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Buck knew the priest was gay, the same way he knew which guys to hit on at clubs. It didn’t matter that he was a priest. Buck was a guy whose therapist had sex with, so he understood how quickly staunch rules could be broken in the name of attraction. Not that he really thought Eddie would help break this particular rule, but the two had been awfully…close lately.
He’d seen them getting coffee together a couple of weeks ago and asked Eddie what that was about. The reply he got was less than satisfactory, something about getting help from someone who understands him. Buck didn’t know what that was supposed to mean because Buck understood Eddie more than anyone.
Something about it all didn’t sit right with Buck, even if Eddie was a grown man capable of taking care of himself.
Buck’s dislike of the whole thing got worse as time passed. Eddie had clearly been dealing with something—hence the priest—but that thing had started to take shape. Eddie was more open about what had had him going back to the priest. Words like “shame”, “guilt”, “repression” weren’t enough to set Buck’s radar pinging. It was the words “freedom”, “authenticity”, and “truth” that made him almost swallow his tongue. The stuttering breaths that Eddie would use as parentheses around each word felt like being struck by lightning all over again.
Apparently the Catholic(!!) priest was helping Eddie come to terms with something he had refused to notice—or simply been incapable of noticing. He’d needed what he saw as a representative of God and his, evidently, deeply-ingrained faith to make being gay a plausible reality. Which Buck could at least pretend to understand.
What he couldn’t understand however, was why the guy was currently sitting in his firehouse, in his locker room, hand clasped tight to his-Eddie.
Buck stormed up to the glass door and wrenched it open, false smile already set in place. “Oh, Father. Hey. Didn’t know the church was doing house calls now. Although I guess you did track down Eddie at a juice bar.” He raised his eyebrows, disingenuine up turn to his lips falling just as fast as he’d plastered it on.
“Buck!” Eddie reprimanded, rising quickly to stalk towards him. He turned back to the Christ-sized elephant in the room. “Sorry, Father. Buck’s mouth doesn’t always wait for his brain to give the orders.”
Buck just glared at the back of Eddie’s head, betrayed.
“No need to be sorry, your…friend is just being protective. Which I can appreciate. We have been spending a lot of time together, Mr Diaz.” The priest gave Eddie a playful look, something unspoken passing between them. All Buck could do was stand there and watch, not believing how blatantly this man who was supposedly ‘married to God’—which, again, gay—was flirting with his best friend.
A ridiculously well-groomed face met Buck’s and continued, “I go where I’m needed, ‘Buck’.”
Buck wanted to punch him so badly, it was probably a sin. “Unless you’re secretly a firefighter, we don’t need you here.”
“I asked him to come. I needed to talk,” Eddie explained, which wasn’t nearly explanation enough for Buck who immediately felt hurt to go along with his strong helping of jealousy.
“You can talk to me,” he said quietly, perhaps too vulnerable in the presence of someone he believed to be his direct competition.
“I, uh-not yet, Buck,” Eddie averted his eyes. If Buck didn’t already know and have it spelled out for him, that would have been enough to tell him that Eddie was keeping secrets. He just didn’t know what it could be now, because they’d already awkwardly made their way through the ‘I’ve just been dating women because I believed it was the right thing to do’ conversation.
Another unspoken conversation passed between Eddie and the, begrudgingly admittedly handsome, man beside him. Buck felt himself shrink.
He’d come within spitting distance of the future he had only ever allowed himself to dream of on his most inebriated nights, lest he feel like an awful person for being in love with his best friend. When Eddie cornered him in the living room one night, pacing as he finally got the words out, Buck had believed in fate. It was either fate or the unconscious effort he’d made to make something with Eddie, a photo album seen on a particular call as inspiration. But it turned out to be neither, and they continued as they had. Or at least Buck continued, Eddie went off with the priest.
Now they were clearly dating, as was par for the course when someone makes you realise you’re queer. Buck had been there, he just hated that he couldn’t tell Eddie the truth he’d realised later. It wasn’t Tommy that made him realise he was bisexual, it was his proximity to Eddie. Self-preservation along with his tendency to be slow on the uptake kicked in and he went with the option with lower stakes. Clearly Eddie hadn’t been the same, because in what world is a literal priest a safer bet than Buck? Not that the situations were the same at all, but still.
Buck couldn’t stand to be in the same room as them anymore. He nodded his head and lifted an awkward hand in goodbye and fled to the safety of the engine. Apparently he’d forgotten to close the door behind him and just as he was climbing up Buck heard the priest say, “your friend cares about you deeply.”
“I know that. But is it enough?” Eddie replied, his voice carrying in the unusually quiet station.
“What do they say about leaps of faith?”
Eddie huffed, “bit of a touchy subject at the moment, Father.”
“Fair enough,” and then there was a silence that rang too clearly. “But I didn’t mention God. We were talking about Mr Buckley.”
“What about Buck?” And at this point Buck’s ears were burning. It was taking every ounce of self-control he could conjure not to sprint back through that open door. He had to make do with edging back along the engine, pretending to check parts his clipboard already told him were checked.
Buck heard Eddie fall back onto the bench beside Father Brian before he answered with a question of his own. “Do you have faith in him?”
Buck did have to risk giving away his eavesdropping at that, because the answer to that was literally one of life or death. This mattered, and not just as firefighters, partners, together in the 118.
He waited with baited breath, staring so fixatedly at Eddie that he was surprised he didn’t feel it.
Buck almost dropped the hose he was pretending to check for holes at the declaration-shaped words out of Eddie’s mouth. “I have never once lost faith in Buck, and I never will.” It made Buck want to fall to his knees and thank whatever Eddie wanted him to. His heart felt like it would take flight with the wings it had grown.
“Then tell him.” Buck almost missed what Father Brian had said, and kind of wished he had. Because what did that mean? Tell Buck what? What secret was so big that Eddie felt a priest needed to be involved? What did Eddie think he couldn’t tell him?
His mind wondered and as it so often did, came to the complete wrong conclusion.
“Oh my god,” Buck whispered to himself. “Eddie killed someone!”