Work Text:
“What's your hall pass?”
Ah, the monotony of a shift that Eddie could classify as quiet, inside his own head, without any of his coworkers accusing him of having invoked the wrath of the fire gods.
A monotony that usually held as the minutes passed, during which each member of that team dedicated themselves to wandering around the station without any particular destination, simply with the idea of killing time, whether by completing the list of tasks they had been assigned, taking advantage of the fact that they had a large television in the loft, taking turns at the pool table or even sleeping.
A monotony that, if it was broken, would most likely be because of one of his coworkers, not because of him. He had always enjoyed those moments when the world seemed to have calmed down, when silence could be heard inside a fire station that normally submerged itself in daily chaos.
A monotony that, despite enjoying it, he liked to spend in someone's company. If he had to choose one of his coworkers, not out of disregard for the others but out of appreciation for one in particular, the answer would always be Buck.
It wasn't that he followed him around the station like an abandoned puppy. It wasn't because he didn't enjoy the company of the rest of his coworkers. The reason why the answer would always be Buck was because of that feeling of warmth that appeared inside his chest every time he was near his best friend, whether they were sitting in complete silence or sharing a conversation.
The thing was that, approximately an hour earlier, the two of them had settled into the station loft, positioned at opposite ends of one of the couches, their legs stretched out across it, facing each other.
The thing was that, as the minutes passed, their coworkers had started to appear with the intention of joining them, whether by settling into one of the armchairs, throwing themselves onto the floor or sitting in one of the chairs.
And, well, that monotony, accompanied by his entire team, was broken by the question that had been born from Buck's curiosity.
Eddie was just about to ask what a "hall pass" was when the calm voice of his beloved paramedic partner rose above the silence.
“Jennifer Hudson, without a doubt.” Everyone turned toward her, all kinds of expressions on their faces. “What? It's a conversation topic I've had with my wonderful wife and Karen understands.”
“That's what a healthy relationship looks like.” Ravi pointed out from the other side of the coffee table. “I think my "hall pass" would be Zendaya. I've had a crush on that woman since Shake It Up.”
Eddie didn't comment on it, because what do you say when you don't understand what you're being asked? He simply dedicated himself to storing and processing information. He dedicated himself to comparing both answers in case they shared a common point. He dedicated himself to listening carefully to his coworkers.
“Maddie and I talked about this a few years ago, “Chimney interrupted his web of thoughts. “I mean, even she understands why I chose Sandra Oh.”
Everyone nodded at Chimney's words, with the exception of Eddie, who still didn't completely understand the dynamics of the conversation, and Harry, who alternated his gaze between his coworkers, confusion clearly written across his face.
“Should I know who Sandra Oh is?”
“I'm so surprised that you're actually May's brother.” Ravi huffed in exasperation. “The actress who plays one of Grey's Anatomy's best surgeons, you'll always be remembered.”
Eddie made a mental note that that woman was also famous, another addition to the collection he was safeguarding inside his head, while Ravi tried to defend himself from an attack by Harry with a cushion and Chimney slapped the table.
“Amen to that!”
There were only three people left to answer the question that had disrupted the monotony of that shift, including Buck himself.
“I've never really thought about it, but I think my "hall pass" would be Tyla.” At that answer, everyone looked at Harry in confusion. “She's a South African singer!”
Harry, who clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in resignation, pulled his phone out of his pocket with the intention of finding a picture of the woman and showing it to his coworkers. As soon as everyone saw her, they slowly nodded their heads.
Eddie thought that perhaps another thing those people his coworkers were naming had in common was that they found them attractive.
But what did that have to do with the fact that Chimney had talked about this with Maddie or that it had been a recurring topic of conversation between Hen and Karen?
“Well, I actually have a list.”
Buck's words caused the attention of everyone present to shift toward him, especially Eddie's, who feared for the growth of his own mental list once Buck finished naming those people.
“Of course you have a list,” Hen scoffed in disbelief “but we've all only said one person and you can't play the bisexual card.”
Buck shot her a glare, a gesture that Hen answered with a radiant smile.
“Fine, I'll only say one person.”
Eddie knew Buck well enough to know that his best friend wasn't thinking of the answer, he already knew it. He looked serene, calm, there was nothing on his face that suggested he was thinking too hard about what he was about to say.
So Buck had the answer clear in his mind, but he wanted to build some anticipation, anticipation that Eddie himself had fallen victim to.
“Pedro Pascal, especially with the way he looks in Kingsman: The Golden Circle.”
Silence settled over the loft. Eddie didn't take his attention off Buck for a single moment, knowing that a movie session awaited him solely because he was unaware of that film's existence.
Even while focusing all his attention on his best friend, he felt the way all of his coworkers' gazes shifted between him and Buck, as though they were connecting two points that, until the moment Buck answered that question, had remained unconnected despite having a clear relationship.
“I should be surprised that you admitted it out loud, but I have a suspicion that you're not even aware of what's happening yourself.”
Hen's words sparked Eddie's curiosity at the same time that Chimney burst into loud laughter.
“Isn't it very specific that you like Pedro Pascal in that particular movie?” Ravi tried to hold back his laughter as he asked the question. “Isn't there some details about Pedro Pascal in that movie that stand out above everything else?”
“What happens with Pedro Pascal in that movie?”
Eddie surprised himself by speaking, since he had remained silent until that moment. Everyone turned toward him with incredulous expressions.
“Nothing that can possibly matter right now." Hen shook her head before turning fully toward him. “You're the only one who hasn't answered. Do you have something to reveal, Eddie?”
Eddie swallowed before lowering his gaze toward his legs, which were in full contact with Buck's.
Buck, who caught his attention by bumping one of his feet against his thighs, made him lift his head until their eyes met and they communicated in that way that had been established between them years ago: in complete silence, without the need for words, as if they were capable of reading each other's minds.
And Buck, as he always did, as he had managed ever since the shift during which the two of them had promised to have each other's backs, understood him.
“Why didn't you say you didn't know what a "hall pass" was?”
“Because you all rushed to give your answers before I could ask!” His tone was full of indignation. “Because you'd call me old when you're one year older than me!”
Buck tilted his head and gave him a pout, despite clearly trying not to smile at Eddie's small outburst.
“A "hall pass" is kind of like permission within a relationship to have a sexual or romantic encounter with someone else without it being considered cheating.” Buck seemed to recite it from memory. “In this case, we're talking about famous people.”
Now all the common points Eddie had been gathering made sense. That was the mechanics of the question. Famous, attractive people with whom you could have an encounter while being in a relationship without it counting as cheating.
“So, Eddie,” Buck smiled at him, amused “who's your "hall pass"?”
Eddie opened his mouth, ready to answer.
Now that he possessed all the necessary information, he didn't consider the question a difficult one. Everyone else had answered without needing to think too much about it and Eddie only had to say a random name, some actress or famous singer who fit the definition Buck had just given and continue with the conversation.
The answer appeared in his head with such immediate speed that it caused Eddie to go completely still. He hadn't even had time to think of a possible alternative, to consider other options or to construct a conscious answer. It had simply emerged, clear and definitive, as though he had been mentally preparing for that question despite not knowing its meaning or even its existence until a few seconds ago.
And that was the strange part.
Not because it was a bad answer. Objectively, it was a perfectly reasonable answer. Ryan Gosling was attractive and anyone with functioning eyesight had accepted that fact universally. Lots of people talked about how attractive that man was, so there was nothing strange about recognizing it.
The strange part was that that name, Ryan Gosling, had been his first answer.
It hadn't been the name of an actress or a singer. It hadn't been the name of a woman. He hadn't needed to search through a mental list of celebrities he knew in order to answer. No. It was Ryan Fucking Gosling.
Eddie felt a strange sense of vertigo settling somewhere between his stomach and his chest because it didn't make sense. He had never looked at a man and stopped to think about whether he was attractive or not. He had spent more than thirty years of his life without looking at a man and thinking anything remotely similar to what that question was supposed to imply.
And yet, even without understanding why his brain had decided to react that way, every time he tried to think of another answer, Ryan Gosling's name appeared again.
It wasn't even just Ryan Gosling as an actor, no. It was Ryan Gosling with a beard, in that new movie, smiling in that ridiculous way that, for some reason he didn't understand, felt familiar to him.
“Eddie?”
He blinked a couple of times and abruptly returned to the conversation after having gotten lost in his thoughts. Everyone was staring at him, waiting for what seemed to be the most anticipated answer of the moment.
Buck's face entered his field of vision, concern clearly written across it. Eddie swallowed and did the only thing he knew would go well in that moment: he shut down completely. He cut off the mental communication channel with Buck and shook his head several times before clearing his throat to answer.
“I've never thought about it, honestly.” He shrugged, trying to make it seem unimportant. “I'll think about it during the shift and I'll tell you, Buck.”
Buck didn't seem happy with the answer, but his best friend was aware of what he had just done. He couldn't get anything out of him with a look, wasn't able to read his mind the way he always did whenever Eddie couldn't find the words to express himself.
Eddie was the one who ended the conversation. Each of his coworkers went back to whatever they had been doing before Buck asked that question and Eddie couldn't help sinking back into his own head.
Maybe monotony wasn't as great as he thought.
🚒
The first problem with answering Buck with "I'll think about it during the shift and tell you" was that Buck would take those words literally and his best friend would be expecting an answer by the end of the shift.
The second problem with answering Buck with "I'll think about it during the shift and tell you" was that, no matter how hard he had tried, the first answer that had appeared in his mind hadn't changed at all.
He hadn't been able to think of actresses or singers who were women. Not because Eddie didn't know any, but because he didn't consider their names to be the correct answer to the question Buck had asked.
Obviously there were female actresses and singers that Eddie found attractive. He could make a list that included the women who had been his childhood and teenage crushes or the women who were considered icons at that moment.
The third problem was that he didn't think any female singer or actress could fit the answer Buck was expecting from him. Because it wasn't only that you found someone attractive, it was that that person was attractive enough that, while being in a relationship, you could have an encounter, whether romantic or sexual, with them.
Too many problems for a simple question. A simple question that continued to answer itself in his head with the name Ryan Gosling.
He was reorganizing the ambulance, its doors wide open, when he heard footsteps approaching from behind him.
“Is it possible that earlier you froze up thinking about who your "hall pass" would be?”
Eddie closed the cabinet he was stocking without even flinching. He grabbed a package of bandages from a nearby box without looking up from what he was doing.
“I didn't freeze up, Hen.”
Because who else could have been the person who noticed the reaction Eddie's body had decided to have while he was lost in thought?
He heard a laugh leave his coworker's mouth. Eddie didn't know what else to say besides what he had already said. There wasn't anything else to say.
“Eddie, we've been working together for years.” Her voice was infused with a calmness that Eddie couldn't seem to find. “I know you when you're happy, when you're sad, when you're worried and when you're angry. Right now you're unsettled.”
Eddie shook his head, as though he needed to reassure himself that what his coworker was saying wasn't true.
“I'm not unsettled.”
It came out sharp. Maybe he should have been less sharp if he didn't want to support all the assumptions Hen was making inside her head.
“Maybe a little unsettled?”
Eddie huffed while continuing to organize bandages that he had very clearly finished organizing a few seconds ago. Anything to avoid looking up and feeling like his coworker was going to read him with astonishing ease, as though Ryan Gosling's name were engraved in his eyes.
Hen watched him without saying absolutely anything. That was one of the things he liked most about his friend and coworker: she never pushed when a person still wasn't ready to talk. She simply waited, patiently, in a silence that, under normal circumstances, would not have made Eddie nervous.
Since this was not a normal circumstance, that waiting proved unbearably effective.
“Can I ask you a question?”
It was at that moment that he turned toward her, who was waiting for him with one of the biggest smiles he had ever seen on her face.
“Always.”
Eddie nodded slowly.
He sat down on one of the ambulance seats, taking a few seconds before speaking, as if he were trying to construct a sentence vague enough not to reveal anything and specific enough to obtain a useful answer.
“Hypothetically…”
“Ah, those are the best questions!” Hen climbed into the ambulance, sitting across from Eddie, who greeted her with a frown. “What can I tell you? They always start with "hypothetically" and end with someone reconsidering their existence.”
Eddie sighed before shaking his head. This was turning out to be the worst idea he had ever had, and that included having formed a strange relationship with the woman who seemed to be the double of his deceased ex-wife.
“As I was saying, hypothetically…” he repeated, before fully regretting it “if a person hears a question and immediately thinks of a strange answer, too quickly, without even having had to think about it..."
In reality, Eddie didn't know what to ask. He had left the hypothesis hanging in the air, had thrown out a series of facts that Hen would surely understand and hoped that the intelligence she possessed would be enough to interpret the question he wanted to ask in the end.
“Well, seeing as there isn't actually a question at the end of that hypothesis,” definitely, Hen had noticed “that seems to be worrying you.”
“It doesn't worry me.” Eddie answered immediately. “It just... seems strange to me.”
Hen nodded before crossing her arms, without taking her eyes off Eddie.
“Does it seem strange because the answer was immediate or does it seem strange because you didn't like what the answer was?”
Eddie opened his mouth with the intention of answering her, but ended up closing it immediately. Hen simply smiled at him while running her fingers through strands of her hair.
“It's not that I don't like it, but…” Hen raised an eyebrow at those words, with an expression Eddie already knew. “Hen, would you mind not making that face?”
“What face am I making, Eddie?”
“The face you make when you know something and you're simply waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.”
Hen's attempts to contain a laugh were in vain. The sound escaped from her mouth and made Eddie groan in frustration.
“Eddie, I've spent years watching you try to convince yourself of certain things.” Eddie intended to argue, but Hen got there first. “I know that right now you're going to say that you're not trying to convince yourself of anything, but we both know that isn't true.”
For a few seconds, they both remained silent. For a few seconds, Eddie himself lowered his head and his gaze fixed itself on the space that had formed between his two boots.
He felt a strange discomfort, a kind of pressure located behind his ribs that he didn't know how to explain. It wasn't exactly fear, nor was it shame. It was something deeper, a confusion that he hated with his entire being.
A confusion he wanted to get rid of, and the first step was to formulate the question to the hypothesis so that he could continue the investigation.
“So, hypothetically, what would what I just told you mean?”
Hen tilted her head to one side, her eyes narrowed.
“That depends.” Eddie let out an exasperated sigh “People tend to believe that when they realize something about themselves, it arrives accompanied by fireworks or some kind of giant glowing announcement congratulating them for it, but normally it doesn't work that way.”
Eddie's head nodded on its own, not because he agreed, but because his body had entered autopilot mode.
“Then how do you think it works?”
Eddie knew that Hen could take advantage of the situation to tease him, in the way his coworker always did. Hen was aware of Eddie's weak points and used them to her advantage, but not against him. Simply because they were friends and knew each other.
He would have to thank her later for having stopped being so frustrating and having decided to answer directly the most existential questions he had asked himself in his thirty-something years of life.
“Look, when I was younger, I thought that if I discovered something important about myself, I would have some kind of revelation, something impossible to ignore.”
Eddie swallowed again, feeling his throat tighten more and more as the conversation progressed.
“It wasn't like that?”
Hen shook her head immediately.
“It was more like a kind of accumulation of small things or facts that had been hidden for years and that I decided to stop justifying.”
Well, Hen was still getting on his nerves because, although her answers were fairly elaborate, they were not satisfying Eddie's needs.
His coworker seemed to see that frustration on his face, so she rose from her seat with the intention of sitting beside Eddie, placing one of her hands on his knee in a reassuring gesture.
“What I'm trying to tell you is that sometimes you think something and end up spending weeks trying to figure out why you thought it, when the more useful question is whether what you thought would bother you if it turned out to be true.”
Eddie's alarms could have gone off at that moment because what Hen had just said sounded dangerously specific.
“I'm just trying to say that most of us spend more time trying to argue with our own thoughts instead of listening to them.”
“But what happens if the thought doesn't make sense?”
“What happens is that it still won't make sense in a week.” Hen shrugged, trying to downplay the matter. “Just like if it does make sense.”
Eddie groaned again before covering his face with both hands.
“Have I ever told you that I think you're a little exasperating?”
“Have I ever told you that you've mastered the art of overthinking things to the point that you've spent fifteen minutes trying to ask me a question without actually asking it?”
Silence settled inside the ambulance once again. The station continued functioning, despite the fact that Eddie had felt for quite a while, ever since he had started that conversation, that the world had stopped spinning.
Hen waited, because of course she waited. If Eddie could define his friend with a single word, it would be patient.
“What happens...?” The words caught in Eddie's mouth. “What happens if, hypothetically, I had never thought that way before?”
Hen's expression was calm, as if, after all their years of friendship, she had foreseen, in a way Eddie didn't understand, that this conversation would take place at some point.
“Then, hypothetically speaking,” Hen emphasized the word intentionally “you had never thought that way before. Nothing happens.”
“Something does happen.” Eddie insisted, frowning. “People don't think that way for no reason, there has to be a reason.”
At that comment, Hen tightened her hand around Eddie's leg, with the firmness of a woman who had gone through situations in her life that made her capable of empathizing with anyone.
“Listen to me, Eddie. You don't have to decide today what it means and you don't have to put a label on it.” Her tone was firm as well. “You don't have to jump to conclusions because your brain had a quick answer to a question in a stupid conversation.”
For the first time since that conversation had started, Eddie felt a laugh trying to escape from his chest.
“You don't have to solve anything today, Eddie.” Hen patted his knee. “I promise you there's nothing wrong with not having all the answers immediately.”
“I don't like not having the answers, Hen.” Eddie sighed tiredly. “I like knowing where I am and I like understanding things.
“Believe me, if there's one thing I've learned about Edmundo Díaz over these years, it's that he likes having control over everything he thinks he can control.”
Eddie smiled despite the meaning behind those words, and Hen smiled back.
There she was again, his partner, doing yet another of the things Hen did better than anyone else. Even though she drove him crazy, even though he needed the answers, Hen didn’t hand them to him on a silver platter because she knew he wasn’t ready yet to hear whatever it was she was thinking.
She simply gave him space to ask himself the question with which she had concluded her hypothesis so that, in due time, when he was ready to hear the conclusion, he could answer it in his own words.
🚒
Eddie wasn't surprised when Buck didn't say anything during the shift.
When he wanted to, his best friend knew how to be patient, knew how to wait for the right moment to understand when he should intervene or continue staying on the sidelines. Eddie suspected that this was the result of so many years of friendship with Hen.
What did surprise him was that Buck didn't say anything when, once the shift had ended, they found themselves in the locker room changing clothes. Faced with the silence his friend had chosen to maintain even at that moment, especially knowing that Buck and boundaries didn't have a good relationship, Eddie became worried.
"Do you want to come to my house for a while and have a beer?"
The question left his mouth before he thought about it. He didn't think about the fact that both of them would find themselves on familiar territory, one that would be comfortable and personal enough for Buck to start commenting.
But the question had already been asked. The question had been thrown out before Eddie could think about the consequences it might bring. And, worst of all, the answer had come in the form of a slight nod of the head, which Eddie still considered unusual for Buck, because Buck always had something to say.
Eddie made the decision not to speak either. Buck was the one who insisted, the one who pushed when he knew it was time to push. Buck was the person who knew Eddie best, and if Buck had decided not to ask about it, why did Eddie have to start the conversation when he didn't know if he was ready for it?
So he remained silent while they walked together toward their respective cars, which were parked in the station lot, and then Buck followed him to his house.
He remained silent while they met again on the walkway leading to his front door, where they also walked side by side because Eddie had waited for Buck to arrive. He remained silent while they entered the house, while they left their respective bags at the entrance and both headed toward the living room. He remained silent when he veered toward the kitchen with the intention of grabbing two beers from the refrigerator so that both men could relax after that shift.
He also remained silent when he searched one of the streaming platforms they both shared for the movie Buck had mentioned during his answer to who his hall pass was.
A silence that stretched through the first fifteen minutes of the movie, during which Eddie pretended he was paying attention to the plot when, in reality, he was lost in his thoughts.
Ryan Fucking Gosling. In Project Hail Mary. Why Ryan Gosling in that movie? Why?
A silence that was interrupted by the soft sound of Buck's beer being placed on the table in front of them. Even though Eddie was looking at the television, he could see out of the corner of his eye that the other man had slightly turned his body toward him, as if he were preparing to intervene once and for all.
"So, Eddie," there it was, what Eddie had been dreading, "are you going to keep pretending you're watching the movie or are you going to tell me what's going on with you?"
Eddie shrugged before taking another sip of his beer.
"Maybe I just wanted to understand why you chose Pedro Pascal, specifically in this movie, as your "hall pass"."
He noticed one of his best friend's eyebrows arch at the answer. Buck wasn't convinced, and that made sense; after all, he knew Eddie. He knew him well, well enough to know that he was avoiding the conversation.
"Well, as an expert on Eddie Díaz, I have to tell you that I don't believe any of that," Eddie kept his attention fixed on the screen. "It's been hours since I asked the question and you know I'm not a very patient person, not to mention the fact that you froze when I asked the second time."
"I didn't freeze," Eddie interjected, although even to himself that answer didn't sound entirely convincing. "I was just thinking."
He heard his best friend huff in disbelief.
"Eddie, you stared at a wall for quite a while, completely silent, and you weren't reacting to anything we were saying. If that doesn't mean freezing up, then maybe I've been wrong my entire life."
Eddie's beer ended up on the table too before he even realized he was moving. He rubbed his face with both hands, clear frustration radiating from his entire body, frustration that Buck seemed to notice.
"Look, I'm just saying it was a pretty simple question that the whole team answered, some of them way too quickly if you ask me."
Eddie would have been one of those who answered too quickly if it hadn't been for the fact that he had realized what name was about to come out of his mouth.
For a few seconds, silence settled between them again, accompanied by the background noise of the movie, which neither of them was clearly paying attention to.
Eddie tried to focus on it. He really tried, wanting to see Pedro Pascal in one of the scenes that were coming up. However, it didn't work. Ryan Gosling's name was still there, still appearing over and over again in his head every time he thought about the question Buck had asked a few hours earlier.
Finally, he let out a long, tired sigh. Buck shifted in his seat, knowing that this was a clear sign that Eddie was willing to talk.
"What happens if an answer appears too quickly?"
Buck seemed to think about the answer, taking Eddie's words completely seriously.
"Too quickly, how?" Calm had settled into his voice. "Because there are quick answers and then there are the answers that come to you before you've even finished hearing the question."
Well, he had hit the nail on the head.
"Like that, yes, exactly like that." Eddie made a vague gesture with his hand. "Immediately, without having to think, as if you already had the answer even without knowing the meaning of the question."
"I suppose it depends on the answer."
Eddie was having déjà vu from the conversation he had had with Hen. He knew that his best friend didn't dance around a subject unless he was waiting for something, unless he knew he needed to intervene. He was giving Eddie space to formulate the question.
Although Eddie still didn't know exactly what he was asking. He still didn't know how to phrase it without saying it directly.
"It's an answer that just appeared," he finally admitted, almost in a whisper. "And I don't understand why."
Buck didn't answer right away, again. He was trying to choose the words that his best friend might consider appropriate for his next intervention.
"Do you think you should understand it right now?" he asked very cautiously. "Do you think you need to understand it right now?"
"I just want to understand why it appeared, Buck." He tilted his head back in a gesture full of frustration. "It shouldn't be this complicated, should it?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie saw Buck shrug.
"There are times when things just appear in your head and we don't find an immediate explanation for them."
Eddie's throat seemed to close up again as he swallowed with a difficulty that hadn't been there a few seconds earlier.
"Has that ever happened to you?"
"Of course it has, more than once, actually." Buck let out a huff. "The first time it happened, I panicked for a pretty embarrassing amount of time."
That managed to draw a brief smile from Eddie, the first one since the shift had ended and he had headed home with Buck.
"That answer that appeared too quickly..." Buck was thinking about the words he wanted to choose again. "Did it scare you?"
"No," Eddie knew he was lying, so he immediately corrected himself. "A little."
Buck nodded slowly, as if that were perfectly reasonable or as if there were nothing strange or alarming about it.
"What exactly scares you?"
Eddie opened his mouth only to close it again because that was exactly the question, the one he had spent hours trying to find an answer to.
He felt Buck's attentive gaze on him and, from the way his best friend was looking at him, he knew there was still one more question he wanted to ask.
"Do you think it would be wrong?"
Eddie frowned and, finally, looked at him. He turned his head toward Buck, finding a man who was watching him with obvious concern, etched both on his face and in his eyes.
"What would be wrong?"
"Whatever it is that's worrying you," Buck replied, leaning slightly forward, with an unusual seriousness about him. "Whatever that answer was that appeared so quickly in your head after you heard what a hall pass meant."
Buck's Adam's apple moved slowly, as if his throat were tightening too as the conversation progressed.
"Eddie, do you really think it would be wrong?"
From the way Buck had spoken those words, with a softness and a clear display of understanding implicit within them, Eddie sensed that Buck was about to understand what had kept him lost in his thoughts throughout the rest of the shift.
That was when something stopped, because the question was ridiculously simple for the mere reason that the answer was too.
Because, suddenly, he remembered another conversation. He remembered his best friend in his loft, sitting in front of him, trying to explain something that even he himself didn't seem to fully understand yet. He remembered the tension in his words, the uncertainty in his voice, the way he had waited for a reaction that never came because Eddie had never needed time to decide what he thought about it.
He remembered listening to him, he remembered himself saying out loud that it wouldn't change anything between them because Buck was still Buck and there was nothing wrong with that.
There hadn't been then, there wasn't now, and there never would be.
The understanding of what that memory, that conversation, meant arrived so quickly that it caused him to go still once again. No, he didn't think it was wrong, not even a little.
The very moment that answer settled inside him, another question appeared behind it, silent and impossible to ignore. If it wasn't wrong, if that wasn't really the problem, then why had he reacted that way? Why had he spent the entire day thinking about the answer his brain had immediately offered to the question?
And, as he realized that Buck was still watching him, waiting for him to put his thoughts in order, without pressuring him at all, he asked himself one final question: why hadn't he been able to look away from Buck after spending the rest of the shift trying to avoid him?
Suddenly, Eddie began remembering several events at the same time. The first time they saw each other, the day they met. The promise to have each other's backs. The endless nights on that couch, with Chris between them, with improvised dinners and movies playing one after another. The conversations in which Eddie took on the role of listener because he loved hearing whatever Buck was thinking. The need to look for Buck in any room just to be close to him, or the way the world never seemed to weigh quite as much when they were together.
And, finally, the way he had built a life around that man, around his constant presence, without ever stopping to ask himself why.
That was when Buck's voice rose, pulling Eddie out of his thoughts, bringing him back to the reality he was in.
"Eddie."
His voice was soft, almost cautious. Eddie had heard his name come out of Buck's mouth countless times, but never like that, with a kind of reverence, with a clear attentiveness that he felt in every pore of his skin.
At that moment, Eddie felt something finally click into place. There were no fireworks, no giant glowing sign congratulating him for it. It was more like a puzzle piece that had been out of place for years and had finally found the exact spot where it belonged.
At that moment, Eddie understood what Hen had meant during their conversation. Eddie had seen, throughout his memories, that accumulation of small things and facts that had been hidden for years.
Buck was still sitting in front of him, silent and giving him the space he knew Eddie needed to process everything, waiting as he had always waited.
The distance between them suddenly seemed unbearably large. At the same time that all of this information materialized inside his head, Eddie realized that he was tired of thinking, of analyzing every thought, of searching for answers he had probably known for years.
So he leaned forward.
It was a small, slow movement, giving Buck time to react. Buck, whose eyes widened slightly in surprise and whose breathing seemed to stop for a fraction of a second. Buck, who remained still for a moment, his gaze shifting between Eddie's eyes and mouth, as if making sure that this was real. Buck, who was the one who finally closed the remaining distance between them.
The kiss was soft at first, tentative, as if both of them were checking that they weren't walking across hot coals, but that this was solid ground, something that had been built over the years.
Buck's hand found the back of Eddie's neck with a gentleness that made his chest tighten painfully. There was no doubt or urgency in that gesture, only an infinite patience that Eddie recognized in his best friend whenever it came to him. He wasn't demanding that the kiss deepen, he wasn't pushing him for more.
Eddie made the decision not to pull away because, for the first time since the absurd conversation that had begun with Buck's question at the station, since the answer had immediately appeared in his head and refused to leave, Eddie didn't feel confused.
He only felt a clarity and a calmness settling inside him, as if he had finally accepted the decision to stop arguing with himself, as if, after all those hours, he were finally listening to his own answer.
When they pulled apart, neither of them spoke immediately. The movie continued playing in the background, completely forgotten, until a scene caught Eddie's attention and his gaze drifted toward the screen out of pure inertia.
Pedro Pascal had appeared on screen with a mustache and a cowboy hat.
Eddie blinked several times, trying to process that information. He looked at the screen again before turning toward Buck, an amused smile on his face.
Buck frowned because he wasn't understanding the connection his best friend had just made, or the connection their coworkers had made back at the station after he admitted that that man was his hall pass.
"I just understood why it's specifically Pedro Pascal in this movie and not in any of the others he's done."
Immediately, Buck turned his gaze toward the screen. A few seconds later, as soon as he understood what was happening, a groan of defeat left his mouth.
"Which of the two had more to do with your choice, Buck?" Eddie was flirting with Buck, yes. "The mustache or the cowboy hat?"
"Don't start, please." Buck covered his face with both hands. "It's neither of them, okay? It's just all of Pedro Pascal, the whole thing."
Eddie let out a small laugh at the same time that he once again reduced the distance between them, pressing his body completely against Buck's.
"It's the mustache, isn't it?"
Buck groaned again and Eddie didn't hesitate to pull his hands away from his face, allowing their gazes to meet directly, without needing to search for each other. They were a magnet, they always had been, and that no longer scared Eddie.
"It wasn't only the mustache," Buck whispered, raising one of his hands to Eddie's face, intending to brush his thumb over the area between his nose and mouth. "Although I have to say I miss it."
Eddie smiled genuinely then before leaning forward again with the intention of capturing Buck's lips with his own.
As the movie continued moving forward, as Pedro Pascal continued proving himself to be an attractive character on screen and Buck kept complaining despite having his mouth occupied at the moment, Eddie realized several things.
All the questions he had been asking himself during the rest of the shift no longer mattered to him. Ryan Gosling being the immediate answer after learning what a hall pass meant had never really been the heart of the matter.
Ryan Gosling had been the doorway to who he really was. Maybe he didn't have all the answers yet, maybe it would take him time to find them, but sitting next to Buck, while feeling that man's smile against his mouth, he no longer felt the need to find them at that precise moment.
“Eds, wait,” Eddie kept kissing him. How could he stop now that he was finally enjoying it? “Eddie, this is serious!”
Eddie pulled away and didn’t hesitate to pout at Buck, who smiled at that reaction. One of the man’s hands slid slowly toward Eddie’s waist, and Eddie shivered at the touch.
“You still haven’t told me who your "hall pass" is,” Buck batted his eyelashes, in a totally flirtatious gesture. “Is that the answer that popped into your head too quickly?”
Eddie nodded briefly, feeling the heat rise up his neck until it settled on both his cheeks and his ears.
“It’s Ryan Gosling. More specifically, Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary.”
Eddie took a step back, obeying what his own subconscious was telling him. It wasn’t until Buck’s entire face was within his field of vision, until he carefully analyzed the expression on his best friend’s face, that he understood that familiar feeling he’d had when his mind thought of the ridiculous way Ryan Gosling smiled.
Because that ridiculous smile was the same one Buck always gave him; it was the same one he’d first seen on Buck’s face when Eddie admitted he could have his back any day.
It was the same one that would stay with him for the rest of his life, and he was eager because this was only just beginning.