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A slam comes from the entryway of Buck’s house, louder than he’s accustomed to. Louder, at least, than from which he can follow his usual mental shortcuts to deduce who just arrived.
Buck grew up in a house of terse silence, cut through only by the occasional stifled, knuckles-to-mouth sob of frustration. Doors only really slammed when he was responsible — never his parents. Occasionally Maddie, but only when the standard teenage angst came calling; impressively infrequently, especially given the small Buck she was left in charge of and how relentlessly he operated back then.
All is to say: Buck is used to identifying who exactly is coming and going where based on sound cues. For instance, grown-up Maddie shuts his front door softly, as if not to shake the scaffolding of peaceful livelihood that holds the walls of the house firm. His parents, on the rare occasion they deign to visit, also close it softly: always his mother — his father on her tail and with his own between his legs — and not out of any sort of respect or kindhearted homecoming. More so dubious; wary of pressing palm to wood, as though the teal paint will crumble and peel off against her fingertips.
On darker days, Buck thinks that if it did it would be a result of her uniquely corrosive tendencies, rather than any of his own flawed varnishing efforts.
But he digresses.
The slam isn’t loud enough to really startle, but Buck does look instinctively over his shoulder from his spot by the kitchen counter, despite being multiple rooms away from being able to identify the person responsible.
One mystery is quickly solved by the audible combination of keys rattling against a designated hook on the wall and the familiar shuffling-off of boots — Eddie’s here. Which leaves more questions, like: why is he slamming the door, and: where are his manners? Eddie rarely leaves the house without them.
And yet, rapid footsteps pad in Buck’s direction without so much as a polite good morning bounced off the walls. Not even an it’s me, one of Buck’s personal favorites of Eddie’s rolodex of entry lines due to how wildly unnecessary it is: Buck’s radar for Eddie’s presence in any given space is finely tuned; an awareness so sharp he pricks his skin on it every now and then. Those two tiny words put a disproportionately large smile on Buck’s face every time, all the same. Because, well—
It’s Eddie.
“Hey, Eddie,” Buck calls out without turning around, because these chives aren’t gonna chop themselves. “Morning. What did my door ever do to you, by the way?”
“Buck—” Eddie starts, and he sounds almost short of breath, so Buck decides it’s about time these chives learn some self-sufficiency, actually. He rests the knife down and spins, met with a tension-wrought, furrow-browed Eddie, who shakes his head minutely and adds, “What?”
It’s difficult for Buck’s moral compass to remember where true north lies at times like these. Specifically, the times when his best friend stands before him in some degree of active distress — out of harm’s way and, of course, with no indication of a genuine emergency — which, on Eddie, is a look so adorable it takes all of Buck’s strength not to stride forward and pinch his cheek. He looks like one of the mice from Cinderella trying to solve a complex math problem.
More pressing matters: best friend, in distress, tips of his ears an endearingly rosy shade of pink. Buck straightens up and clocks in for Good Friend duty.
“You slammed the front—never mind. Nonissue," Buck says, then refocuses. "Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Eddie nods: sincere enough that Buck is no longer anxious; frantically enough that he doesn’t believe him for a second.
Which is the right call, because Eddie proceeds to shake his head not even five seconds later.
“No,” he amends.
Buck is the one to nod, then: just the once, pointed and slow. “So,” he chimes, “those are opposites.”
Eddie lets out some amalgamation of an exhale, a gasp, and a scoff, all of which Buck thinks are supposed to be a laugh.
“You’re telling me,” says Eddie sardonically, seemingly uncaring that Buck isn’t in on the joke.
Which is fine. Eddie sometimes just—needs a second, and Buck keeps a handful in reserve for this exact sort of purpose. It’s a limited supply, because an impatient tiger can’t exactly change its stripes, but hopefully just enough for this: Eddie huffing through two flared nostrils, scratching his flushed neck, biting at the nail of his thumb. After a couple of seconds he looks down, notices his own bad habit and shakes the hand out at his side, self-chastising.
All the while, Buck stands and looks and breathes as his polite reservations slip through his own fingers like sands in a faulty hourglass. Once a single one of them slides down and away from him, the rest seem to cascade faster and faster.
It’s scarce moments before Buck is about to break and burst out with a please, god, just tell me what’s wrong when Eddie finally speaks.
“You—” Eddie huffs once more at the false start; clenches his jaw only to unclench it immediately, ever self-correcting. “You’re… Buck.”
Buck squints and angles his head, smiling only very slightly. Really, just a... teeny, tiny, undeniable smirk.
“Well, you’re not wrong,” he replies.
“Shut—shush,” Eddie waves him off. He squeezes his eyes shut, lids crinkling with the pressure. When he reopens them he has to blink harshly against the daylight of the kitchen, even muted by the sheer curtains Buck hadn’t got around to drawing open all the way this morning.
“Okay.” Buck tucks his lips into a sheepish line when Eddie shoots him a feeble glare. “Sorry. Shushing.”
Eddie’s expression softens. “Shut up,” he says, dripping with fondness, then realizes his error and adds, “God. I mean—don’t apologize.”
“Okay,” Buck echoes, soft to match.
Nodding twice, on your marks, get set, Eddie takes a visibly deep breath. “You’re my best friend, yes?”
Buck just manages to hold back the scoff that elbows its way instinctively to the front of his mouth. The answer is obvious, but there are no stupid questions when your friend is clearly overthinking—well, something.
Still, he answers with, “Duh.” He’s not a perfect man.
“Good,” Eddie says, and he looks far too reassured by Buck’s simple confirmation of a fact that has been unwaveringly true for nearly a decade.
“What’s up?” Buck takes a small step closer. Eddie’s gaze follows his feet as they move. “Something happen?”
“No,” Eddie replies immediately, only to once again change his mind. “Or—yes.”
Buck doesn’t bother to repeat his line about opposites, letting the look on his face do the talking instead.
Eddie, predictably, rolls his eyes. “Shut up.”
And Buck learned about the all-powerful rule of threes in high school English class, so he lets a bite-sized stupid smile through while he continues to scan Eddie’s features for a hint at whatever is going on.
“You’re my best friend,” Buck says, prompting. He lets the words dangle off a precipice between them, its height yet to be determined.
“Right.” Eddie sets his shoulders, his jaw, his brow. “So you would—no. I mean, would you….”
Distracted by—besotted with—the hard-thinking wrinkles determinedly engraving themselves on Eddie’s forehead; the pull of his lower lip, bitten white beneath one pointy canine; the steady warmth of wrenchingly familiar brown eyes that meet his own, Buck replies before he realizes he’s going to speak.
“I’d do anything for you.”
Notably, the answer comes before Eddie can actually finish his question. Small, infinitesimal seconds before, in fact, because Buck has barely finished casually peeling back the membrane of his soul when Eddie opens his mouth—
“Would you kiss me?”
Buck is proud, at least, that he doesn’t legitimately physically stumble back — but the gears in his head still grind to a halt with a dumbfounded screech.
“What?”
Which makes Eddie wince. Buck doesn’t want that, doesn’t ever want Eddie to feel off-kilter — or all the more likely, immediately guilty — simply for asking a favor.
The exact nature of that favor Buck is, admittedly, still processing. He’s churning the words—Eddie’s words—that made up the favor in his mind like butter, a painstaking incremental effort. His arms almost ache with it. His head, too. His heart isn’t aching, exactly, but doing something sort of similar; a little agonizing, definitely concerning, but far less slow: it patters, quietly but incessantly, rabbit-fast in his chest.
And if his heart is the hare, then his brain is the useless old tortoise; and Buck is left to stand struck still like an idiot and pray that fabled race wraps up sooner rather than later, ironic though that may be. Immediately, preferably. At the very least, before Eddie ups and runs — which could no doubt be any second now.
“You know what?” Eddie claps his hands together, and scene. “Forget it. I was—it doesn’t matter.”
He spins around, likely gunning to hoof it right on back to the front door as quickly as he arrived. Buck catches him by the bicep before he can finish taking that first step. When Eddie concedes to the gentle weight of his palm and turns back, Buck lets a breath free he didn’t know he was holding hostage.
There’s a phenomenon Buck is intimately familiar with, as a man with a mind that rarely agrees to sit still: where two people who are anxious — whether it be by nature or by circumstance — wind up in a given situation, he finds that one of them, by some sort of pack survival instinct, maybe, will always step up and rise to the occasion. It’s most common at work, obviously; day after day he sheds trepidation like a coat before he steps into hot water, because if a civilian is panicking, it’s his literal job to stay calm.
But it applies in his personal life, too, more frequently than he might expect.
When Eddie turns and meets his eyes again, Buck’s pulse evens out to a more acceptable pace. Like a hunter’s focus: everything narrows into a vignette, target locked, all he feels is pragmatic concern for the man in front of him — who might be shaking, actually, just a little.
Buck doesn’t move his hand. If anything, he squeezes slightly tighter.
“Hey,” says Buck, low and hopefully comforting. He tilts his head down, just enough to assert a no-nonsense approach to eye contact.
“Hello,” Eddie responds through gritted teeth.
He holds Buck’s stare like it burns. His ears have shot from rosy pink straight to crimson.
“Hi,” Buck adds, unnecessarily; intentionally a little stupid. Thankfully, it’s enough that Eddie exhales a faint hint of a laugh, and a portion of the tension in Buck’s chest unclenches.
He attempts a responding smile in the ballpark of reassuring. If it hits the mark, he doesn’t know, but he does know that it serves to make Eddie look directly at his mouth, which—Buck can’t think about right now, actually, he really has to be mentally attuned to the task at hand; so he ignores, ignores, ignores for the time being.
“Eddie,” Buck starts, and sweeps a thumb soothingly over the front of Eddie’s shoulder, where stiff tissue traces of jarring memory linger beneath fabric. “Can you repeat the question?”
Eddie’s eyes dart briefly to Buck’s hand, then back to his face. Slightly strangled, he asks, “Do I have to?”
Buck bites his lip: a fond smile wrangled back, an outlet for his nervous energy.
“I’d like it if you did,” Buck answers, honest in a whole host of ways. His free hand jitters at his side, desperate for its cue to reach out and touch. Soon, he thinks, he hopes, just—not yet.
He continues, “I’m not, like, a hundred percent sure I heard you right, is all. Ninety, ninety-five, maybe, but…” a shrug, small and bashful like a schoolboy, “I’m kind of unwilling to leave a margin of error on this one.”
As expected, Eddie digs his heels into the kitchen tile. “There’s no point anyway,” he says, exhales once harshly through his nose, stares down at his socks. “It just… I was just spiralling, a little.”
“Was?” Buck prods, digging his fingertips into Eddie’s bicep, hey, look at me.
Eddie does. He also huffs, but a hint of a smile comes along with it. “Okay, am,” he relents. “Maybe.”
“Okay. Maybe.” Buck can work with maybe — he’s great with maybe; maybe is a jumping off point, really. He slides his hand down to cup Eddie’s elbow. “Can you talk to me about it?”
The smile grows stronger but becomes self-effacing, and Eddie repeats, “Do I have to?”
“No,” Buck concedes the point, and then some. “But I feel like I should remind you, maybe, that less than—” he checks his watch, “—two minutes ago, I said, quote, I would do anything for you. So you say there’s no point, but… to me at least, it kind of feels like there—might be one, actually.” He clears his throat, reluctantly self-conscious. “If you’re up for it.”
Eddie’s eyes flare with something akin to determination. Softer, but still stubborn. Not quite like accepting his fate — more like accepting that his fate isn’t so bad after all; might be quite nice, even, once he battles through the vulnerability it takes to reach it. He holds Buck’s eye steady and nods.
“Okay,” Eddie says, steely. He swallows, but his mouth must be dry, because it looks like it takes effort. “Okay.”
Then a few long seconds pass where he doesn’t offer those okays any company.
Sighing, deflating, Eddie continues, “Okay. I’ve lost momentum, I think, so… I’m kind of fighting uphill, now. I’m sorry. Give me a second.”
“No problem,” Buck responds immediately. “I can wait,” he adds, and he means it, perhaps more than he’d ever imagined admitting out loud.
He watches Eddie’s eyes scan the room as he gathers his thoughts alongside his nerve. They land on something over Buck’s shoulder, and his nose crinkles.
“Were you cooking?”
“Oh,” Buck glances behind him at the abandoned chives. “Just eggs. They can wait, too.”
Despite Buck’s assurances, Eddie abruptly takes what seems to be the quickest deep breath he can, like the idea of Buck’s interrupted eggs has put him on a timer.
“Okay,” Eddie utters once more — a reprise, subdued yet resolute. “I, uh… you know how I keep getting those Substacks?”
Buck reigns in a laugh. God, does he. “The ones you swear you didn’t sign up for and have been grumbling about for months? Yeah, I’m familiar.”
“Right,” Eddie monotones, but the glare he throws Buck’s way barely lasts a second. “Well, I checked my email this morning, and… I read an article, about this guy, who—never mind.” He doubles back, shuts his eyes to shut off the thought, waves his hands in front of his chest as if to wipe the slate clean. “Can’t afford distractions. I’ll tell you later. Point is…”
He looks up at Buck then, vulnerable in a way that makes Buck’s breath snag in his throat. Looks up, because apparently they’ve gravitated close enough over the span of this interaction to warrant up, which Buck is embarrassed to admit he totally did not realize was happening; does that usually happen?
“Point is,” Eddie repeats, as though the newfound weight of this eye contact necessitates a full restart, “that I think—I think I might be…”
He glances down at Buck’s hand, still cupping his elbow, though—oops, definitely significantly tighter than it was before. Buck has got to get a grip. Or—the opposite, he supposes, so he starts to let go; only for Eddie to cover the hand with his opposite one, keeping them tethered.
“I think my sexuality might be… well. Not what I thought.”
All of the oxygen leaves Buck’s body in an instant: a vacuum, a whirlwind, rattling his foundations. He swears he feels his bones vibrate.
Breathlessly, he replies, “That’s a hell of an article.”
“Sure was,” Eddie concurs with a shy curl of his lips. He sounds contrastingly breathy, as if Buck’s exiled air supply sought immediate sanctuary in Eddie’s lungs instead. A safe place to land.
Buck coughs, suddenly nervous in a way he hasn’t felt in—years, honestly; Jesus, probably since Abby, and even that doesn’t begin to compare. He starts to slowly slide the lengths of his fingers between the divots of Eddie’s own, hinting.
“And this was…”
“Roughly an hour ago,” Eddie confirms.
“Right,” Buck nods. “And straight away, you came here to…”
“Ask if I could kiss you.” Eddie chuckles, low and rumbling, like he’s just put together his own actions upon hearing them out loud. “Yeah, uh. Straight away.”
“Right.” Buck’s thoughts are running a mile a minute, yet he’s never felt so stock-still. “Right. Could you, uh—could you explain your thought process there? Because, y’know, it…” He trails off, licks his lips as he desperately hunts down the right balance of words. “I just need to know, like—in what way.”
Eddie’s expression wrinkles, confused. His eyebrows draw together like magnets just above his nose.
“What way to… kiss me?”
“No,” Buck blurts, oh god, how did he get here? “No, I mean—well, if you have a preference, but—no, not the point I was trying to—fuck.” With his free hand, Buck rubs harshly at his forehead. “I’m gonna—I’m gonna start over.”
“Okay.” Eddie looks blatantly amused. Which, well—at least Buck has cheered him up.
“You had a—a revelation, and you came here to ask—uh. That. So I just need to know if it’s in a… trial and error kind of way?” Buck’s eyebrows draw together, pensive; apprehensive, too, somewhere deeper down. “A test drive?”
“No,” Eddie is quick to reply, shaking his head vehemently. Then, as seems to be the theme: “Well—yes?”
Abruptly, Buck is faced with suppressing the thunderous beat of his own heart in his ears.
“You’re tricky today,” he quips.
His voice doesn’t crack, but it’s a close thing.
“Believe me, I know,” says Eddie. His eyes flit between each of Buck’s for a moment, and whatever he sees there has him taking the leap Buck had been teetering toward: he finally slips his elbow free of Buck’s grip in favor of intertwining their fingers.
Eddie’s expression swaps to one of hushed reassurance, and his voice to match.
“It’s not in whatever bad way I know part of you is thinking. I just mean that—I guess it’s sort of like a test drive in a way, but not like that,” Eddie explains. Clumsily, rambling far more than is his standard, but he explains. “I’m not here because you’re a man and I wanted to try out just… kissing a man. But I am looking for, uh.” He clears his throat. “Results.”
“Results,” Buck echoes.
Eddie presses his lips into a line, glances up at the ceiling, thinking loudly. “Sense,” he corrects. “Answers. An explanation for, well, a whole lot of things, really. I’m looking for—I’ve done most of the equation, but I just need you to help me… check my work.”
There’s a sweet spot hidden in there, somewhere between Eddie’s uncharacteristic babbling and his misguided attempts at analogy. It all adds up to nerves: the honeyed kind, the kind that hum softly like bees over one’s skin, the kind that precede a really, really nice thing.
Buck distantly feels a little bad that Eddie’s fumbling is what wound up putting him at ease, but it’s definitely distant.
“God, no wonder you dated a teacher,” Buck teases. The ribbing tumbles out of him on instinct, even while he’s actively holding Eddie’s hand — which might just be a good sign. “What is it with you and flirting through math?”
Eddie squints in disbelief. “Why would you—” he says; doesn’t even bother adding the bring her up. Buck fills in the blanks just fine. “You know I’m rough with metaphors, Buck. Please.”
“Sorry,” Buck says, but he’s smiling too hard to sell it. “So, uh—yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, Eddie, I would kiss you,” he clarifies, and revels in the way Eddie’s eyes widen slightly; further still when Buck moves to curve a palm around the side of his waist.
“Thank you very much for asking,” Buck adds, just to be a little bit of an asshole — and holy shit, Eddie must really want to kiss him, actually, because he doesn’t even call him on it.
“Okay.” Eddie nods. A thumb taps restlessly against the side of Buck’s own. “So, like… Any day now.”
“God,” Buck sighs, looking reproachfully at the ceiling even as he steadily draws Eddie in by his midsection. “And people think I’m the impatient one. They really have no idea.”
Eddie drifts closer, closer, close enough that he actually has to lean back to grumble, “I’m hoping to get an idea, if you’d—”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard you,” says Buck. “Come here.”
He ducks his head just as Eddie tilts his chin to meet it, colliding quietly in the middle.
It’s practically seamless, especially in comparison to the bumbling back and forth they just waded through. Buck’s lips brush over Eddie’s, intentionally sweet while lacking no conviction; kisses him, soft but so, so assured.
At first, Eddie kisses almost like he’s taken aback, but he quickly finds his footing — and once he does, he doesn’t waste a second. He pushes in, firm; lets go of Buck’s hand to settle both palms against his shoulder blades. He plucks Buck’s lower lip between his own, over and over, letting out small muffled hums of contentment like he’s swiftly discovered a new favorite hobby.
God, Buck hopes he has.
Buck already resolved to match whatever pace Eddie sets, but he allows himself hints of indulgence here and there: a hand pressed at the small of Eddie’s back, slightly suggestive; another curled possessively from his collarbone to his nape; a bite at Eddie’s bottom lip.
That last one in particular draws forth a stifled little sound that Buck won’t act on now, but will absolutely circle back to, eagerly, at the appropriate opportunity.
Eventually, Buck is the one to pull back. His head spins a little bit where he rests it against Eddie’s, their noses only just touching.
Eddie breaks the breathy quiet. “That was…”
“Yeah.”
“...clarifying,” Eddie finishes the thought, grinning ear to ear. Buck brushes a kiss to the tip of his nose for his troubles. “Enlightening. Is this how that Eureka guy felt? With the bathtub?”
Tilting his head back enough to meet Eddie’s eyes, Buck asks, “You mean—Archimedes?”
Eddie hums. “That’s the one.”
Buck steps back so he can grab the tops of Eddie’s shoulders. He levels him with a flat look; hopes it comes across as sincere and thought-provoking as intended.
“The famous mathematician?"
“Oh.” Eddie makes a comically sheepish face. “Guess so.”
Guess so, he says. Buck, very bravely, doesn’t kiss him about it.
“We—we just kissed, and you’re somehow still on math.”
Eddie pouts. It’s now taking every crumb of willpower in Buck’s possession, from his head to the tips of his toes, not to kiss him about it.
“Be nice to me,” says Eddie insistently. “I’m un-repressing a lot of things this morning.”
“Uh huh,” Buck drones.
“Yeah, you know. Homosexual tendencies—”
“Homosexual tendencies.”
“—as well as all these feelings for my best friend, which I can’t lie, I’m feeling pretty dumb about missing—”
Ignoring his heart enacting the emotional equivalent of trying to step on a phantom stair, Buck says, “And a math kink.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Eddie replies skeptically. “Because—” he grins and plucks Buck’s hands unceremoniously away from his shoulders, taking them in his own, “—if that were true, I surely would’ve jumped your bones after the lightning strike.”
It’s an absolute miracle of miracles that Buck doesn’t choke on air.
“If I’m—” Buck clears his throat and squeezes Eddie’s hands in tandem. “Say I’m kinda bad at math, nowadays. Is the, uh, bone jumping still on the table?”
“Depends,” says Eddie. “Can I take you on a date first?”
“Oh.” Buck breathes the word out, soft and surprised. “Yeah, totally. You’d wanna do that?”
“Buck. What part of feelings for my best friend didn’t make sense?”
“No, that made sense. It’s the, uh, the dating.” Buck instinctively goes to scratch nervously at his jaw, deciding to bring Eddie’s hand along for the ride rather than do something awful, like let go. “You hate dating.”
“I don’t think that’s true anymore,” Eddie admits. “I think a lot of things are about to be different, with you.”
Buck’s heart starts pounding a kick drum beneath his ribcage. “Uh—probably.”
Eddie smiles. He lets go with one hand so he can bring it up to thumb sweetly at Buck’s lower lip. “Good different, though.”
“Really good different,” Buck agrees, agrees, agrees. He’s so fucking agreeable, he can barely contain it. “I’m—I’m not sure it’s fully hit me yet, honestly. I might, like, start crying at random while I eat my eggs.”
“Oh, fuck,” Eddie mumbles. “Your eggs. Have you eaten? I can—no, I won’t offer to make them. That won’t help.”
He looks genuinely remorseful. Buck wants to eat him.
First, though, eggs.
“I appreciate the thought,” Buck offers, curling a set of fingers over the firm line of Eddie’s jaw. “But, yeah, maybe not.” He presses a brief peck to Eddie’s lips — which swiftly turns into a slightly longer, drawn out, barely-qualifies-as-a peck, but hey, who’s keeping score — then with a parting squeeze of Eddie’s hand, he turns back to the abandoned chives on the countertop.
“Coffee?” Eddie asks, having already drifted over to the cupboard housing the mugs. He navigates Buck’s space as if it were his own — a statement that feels a hell of a lot more achievable than just half an hour ago.
Buck wonders just how long it’s been true, really, even before then.
“Coffee sounds great.”