me to come in there and get u myself ?
Cheeks warm, he hands the phone back.
Cam hauls her bag over her shoulder and begins backing away from the table. “Hey, listen! If you’re ever in the area, I work at that shitty coffee joint down the street from the fire station. The big one.”
Eddie quirks an eyebrow over his beer. He knows just what shitty coffee joint she’s talking about. Buck loves that place, and has been trying to get him to go there since it opened. “Station 118?”
Cam shrugs. “Fuck if I know. The one whose captain just died, or whatever. Man, those people bring us a lot of business. I’m working tomorrow, come see me and tell me all about tonight.”
And with that, she’s gone, bounding her way through the doors to where her girl, her wife, is waiting for her.
Eddie laughs to himself and goes for another sip but finds his beer empty.
Before he can get up, before he can even set the empty drink down on the table, the bottle is plucked from his fingers and a new one, full and crisp and already popped open, is set down before him.
“Cam—”
Not Cam.
Zane, in a maroon Henley, looking conventionally attractive.
“Oh!” Eddie says to the face looming over his shoulder. “Hey, man, thanks.”
Zane settles his elbows on the table in the spot that Cam had just occupied and leans forward a little.
“Don’t mention it. Eddie, right?”
“Right.”
The smile he gives Eddie is the same one he gave him back at the firehouse, after Buck officially broke things off with him and—
“Didn’t bring your wife tonight?”
Zane’s smile doesn’t falter. “She’s working. I’m here all by my lonesome.”
“Lonesome, huh.” Eddie drinks his fresh beer, frowning slightly at the taste. Not his usual brand, but he’ll take it. Plus, the gesture was nice. A man bought him a drink. That’s a step in the right direction, right?
“You too, it looks like.” Zane looks around briefly, then settles his kind brown eyes back on Eddie. “No friends?”
“Nope. Busy.”
“Hm. And no luck finding a guy to take home, I guess.”
Eddie cringes. “Ah, you saw that?”
Zane laughs, warm and loud, and stands up, palms bracketing the edges of the table. “I did. It’s okay! It’s tough out there, man, I get it.”
Eddie glances at his gold wedding band, glittering from his left hand like Cam’s tooth gems under the flashing lights. “Do you?”
Again, the smile doesn’t falter. It’s a nice smile, Eddie thinks. A friendly smile. A smile he could maybe follow home.
“Sure. Just look what happened with your friend. Buck.”
Something zips up Eddie’s spine like an electric shock.
Right, Buck. The reason both of them are here tonight, probably. A tether, an icebreaker. The same man turned both of them down, in one way or another.
Zane reaches across the small round table and puts his hand atop Eddie’s. Eddie doesn’t pull away.
He uses the hand not incapacitated by the weight of Zane’s to bring his beer in for another pull. Eddie meets his eyes, and lets his lips linger on the glass mouth for a second longer than necessary.
Maybe this isn’t so hard, after all. Maybe he just needed a familiar face.
Not the familiar face Eddie was hoping for, but, like the beer, this’ll do.
He’s here to have fun, and clearly, Zane is all about having fun.
“Shame,” Eddie says. He holds eye contact, tilts his head a little.
Zane’s tongue darts out to lick his lips. Bingo. “A damn one. Me and Jade really liked him.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Yeah, he’s easy to like.”
The hand wraps around Eddie’s until it’s holding his proper, and it tightens. “I like you.”
Pinpricks of perspiration ooze from Eddie’s palms. “You gonna wine and dine me too?”
Zane tilts his head to mirror Eddie, and the smile tightens into a smirk.
“Why don’t we skip the formalities?”
They skip the formalities, all the way to his and Jade’s place.
All the way to the bedroom.
Clothes are shed from the front door to the bed, leaving a trail of fabric that they trip and stumble over. Zane’s hands are big and warm, covering Eddie’s chest, his sides, pulling goosebumps to the surface of his skin. Eddie’s stomach is in knots. It feels good. It’s been a long time since he was so excited that it made him nervous.
“I wonder how Buck will feel about this,” Zane murmurs into the junction of Eddie’s sweating neck. His hands are working at his belt, and Eddie lets him. He tangles his fingers in Zane’s short hair and tries not to imagine it longer, curlier. “You hooking up with his ex-hookup.”
“Eh,” Eddie says, and it comes out more a breath than a word. “What Buck doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Plus— Uh, I think he’ll be happy for me.”
The belt is undone and the button on Eddie’s pants is next, then the zipper. “Oh yeah?”
Eddie swallows a gasp as Zane bites him on the neck and shoves his pants to the floor. Eddie steps out of them and kicks them away. “Sure. Just— I’m not looking to be your unicorn, or whatever.”
“Fair enough, man.”
The first time Eddie kissed a man was back in Texas, after Christopher moved in with him. It was some guy in some honky-tonk bar, and while it was good enough to throw Eddie headfirst into a sexuality crisis at thirty-three, it didn’t give him a thrill the way kissing Zane does. Eddie wonders, briefly, if it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that Buck had kissed him too, that his lips were exactly where Eddie’s are right now. They tasted the same spit, sucked on the same tongue.
It’s almost like kissing Buck.
This can’t be fair to Zane, it can’t, but he did take advantage of Buck, both him and his wife, so. Maybe, maybe not. Eddie finds that he really doesn’t care.
Zane drops to his knees before Eddie, releasing his mouth with a wet pop!, and the sound of him landing heavily on the hardwood floor mingles with the sound of the front door opening and closing. Eddie puts a hand on Zane’s head and waits, listening as the clack of heels draws closer.
And then, there’s Jade.
“Now the party can start!” Zane says, and hooks his fingers in the waist of Eddie’s underwear.
Eddie stops him, grabbing his wrists and holding them in place. Jade is smiling that black-cat smile of hers, and she kicks off her high heels and begins stripping out of her neat work clothes.
“Just what I needed after the day I had,” she says, and the knot that makes up Eddie’s stomach tightens.
“Hey, uh— Hold on—”
Jade, in her lacy bra and panties, circles around to Eddie’s back and puts her manicured hands on his chest. Zane tries to shake free of Eddie’s bone-crushing grip and Eddie holds his wrists tighter.
“Come on, Eddie—”
There’s nowhere for him to go. Zane at his front, Jade glued to his back. Panic, strange and bitter-tasting, rises up his throat.
“No, I told you—” Zane reaches for his underwear again and Eddie moves without thinking, using a foot to shove him back. Zane lands hard on his ass, and looks up at Eddie with narrowing eyes. “I thought it was just going to be the two of us. I don’t want— I don’t want to be your unicorn, man. I told you that.”
Jade’s hands are imploring, and the touch makes Eddie feel sick low in his gut, but there’s still nowhere for him to go. “Come on, handsome,” she purrs in his ear. “You don’t have to be anything more than a one-night stand. Let’s have fun.”
“I’m not—” Eddie huffs. He doesn’t want to have fun, not anymore. He wants to chill with Buck on his couch and share the good kind of beer. “I’m not attracted to women. Okay? I’m sorry, I—”
Zane gets up and comes close, effectively sandwiching Eddie between him and his wife. Cologne and perfume clog his senses, and beneath that, the sour tang of Eddie’s own fear.
Fear. God, maybe he should look into celibacy. Sex has never seemed to work out for him, even now that he knows what he wants.
“Everyone’s a little fluid, Eddie,” Zane says, and gone is that warm smile, those kind brown eyes. He looks hungry. He looks mad. He scoffs. “I mean, come on.”
“No,” Eddie shakes his head. “I dated women for thirty years. Hell, I was even married to one! It’s not what I want.”
He shoves Zane’s chest with both hands, knocking him back into the wall, then steps out from beneath Jade’s touch. He grabs his pants from the floor.
“Sorry, I, uh— I think I should go.”
In his periphery, Jade’s stockinged foot tamps. “So soon?”
Eddie looks at her, then at Zane. She looks disappointed, but Zane—
Is holding a switchblade.
His face is the color of an old brick building, deep red and burning, and he lunges before Eddie can react.
One hand on Eddie’s shoulder, holding him in place, and the other pressing hard up under his ribs. It feels like a punch, and it knocks the wind out of him. He drops his pants. His belt buckle sounds like a gunshot when it hits the floor.
“Zane!” Jade cries, but she doesn’t sound shocked. Through the roaring in Eddie’s ears, she sounds annoyed. “What the hell!”
The switchblade retracts, pulling Eddie to his knees. His hands fly to his belly, ball of his palm pushing deep into the wound. There’s no blood, not yet, just a tingling numbness that’s spreading fast.
“Fuck,” Zane says softly, and pockets the switchblade. Jade grabs Eddie’s hair and pulls his head back, looking at him like he’s a bad dog or a failed science experiment.
“You promised,” she mutters, letting go of Eddie’s hair and effectively tossing his head from her grip. “You promised we were done with this shit.”
Zane takes a breath and grabs his wife’s hand, pulling her to him. He caresses her face. “I don’t know what came over me,” he says. The color starts to drain from his face, leaving him tan and heaving. Sweat glistens from his brow. “I’m sorry, I— I just lost my temper, babe.”
He just lost his temper.
“I didn’t want him to go.”
Jade lets him kiss her, lets him fondle her breast while she frowns at Eddie. He still can’t breathe, and he’s still not bleeding. His belly is warm beneath his touch. Deep, deep. He’s bleeding internally. Zane stabbed him.
“You were doing so well,” she croons sadly. “I know how much you wanted Buck. He broke your heart, baby.”
They kiss like two wild animals, teeth gnashing together in a clash of fervor. Eddie watches with waning strength and a dawning horror as the switchblade finds its way back into Zane’s hand.
“I missed this,” he says into his wife’s mouth, and she smiles against him.
Eddie sits back and scoots towards the bedroom door. Zane smiles at him and points the switchblade. The glinting metal is smeared with blood.
“How sweet,” he sneers. He’s unrecognizable now, like somewhere deep inside him a switch was flipped. Like Eddie’s rejection awoke a monster. “Your buddy was the first. First one we managed to let go. And now—” A step forward. Jade’s hand holds loose on his elbow, like a slack leash. “You might be the first we’re going to kill before we even get to fuck. LA really is the city of opportunity, huh?”
Zane breaks away from his wife and stoops before Eddie. Before he can cringe away, he stabs him again, quick and efficient, this time through his overlapped hands. At his ragged inhale, Jade brings the bedside lamp down on his head.
Buck is just settling in on the couch when his phone rings. It’s Christopher.
“Hey, Chris, what’s up? I thought you were hanging out with Denny tonight.”
“Wait, you didn't go out with Dad?"
"Uh, no, I'm—I'm home. Are you okay?"
"Can you pick me up? Mara’s sick. I think she got food poisoning at school.”
He pulls the phone back to look at the time. 10:35. He frowns. Eddie doesn't usually stay out this late. Even when they went out the other night. “Your dad still isn't back?”
"No," Christopher says. "He probably met someone. He didn't pick up."
The frown deepens. Right.
"So, can you come get me?"
“Uh, sure, yeah, I’ll be right there. Just—just get yourself ready.”
Buck calls Eddie while he’s putting on pants. It goes straight to voicemail.
He really shouldn’t be upset that Eddie is putting himself back out there, because isn’t that why he and Ravi brought him out to that club in the first place? To meet someone?
It’s just that—
He never thought about what it would be like if Eddie really did meet someone the other night. A part of Buck knew that he’d be stubborn about it, and maybe a part of him even knew that it was a bust from the start. Maybe that’s what he was hoping for.
A part of Buck, the green and ugly part of him, might even be a little glad that Jade ended up trying to get his attention and not Eddie’s.
God, he’s a terrible best friend.
“Buck.”
Buck stops his pacing before he wears a path into his floors. His knee and ankle ache at the sudden halt and he reaches down to rub at his leg.
“You need to get laid.”
He looks at Christopher, curled up on the couch in his pajamas with his Switch in his lap.
“I already got laid.”
Christopher rolls his eyes. “Yeah, and that worked out.”
Buck straightens and puts tentative weight onto his foot. It really doesn’t feel great. He should be getting into bed with his heating pad and muscle relaxers, not worrying about what Eddie does with his free time.
“I’m not trying to be someone’s third.” When he realizes what he just said, he scrubs his hands down his face. “Oh my God, I’m sorry—”
“I literally hear worse on the bus,” Christopher says. “Wait, are you jealous?”
Buck takes his hands away. Christopher almost looks…
“Do you think I should be jealous?”
He shrugs, grinning a mischievous grin that’s all Eddie. “If you want to go out, Buck, then I think you should. Dad isn’t the only one that can have fun, you know.”
Buck really, really shouldn’t. It’s inappropriate, and he’s not jealous.
He’s not.
He finds the groupchat with Zane and Jade anyway. And he texts them.
Eddie wakes up tied to a bed, bound at the wrists and ankles with silk neckties. The blood has finally begun flowing, and it runs down his arms from his palms and pools in the hollow of his flayed belly. His undershirt has been stripped from him, and the starbust scars on his shoulders stand bright in his peripheral like twin floaters at the edges of his vision. A matching bundle of white scar tissue ripples from the inside of his left wrist when he flexes, straining against the restraints. His bare feet overlap, tied together.
He feels like Jesus crucified. All he needs is a headshot and the canonization will be complete.
Down the hall, in the master bedroom that this all started in, Eddie gets a clear shot of Zane and Jade. On the bed, having sex. They’re both nude, pale bodies moving in frantic tandem in the square of light. The bedframe squeaks and knocks into the wall, and the sound of their heavy breaths reaches his ringing ears in a sick cacophony of exertion.
Zane’s eyes suddenly open, and he grins a devil’s grin from beneath his wife.
Eddie squeezes his own closed and gives in to the throbbing pain of his body.
The next time he comes back to himself, it’s to Zane looming over him. Fully clothed now, cooling sweat pinpricking his hairline. The door to the guest room is closed, cutting off Eddie’s view of the hallway. The blinds are drawn, and the only light comes from the closet light through the accordion doors.
“You should’ve behaved,” Zane murmurs, eyes roving over Eddie’s prone body.
His stomach is a canvas of black-and-blue, swollen, radiating pain and heat. His wrists are stiff. His shoulders ache. The air is rich with the stench of iron and sweat.
It takes Eddie a few tries to get his mouth to work. He can feel his pulse in the base of his throat. “Buck’s going to find you guys,” he says.
Zane gets on the bed at Eddie’s side, and the sudden dip in the mattress has him hissing in pain. He puts a hand on the other side of him, all-encompassing, and puts his mouth to Eddie’s ear.
“Oh, I know,” he says. “We just invited him over.”
Before Eddie can object, a bundle of fabric is stuffed into his mouth, a sock, and another necktie is knotted around his head to hold it in place.
Zane gets up and leaves, locking the door from the outside behind him.
“Wow,” Buck says, looking around. “Nice place. I love the wood accents”
Jade, in her silky two-piece pajama set that Buck can’t wait to get his hands on, lifts up on her bare feet and says, “Thanks, we kind of lucked out finding it.”
“Just—” Zane steps in front of Buck when he starts for the hall. “Don’t go into the guest room. It’s still full of boxes.”
Buck snorts and puts a hand on his waist. “I’m pretty bad at unpacking, too.”
Jade siddles up to Zane’s side, her mouth full of bright white teeth. Buck remembers what it was like to lick them and his stomach clenches. “We can show you a different room, if you want.”
They each take one of his hands, and pull him deeper into the house. Buck goes willingly.
The bed is already warm, already rumpled, like they were sleeping when Buck texted them. Zane pulls off his shirt, baring a fresh hickey on his chest. When Jade unbuttons her pajama top, there’s a matching one on her breast.
Not sleeping, then.
She mounts Buck’s lap, knees squeezing his thighs, and leans down to kiss him. Her wavy hair tumbles over her shoulder, and Zane holds it for her, brushing it aside to kiss at her shoulder. His other hand reaches around her to thread his and Buck’s fingers together against her thigh.
Buck wonders what Eddie’s doing. Where he is, who he’s with. Does he have a beautiful woman on top of him right now, shoving her tongue into his mouth like Jade is doing?
Speaking of Eddie, the room kind of smells like him. Like his good cologne that he only wears for special occasions.
God. Thinking of someone else while having sex with not one, but two people. He’s not just a bad friend, he’s also a bad partner.
This is why he needs to figure out how to be a half.
Jade sits up and reaches behind her to undo her bra, which Buck knows she was only wearing under her pajamas just so she could make a show of taking it off for him. As she’s sliding the straps down her arms, he notices something dark beneath her naked but polished nails. It looks almost like blood.
She notices him looking at her hands and something imperceptible pinches her mouth. “Didn’t you feel me scratch your back? Hold on, I’ll do it again.”
Just as her hands are tucking themselves beneath him against the pillows, Buck’s phone rings from the side table. Zane reaches over and silences it.
“Hey, uh— I should get that,” Buck says, pushing himself up. He keeps a hand on Jade’s hip so she doesn’t slip. “I have a teenager at home that I need to make sure is okay.”
Reluctantly, Zane passes Buck his phone.
“Can I use the hot tub?” Christopher says in lieu of a greeting.
Buck lets out a breath. “Don’t even think about it. Do—do your legs hurt?”
“Kinda.”
“There’s some of that gel you and your dad like in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom. Use as much as you need, okay, buddy?”
“Okay.” A pause. “Did I interrupt your booty call?”
“Okay, Chris, goodbye.”
Buck hangs up. Jade is looking at him from her place on his thighs with a hunger in her eyes, and Zane’s big hands are splayed over her stomach, his fingers dipping below the elastic waistband of her pajama pants.
“Didn’t know you have a kid,” he says over her shoulder, and Buck feels his cheeks go warm.
“Oh, I, uh— I don’t. I’m just watching Eddie’s for the night. While he’s…out.”
He moves his eyes from Jade’s face to Zane’s, then down to his phone in his hands. Smells the phantom of Eddie’s cologne.
“You know what? Maybe I should get home.”
“What?” Zane says, low, a rumble deep in his throat. His hand overlaps Buck’s on Jade’s hip and he squeezes, like he’s trying to anchor him in place. Jade looks at her husband over her shoulder, her eyebrows doing a little dance on her forehead.
“Yeah, I thought we could work something out, but—”
Buck extricates himself from them, getting up off the bed. He grimaces at the pain in his knee. He’s definitely spending the drive home with a semi, but he’d rather slather on some of that pain gel and watch movies on the couch with Christopher. He shouldn’t have come here. What was he thinking? He broke things off with them for a reason.
He doesn’t have to go get laid just because Eddie is.
“I don’t think so,” he finishes. “I’m sorry, guys.”
The smile Jade gives him is overly bright, and the grip on her husband looks bone-crushing, “That’s fine, Buck. It was good to see you again. Babe?”
Zane wrinkles his nose, and the look he gives Buck across the bedroom sets his teeth on edge, just a little. “Get home safe.”
It sounds almost like a threat, but, just like the smell of Eddie’s cologne in his nostrils, Buck figures it’s just his brain playing tricks on him.
“You should’ve let me have him! We already let him get away once.”
“Never two at a time, baby, you know that. If we’re gonna start this up again, you’ve got to play by my rules.”
“But he left you high and dry. He doesn’t deserve to just walk after that.”
“One scare with the cops is enough. And I promise you, he did not leave me dry.”
The shower is running, and Buck is long gone. Eddie could hear him through the walls, could recognize his tread through the house, the ringtone he’d set specifically for Christopher’s calls. He tried to call out, to scream past the gags, but the effort left him dizzy and sick-feeling. The last thing he needs is to choke on his own vomit.
The door to the guest room unlocks and opens, and in walks Zane with a shit-eating grin. He’s holding the switchblade again, and Eddie doesn’t have the energy to be afraid. He’s fading, and fast.
“Wow,” Zane says. “We really did a number on you, huh?”
He takes the necktie from around his head and pulls the damp sock from behind Eddie’s teeth. His jaw aches when he finally gets to close his mouth.
Then, Zane gets into bed with him. Fully, this time, laying flush against his side. Clothed while Eddie is near-naked. He rests the switchblade on Eddie’s stomach, above the wound. The metal is cool against his warm skin.
“He was so good,” he whispers, and though Eddie isn’t looking at him, he can still hear the grin. “He has such a big cock. You wouldn’t know that, though. Would you?”
You wouldn’t, either, Eddie doesn’t say.
“Big hands, too. Thick fingers. You should’ve seen the way he got Jade off.” He looks at Eddie, suddenly, and whatever he finds on his face has his eyes going bright, makes him tongue at his molars. “You like him. Holy shit, you have a faggy little crush on your firefighter buddy, don’t you?”
Zane settles against his aching shoulder, and he huffs a laugh into his ear. Eddie strains against the ties, but they don’t budge. The switchblade slips from his stomach and falls between them, its blade poking into the meat of Eddie’s flank.
“You know—” A chill races its way up Eddie’s spine, making him ache, making him throb, making his stomach roil. “Jade and I couldn’t figure out whether the two of you were together the other night. Guess not. Lucky us.”
Eddie tips his head away, towards the windows that give him no chance of escape.
“We got to you before you could get to each other. Doesn’t that just make you sick?”
Zane rolls off the bed, taking the switchblade with him. He looks at Eddie like he’s considering him, pressing the pad of his thumb into the tip of the blade thoughtfully. Eddie’s own dried blood flakes off at his touch.
“At least Chris will be taken care of,” he says. “You know, if anything were to happen to you.”
Christopher is sitting on the couch in a pair of swim trunks and Buck’s flannel robe when Buck gets home. Where he got the swim trunks, he has no idea. He just puts his own on, and together they go out to the hot tub.
Settled on opposite ends, Christopher splashes water in Buck’s direction and says with a laugh, “Looks like the swingers really did a number on you.”
Buck doesn’t correct him. He just sinks deeper into the bubbling water and shuts his eyes. He won’t let himself think about Eddie. He won’t let himself wonder if he’s having a more successful night than him.
He should be happy for him, so why does Buck feel like a little kid on the verge of a tantrum? Why can’t he stop making everything about him?
“Are you going to see them again?” Christopher asks over the sound of the jets and the crickets on the other side of the privacy fence.
Buck hums. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I was kind of thinking about your dad the whole time. That’s not— That’s not fair to them.”
Christopher is quiet for a second, and Buck looks at him. He’s squinting, but that might just be because he doesn’t have his glasses on.
“Buck… Do you like my dad?”
“What? Yeah, of course—”
“Buck.” Buck shuts his mouth. “Are you in love with my dad?”
All at once, the heat of the water makes him sick, but he finds that he can’t move. There’s nothing for him to do but answer.
And what comes out is: “Eddie— Your dad is straight, Chris.”
The look Christopher gives him is one that he’s seen before. On both Maddie and Tommy. He doesn’t have the brain right now to think about what it might mean.
“I don’t want to be the cliché queer guy that’s in love with his straight best friend, okay? It’s—it’s not like that.”
Christopher throws his head back and sighs. “The two of you, I swear.”
After Christopher is tucked into the bed in Buck’s guest room, he tries Eddie again, and again, there’s no answer.
He texts him.
hey! chris is with me. guess mara wasn’t feeling good, so he wanted to come home. all is good
see you in the morning :)
Eddie doesn’t think he’s going to make it to the morning. Not with the blood that’s been steadily pooling in his belly for the last few hours, not with the way he can feel his lungs squeezing in his chest the longer his arms are tied above his head.
He’s not going to survive until the morning, and Christopher is going to wake up an orphan. All because Eddie wanted to get his dick wet.
This is why, he wishes he could tell that priest. This is why I don’t let myself feel it.
None of this would have happened if Eddie just stayed in the closet, if he just kept pushing it down and down the way he’d been doing his whole life. Hell, he isn’t even out yet! Not really. Not to anyone that matters, other than Christopher. He sticks a single toe in the door, and this is what happens.
Buck was supposed to be the first guy Eddie slept with. They were supposed to go home from the club that night together.
Buck, who has such a big heart that he let those two psychopaths take advantage of him not once, but twice.
Eddie agrees with Zane about one thing; Christopher will be taken care of.
He guesses that’s all he can ask for.
When Zane comes in next, it’s with food. A greasy late-night DoorDash order from a burger joint across town. He tosses the paper bag on the bedside table like Eddie has two free hands to feed himself.
“We need to get you back into tiptop shape,” he says quietly, fists perched on his hips.
Eddie narrows his eyes. “Why.”
Zane is delighted to hear him speak. “Because, Eddie, I changed my mind. I actually want to finish what we started. You know, before we kill you. It’s sort of tradition. Or routine, I guess.”
Eddie chooses his words carefully. It’s hard to, with his head swimming the way it is. “I know you’re so—so desperate for someone to pleasure your wife because you can’t do it yourself. Buck—” He swallows. “Buck said the sex was mindblowing. He was probably too embarrassed to say otherwise. He’s always been easy to please.”
There Zane goes, turning fire-engine red. His fists drop from his hips. “Like you could do any fucking better.”
“I bet you I could.”
The switchblade makes another reappearance, and with jerky, infuriated movements, Zane slashes Eddie free of his restraints and drags him off the bed and all the way down the hall by his upper arm. He all but throws him into his own bed, next to the sleeping body of Jade.
She wakes with a start, and Eddie grabs any part of her he can reach. “You need to help me,” he says into her face desperately. ”Please.”
Zane reaches past him and flips the blankets back. He pulls his wife’s pants down to her knees. She’s still looking at Eddie, blinking at him steadily through the dark.
“Do it!” Zane says, pointing the switchblade.
”Please, Jade.”
Her eyebrows raise, and her legs part. “Well?”
Frustration builds in Eddie’s throat and he launches himself from the bed with a cry. He uses everything he has left in him to try and wrest the switchblade from Zane, but when it drops from his hand and lands on the bed, Jade gets ahold of it, and she gets up on her knees to punch it into his flank. Immediately, Eddie knows that it nicked his spleen.
He falls to the floor as if he was being held up by strings, and now they’ve been cut. Silently, angrily, Zane drags Eddie back to the guest room.
He is not making it to the morning.
The first thing Buck does when his alarm goes off is check on Christopher. The second thing, is check his phone.
No calls, no texts.
Which is fine. Eddie had a good night. That’s good.
After dropping Christopher off at a friend’s house for an all-day DND campaign that he promises won’t go past dinnertime again, Buck heads to 4995 South Bedford Street. Eddie must have made it in late and passed out. He could probably use someone to make breakfast, or throw in a load of laundry for him. That’s what supportive, non-jealous best friends do.
Buck expects to find him in bed, clothes and shoes still on, the room smelling like sweat and sex and the stench of his favorite drinks, but the house is empty and quiet. The non-jealousy fizzles out into something else. Something that has his palms beginning to sweat.
He decides to wait around. Not because he’s worried, but because there are dishes in the sink, and Christopher’s hamper is full.
By mid-morning, Eddie still hasn’t called, or texted, or given Buck any sign of life, and this is when he starts to worry.
Before jumping to conclusions, though, like heading straight for the police station and convincing Athena that Eddie’s been kidnapped, or something equally crazy, he opens up Life360.
His date probably cooked him breakfast, Buck tells himself while the app loads. He knew Chris was going to be out all day, so maybe he’s just having a lazy morning with her.
He’ll take jealousy over worry any day.
Eddie’s location is not immediately recognizable, and Buck stares at it.
Then it clicks.
With trembling fingers, he opens up the text thread with Zane and Jade from last night, and there he finds that same address.
“What the hell?” he says aloud.
Buck doesn’t jump to conclusions, but he does jump back in his truck, and for the second time in twelve hours, he speeds towards Zane and Jade’s house.
They’re leaving when Buck pulls in behind their cars, dressed for work. He hops out and flies past them, catching the door with his hand before Zane can shut it behind them.
“Hey, woah—”
”Eddie?” Buck yells into the house. ”Eddie!”
“Buck, man, what the hell?” Zane grabs him by the shoulder and tries to pull him outside, but Buck shakes him off. He wasn’t going to jump to conclusions, but something sour has been building in his gut the whole drive over.
The blood beneath Jade’s nails, the smell of Eddie’s cologne on the both of them. It doesn’t make sense, but it does.
Christopher said that he’d gone out to meet someone, so where else would Eddie go than the club they’d gone to the other night? A familiar place? And who frequents that club looking for a third, but the couple standing dumbfounded behind Buck?
“Buck, what’s wrong?” Jade asks.
Buck whirls on them when he doesn’t get an answer from within the house. “Eddie’s location,” he says, his stomach inching its way into his throat. “Why is it here?”
Zane looks shocked for a second, then his face melts into an easy smile, and he laughs, embarrassed. “Okay, uh. Listen. I ran into Eddie last night, okay? Before you texted us. I took him back here for some bro-time, but he couldn’t stay. I guess he left his phone behind.”
“You guess?” Buck says. “Why didn’t you give it to me when I came over?”
The shock returns, and Zane looks to Jade. She pushes past her husband and presses herself to Buck’s front. She barely comes up to his chin, and he could easily shove her aside if he had to.
“You’re just so distracting,” she purrs, and her knee brushes his crotch. Instinctually, he takes a step back, and it sends him deeper into the foyer.
Zane jumps into action, and he pushes past Buck and disappears down the hall towards the bedroom. He returns a moment later with Eddie’s phone held out.
“Here, man,” he says, and Buck takes it. The front door is shut and locked. “Sorry, but we really need to get to work. Could you move your truck?”
The dumbfounded one now, Buck backs out of Zane and Jade’s driveway, and watches from the street as they peel off in opposite directions.
Idling in front of a neighbor’s house, he clicks Eddie’s phone on and finds every notification cleared.
“There wasn’t much to find,” Athena says, sitting back down at her desk and dropping a few papers in front of Buck. He slides them over. They’re still warm from the printer. “It seems like they haven’t been in LA very long.”
Buck looks over the profiles and finds that she’s right. Zane and Jade moved here just last month from Pasadena, which they’d left because—
“‘Thena…”
“I saw,” Athena says evenly. “Leslie Pace, 38. Disappeared after a night out. Witnesses said she was last seen with your couple.”
“And?”
“And nothing was found on them. They were clean.”
Buck tosses the papers and puts his hands in his hair. “Athena—”
“I know, Buck.” She reaches over and puts a comforting hand on his shoulder. “But listen to me. Hey, look at me.”
He looks up.
“I know you’re thinking of your sister, and trust me, so am I. Don’t go jumping to any conclusions just yet. We have an APB out on Eddie, and me and my guys will be talking to your couple the second they leave their workplaces. Okay?”
Buck stands, slipping out from under Athena’s hand. His skin is crawling, thinking about Eddie going through what Maddie did. He can’t let it happen again. He can’t.
Even if this turns out to be nothing, he thinks it’s better to be safe than sorry. He’ll happily play the crazy best friend card, the obsessive, possibly-jealous worry wart best friend who puts a BOLO on you because your one-night stand ran a little long. Whatever.
Isn’t that what they taught them at the academy? Better to be safe than sorry? He’s sure Athena was taught it too. But she’s the one in uniform right now, so she needs to follow protocol. She needs to follow procedure.
“Buck,” she says in that warning way of hers. “Don’t do anything stupid, now.”
He clenches and unclenches his hands. “No promises.”
When Eddie hears Buck’s voice for the second time within the walls of Zane and Jade’s house, he’s convinced that he’s dying.
He knows he is, he has been all night, but it’s then that he knows it’s a sure thing. This isn’t the first time that death was nipping at his heels and Buck was on his mind. During that well collapse back in 2020, other than his son, he was thinking about Buck topside, waiting for him, probably losing his mind like Eddie is sure he’s doing now. Or when he was shot just a year after that, and the look on Buck’s face when he fell. He was right there, in his line of sight, his eyes following him all the way to the ground.
Back when they first met, during that volatile first shift and the ensuing earthquake, Eddie was sure that Buck was going to be the death of him. What he didn’t know then was that Buck would become his reason for living, second to his son, and that he’d be the guiding light to bring Eddie into the afterlife.
He also doesn’t know that Buck’s voice wasn’t just a figment of his deteriorating imagination this time.
It was Buck, in the flesh, and he’s on his way to guide Eddie home.
Ravi answers the door in his pajamas with New Girl paused on the TV behind him. He looks less than thrilled to find Buck on his welcome mat.
“We started this together,” Buck says, raising a hand. “So we’re finishing it together.”
“Uh, finishing what, exactly?”
Buck turns on his heel. “Get dressed!” he calls over his shoulder. “I’ll be in the truck.”
The decision to kick the door in was not a smart one. The pain that radiates up Buck’s leg almost sends him to the ground, and he has to hold onto Ravi to keep himself upright.
“I could’ve picked the lock, you know,” he says, letting Buck grip his arm until the pain passes.
“I know,” Buck says, shaking his foot out. He didn’t know.
“I still don’t understand. What makes you think Eddie’s here?”
The house is dark and quiet, just like last night, just like this morning. Just like Eddie’s. Knowing that he could be here, in one of these rooms, makes Buck want to tear the walls down. Was he here last night? While Buck was—
“Dude, hello?” Ravi waves his hands in front of his face.
Buck frowns. “Sorry. Uh. Mostly a hunch, I guess.”
He could also not be here. Eddie could’ve come back with Zane, shared a beer, left his phone, and gone back to the club where some woman was waiting for him. They should be at the club right now, interrogating the staff, tracking down who else Eddie left with.
A sound, somewhere down the hall. A thump, or maybe a groan. The hairs on the back of Buck’s neck stand on end, and Ravi’s eyebrows jump on his forehead.
Or, maybe not. After all, Leslie Pace was last seen with Zane and Jade.
“Good enough for me,” Ravi says, and with a shared look, they head deeper into the house.
The bedroom is empty, and the ensuite. The hall bathroom. Every closet and crawl space. There’s no attic pull-down, no attic at all. No basement. All that’s left is the guest room.
Buck tries the knob, and finds it locked from the outside.
“They said it was full of boxes,” he murmurs, and twists the lock.
He pushes the door open.
Feels for the light.
And there’s Eddie, splayed out on the bed like a man tied up to a medieval torture device. Blood stains his arms and his stomach in matte rivulets, turning his tan skin pale. There’s so much that Buck, from where he stands, can’t tell where it’s coming from.
“Holy shit,” Ravi says from behind him, and that propels Buck forward.
He stumbles to the bed, pressing his knees into the side of the mattress. His hands hover over Eddie’s stuttering chest, unable to touch, unable to move.
“Eddie?” he says, high and breathy. ”Eddie?”
Eddie’s eyes roll beneath their lids, and his tongue darts out to lick at his dry lips. He’s dehydrated. He’s—
“Buck?”
“I’m—” In Buck’s peripheral, Ravi thumbs behind him. “I’m gonna call Athena.”
Buck takes his pocketknife and slashes the fabric that’s tying Eddie’s hands to the headboard. He finds that the blood is coming from his palms, from twin wounds like the stigmata. Once his arms are free, Eddie holds them close to his chest with a groan. He immediately goes to curl in on himself, but the—
He’s—
Buck counts three stab wounds in his stomach, two above his belly button and one on his side, under his ribs.
Eddie groans, low in his throat, and Buck makes quick work of freeing his feet. His legs come up, and he groans again. Buck puts a shaking hand on his bare thigh. Jesus, he’s naked. He’s in his underwear. Tied to a bed in just his underwear, bleeding out, all alone.
Buck swallows down a hot rush of vomit and pulls the blood-stiff sheets over Eddie’s near-naked body. He tries to swaddle him like a baby.
“You’re gonna be—”
Sounds of a struggle, just outside the bedroom. The unmistakable sound of Ravi shouting in pain and then a phone clattering to the hardwood floor. Buck wraps Eddie up tighter and stands between him and the door.
Zane appears in the hall, looking murderous. There’s a fire in his eyes that Buck has never seen, and there’s a hammer in his hand that he has no idea where it came from.
“You must be as stupid as you look,” he says raggedly.
Silent alarm. They tripped a silent alarm.
“Shit.”
“Yeah, shit.”
Zane swoops in with the hammer, swinging it in a wide arc that goes low. Before Buck can sidestep him, the flat head collides with his left knee, and he collapses with a shout. The pain is bright and all-consuming, and it has Buck’s vision fading out at the edges. Kneecap, shattered, just like that.
“You should’ve been ours,” Zane says, standing over Buck with the hammer held loosely in his fist. “Maybe then we wouldn’t have done this to your friend.”
“Fuck you,” Buck breathes. He grabs the foot of the bed and tries to pull himself up, but Zane brings the hammer down on his hand.
His grip falters and he lands on his back, left staring up at Zane. He stands on either side of him, and grabs him by the shirt with the hand not gripping the hammer to pull him up for a kiss that’s more heat and teeth than anything. Buck spits.
“Should’ve been ours,” he says again, then he raises the hammer high above his head to deal the final blow, or one of many, until Buck is nothing but a mess of bloody pulp on his guest room floor. From the bed, Eddie moans.
The hammer comes down—
No impact follows.
Buck cracks his eyes open to find Zane frozen in place, his arms limp at his sides. The hammer slips from his grip and crashes to the floor between Buck’s legs. The tip of a knife sticks out from beneath his chin. He opens his mouth, but all that comes out is a waterfall of red-black blood.
And then he falls. Buck rolls out of the way just in time.
Ravi stands over Buck now, dark eyes wide, a stark and ugly bruise forming over his jaw.
“I was going for his spinal cord,” he says, looking down at the hilt of a switchblade protruding from the back of Zane’s neck.
Jade skids into the room, and she cries out when she sees her husband on the floor, her hands flying to her mouth.
“What the fuck!”
Ravi turns on her and swings. A well-placed punch to her temple sends her flying into the far wall. Athena appears in her place at the impact, gun in hand. She looks from Jade to Zane, then to Buck, still on the floor. He tries to get up again but fails miserably.
Athena and Ravi go to help him, but he throws his good hand out in Eddie’s direction.
“Help him!” he yells. “Help him. He’s— Three stab wounds. Uh, four. Five? Fuck.”
Buck manages to get himself up and onto the edge of the bed. Athena is holding Eddie against her while she talks into her walkie. Ravi is inspecting his hands, prodding at the wounds and grimacing at what he sees. The sheet is pulled around his shoulders like a robe or a toga, and the white fabric against tan skin makes him look like a religious figure. Like Jesus, or something. After he was pulled down from the cross but before he was thrown into the cave. Eddie’s dark hair, greasy in some places and frizzy in others, surrounds his head like a halo.
His eyes finally open, and he catches Buck’s across the bed.
“Eddie,” he says. Whimpers. “I’m so—”
“I’m gay.”
The room does a doubletake. Athena looks down at Eddie in her arms and lets out a startled laugh.
“Dude.” Ravi scrubs his hands down his face. “What the hell.”
“Eddie?” Buck says again. He tries to crawl towards him, but his fucked knee doesn’t let him get far. He’s delirious, has to be. Blood loss, or a TBI, or—
“Buck,” Eddie says, and he sounds in his right mind, if not fatigued, in pain. His eyes are clear. He smacks his dry lips together. “Do you want to get coffee?”
Buck can’t help the laugh that bubbles up through the tightness in his chest. He feels like he’s the one with a TBI, but one glance at Athena’s scrunched nose and slack jaw tells him that he’s hearing things correctly.
He looks back at Ravi, who shrugs. He’s rubbing at the bruise on his jaw and looking like he’s wondering if it’s too late to call up Chimney and ask for an extra shift today. “Uh, s-sure? Uh, what— How about that place by the station?”
Eddie smiles and shuts his eyes. It makes Buck momentarily forget about the two unconscious bodies on the floor, and makes the approaching sirens fade into a familiar background noise.
“I have a friend that works there,” he says, and Buck highly doubts that, Eddie’s never been to that coffee shop, but he doesn’t call him out. “I have…a lot to fill her in on.”