Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hey, it’s me. Which, I know you know it’s me, because even if you have deleted my number, and even if I hadn’t just gotten it repaired- whatever. I know you know it off by heart, so. Look, I wanted to give you space, and you have every right to be mad at me, and to ignore my calls. I get that. But I went by your loft but I guess you’re staying with Maddie? Or just ignoring my knocks, which is also completely fair. Um. I didn’t know – I wanted to give your space, and respect your boundaries, because I know, well. I haven’t done that much recently. Right. But it’s been a whole day and I can’t- And if you want to talk before tomorrow’s shift, I’m here. If you want to hit me, I’m here for that too. If you don’t, then I guess I’ll see you at the firehouse. Okay. Um. Bye, then.”

Shockingly, Buck has not decided to forgive Eddie within the twenty-four hours since Eddie smashed up their friendship like the tortilla warmer.

Eddie turns up to work and locks eyes with Ravi, who immediately widens his own gaze and then runs away like he’s being hunted. Eddie lets out a sigh. Okay, then, there goes any chance of the firehouse not knowing something’s up. He drops his bag from his shoulder in front of his locker, and reminds himself that he deserves this, that Buck has every right to be mad.

Then he opens his locker – their locker – and sees that Buck has cleared out all of his stuff from it. The postcards and the post-it notes and the spare hoodies and the blue cable are gone. There’s just a photo of Christopher, aged six, grinning with just the slivers of grown-up teeth poking through, like a physical manifesto of his own conscience.

Eddie yanks off his jacket, shoves it in the locker, and reminds himself again that Buck deserves to be angry. Deserves to reclaim his boundaries and his privacy. The reminder does not stop him from slamming the door shut with an angry metal clang, however. It’s going to be a long shift.

It’s Lucy who catches him on the way to the stairs, which is both the worst and best option Eddie could have hoped for. She says, with folded arms, “Buck’s in a bad mood.”

“I haven’t seen him yet today,” replies Eddie, calmly.

“Seems like you’re in a bad mood too.” Lucy hums. “Wonder if that’s related.”

Most of the time, Eddie thinks Lucy’s clever assessment and no-bullshit radar is amazing, and helpful, and something to be respected. Now, however, he just wants her out of his space as fast as possible. “Maybe it’s no one’s business if it is.”

“So that’s a yes.”

Eddie grits his teeth and shoulders past her. “I’m getting a coffee. Do you want one?”

“Ravi already made me one,” she calls after him, because god forbid she doesn’t get the last word. “You know, because I have a best friend who isn’t pissed off at me!”

He flips her off over his shoulder and bounds up the stairs to the upper floor. Immediately, the tension hits him like a brick wall, with Chimney and Hen deliberately staring anywhere but him, and Buck and Bobby arguing in the kitchen area, keeping their voices just low enough to hide the words themselves.

Eddie likes to think of himself as a brave man, but actually he’ll wait a bit before going to make a coffee.

Instead, he flops down on the couch, on the other side from Hen. He says, trying for normalcy, “Anything good on TV?”

Hen slowly turns to stare at him. He manages to hold out for a whole minute, before finally glancing over and seeing the incredulity on her face.

“What happened?” she hisses.

“Nothing, I-” Eddie sees Chimney leaning forward out of the corner of his eye, and frantically tries to think of any explanation that doesn’t humiliate Buck further or reveal too much about Eddie himself.

Luckily – or not, depending on how you look at it – Buck raises his voice loud enough to say, “Am I allowed to do anything without your say so, then?”

“Not when I’m your captain, and you’re under my firehouse,” Bobby replies, tense enough to suggest this is not the beginning of the fight. “Look, do you want to take this into my office, or-”

“No,” Buck says, and he turns the volume up deliberately with a side-eye in Eddie’s direction. “No, actually, I don’t believe in keeping secrets.”

“Okay,” Eddie allows quietly, closing his eyes for just a moment. “Something happened.”

“You can’t just walk in here and ask for a transfer and refuse to tell me why,” replies Bobby, the fight still going on over there, and Eddie feels something like panic shoot vertically through him like lightning, like his skeleton is all lit up on one of Christopher’s cartoons.

He twists on the couch and stares over the back of it at Buck. “What?”

Buck folds his arms tight enough that his shirt sleeves look like they’re struggling. “I don’t see how this needs anyone else’s input. I’m making a decision for myself, about myself.”

“You’re making an impulsive decision, and-”

“And what, I’m not allowed to make those? Stop babying me! I don’t need anyone pretending to care when they don’t!”

Eddie has to fix this. There is absolutely no question at all that Buck should transfer, or that any of his justified anger should be directed in Bobby’s direction. He knew Buck would be reactionary until Eddie could properly apologise, but somehow he didn’t see this particular direction.  He glances at Bobby, who’s already looking at him speculatively.

Buck’s head whips between the two of them, catching their shared look, and he throws his hands up in exasperation. “Do I need a committee involved now? This was supposed to be a private conversation.”

“You had it in a public space, kid.” Bobby is firm. “And yes, there is a committee of people who care about you, especially when this all seems to be coming out of left field. It’s called having a team, who have your back.”

At that particular phrasing, Buck’s left arm jerks like a flinch, and Eddie winces.

Buck tries again, lower and colder now. “I’ve tried to quit before, Bobby. You let me go before.”

“Yeah, and look how that stuck. It’s not baseball, you don’t get a home run on the fourth time you try it.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” Buck snarls, rabid with his anger. He’s wounded, anyone can see that, and he’s lashing out with claws from his corner retreat. “Can’t I make a decision for myself? Maybe I just want to be surrounded by people I can actually trust.”

Okay. Yeah, that- that one hurts.

“Why can’t you-?” Bobby must see the wound slice across Eddie’s face, and he pauses, then lowers his voice to say something else that only Buck can hear.

Buck recoils from whatever it is, though. He takes a step back, and growls, “I don’t want to talk about it. And I want those transfer papers, Bobby. I’m going to go hit things in the meantime.” With that, he stalks downstairs.

In another version of events, Eddie would be able to follow him. Instead, he just stands, and wanders towards Bobby, fully intent to storm straight over more boundaries and ask Bobby what he needs to do to make sure Buck never gets a hand on those transfer papers. The 118 is Buck’s home – Eddie’s too, and he hated leaving it before, but he can survive it better than Buck can. If anyone has to leave, it’ll be Eddie.

Before he can ask, Bobby clasps a hand on Eddie’s elbow, just firm enough to tug him to a standstill. “Eddie,” Bobby says under his breath urgently. “What the hell happened?”

Eddie looks at him with wide eyes and has no idea how to explain beyond: “I fucked up, Cap.”

Bobby frowns, opens his mouth to say something else, and then the alarm blares from all directions.

In the beat before they move for the truck, Bobby says, “We’ll continue this conversation later, okay?”

Except that conversation doesn’t come.

They arrive on the scene and there’s at least eight cars in a massive pile up, though most people seem to be wandering around mostly annoyed rather than grievously injured. Bobby is batting out instructions even before the truck parks, making triage plans and equipment requests, and, most noticeably, pairing up Buck with Ravi and Lucy with Eddie. Lucy and Ravi send Eddie twin glares, like it’s his fault they don’t get to be special best friends today, which is both absolutely fair and very hypocritical of Eddie to be uncharitable about.

The whole scene is a mess, honestly. Most people are okay, but there’s three cars wrangled and twisted up together, with various shouts and cries coming from within. Worst of all, there’s a kid stuck in the backseat of one, with a hysterical father in the front seat.

“He came out of nowhere!” he begs, crying and loud and pained. “Please, it was a green light on our side and he just rammed into us!”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Eddie tries to soothe from the passenger side whilst Lucy pries open his car door with the jaws of life, and Hen and Chimney are assessing the little girl in the back. “Sir, what’s your name?”

“It’s Andrew, please, you have to-”

“Okay, and what is your daughter’s name?”

And Andrew’s face just crumples, like with that one question his day has gone from horrifying to harrowing. “She’s – she’s not mine, not really. She’s my goddaughter, and we’re – we were on our way to meet my friend, her dad, she- oh god.”

From the corner of Eddie’s eye, Eddie sees Buck flinch as he hands over another piece of equipment to Lucy, imperceptible to someone who didn’t know him, before he’s rushing away again to join Ravi at another car. Shit, shit, shit. Of all the days – or maybe that’s just this life, trying to help people who remind you of yourself, finding connections with everyone you help no matter how big or small.

 But Eddie can’t focus on that right now.

Thankfully, they manage to get Andrew out, and then his goddaughter too with minimal damage. Daphne, as she introduces herself to Eddie, manages to only have a broken ankle from where the car door bent into her footrest – she’s apparently six years old, Aisha is her favourite Winx Club member, and she has a pet gerbil called Geralt. (The latter of which, Andrew explains through relieved, tearful laughter, “Her dad is obsessed with the video games, but every time she comes into the room when he’s playing, he just makes sure to only be petting the stupid video game horse rather than fighting any monsters.”) 

Hen and Chimney have already moved onto the next car, leaving Eddie to quickly splint Daphne’s ankle up, whilst Lucy moves on for the next car she can use the jaws of life on. Andrew is holding onto Daphne’s hand while she chatters on about Winx Club, and why it’s really cool, and why Eddie himself should watch it – which Eddie is happy to indulge since she’s probably in a lot of pain for a six year old’s point of reference – when Eddie hears something.

Like he just has an inbuilt radar for Buck’s about to be in trouble, he hears Buck say, tension lining his words, “Sir, you need to stay put. If you’re injured-”

An aggravated man’s voice replies: “I’m not injured, I don’t need your assistance, I just need to get to work! Let me go. I’ve already called a cab.”

“Sir, the police will be here to take statements. Leaving the scene of an accident where someone is injured - especially a young child! - counts as a felony in California.”

“You know criminal law? Give me a break, you look too stupid to tie your own shoelaces.”

Eddie finishes tying up the splint, and says to Andrew as normally as he can, “You might need to just stay for a bit while we sort out the rest of the injuries and allocate ambulances - if the police come round, give them your statement or tell them they can find you at the hospital, okay?”

Andrew nods, looking far more traumatised by the whole ordeal than his goddaughter, who is already admiring her splint and asking, “Can you take a picture of me by the car accident, Andy? I wanna show everyone at school. Mrs B is gonna be so jealous.”

“I don’t think Mrs Binder is going to be jealous of you getting into a car accident, honey…”

But Eddie’s already moving, shouldering his medkit back over his shoulder. Cap assigned him and Lucy together, so he knows his duty is to move towards her, where she’s currently talking to someone in a mostly-unscathed red Ford Fusion. Except he starts towards her, and then out of the corner of his eye sees exactly where Buck is standing, squaring up to some lawyer-type with barely a hair out of place, despite being beside the one mangled car that is facing perpendicular to every other car on the scene. The one who ran the red light, then. No wonder he’s so keen to get away.

As much as every instinct in Eddie is telling him to get over there, to back Buck up, he also trusts that Buck is a professional, and has managed to de-escalate plenty of similar situations. It’s not like any of them are strangers to angry, stressed civilians - one tends to rack them up when you’re a first responder. People aren’t their politest on the worst day of their lives, after all.

That trust means he’s on his way to Lucy when he hears Buck snap, “You’re the one who caused this mess – don’t you feel bad at all?”

Eddie looks over just in time to see Buck shove the man – not as hard as he could, but enough to make the man stumble back out of Buck’s space. Enough to be a big deal, considering not shoving potential victims at a scene is kind of first responder 101.

And because Eddie is already redirecting, despite the fact Ravi is already raising his arms to try and pacify the other man, Eddie sees the man recover, and a burning rage fill his eyes, and then pull his fist back to land a solid blow across Buck’s temple.

Eddie recoils like the punch landed on him instead.

The crack sounds across the scene, reverberating between the LA high-rises, and Eddie is changing direction before the echo even fades. He rushes over, feels the rest of the team doing so like he knows they all have Buck’s back – but Ravi is already pushing the man away, and Buck’s standing back up, clutching his head.

Hen gets there before Eddie, and so she’s the one who starts checking his irises and his speech pattern – but Buck is barely paying attention, too busy shouting at the man, “Yeah, punch me again, asshole! Just keep adding to that prison sentence, come on, hit me again!”

“Buck!” Cap’s voice cuts across all over, across all the bullshit, deep and commanding. He points at the man, “You, sir, will need to stay here, and the police are going to take you to the station for a statement. Firefighter Buckley, you’re off the scene. Hen, what’s his status?”

“Not an obvious concussion,” she replies, professional and efficient as ever. “But he’s slurring his words, just a bit. Needs a check-up.”

“I’m fine,” Buck refutes – and this is why Hen is a better paramedic than all of them, because it takes her pointing it out for Eddie to notice the faint smear of his consonants.

“Firefighter Buckley, I said-”

But Buck exclaims before Cap can finish, “He started it! He started this whole pile-up, and there are people injured, and I’m the one in trouble?”

And with that, Eddie knows – because he knows Buck, from what will make him laugh to what will piss him off – what Buck needs to hear.

“She’s fine,” Eddie cuts across whatever Bobby’s response would be, with eyes only for Buck. “Daphne – his goddaughter, the one back there – she’s okay. Broken ankle and talking about Winx Club. Aisha is her favourite. She’s fine, Firefighter Buckley.”

Buck holds his gaze, like it’s less of a choice and more of a necessity, and then the fight goes out of him all in one gust.

He raises a gloved hand to his head, as if only just acknowledging the pain there. “I’m sorry, Cap.”

Bobby, still with authority in his tone, not showing whatever surprise he might feel at that transaction, “Get to the hospital in the next ambulance out of here, and get yourself checked out. I’ll come see you when you’re done, and I’ll let Maddie know to meet you there.”

“Should I-” Eddie says, out of habit, because forty-eight hours ago there would be no question as to whether he’d be in the ambulance with Buck, if only to drop him off.

“On it, Cap.” Buck says in a hard tone, and then walks off in the direction of one of the 89’s ambulances. Bobby gives Ravi a look, and Ravi sighs but obediently goes to chase after him and make sure he at least gets into the right vehicle and without another major incident.

-

Somehow, Eddie gets through the rest of the hour on the scene, pulling people out of cars and helping the ones who need it. When Andrew and his god-daughter need a medic to go with them in the back of the ambulance just to keep an eye on her BP, Eddie volunteers without a second’s hesitation. Before the doors close behind them, Bobby nods once at Eddie – and that’s all the permission he needs. Once he hands over the two to a nurse, he quickly makes his way to reception.

“Hey,” he says. She recognises him, mainly because it’s the same receptionist who tries to flirt with Buck every time they come in on a patient drop-off – she’s probably surprised to not see a jealous glare on his face. “I’m looking for Evan Buckley, he was brought with suspected head trauma about an hour ago?”

She looks him over, and Eddie tries not to be rude about his impatience. Eventually, she says, “I can’t give out personal information unless you’re his emergency contact-”

“I am,” he says, desperately hoping it wasn’t the first on Buck’s checklist to change since the fallout. “Me and Madeleine Buckley, we’re his two emergency contacts. You’ve probably contacted her already. My name is Eddie- um, Edmundo Diaz.” He points to his metal name tag with the DIAZ printed on the brass, as if that’s even necessary. “I know his social security number if there’s, like, confidentiality or-”

The receptionist quickly types something into her outdated computer. Then she smiles. “Oh, there you are, right on the form Mr Diaz. He’s up on the fourth floor – there’s a waiting room there for you while he finishes his scans.”

Eddie does not say the rude comment he wants to, and instead makes his way to the fourth floor, taking the stairs because he can run up them faster than the elevator. He recognises the waiting room by the familiar Buckley sitting there, with Jee-Yun in a baby carrier on the seat next to her. He very seriously considers turning tail and waiting outside – but then she catches sight of him. “Eddie!”

He shoves his hands in his pockets and walks over, conscious that even though he left his jacket in the ambulance, he’s still wearing unwieldy turn-out pants and boots. “Hey, Maddie. Any word?”

“Nothing for sure. He’s in with the doctors now. Here,” she pats the available seat next to her. “Come sit.”

He leans over to see Jee-Yun asleep (and wearing the ugly bee-beanie Buck spent six straight shifts knitting) and then can’t avoid taking the seat next to her.

“They think it’s a mild concussion,” she says. “I think he should have some kind of punch card, by now.”

“Six concessions and you get a free brain scan?” Eddie suggests.

“Or at least a free coffee,” she concedes, and smiles at him. She nudges into his shoulder. “Thanks for coming, Eddie.”

She shouldn’t be thanking him. He says as much, and at her frown, he confesses – because it’s Buck’s sister and if not her, then who else? – “It’s my fault he got punched.”

Maddie hums, not at all sounded as angry as she should at the man to blame for her brother’s most recent concussion. “That’s weird,” she says. “It seems out of character for you to hit Buck in the face at the scene of a car accident.”

His breath escapes through his teeth. “Okay, that’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

She smiles. “Made my point though, didn’t I?”

With the cheeky tone to her voice, Eddie can’t help but comment, “It’s impossible to forget the two of you are related, you know that?”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

Eddie looks back at his feet. “You should.”

After a few moments of silence, where Eddie finds himself replaying everything he could have done differently in the last forty-eight hours, Maddie says, seemingly apropos of nothing, “You know, Buck was telling me about his glass door theory a few weeks ago.”

Eddie tilts his chin to show he’s listening.

“For us dispatchers, it’s about putting the phone down on someone. You know, you can help them until a point, and then you have to let them go. I have to let you guys do your job, and then you guys have to let the ER doctors do their job, et cetera.”

“Right,” says Eddie. “Those glass doors. Buck mentioned that to me, too. We don’t go past them.”

“Yeah. But, of course, we do, don’t we?” Maddie nudges her elbow into his arm again, gently enough to be unnoticeable if he was wearing another layer. “Especially – and I don’t mean to insult you Eddie – but especially as older siblings.”

Eddie snorts. “Buck told you about my sisters?”

“Pft,” she says, teasingly. “He didn’t need to. I can spot an eldest from miles away. It’s all about the control. Trusting someone to look after themselves doesn’t come easy to us. We have to be vigilant, whether it’s for skinned knees or tantrums or heartbreak.”

“Yeah, but,” Eddie frowns at his own hands, useless here and clasped between his knees. “I’m supposed to be over that. I’ve done the therapy, I’m back at work, I’m sleeping better. The panic attacks have gone. I’m- you know, I know I had survivor’s guilt, and control issues, and whatever. I’m good.”

“Yeah.” Maddie doesn’t say anything else for a long moment, and Eddie thinks they’re done with it. Then, almost out of nowhere, Maddie says, into the quiet of the hospital waiting room, “It’s like drowning, isn’t it?”

Eddie balks, turns to look at her. “What?”

“Depression. Or whatever mental health diagnosis has us going to Frank, week after week.” She shrugs, as if it’s something easy for her to say, as if she isn’t chipping bits away from the marble of Eddie’s chest with every word. “It’s like drowning, and you have been for a while, and you won’t let anyone rescue you because you think it’s your fault for jumping into the water. And therapy isn’t the rescue coming, or even a lifejacket. It’s the fact that if you keep at it, in six months you’ll look back and realise you’ve been swimming to shore the whole time.”

Eddie swallows. “Everyone is waiting on the shore for you.”

Maddie’s smile is a rueful one. “Yeah. And they’re so proud of you for swimming, it’s impossible to tell them you’re not quite finished yet. That you’ve spent so long swimming, dry land seems a little scary.”

Eddie’s chin drops to his collarbone so he can hide his face from her.

Maddie continues, “Look. I know you two argued, though he won’t tell me what about. But it’s not your fault that he’s here, Eddie, not really. We’re all still swimming, I think.” She reaches over to put a hand over his clasped, shaking, praying ones. “And it is, I think, possible to worry about Buck without blaming yourself.”

Eddie twists his lips up, trying very hard not to let any tears fall. He doesn’t deserve the kindness of Maddie, nor the benefit of the doubt that she hands out so freely. It is, in fact, very much his fault that Buck is currently getting his head stitched up and reamed out by Bobby. Eddie hurt him, and Buck only knows one way to deal with hurt – he hurts himself further. Fire with fire, and he’s a goddamn firefighter so he knows where to find it.

“He could have deescalated the situation,” Eddie says. “He- Maddie, he wanted to get punched. And I know he’s angry – but it’s difficult to make it better when he’d rather get punched than punch me, you know?”

“You men and your punching,” Maddie teases. He lets out a scoff of concession – he joined a fight club to process his wife’s death, he’s not exactly the best role model for avoiding toxic masculinity – but she doesn’t move her hand away from his interlocked ones. “You remember when Howie punched Buck?”

Eddie says, carefully, because he doesn’t know what conversations Maddie and Buck and Chimney have had in their own time: “Yeah. Real shiner.”

“Don’t worry, I was furious at Chim when I found out. But he was hurting, and so was Buck. Because of me, and my hurting too.” She’s blinking fast now, eyes shining, though there’s a small, rueful smile on her lips anyway. “I don’t know how to stop Buck from getting punched, or from hurting – believe me, I’ve been looking for that answer for thirty years – but I know that he knows we love him, and we’re here to put ice on the bruise. We’re waiting on the shore for him, you know?”

Eddie lets out a groan from the back of his throat and grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes to try and blockade the tears there. The movement dislodges Maddie’s gentle hands from his.  “That feels like a Frank special.”

She laughs, only a little wet. “That guy really does a number on you, huh?”

“He’s the worst,” Eddie complains, and they both know he doesn’t mean it.

“My point – Buck loves you, and he knows you love him too.” Eddie has half a second for his heart to restart from shock before he realises she means as friends, like the whole firehouse loves each other, not in the more accurate way where Eddie loves her brother so much he wants to burrow into him, dick and heart first. She continues, “You’ll get through this.”

 Eddie has about thirty seconds to think, yeah, maybe they will - then Buck comes out into the waiting room and groans at the sight of him. Eddie tells himself that it doesn’t hurt. “Athena already reamed me out. I really don’t need a lecture from you guys too.”

“We’re not here to lecture you,” Eddie replies, keeping his voice carefully level as he stands up. “I just wanted to check that you were alright. It looked like a nasty punch.”

“Well, you didn’t need to be here for that. You could have texted. Or, wait,” Buck clicks his fingers with a nasty glint in his eye. “You could have just DM-ed me, right?”

“Okay, that’s – I deserve that.” Eddie glances over to see Maddie already waiting by the doors with Jee-Yun and doing a great impression of someone not listening to their conversation. “Look, can we talk? I hate this.”

Buck’s jaw clenches, and he starts to walk past Eddie. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You asked for a transfer, Buck,” Eddie reaches out. Buck twists his shoulder so Eddie’s hand falls back, empty. He tries not to let the hurt show on his face. “We need to.”

“I asked for a transfer precisely because I didn’t want to talk about it.”

Eddie takes a breath, tries to slot his jaw into something in control. “Look, it was never about making fun of you. It only really started because I was worried about you! It was when – it was the anniversary of Daniel’s death, and-”

“No, don’t worry. I went back to the start of the conversation – re-read the whole goddamn thing. I know exactly when it started.” Buck finally turns back to him, squaring up his shoulders – and it’s awful, and he’s raging and hurt and his right eye is squinting a little from his swollen temple, but he’s still gorgeous. “’There’s nobody in this world I trust more with my fire safety than you.’ Right?”

Shit, Eddie thinks.

“I should have caught that reference, considering how often I replay that memory in my own head. But I guess I never expected it to be thrown at me as a joke in an Instagram comment.”

Eddie wants to say it wasn’t meant as a joke, but that would be a lie, because he did. But the joke was never the words themselves. The joke was supposed to be that they had both spent enough time thinking about it that Buck would immediately know who Eddie was, and therefore the joke would end there. In retrospect, though, the nuance doesn’t quite hold up.

Instead of trying to defend it, Eddie says, “I shouldn’t have commented that. I shouldn’t have commented at all, okay? I know that. But I found the account, and, I don’t know, I thought you’d realise it was me! And then we started talking, and it just became more and more difficult to tell you. And it’s always easy talking to you, Buck, and I tried to justify to myself because I thought I was helping you. I thought I could be another person for you to lean on-”

“But you weren’t another person! You’re still you. You still came to every conversation knowing more than me.”

“I know. Okay? I know! That’s why I stopped.” Eddie says, like that makes any of it forgivable. “I stopped replying, because it became too much to pretend I wasn’t deceiving you.”

Buck’s hands curl up into fists. He raises one to press the heel of his palm against his swollen temple, and Eddie can’t help it, he can’t, he reaches out again to try and help, to find out where the pain is coming from, but Buck sees the movement and steps back. “Don’t touch me.”

Eddie’s hand falls back to his side.

Buck continues, in this bitter twist to his normal voice, “I know you stopped replying. I know when exactly, actually, and why. I mean, Jesus, why did you even let me bother coming over to cook for you?”

“You asked to,” Eddie says, like it’s obvious. He doesn’t know what Buck means by that – Eddie stopped checking the app after he sent the message about Buck being sunshine, because that seemed to be the most embarrassing way to throw his heart at Buck. He doesn’t really see how that is related to Buck’s arrival in his kitchen a week later.

Like his strings have been cut, Buck deflates. “Yeah,” he says, sounding hollow. “Yeah, I did.”

He glances over towards Maddie, who’s still waiting with a somewhat supportive smile, a little weaker for the longer she’s waiting. Eddie realises he has maybe thirty seconds before Buck goes home, and Eddie loses his best friend forever.

“I know you want space, and to not talk to me right now,” he rushes out. And he knows that it’s exactly what has gotten him into this mess, that he wants Buck all of the time. That even now he can’t even give Buck two days without being begged for forgiveness, that every hour that goes by without talking to him hurts more and more. It feels like there’s a red ribbon around his wrist that yanks him closer whenever Buck is too far away, and right now, it’s squeezing so tight Eddie’s about to lose the limb. “But you have to at least understand that I was never making fun of you. It was – it was my selfishness wanting to know you better. And I’ve ruined things, but I really loved talking to you as Eddie and as el bombero. You have to know that, at the very least.”

Buck presses his lips together. His nostrils flare the way they always do when he’s trying not to cry. He says, “I always wondered how you would pronounce it.”

Eddie’s heart breaks off another chunk. “Buck.”

“Look, it already sucks being mad at you, Eddie.” Buck says, sounding tired and defeated. The bruising is starting to diffuse over his pink skin. “Don’t make me do it when I have a concussion, too.”

Eddie nods, tries not to look like his heart is breaking. “Okay. Yeah, okay.”

Buck begins to walk away from him before he pauses. He looks over his shoulder to ask, quieter than anything else they’ve said to each other today: “Were you ever going to tell me?”

“Yes,” says Eddie. Then he closes his eyes and finally tries for honesty: “Not for a long time yet, though.”

Buck lets out a sharp exhale and then storms out through the glass doors. And Eddie’s left there in the hospital waiting room. For the second time in his life, he’s left with a grieving, beating heart, bleeding out in the fucking hospital waiting room.

Bobby appears from nowhere and clasps his shoulder. “Come on,” he says, sounding heavy with it. “We still have a shift to finish.”

-

Bobby seems to realise that Eddie isn’t physically capable of, never mind in the mood for, that conversation he was promised. In between the civilian fight and the concussion and the hospital waiting room argument, Bobby must have realised he is, in fact, not paid enough for the levels of fucked-up-ness that he would need to unpack here.

Eddie gets through the rest of his shift in a daze, and the next two as well – Buck’s off for the rest of the week recovering and also technically waiting out his probation, the least Bobby could reprimand him for, and it’s the worst. Every hour, pretty much, Eddie will think of something to message Buck, or even @firehoseLA, and then he’ll remember that he can’t. Ravi and Lucy make at least six jokes about a dog waiting sadly on the doormat for his master to come home, and Eddie is too pathetic to try and defend himself. Maddie will send him intermittent updates, as will Chimney, and so Eddie knows the moment Buck moves back to the loft on his own, and when he’s cleared from any lingering damage, and when he’s safe to look at screens again. Which means Eddie knows the exact moment when he can’t pretend that Buck is still recovering from the concussion and when he is now actively ignoring Eddie.

It’s at the end of his final shift of the week, finishing 6pm on a Monday which means he can relieve Carla and get her home to her husband at a reasonable hour for once.

Except when he gets home, she takes one look at him and says, “You know, Christopher is finishing a really important game right now, that he can’t save on. I don’t want to interrupt him by saying goodbye.”

Eddie levels her with a look, knowing exactly what she’s doing even with that innocent expression. He says, exactly as he knows she wants him to and deadpan, “Gee, Carla, would you like to stay for a drink?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t, but thank you! Yes, I’d like one of the winter berry blend ones, please.” She takes a seat at the dining table expectantly, and he hides his fond smile by turning to the kettle. He makes her a berry blend one in her mug, the one from some car boot last year that cheerily reads, ‘This is my mug for tea. My mug for vodka is much bigger.’ He grabs one for himself too, one from the zoo that Buck picked up for him after their first trip post-blackout.

He sits down opposite her, cups the mug in between his hands even though too hot for it. He tries to get out ahead of wherever this conversation is going, and says, “Really, I’m fine.”

She raises her eyebrows. It’s the same look she gives Christopher when he claims to have already finished his homework. “You and Buck are still arguing?”

Eddie’s shoulders slump. He doesn’t know he ever thought he’d get one over Carla. Just like Christopher always admits, no, he finished most of it but there’s still one question left, he says, “Everyone knows, then?”

Carla is unapologetic. “Me, Maddie and Karen have a group chat. It’s active.”

“Oh, it’s active. Wonderful.”  He sighs. “Yeah. Well, arguing is a strong word. It’s more like Buck’s mad at me, has every right to be mad at me, and I’m just, you know. Dealing with that.”

She looks at him through her eyelashes knowingly. “Yeah. You seem like you’re dealing with it.”

“Okay,” he says, plaintively. “I know I’m being pathetic. It’s just – he’s never been mad at me before.”

“Never?” Carla frowns. “You’re best friends. Surely you’ve had an argument before.”

“Once,” Eddie admits, and then, even more pathetically, “But that was only because that stupid lawsuit meant we could speak to each other. It feels like that all over again. You know this is the longest we haven’t spoken to each other in two years? I’ve never gone more than eighteen hours without at least sending him a text. It just feels wrong.”

Carla presses her lips together. “Oh, Eddie. You guys will make up. You’re best friends – you’re Buck-and-Eddie. You’ve been through worse than whatever this is.”

Eddie leans his elbows on the table and hides his head in his hands. “Yeah,” he says. “I just- I don’t think we’ll be the same. I think I’ve done something permanent and even if we’re friends again – it’ll be different.”

“Well,” Carla says, carefully. “Maybe that’s a good thing?”

He raises his eyes to stare incredulously at her. “How can that possibly be a good thing?”

“Relationships change, Eddie. And maybe if you’re both honest with each other about the things you want to change, and the things you don’t – well, then that relationship could change into something better.”

Eddie narrows his eyes at her. “How active exactly is that group chat?”

She laughs. “Unbelievably, Eddie, there are people who want you to be happy. That’s all.”

He takes a sip of his mug and pretends the heat on his cheeks is from the steam.

She watches him for a moment, and then says, “I told you, a while ago, to follow your heart. You remember that?”

Eddie hides his uncharitable scowl by directing it at his own mug. “Yes, Carla, you were right about Ana, you get to say I told you so.”

“That is not what I was going to say,” she laughs, reaching across the table to smack his forearm. “I just meant that you’ve done a lot of growing. A lot of putting yourself first for once. And look how well that’s turned out! It seems to me like you have been following your heart, and maybe you just need to listen to it once more.”

Her smacking hand turns gentle and instead rests on his arm, squeezes him just above his watch. His instinct to make a deflecting comment dies in his throat, and instead he says, “I don’t thank you enough, you know that?”

“Well that I know is true.” She winks, and then takes a big swallow of her tea. She puts it back on the table and stands up. “You’ve built something here, Eddie. You have a home, and the smartest, kindest little boy I’ve ever met. Your tía Pepa is taking me to Bingo next week, so maybe I’m biased, but you have a wonderful family. That includes Buck – so I know you’ll get through this.”

She gives Christopher a hug before she goes and gives Eddie an even tighter one. He waves her car off from the driveway, and when he shuts the front door again, he knocks his forehead into the wood for a moment. He’s endlessly grateful for Carla – the issue is that when he follows that line of gratitude, it leads back to Buck as the person who brought her into his life, and therefore back to his current predicament.

Probably most things in his life lead back to Buck, at this point. And that fact is found in Eddie’s whole life, all the way through the evening and into the morning.  

Buck can be found in the cereal they keep in the cupboards for when Buck stays over, the couch cushions he bought for them from a yard sale two streets over. He’s found in Smaug, and the little feeding chart Buck made and printed out from Bobby’s office that’s now tacked up by her tank. He’s found in Christopher himself: in the alligator facts and the smiles and the emotional intelligence as well, in the way Christopher knows he can be cheeky without reprimand, that he can make mistakes and take risks and say his dreams out loud, in the way Christopher spends the school morning commute asking Eddie questions as fast as he answers them for himself.

(“Do you think aliens would be more like lizards or clouds, Dad?” and “Dad, was Aimee going towards the sunset foreshadowing in last night’s Corazón salvaje? Or was it a metaphor?” and “If Jessica wants me to be her boyfriend, why is she still making fun of me?” Which are all very valid questions and Eddie does his best to answer them all with nuance and conscientiousness of morality and development and whatever, but also LA traffic is a bitch this morning, he didn’t have time to make a cup of coffee because he slept so poorly, and Christopher usually gets bored of Eddie’s fumbling answers about five minutes in and moves onto the next one. He’s not winning Father of the Week, that’s for sure.)

And when Eddie gets home, and shuts the front door behind him, it’s in the dent in the wall that Buck always crashes the door into.

Eddie finds himself caught on the dent. It’s in the perfect shape of the door handle, repeatedly etched in with every happily announced, “Diazes!” The drywall is crumpled in just that patch, and some day, Eddie is going to have to explain that to his landlord. Sometimes, if Eddie is feeling particularly sentimental, he’ll press a couple of fingertips to the space above it, like the toes of a lucky statue.

Eddie has never had the heart to fix it – even though, of course, he has all the materials needed to fix up drywall holes. Nor the heart to reprimand Buck. Why would he? How could he possibly be mad at the physical evidence of how excited Buck is just to come inside their house. Just to-

Just to come home.

The thing is, everyone has been sympathetic. They know Buck and Eddie are close. Best friends. They don’t know about the Instagram betrayal, but they know Eddie fucked up, and they’re all sure that they’ll be fine.

But Eddie is starting to realise that they won’t be fine – or maybe they will. Maybe they’ll be colleagues and friends and Buck will still be Christopher’s godfather. Fine. But they won’t be them, they won’t get back to what they had.

Not until Eddie is truly, completely, honest.

He’s been hiding behind half-hearted explanations. It’s been safer to make himself the voyeur than to step into the room with Buck. Safer to restrain himself and punish himself too. But where has that gotten him? He’s in an empty house and his best friend is hurting in the other end of town.

It doesn’t matter how the account started, or how he ended up talking to Buck, or why he didn’t tell him – not in the way he’s been pretending. Because when he makes excuses about Buck’s mental health and wanting to be there for him (true), or when he says it was easy to keep talking to him (also true), or even when he gets closer, that he loved getting to know Buck from every angle and pose and fear (definitely true), he’s still hiding the main component.

That he wants Buck. He loves him, and he’s in love with him, and he wants him here, at home, making that dent deeper and larger with every exuberant entrance – but he also wants Buck’s body and smile and love. His kisses and his morning breath and his tears. All of it.

Eddie’s been so terrified of that leap of faith, of jumping off the cliff without knowing if Buck’s at the winch. Of connecting his desire to his trust in one person. He trusted Shannon even when they were strained in El Paso; she left, came back, and he desired her even when he didn’t trust her. He desired Ana when he first saw her, and then she became a part of his life and suddenly it was too much to imagine trusting her forever. And the idea of Buck is so terrifying because he already trusts him with his life, and his son, and his heart – but he wants him so bad he can barely breathe from it too.

So, yes, that’s the only way they’ll be able to heal – changed, yes, but this has already changed them. They can plaster all they like, but they’ll always know the holes in the drywall were there.

Eddie has to tell Buck the truth.

With that thought, he grabs his keys back from his hallway console, and jerks the door open so fast it, ironically, slams into the wall.

And like a wish fulfilled, Buck is standing there with his hand raised ready to knock.

They stare at each other for a moment.

Buck frowns at him. “How did you know I was here? I haven’t knocked yet.”

“How are you here?” Eddie frowns straight back at him. “I was coming to find you.”

It’s then that Eddie notices with the hand not ready to knock, Buck is holding a brand-new ceramic tortilla warmer.

“I, um.” Buck floats the tortilla warmer a little higher in his grasp. “When I was re-reading through the – our – messages, I realised you said Abuela painted your old one. And I broke it, so. It’s not hand-painted, obviously, but I’ve already researched some pottery places I can go to, or pay for Abuela to go to, or-”

What the fuck is wrong with you, Eddie wants to say, but he knows Buck will take that as a blow rather than the reverence with which it’s meant. Instead, he steps back and says, “Why don’t you come inside?”

Buck steps over the threshold tentatively, like he doesn’t already belong here. Even that makes Eddie want to start throwing things. Buck follows Eddie into the kitchen, and Eddie is trying to remember whether maybe he’s the one who’s recovering from a concussion, because this doesn’t make any sense at all. Buck holds the tortilla warmer with two hands and says, “I’m sorry for not wanting to talk earlier.”

Eddie is already shaking his head by the time Buck finishes his sentence. “No, I’m the one who was badgering you, I should have been giving you time to process your anger.”

Buck smiles, and it’s only a little false in his eyes as he points to the still-swollen pink of his temple. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have – my anger wasn’t super productive, apparently.”

Eddie fights to keep his hands by his side rather than raising to assess the damage for himself – Buck has already shown what he thinks of Eddie touching him now.

It’s awkward between them, in a way that it never really has been. Even when they weren’t talking after the lawsuit, even when Eddie was at the worst of his spiral and pretending not to be- Buck always had a way of cutting through the bullshit with vulnerable honesty. But now Eddie’s the one who needs to say something, and there aren’t words to try and articulate everything going on his head. Honestly, he figured he’d at least have the drive over to Buck’s place to plan something.

Eddie starts with the obvious. “You brought a new tortilla warmer?”

Buck shrugs. “It’s just one from Home Depot, nothing special. I figured it would do in the meantime, until I can get a new one from Abuela. I wanted to say sorry, I guess.”

Eddie frowns. “What on earth are you sorry for?”

Buck’s gaze ducks, refocuses on the ceramic in his hands. It’s plain blue rather than the over-the-top florals of Abuela’s design. “Well, definitely for breaking your old one, at least.”

“You didn’t break it, you dropped it, Buck. Because you were in shock, because you just found out your best friend had been lying to you for months!” Eddie can feel his voice rising – this, he knows. Anger, he knows.

Buck shakes his head. He says, “Look, with the time off work, I’ve had time to reflect. And- and I know you weren’t making fun of me. I can’t believe you would. Can we just move past this? I mean, you already know everything I was trying to keep secret. And I don’t – I don’t want to lose you over this, or Christopher. So, I’m sorry for being angry. Okay?”

Eddie wants to hit something – preferably the Buckley parents, but that might get him arrested in Pennsylvania, which would be awkward for the bail at the very least. “You won’t lose Christopher. And if you want me, you have me in your life, always. I’m the one who fucked up!”

“No, you- you were looking after me. I’m the one who took it too far and was too needy.”

“I’m the one who was catfishing you, Buck!”

Buck stares at the tortilla warmer. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I mean – yeah, you didn’t tell me your identity. But maybe if I’d thought it through for a second, I’d have figured it out. Eddie, your username was the 118 firefighter in Spanish. I’m just an idiot who maybe didn’t want to think it through. And I shouldn’t have lashed out when that self-delusion crumbled.”

This can’t be happening. “No,” says Eddie. “I refuse. You shouldn’t be sorry. I don't accept your apology because you have nothing to apologise for. Jesus Christ. I’m the one in the wrong, you asshole."

Buck squints. "Sorry,” he pauses. “Just to clarify - you're mad at me because I'm not mad at you?"

“You should be!” Eddie shakes his head a little helplessly. “You were four days ago, and you should still be. I was preparing to beg for your forgiveness. What could possibly have changed?”

“I, ah.” Buck swallows. “Well, I was looking at all the messages. Reading them over and over again, with, you know, everything I know now, and I realised that you never actually lied to me.”

A laugh bursts out of Eddie like a shot – humourless, and worse for it. “That’s your bar?” he asks. “That’s what you’ll accept? Deceiving you for months, and taking advantage of your kindness – but I didn’t explicitly lie to you? Buck, that’s the worst line in the sand I’ve ever heard.”

“The closest you got was about your birthday,” Buck shrugs. “And I’m the one who assumed eleven-eight was a birthday, so. That’s on me.”

Eddie wants to shove him against a wall, maybe through a wall. There has to be a medical term for the way Eddie wants to physically shake Buck until his self-esteem takes notice. Eddie’s blistering from the inside out, boiling under his own skin. And the wild energy in him has to go somewhere.

So he yanks the peace offering tortilla warmer from Buck’s hands and throws it on the ground between them.

It smashes – not as dramatically as Eddie would have probably imagined, a little muffled against the linoleum tile of Eddie’s kitchen, but equally probably for the best.

They both look down at it, at the cracked chunks of ceramic on the ground, and then at each other.

Buck croaks out, “What.”

“It- uh, it was supposed to be a metaphor.” Eddie frowns at the ceramic for a moment, and then looks back up with renewed vigour. “You’re not the one who made this mess. Okay? I am. I’m the one who broke us and broke normal boundaries and you should not be the one just – just letting it go! You should still be angry at me – you should be even angrier, actually!”

Buck’s brows are creased, right in the middle. “Don’t I get to choose what to be angry about?”

“Well, yes,” Eddie has to allow. “But you still shouldn’t let me off the hook so easily.”

“It’s my hook, isn’t it?” There’s a small smile on Buck’s face, a little sad. “I’ll decide what to do with it.”

The ceramic metaphor at their feet is starting to feel more dangerous with every second that passes.

“I still haven’t actually apologised to you,” Eddie realises out loud. Which is really indicative of how well he’s been handling this whole thing, that he forgot the most essential step to an apology – the apology itself.

Buck shakes his head. “I don’t think you need to.”

“Buck, seriously-”

“I mean it. I told you, I’ve been thinking it all over. And I think you were kind of right about me, not sharing everything that was going on with me. I guess I was always afraid it would be too much to share with someone. But, you know, you’re a really good friend, Eddie.” Buck’s eyes are shining now, all the more potent for it. “So many people on that app – I think I was just using it for self-esteem after all, no matter how many times I told myself it wasn’t about that. But they were objectifying me, and I was letting them, and you were someone I could be really honest with, even though it was through our two fake accounts. I spent so much time hiding things from you, and everyone else, and now it’s all out there. There’s a freedom in that, I think, that I’m grateful for.”

Not for the first time in his life, and certainly not the last, Eddie is a little bit in awe of Buck. How he just passes around chunks of himself for others to feast on, and acts like he should be grateful others want their pound of flesh from him. How he forgives easily, and reflects on himself, and is honest even about his vulnerable spots. How he puts others first, always - how he cuts his line for the sake of others.

Eddie needs to cut his own fucking line too.

“I’m not a good friend, Buck.” He says, like he should have done earlier this week, at the start of this conversation, any time in the last five six months. His hands are curled into fists by his side. “I’m – actually, I’m the worst of your Instagram followers. I’m the dirtiest out of all of them.”

Buck blinks. “What?”

And Eddie can’t help it. The truth, finally, explodes out of him. “I know you better than anyone else, and it’s still not enough! I’m selfish, Buck, I’m the greediest and most desperate of all your fucking followers. I want everything of you, all of it. Every slutty pose and weird thought and bad feeling. And I took advantage of your sincerity and I- I’m sorry for that, at the very least.”

“Eddie-”

“I’m not sorry for worrying about you and I’m not sorry for desiring you and coveting you and wanting you. Because I do, so much I think it’s going to explode out of me like a bomb most days.” Because he has to be truthful now. He has to get this all of his chest, because Buck deserves the whole truth. Buck deserves Eddie to throw himself into humiliation, to take the real blame for ruining their friendship, rather than Buck trying to take the fall for it. Eddie won’t allow that, at the very least. “I won’t apologise for any of that, and I won’t apologise for loving you this greedily either. But - I am sorry for deceiving you, and I’m sorry for not being honest with you from the start.”

“You want me,” Buck echoes.

“Yes. But you’re not listening, okay, that’s not-”

“Like,” Buck pauses, the sound of his lips smacking lightly together before he tries again. “You said more than anyone else on Instagram. You mean you want me the way they want me? You- you said loving.”

“Yes! I mean, kind of. No. Buck, I-” Eddie takes in a deep breath. “Yes, I want you. Romantically, carnally, as a friend; any way I can have you. I’ll be happy with us as friends, forever, okay? But it’s more than that, more than anyone on that fucking app. I’m in love with you.”

Buck lets out a little sound, like he’s winded.

Eddie rakes a hand through his hair. “And, Christ, some of them might think they are too, I’ve seen the comments - but they’re not. They don’t know you like I do. And this whole stupid catfishing account was all because I wanted to know you even more. I saw you hurting, and you weren’t sharing that with me in person, and I just thought- I thought maybe I could be there for you in a different way. I thought I could know you from a different angle. It was never a joke and it was never pity. It was me wanting more of you than I had any right to have.”

“That’s why you started messaging me?” Buck’s voice is crackling, like he’s waiting for lightning to hit his outstretched hand. “Because you’re – you’re in love with me?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. And maybe Buck was right, because this is freeing in its own way. The truth is out there and off his chest, and he doesn’t have to worry about the consequences anymore because they’re already happening. “You were hurting, and you thought you were a burden and- I couldn’t stand it. I don’t want there to be a single part of you that you feel you have to hide from me.”

“Then,” Buck sounds confused, a little breathless from it. “Eddie, why didn’t you tell me you were behind the account earlier?”

Eddie lets out an irritated groan. “Buck, you’re not listening to me-”

“I am, actually, more than anything I’ve ever- but, come on, Eddie, you knew I was talking about you! Why didn’t you say something if you felt like this? That’s what I don’t get. This doesn’t make sense.”

Eddie’s chin snaps around so he can stare incredulously at Buck. “What are you talking about? When?”

“Are you joking? How about when I was going on and on about you, to you? I was talking all about my stupid crush, and it was you, and you didn’t say anything! That’s why I’ve been so upset, Eddie, I thought you read my messages telling you I was about to tell you that I was in love with you, and you-”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Eddie puts his hands up as if to physically stop Buck. “What the fuck do you mean you were talking about me? What do you mean, in love with me?”

Buck’s eyes go wide. “You…didn’t know.”

“Are you- I’m the guy you’re in love with? The one you’ve been talking about this whole time?” Eddie feels like he’s been smacked on the back of a head with a shovel. He blinks. He’s the brunette. The one who’s apparently funny, and handsome, and kind, and- “I am not short, what the fuck, Buckley?”

Buck splutters. “You- you’re shorter than me!”

“By like an inch, are you kidding me?” Eddie is going to tear his fucking hair out.

“Are you kidding me?” Buck exclaims right back at him. His hands are gesturing wildly and long-limbed. “I literally described you to you. And I’m the idiot?”

Eddie is wracking his brain to try and remember Buck’s exact wording all those months ago. “You called me emotionally intelligent? What were you thinking?”

“You’re in therapy!” Buck snaps back at him, sounding just as exasperated. “You encourage your kid to talk about his feelings! You’ve had personal growth!”

“I’ll show you personal growth,” snarls Eddie, and then he fists his hands in Buck’s shirt to yank him into a point-proving kiss. 

Kissing Evan Buckley is like everything Eddie could have hoped for. It scorches Eddie under his skin in the best way, lighting him up from the inside out. It’s just sunshine, all the way down.

Buck doesn’t waste a second in getting with the program. His hands grip onto Eddie’s arms as he lets out a small keen and tilts his head just a little bit to get a better angle, to fit his mouth even more perfectly against Eddie’s. There’s a distant crunch as one of them steps on a piece of shattered ceramic, but Eddie can’t find it in him to give a single fuck, not when he’s burning up from Buck’s kisses. His fist tightens in Buck’s shirt until he’s sure he’s going to rip it, while his other hand finds its way around Buck’s ribs, his shoulder blade.

Eddie can’t help himself. In between one kiss and the next, he says against Buck’s lips, “What about Spencer?”

It takes Buck a second to respond, especially because Eddie can’t stop kissing him, can’t stop himself from pushing up against him. When he does, he looks kind of pissed off at the interruption. “Who the hell is Spencer?”

“The guy from the call. The one I thought you were in love with.”

At that, Buck physically wrenches himself away to look incredulously at Eddie. “Sorry, you think I was calling Spencer the most attractive man in California? I mean, I’m sure he’s good-looking to someone else, but Eddie, come on. Not compared to you.”

Eddie’s still struggling to put all the pieces together in his head. “But – you blushed when everyone asked you whether he’d messaged you.”

Buck rolls his eyes. “He sent me a dick pic. It wasn’t very impressive.”

Eddie decides his hatred of Spencer was entirely justified and not at all petty and he feels much better about all the times he fantasised about pushing him off a cliff.

But now the kissing has paused, the doubt is starting to creep in. Eddie uncurls his hands from Buck’s shirt and feels only slightly guilty for how badly he’s warped the fabric. “We should…probably talk, right?”

Buck shakes his head, doesn’t at all let go of Eddie. “Feels like we covered the basics. I love you, you love me, maybe we both delete Instagram… Yep, seems like that covers it.”

Eddie takes a step back and manages to ignore Buck’s pout about it. “Yeah, but – I was still lying to you. You shouldn’t forgive me just because I’m in love with you.”

Buck nods. “You’re right. Let me take a second to think it through. Okay, yep, done, all forgiven. Back to kissing?”

“Buck,” Eddie says in exasperation.

“Eddie, come on. I know you. I thought I knew everything about you, and then we started talking as fake accounts and we know each other even better. I’ve been – I’ve been so insecure this whole time about being too much for someone. And you- you wanted more.” One corner of Buck’s mouth lifts. “You’re not going to flee me, are you?”

“Of course not.” Eddie says, and he wishes he hadn’t let go of Buck now. “But I know that Taylor and Abby fucked you up, and I’m fucked up too, and I don’t want you- I don’t know, settling for me just because I’m obsessed with you.”

“You’re obsessed with me, huh?” Buck presses his lips tight together, which does nothing to hide his impish grin.

“Buck, come on-”

“Eddie, it kind of feels like you’re cockblocking us both unnecessarily-”

“I have baggage!” Eddie exclaims over him, gesturing around as if the broken tortilla warmer and the not put away Lego and the unwashed dishes in the sink will back him up.

Buck looks around at it too with a dumbfounded twist to his lips. “Do you… think I don’t know that? I know you have baggage, Eddie. Obviously you do.”

Eddie throws his hands up. “Great! Then you know – look, I’m not good at relationships, and I just think you should maybe take a second to…” He trails off, because Buck does not at all look like he’s taking a second to think things through; in fact he’s just one big smile and happy eyes. “Buck.”

“Sorry, it’s just – you want a relationship with me,” Buck says, delightedly, and then adds in a sing-song voice, “You love me, and you want to warn me about your baggage.”

“Right, it feels like you’re not taking this seriously,” Eddie complains, though it’s difficult to keep a stern face when Buck looks like that, when he’s shuffling closer.

“Eddie,” Buck says, and he reaches up to hold onto Eddie’s neck, to gently stroke each thumb along both sides of Eddie’s jaw. “I am very serious about you. I was madly in love with you even before I found out that I managed to fall a little bit in love with an account I didn’t know was you. I can promise that, at least. I’m just – you know – a bit giddy, I suppose.”

Eddie bites down on his bottom lip to try and stifle the pleased grin, impossible not to be caught up in Buck’s optimism. “Giddy?”

“Yeah, Eddie, come on. I’ve been in love with you for… God, it feels like years.”

“Me too,” admits Eddie. “I don’t – I felt it before I knew it, so I don’t know when it started but. I think you’re it for me.”

Buck gives up on trying to contain his beaming smile. He ducks his chin and looks up at Eddie from underneath soft eyelashes. Eddie is struck, for a second, on that same smile above a bomb squad vest, and then sort of wants to cry at how far they’ve come. Instead, he very bravely pulls Buck even closer. Buck says, quiet into the small space left between them, “Eddie, listen to yourself. Yeah, you’ve had relationships fail before, and- and what happened with Shannon was awful. I know that. But- do you not think everyone in love has had relationships fail? Isn’t that the point?”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” says Eddie. “I already have.”

“I don’t want to hurt you either. But we might. And I think – I think we’re strong enough together that we can work through it. We love each other to keep trying, right? Even through the worst parts.”

 Buck, very deliberately, kicks aside a large, jagged chunk of tortilla warmer, so he can step closer to Eddie.

He puts his hands on Eddie’s upper arms and strokes his biceps, soothingly.  He continues, “I’m in love with you. And maybe I would prefer a different story to tell our friends how we got together, one that doesn’t involve explaining the terms ‘thirst trap’ and ‘catfishing’ to Abuela,” and Eddie snorts at that image. Buck grins at getting the laugh from Eddie, and continues, “But I wouldn’t change a thing. You know me. All of me. And I know all of you too. And now I know you’re a great kisser, so you’re mad if you think I’m giving that up.”

“You thought I might be a bad kisser?” Eddie raises a single eyebrow, but his hands are already wandering to fit around Buck’s waist, so he’s probably a hypocrite.

Diplomatically, Buck replies, “I knew you wouldn’t be. But I had to consider all possibilities, just in case.”  

“You thought about this, then?” Eddie knows that really, the sensible thing would be to pause, sweep up the broken tortilla warmer, maybe order a new one from eBay, and then very sensibly talk about their relationship. But Buck loves him, and it’s starting to seem like this is real, that he can have this, that he could have this for a while. So he does the not sensible thing of stepping closer to Buck, crunching a bit of ceramic underfoot, and tilting his chin close. “You fantasised about this?”

Buck looks a little thunderstruck. And sincerely, he raises a hand to cup Eddie’s jaw and says, “Every day since I met you, I think.”

And Eddie has to kiss him. He has to.

Buck’s grip on Eddie’s jaw is careful as their mouths slide together, as Eddie tightens his hands around Buck’s waist and kisses him like he’s wanted to for so long. He’s nothing but heat and warmth and the taste of Buck’s mouth.

Buck walks them both backwards, around the shattered tortilla warmer across the floor and against Eddie’s kitchen countertops, never not kissing him until Eddie thinks breathing is a burden, actually, one that he’s not interested in when he has the plush of Buck’s lips to focus on. The edge of the countertop digs a little into the small of Eddie’s back, and it’s just enough to ground him, to keep him floating away on happiness.

Of course Buck would be a good kisser. That was never a concern, actually – not only because of Buck 1.0, or that no one can be that good looking without being a good kisser too, but also because it’s Buck, who’s so attentive to Eddie’s every need and twitch. He knows when to press deeper and when to keep it light. When to slide one hand along Eddie’s jawline, and when to–

Buck crouches just a little so he can grab onto the back of Eddie’s thighs and lift him further onto the counter. For a second, just the briefest blip, Eddie remembers a similar motion into a fire truck covered in blood. He kind of prods his brain like, we gonna freak out about that? And his brain replies with a steady stream of Buck mouth hands dick now more now please? And Eddie thinks, okay then.

And then Buck’s already back to kissing him, so nothing else really matters.

Buck presses all up against him, into the space Eddie’s thighs helpfully part for him, groaning into each other’s mouths as they feel each other, even sheathed behind jeans and khaki pants. There’s not an inch of him Eddie doesn’t want to be holding, doesn’t want to fold himself into and around and over.

Eddie is clawing at Buck’s back, hair, arms, rucking Buck’s shirt up so he can feel the warm, sweaty divot of his tailbone, the sculpted flesh of his lats and his rhomboids and his trapezius. Eventually the fabric just seems redundant because Eddie has it pushed up to Buck’s armpits, and so Eddie wrenches himself away from Buck’s searing kisses to yank it up.

Buck, God bless him, takes a moment to get with the plan, his eyes a little too starstruck for tactics, but he eventually holds his arms up straight and Eddie manages to wrestle the offending fabric away. He chucks it somewhere and hears the swish of it landing, and then it’s immediately gone from his mind. Object permanence is for people who don’t have a Buck to kiss.

His hands wander all over that soft skin, stroking over every part that bulges and dips and sweats. He feels the hair on Buck’s forearms and chest and the nape of his neck. The aforementioned hands have a better plan of attack than he does, because they pass across his shoulders and then down his front, scratching a little on their path down his abdomen, and then start to fumble with Buck’s belt, before he’s even made the conscious decision to grab at Buck’s crotch.

Back gasps against Eddie’s mouth, “This isn’t moving too fast, right?” Because as always – or maybe for once – they’re on the same page about what’s happening right now, what’s going to happen hopefully in the next hour before Eddie combusts like ignited sawdust.  

“We’ve basically been sexting for six months,” Eddie points out, rather fairly in his opinion. “I deserve to touch your dick at this point.”

Buck has to pause in kissing him, because he’s giggling instead. Eddie, who is not so easily distracted, starts to kiss along Buck’s jawline and bite a mark at the bolt of his jaw. Buck lets out a gratifying gasp at the sensation, an undeliberate roll of his hips into Eddie’s, giggles forgotten, and Eddie licks across the soon-to-be bruise as some kind of apology.  

A memory comes to him. “You said you dreamt that I brought you bugs on our date,” Eddie remembers, a little offended in retrospect.

Buck huffs out a laugh. “It was a dream, Eds, I don’t think I can be blamed for that. The important thing was the date.”

“I wouldn’t bring bugs on a date,” Eddie insists, because it seems important to.

Buck’s smiling a smile that Eddie is recognising as endeared. It’s like all of Buck’s smiles are suddenly making sense now, now that final puzzle piece has slotted into place. Because Buck loves him, and so every smile is tinged with that love. It’s pretty great. “I know you wouldn’t.”

Eddie keeps thinking back. There’s another memory, from the thousands of DMs they sent each other, that comes to mind. “You also said you’d thought about putting your fingers in my mouth.”

Buck goes red, from his ears to the bulge of his cheeks, and he ducks his gaze away. And Eddie can’t, not for a second, have Buck be at all ashamed of his desires.

So he takes Buck’s hand, carefully adjusts the fingers to Buck has his forefinger and middle one straight. For all their frantic kissing before, this stillness is just as heady. Buck’s breathing is still coming fast, eyes flickering between his own fingers and Eddie’s mouth like he can’t decide what to focus on. Eddie holds Buck at the wrist and guides his hand up. He opens up his lips and Buck’s fingers slide in, just to the first knuckle.

He feels – God, coquettish maybe, or just a little bit slutty. Like he’s performing, posing for Buck. And as he sucks once, hard, on Buck’s two fingers on his tongue, the pads of them just weighty enough to make him feel full and held and still, he sees Buck’s gaze go hazy and heavy.

And Buck takes his fingers back, only to kiss Eddie so fiercely they both go leaning back from the force of it.

Buck’s forearm quickly braces against Eddie’s upper cabinet, which both shields him from a concussion but also has the heady side-effect of enclosing Eddie in, surrounded by Buck from all angles. But Eddie has to say, only moving far enough to speak and barely that, “Is that how you felt? When you posted those photos, looking like a slut?”

He gets his answer by the way Buck shudders against him.

Eddie continues, low and intimate, “Did you feel good? You must know you looked good. Hotter than anything I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Buck is panting, animalistic, bottom lip hanging and waiting to be licked across, but he manages to get out, “The irony is that, uh,” he rolls his hips against Eddie’s again. “I actually used to imagine that you were looking at the photos. You were all I fantasised about looking good for, really.”

Eddie swears and it lands on Buck’s lips. He fists the nape of Buck’s neck and yanks him into a bruising kiss. “You have no idea,” Eddie promises. “I would look at them over and over again – God, some of those photos I don’t know how I didn’t come all over my phone screen.”

Buck whimpers against Eddie, his kisses turning sloppier.

Eddie continues, “You probably don’t even remember, but – you once posted a photo in grey sweatpants, and-”

“They were the ones you had worn,” Buck knows, of course he does, exactly which photo Eddie means. “I didn’t wash them. You left and I- I put them on and my dick was so hard. God, you- you talk about my photos but Jesus, Eddie, do you have any idea how good you looked that day? You look good all the time, but I thought then you were out to kill me. All sweaty in that tank top in the gardens, and then back home in my clothes, in my sweats – you didn’t wear underwear, I could tell. And I could see the faintest hint of your dick, depending on how you sat, and I was trying so hard to be good and not stare at you. And then you left, and I couldn’t help myself. I took a photo for Instagram and then I jerked myself off right there on the bed.”

Eddie’s biting on his bottom lip, he realises, hard enough to hurt. He’s hot all over, coiled tight and tense in his gut. He lets go of his lip and immediately an “Oh fuck,” slips free. He continues, grabbing at whatever part of Buck he can, “I’m going to – one day, I’m going to make you jerk off in front of me. I have to see that. Okay?”

Buck makes a winded sound behind his teeth, kisses Eddie harsh and desperate, which gives Eddie a pretty clear answer of how much Buck’s up for the idea. Eddie gets lost in his kisses all over again, all lips and tongue and hands.

In this position, barely an inch of his ass sitting on the countertop and the rest of him trying to engulf Buck whole, he’s actually a bit taller than Buck, and with that realisation comes another thought. He pulls back enough to say, “Do you really think I’m short?”

Buck’s brows crease right in the middle, and it takes him a moment to look up from Eddie’s lips to say, “Right. Just wondering, are you going to let that go at any point, or should I be prepared for this argument to continue when we’re in the retirement home?”

And so, partly as rebuttal and partly because Eddie’s going to get to do this until they’re in a retirement home apparently, Eddie sticks a hand down Buck’s pants, feels the weight of him in his palm, the warmth and the hardness of him. Buck, for his part, nearly collapses, with his knees giving out a little bit and his forehead knocking against Eddie’s shoulder – partly to brace himself, but also partly, if Eddie is right, to keep sight of Eddie’s movement. Serves him right – Eddie is above average, thank you, in all the ways that matter.

 “I can’t wait to have you naked,” Eddie confesses, which wasn’t the point of the tangent, but he can’t help saying it anyway. It also isn’t necessarily meant as dirty talk and more of an admission, but Buck whines all the same. Eddie, feeling encouraged, continues, “Yeah? You like that idea?”

“Only if you’re going to be naked too,” replies Buck, brattish enough that Eddie feels justified in tightening his grip on Buck’s length and making him gasp. Eddie begins to move, a little dry but gentler for it, trying to mimic what he likes when he’s jerking himself off. It’s different enough, of course – different angle, different skin, different cock – but Buck seems happy enough by the wet panting Eddie can feel against his neck. Eddie’s other hand is tight on Buck’s waist, and creeps around of its own accord to slide underneath the hem of Buck’s jeans, to grip onto the fleshiest part of his ass. Buck rocks into Eddie, like he doesn’t even mean to, like he’s just testing the bookending grip Eddie has on him.

“We should move this to the bedroom,” Eddie says, like his brain isn’t leaking through his own ears and he has any memory of anything like the layout of his own house.

“Yeah,” Buck agrees, and then licks into Eddie’s mouth and doesn’t move for a long few moments of kissing. Finally, Buck manages to pull himself away – as with all of Buck’s movements, it’s dramatic and infinitely endearing. He braces himself against Eddie’s thighs, and his cock is still hidden away but his flies are undone and Eddie can see the bulge there behind his underwear, and his mouth waters a little bit. Buck reaches for Eddie then and helps him slide back down to the floor. He says, still staring at Eddie’s lips, “We should probably clean up the tortilla warmer.”

“Probably,” Eddie agrees, and then he pulls his shirt off and flings it into the same void Buck’s shirt ended up in.

“Good point,” Buck says, and then they’re colliding again, stumbling across the kitchen and into walls they both should be able to avoid and yet somehow don’t.

At least one family photo gets knocked to the ground and Eddie adds it to the ‘things to feel bad about tomorrow’ list. They manage to stagger through the hallway, all wrenching kisses and frantic limbs, kicking off their shoes just before launching into Eddie’s bedroom.

They fall onto the bed together, and Eddie ends up underneath Buck. He can’t say he minds, especially not when Buck grinds down, their belt buckles clanging but with enough pressure to make Eddie impossibly hotter. Buck rests on his forearms so he can nuzzle kisses along Eddie’s neck, under his ear, along his chest. He teases a nipple with his tongue and Eddie arches up, and then they’re both useless from the way it brings their hips against each other.

“Take your pants off,” Eddie instructs, grappling with Buck’s waistband and trying to shove them down.

Buck ignores him, instead moving to suck a bruise on Eddie’s chest, just below his right nipple, before moving further down. He gets to Eddie’s pants, which is not where Eddie directed him but he’s not complaining, and Eddie obediently lifts his hips so Buck can undo the button of his khakis and pull them down, along with his socks. Buck chucks the pants away, along with his own jeans, and kneels above Eddie. His gaze is like a physical weight on Eddie, sprawled across his own mattress. “I can look all I like, now,” Buck murmurs, as if a realisation that made it past his lips.

Eddie considers making a joke. Instead, he reaches for Buck.

His hand circles Buck’s wrist, and he pulls it towards his lips – not to suck on his fingers this time, but to instead press a kiss against the soft skin, where the blue of his veins just shows through. “I love you,” he says, just in case it means more the more he says it. By the way Buck’s eyes soften, maybe it does.

Buck tugs his wrist back so he can lean over Eddie and kiss him, hot and aching. “I love you too,” he says, and tries to push that love bodily into Eddie. The heat picks up again, measured this time rather than frantic, because it can’t not, not when Buck has kiss-swollen lips and golden stubble and hands that wander. Eddie tries to give as good as he gets, enjoying the heaviness of Buck over him, of being pressed into the mattress. They start to build up a deliberate rhythm, grinding their cocks together still hidden behind boxer-briefs, just riding the high of the sensation.

“What do you want?” Buck asks, breathing heavily, right up against Eddie’s neck. Eddie arcs up at the words and the feeling of them across his earlobe, grabs onto Buck’s ass to rut their cocks together once more. Eddie suspects the correct answer isn’t ‘you’.

“Condom,” Eddie instead demands in the exact same tone of voice he demands the jaws of life with – it’s not deliberate but Buck must recognise it too, because he pauses in leaning over Eddie towards his bedside table, and instead drops his forehead against Eddie’s chest to hide a giggle against. Eddie grins too, can’t help it, greenhouse-golden-warmth lighting him up from the inside out. He pokes Buck in the side, right where he’s ticklish.

“Sorry,” Buck says, and darts up for another kiss as an apology. Eddie pulls him close enough to make it a long one, pressed all up against each other and sliding lips. Buck pulls off and says, “And lube?”

“They’re both in the-”

“Middle drawer at the back, I know.” Buck goes to reach for them, and then freezes when he returns successfully with a foil packet and bottle in one hand to see Eddie’s raised eyebrows.

“You know where my condoms and lube are?” Eddie still has a hand wrapped around Buck’s ribs, so it’s not like he’s mad, but equally if there’s a camera in his bedroom he’d like to know about it.

Buck blinks. “Um. I found them once when I was staying over. I- it was after the- I was looking for your pain meds.”

Right. The shooting. And the aftermath. Eddie’s grip on Buck’s side softens and strokes a reassuring path up to his back. He pushes down, just gently, and Buck sinks down onto him. They’re still pressed together, and Buck is still the most gorgeous thing Eddie’s ever laid eyes on, but they can take a moment to breathe. They’ve got all the time in the world now for each other.

“I never thanked you properly for staying and helping. But I guess I wish you’d never left,” Eddie confesses, which is dangerous, and stupid, and unfair, because both of them are still messed up but they were sharp and bruising back then. Back when Eddie was a walking time bomb with gritted teeth and Buck was aching to be held still in one place, and neither of them could do much for the other.

But Buck lets out a little sound anyway, small and vulnerable, and then he’s kissing Eddie with an intensity that surprises even Eddie, like he can press all his feelings into Eddie by way of his sliding lips.

“You should stay now,” Eddie says, in between kisses, because his brain has kind of been goop since Buck walked in with a tortilla warmer. “Don’t go back to your loft ever.”

“You can’t,” Buck muffles his own groan against Eddie’s neck, and tries again. “You can’t promise things like that when I can feel your boner.”

“Hey, my boner is your fault.”

And that at least gets Eddie a laugh, one that brushes against his skin. Eddie continues to rub up and down Buck’s back, feeling old scars and moles and sweat and the divots of his spine.

Eddie pulls Buck down for another kiss, and then says while Buck’s eyes are still closed. “I can ask again another time.”

“I just want to make sure you mean it,” says Buck, but it’s soft, not sad. Like there’s nothing that can really damper them right now, not in their little pocket of sunshine. “And you’re not just high on endorphins because you’re about to fuck me.”

Eddie’s grip on Buck’s back spasms, grips into the soft flesh above his kidneys. “Uh.”

Buck grins. “You like that idea?”

And Eddie should say at least half of the truth which is, yes, Eddie likes the idea of fucking Buck very much, thinks he might just be able to die happy buried to the hilt in that flat white-boy ass. But also, “I was actually thinking you could fuck me, this time. If, you know. You wanted.”

Buck blinks. “Are you sure?”

The beginnings of doubt begin to creep in. Eddie holds on tighter to Buck to make them dissipate. “Um. Well, if you wanted to, yeah.”

“Of course I want, Eddie, I-” Buck pauses, lets out a small sound as if irritated at himself, and then kisses Eddie so fiercely Eddie’s jaw aches a little from it. “Jesus, Eddie, we’ve been over this, haven’t we? I want you anyway I can have you. And- God, I would be honoured- I mean, not honoured, that makes it sound like it’s a weird virginity thing. Which is stupid, because it’s just- like, the Aztecs thought you could lose your virginity to an avocado, you know?”

Eddie’s not sure why he’s even asking. But he does anyway. “Well, did the Aztecs fuck the avocado?”

“No,” Buck replies, like it should be obvious. “They thought they were just so sexually powerful as, like, a fruit.”

Eddie can’t resist. “You know who’s also a sexually powerful fruit?”

Buck groans. “Don’t you dare-”

“This guy.” Eddie uses the hand not clutching onto Buck’s back to jerk a thumb towards his own deadpan face.

“That’s like…such a dad joke, Eddie.” Buck leans down and kisses Eddie anyway. “I can’t believe you’re so hot.”

Eddie lets Buck kiss him (it’s such a hardship) for a little while longer, lets their hands roam and their bodies enjoy being pressed up against each other away from the excuse of harnesses or tight underground spaces or the bunks after a bad call. But eventually, he pulls back just far enough to say, “So, if you want to fuck me, and I want you to fuck me – why did you hesitate?”

Buck presses his lips together, just for a second, before he finally admits, “I just – I didn’t know you were into men before today.”

“So you thought, what? That I’d remember I didn’t if you railed me?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds stupid,” complains Buck.

Eddie kisses Buck again, because it’s been like a minute since the last time. “I get it. I know I didn’t say anything. I’ve known for a while, I think. All the therapy was bound to dislodge a sexuality crisis of some sort. But I just – I thought if I admitted I was somewhere on the rainbow flag, you’d realise what was motivating me.”

“Yeah, but,” Buck says. “Your sexuality should be just about you, Eddie. You’re still whatever label you want to use even if you never met me.”

And it is so ridiculous, but the idea of never meeting Buck makes Eddie a little desperate, like a pang of pain from that lonely universe. Eddie digs his fingers into Buck’s back, thinks he might leave bruises there in the shape of his hand. (Buck bruises like a peach and now Eddie can finally take advantage of that.) He says, “Yeah, okay. But I want you as a man, Buck. I want your- Jesus, I want your beard burn, and your tree trunk thighs, and your goddamn firehose.”

Buck breaks first, tucking his helpless giggle against Eddie’s neck. “It’s not that big.”

“Oh, you’re forgetting that I’ve already seen it. We’ve changed next to each other many times. I know exactly how big it is.” Eddie says. His hand trails up Buck’s back to his neck to his hair, to grip him by the curls and reposition him because he wants eye contact for this part: “And I want it inside of me. You understand?”

Buck lets out an honest-to-God whimper. “Yeah. Um. Yes. I love you.”

Eddie’s hand in Buck’s hair tightens, and Buck’s eyes nearly roll back in his head. “Good to know,” Eddie says. “I love you too. Now get to work.”

Buck barks out a laugh, and with a grin, cheeks out, “Yes sir.” His grin stretches when he sees Eddie bite his lip at that, like he was testing a theory and has just been proven right.

Which, Eddie’s got theories of his own, so he replies, “Yeah? You’re going to be good for me?” and Buck lets out a groan that sounds like it came from his gut. He surges to kiss Eddie, just fast enough that Eddie can’t do much but take it, and then pulls back to uncap the lube bottle while Eddie eagerly pulls off his boxer-briefs.

He smears a line of slick down a finger, and then reaches down, one hand splayed across Eddie’s thigh as if to ground him. He stares for a moment at Eddie’s cock, hard and just for him – which is very gratifying, but Eddie makes an impatient noise to remind him of his task and Buck licks his lips before refocusing. He starts to rub a cool, wet circle against Eddie’s hole, teasing the rim with just a fingertip until he and Eddie share a look, the same look they’ve shared a million times, which is basically: Yeah? Yeah.

Buck slides a finger inside, and it doesn’t necessarily feel good but it also really fucking does at the same time. Eddie lets out a winded gasp either way. It feels like he’s finally connected to Buck the way he should be, like he’s finally full. Buck starts to carefully move his finger in and out – and then he crooks up, and Eddie jolts, does half an ab crunch, and almost smacks his forehead into Buck’s.

Buck grins. “Cool.”

Eddie thought his desire was dangerous, angry, biting – but Buck is so gentle with him. He’s tender and happy and Eddie didn’t know it could be all of this too. Buck keeps moving his finger inside of Eddie until Eddie is unravelling from it, coiled up from his gut to his head to his sweaty temples. Eddie feels like his desire is something that can be loved along the rest of him, like this.

“Come on, come on, more,” Eddie is chanting on half-breaths that keep getting punched out of him with every twist of Buck’s finger.

“Hang on, you haven’t done this before-”                        

“How do you know?” Eddie gasps, which is brave of him to say anything that might require further conversation and therefore a delay in getting Buck inside of him, seriously, what’s the fucking hold up? “Maybe I have.”

As feared, Buck pauses in his ministrations to raise a knowing eyebrow. “You’ve been getting off with a guy I don’t know about?”

“No,” says Eddie, and kindly resists the urge to throw one of his nearby pillows directly at Buck’s head. “But I’ve, you know. Stuck a few fingers up there.”

“Sexy,” says Buck, and Eddie thinks its supposed to be teasing, but unfortunately Buck has a blush like a Rorschach test climbing up his neck and betraying his sincerity.

Eddie seizes the opportunity and adds, “Yeah. Also, I was thinking of you, every time.”

And Buck’s finger actually spasms inside of Eddie, and then they’re both winners because it jolts against that same place Eddie doesn’t quite have the mobility to reach every time he tries on himself, and also Buck looks like he lost some brain cells. Buck leans down to mouth at Eddie’s neck hungrily, slides another finger inside Eddie and presses his thumb against Eddie’s perineum, and Eddie thinks he understands the Matrix now.

So apparently Buck isn’t bothered by the idea of Eddie masturbating about him – apparently he likes the idea a lot. Eddie kind of wishes he knew that four months ago, but he supposes he’ll make do now.

Buck is close enough to kiss now, his fingers still beating a rhythm inside of Eddie, and Eddie takes advantage of the position by gripping a fist in Buck’s hand and kissing him sloppily. Buck picks up the pace and Eddie has to pause in kissing him just to try and fail to catch his breath.

Buck murmurs, still close enough for his breath to cool the wetness on Eddie’s lips, “I thought about you, too. Thought about seeing you like this, all pretty and desperate for me. Thought about it the other way round, too. Thought about you bossing me around, bending me over, splitting me open.”

“Holy shit,” Eddie gasps, because it’s one thing to fantasise and it’s an entirely different thing to have the object of those fantasies lie out a ten-point plan of potential positions to try while he’s knuckle deep inside of you.

Buck presses a kiss to the corner of Eddie’s mouth, ignores his whimper to redirect and instead presses a butterfly trail along Eddie’s jawline to his ear. He tugs the lobe with his teeth, which Eddie did not even know was a thing for him until he’s shuddering from it. He says, “The fantasies were nothing in comparison, you know that? Jesus, Eddie, you look like – I can’t believe you’re mine. You love me and you want me and we’re gonna do this again and again.”

“Oh fuck,” says Eddie, because apparently his erogenous zone is just Buck, and Buck saying romantic things, and: “You need to put another finger inside of me.”

“I’m taking my time,” says Buck, which is a bare-faced lie because the rhythm of his fingers picks up, and he starts scissoring the two fingers he already has inside, and the coil inside of Eddie’s gut tightens to the edge of bearable like he’s going to physically snap in half. “Maybe I want to see you even more desperate.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Eddie whines, and then instantly regrets it when he sees the glint in Buck’s eye. “No, no, Buck, that wasn’t a dare.”

“It sounded like a challenge, at the very least,” Buck says, and Eddie shouldn’t be surprised that he’s in his element like this, getting to use his body and his charm and his humour to press all of his love bodily into Eddie, but it’s potent all the same.

He kisses Eddie once more, and then starts nipping kisses along Eddie’s chest, following the hair between his pecs down to where his abs aren’t as neatly defined these days, until suddenly he’s eye-level with Eddie’s cock, and Eddie remembers exactly how competitive Buck gets.

"I'm gonna die, aren’t I?” he says, weakly. Buck just winks at him, and then mouths a sloppy, tonguing kiss around the head of Eddie’s cock, and that’s really all the confirmation Eddie needs.

The thing is, Eddie hasn’t had a blowjob in a long time. He and Shannon were so familiar with each other when she was in LA that they tended to skip foreplay, and Ana wasn’t a big fan of the act. And to be honest, it’s uncharitable to think of literally anyone else right now because Buck, apparently, is a goddamn legendary cocksucker.

He goes down on Eddie like he’s got something to prove, all hot wet mouth and tongue and suction. He works the head, then slides down like his throat is a tunnel only Eddie’s cock can pass through, and curls his tongue on the way up, and Eddie is only a mortal man, okay? His hand slides into Buck’s hair and grips on, and he means for Buck to take that as ‘okay you’ve proved your point can you relinquish my dick so I can breathe again.’ But Buck instead picks up the pace, bobbing his head up and down, making filthy sounds Eddie’s only heard in porn, and then – oh Christ, Eddie deserves a sainthood from the Vatican for not coming right then and there – he times the slide of his fingers inside Eddie to the same rhythm.

Eddie’s making these small, helpless, “Ah, ah,” noises, which would be embarrassing if he had any idea how to stop making them. His grip in Buck’s hair tightens, and he manages to gasp out, “Buck, wait- I’m gonna come if you, ah, don’t stop.”

To his credit, Buck immediately pulls off, pauses his fingers too, and his bottom lip is slick with saliva and pre-cum, and Eddie wants the sight photographed. Buck says, seemingly apropos of nothing and a little hoarse, “Do you remember when I was telling you about my crush on you? Do you remember when we were talking about dick pics?”

“You- fuck – you might have to be a bit more specific,” Eddie gasps, because he was about a second away from an orgasm that’s been building for maybe three years by now, and he can’t realistically be expected to have perfect memory recall.

“I said I wanted to gargle on your dick,” Buck reminds him, helpfully, and Eddie shudders.

“Now you mention it,” he pants. “Yeah, I remember something about that.”

“So,” continues Buck, innocently like his fingers aren’t still pulsating inside of Eddie. “If you want to come down my throat, I’d really be into that.”

It’s tempting. Of course it is. Eddie wants to fuck Buck’s mouth until his own come is spilling over Buck’s tongue, obviously, because anyone with a libido would. But what comes out of his mouth instead is: “I want to come with you inside of me.”

Finally, it’s Eddie’s chance to leave Buck a little speechless, because Buck licks across his bottom lip (tasting the shine there) and then stares at Eddie like he’s something reverent.

Eddie grins, scratches Buck’s scalp from where his fingers are still tangled in his curls. “I told you that you should have hurried up. You could already be inside of me right now.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Buck snarks back, but then he’s leaning forward to kiss Eddie deep enough that Eddie can taste himself, and he didn’t think of that as a turn-on before. Like most things involving Buck’s tongue, he’s rapidly a fan. Buck pulls back to say, “You weren’t complaining five minutes ago.”

“Nope, I’m not complaining,” Eddie hurries to say. “Definitely not complaining.”

“Good,” says Buck. He rises to his knees and slides his own boxers off.

Firehose, indeed.

Eddie is, distantly, aware that he is staring. And if he was ever doubtful about his sexuality, the way his mouth drops at the sight of Buck’s cock feels like a good way to dispel that doubt. It’s pretty, is the thing – curved a little to the left and so hard it looks like it hurts, flushed pink and now glistening from the lube-covered palm Buck drags up and down it. There’s a bead of precum that Eddie wants to taste – and he doesn’t have to contain his desires anymore, does he? He wants Buck and Buck wants him and he wants every single piece that Buck offers to him.

In one twist, while Buck is distracted with the condom foil packet, Eddie sits up, gets a hold of Buck’s sides, and wrestles him over onto his back on the other side of the bed. Buck lets out a little yelp, but otherwise rolls over like a trooper, only says a warning, “Eddie-”

And then Eddie gets a hand around Buck’s cock, drags his fist up its length and wipes his thumb around the tip. Not fighting the impulse, he lifts it to his lips and tastes it, and Buck’s head falls back to the pillow to let out a pained groan. Eddie shifts from where his knees fall on either side of Buck’s thighs. He lays out a palm flat on Buck’s stomach, spreads his fingers to touch as much skin at once as possible. “Like this?” he says, trusting that Buck will know what he means, like he always does.

Buck looks at him, looks at once vulnerable and smoking, lifts his own hands to cradle Eddie’s hips. “Yeah,” he says. “Like this.”

Eddie raises himself, shuffles himself forward to position himself while Buck quickly slides the condom down his shaft. They share a look – ready? – and then Eddie sinks down.

Christ. It’s like nothing Eddie has experience before, stretched and full from the inside out. Buck lets out a throaty moan as Eddie slowly descends onto him, until he’s fully sat in Buck’s lap. He braces himself on Buck’s chest, takes a second to catch his breath. Buck trembles underneath him, his palms shaking a little bit where he supports Eddie’s sides. Eddie almost wants to let out a hysterical laugh – he has a dick inside of him! He has Buck’s cock inside of him. He has the insane idea to take a selfie and send it to every one of Buck’s weirdo Instagram followers. I’ve got him, suckers, and you can’t have him.

Eddie shifts his hips a little experimentally, and Buck squeezes him. “That good?” Eddie says, hushed and all the more intimate for it. “God, you’re big. You feel huge inside of me.”

“You feel amazing,” Buck replies, sounding already out of breath. “Can I- should I move?”

Eddie considers, takes note of where he stretches and where Buck’s prep Eddie is now immensely thankful for. He rotates a little bit, builds something like a rhythm back and forth. Buck is biting his lip hard enough to possibly draw blood, and Eddie loves him so fucking much. “Yeah,” he says. “Come on, Buck, move. Fuck me.”

And Buck thrusts up, and Eddie sees stars.

He falls forward and braces himself on his hands by either side of Buck’s head. He has no idea what his expression is doing right now, because his whole body is just endorphins and pleasure and the points where Buck touches him, where he’s inside of him. Buck starts to build a pace, using his grip on Eddie’s waist to pull him down intime with Buck’s upwards thrusts, and Eddie will get right on being an active participant until he can regain his breath and get his brain working again.

“Eddie, dude, you feel so good-”

And Eddie snickers.

Buck groans, falters in his rhythm. “Shut up.”

“Dude? Really, Buck?” Eddie leans down to kiss Buck’s jawline and then has to give them both a moment to groan at that new angle. He continues, “Kind of feels like you’re no-homo-ing me while you’re balls deep inside of me.”

“I can do better,” promises Buck, and then proves it by slowly regaining his rhythm, rocking shallow thrusts inside of Eddie and readjusting his grip on the meaty sides of Eddie’s thighs. “Sweetheart? Baby? Schnookums?”

Eddie laughs, and then Buck’s hips snap up and he’s panting all over again. “Ah! Fuck – maybe we can work up to schnookums.”

“Love of my life?” Buck suggests, and Eddie does not find that romantic, not one bit, his full-body shudder is unrelated, actually. He mouths at Buck’s jaw and neck and collarbone, tongue sloppy and desperate, letting out a guttural breath each time it’s punched out of him by Buck’s thrusts.

It feels so good. It feels impossibly good, too good, like Eddie hasn’t earned this kind of heady pleasure. He’s getting fucked, and it’s Buck underneath him, with red flushing up his chest and his forehead shining from sweat and his hair curling from exerting his own product out. Eddie starts to move on top of Buck to meet his thrusts, and they’re just bodies, they’re just pleasure, they’re just flesh and endorphins and sex and limbs.

And then Buck multi-tasks – plants his feet flat on the sheets to keep fucking up into Eddie and frees one hand to wrap it around Eddie’s cock and start jerking him off – and Eddie is going to die. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been fucking, how long Buck has been inside of him – only that it just all feels so fucking good.

“Come on, Eds, fuck, Eddie, you gotta – I need you to come. I need to see you lose control.” Buck pants out, looking up at him with heavy lids. And Eddie can’t even be this far from him, not if he’s about to jump off the cliff. Gasping, even as Buck builds a punishing pace on Eddie’s cock, Eddie reaches for him.

And because he’s Buck, because they’re Buck-and-Eddie, Buck knows what he needs. He sits up, still inside of Eddie, tangles their legs over and around each other so they’re both sat up, panting into each other’s mouths, chests pressed together. Buck claws his arm around Eddie’s back, holding their chests close as Eddie takes over and starts to strip his own cock, fast and unrelenting.

Eddie kisses him, licking into his mouth and tasting him, rocking into him. Buck helps lift Eddie up and down, and for every pace they set, they fall out of just as quickly. It’s messy and uncoordinated and perfect all the same.

And Eddie’s going to have this again and forever. And Buck’s going to catch him when he falls, and Eddie’s here for every part of Buck.

Eddie comes, shooting white stripes over Buck’s abs. Buck lets out a sound like a sob and follows him over the edge, shaking under Eddie’s grabbing hands. They breathe through the aftershocks, and Eddie kisses Buck with now mostly numb lips. They’re both sticky and trembling and flushed all over, hot to the touch.

“I feel like I want to high-five you,” Buck admits weakly.

Eddie laughs, a little wild around the edges, and drops his forehead to rest against Buck’s shoulder.

They manage to wash up perfunctorily, mostly thanks to Buck being a real trooper in discarding the condom and bringing in a washcloth from the bathroom to wipe them both over. Buck chucks the washcloth to the floor and closes Eddie’s curtains against the late morning sunshine. Eddie can’t do much more than get under his sheets – he feels a little empty without Buck inside of him but manages to alleviate the symptoms by pulling him closer under the covers, tangling their legs and facing each other.

“When’s Christopher back?” Buck whispers across the pillows.

“He has art club,” Eddie says, which they both know means it’s at least six hours until they need to leave in time to pick him up. “We can take a nap. We’ve earned it.”

“Hell yeah, we have,” Buck teases, and shuffles closer to nuzzle his nose against Eddie’s. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Eddie replies, and revels in how quickly it feels like a habit now. An hour ago he had no idea what it was like to say that to Buck, and now he can’t imagine he’ll ever go a day without it.

Just as Eddie begins to drift, he hears Buck whisper, “I’m really glad you commented, Eddie.”

“There’s no one else I’d rather catfish,” Eddie replies sleepily, and smiles even with his eyes closed as he hears Buck snort.

Just before he falls asleep, he feels Buck shift closer and press a kiss to his temple. “We can pick out a new tortilla warmer tomorrow. Together.”

Eddie manages to find Buck’s hand and squeeze it. Yeah. Together.

-

They wake up a few hours later, and have a very sensible discussion about what’s changed, and how they go forward.

(Eddie’s kidding, obviously. They wake up tangled up and already rutting against each other and they come on each other while kissing through their morning breath, and then, still panting, Eddie says, “We probably shouldn’t tell people until we’re settled into this, right?”

And Buck nods in the space in between Eddie’s neck and the pillows and says, “Yeah, that’s probably for the best.” And that’s that.)

They both go to pick Christopher up from his art club, which is exactly what they would’ve done as just best friends. And Christopher shows Buck the latest page of the comic book he’s been working on, The Adventures of Alligator Alex and His Pet Dinosaur, where Alex and his Pet Dinosaur are fighting a monster that, from what Eddie can assess, looks like Smaug if Smaug were crayon-orange and the size of a skyscraper. And Buck offers delighted feedback from the front seat all the way back home: “Wow! I can’t wait to read what happens next. And, hey – is that the Doctor Lady from the last issue? The one with the radiation rocket launcher? Oh, she’s switched sides? That’s awesome, I love a redemption arc. And your colours are amazing, and that’s such a difficult angle you drew Alex at, you can really see his tail so well.

They make dinner together, and feed Smaug together, and watch the next few episodes of Corazón salvaje, and then put Christopher to bed together. Which is all exactly what they would have done as best friends, and Christopher certainly doesn’t notice the difference – except when they’re both in the kitchen, Buck presses Eddie against the fridge door and kisses him until Eddie can’t tell his onions from his red peppers from his own beating heart. Except when they watch the telenovela, Buck slings his arm around the back of the couch and plays with the nape of Eddie’s neck through three episodes. Except when they close the door on a dozing Christopher, Eddie makes Buck a cup of chamomile tea and then stands tucked against him while they both drink from it. Except they brush their teeth together, and go to bed together, and sleep through the night together.

They’re back on shift the next day, and Buck’s probationary period is over. And in Eddie’s defence, he actually thinks they do a great job of keeping things normal. They’re back to being best friends, their argument forgotten, and so they get a few odd looks for that. But they’re kept busy for the first couple of hours on a call to a bakery up in smoke, and they all troop straight to the showers when they get back.

Eddie flops upstairs along with the rest of them – Buck was taking a little longer in his shower stall, and Eddie is not at all co-dependent and so managed to brave not waiting outside for him or joining him. He mucks about on his phone while he waits, and eventually the hears the tell-tale bound of Buck coming up the stairs, and then the whole couch shifts as he leaps down next o Eddie.

Eddie, because he is focused on keeping their secret, doesn’t look over at Buck. If he maybe shifts a little closer, that’s his business, and he does it really subtly anyway. Eddie keeps scrolling through his phone, reading nothing, when Buck nudges his elbow into him.

Eddie peers at him sideways. “What?”

Buck has a twinkle in his eye that Eddie has fast learned means trouble. Buck says, “Maybe you should check your messages.”

Eddie frowns, looks at his phone again. There’s nothing new on Whatsapp or in his texts. He’s about to ask Buck what he means when he sees the little pink notification on his Instagram app. His eyes widen on his phone, and his gaze flickers back to Buck as if for permission. He still hasn’t checked the app since, in his mind, he let Buck go – even though Buck explained, under the cover of night and the security of Eddie’s bed, about his plan to cook for Eddie, and why he was so humiliated that he thought Eddie knew about the plan and still wouldn’t tell Buck the truth.

But Buck waggles his eyebrows, and Eddie thinks, sure, he trusts him. Why not?

And then Eddie opens their direct messages to see a dick pic from @firehoseLA.

Eddie slams the face of his phone down on his thigh so fast and so hard he thinks he’s going to have a bruise in the shape of an iPhone tomorrow. Buck, for his part, bursts out laughing, tries unsuccessfully to hide it in a fake cough in his elbow and is fooling absolutely no one.

“Buck,” Eddie hisses under his breath.

But then Eddie’s the hypocrite who checks there’s no one behind them on the couch, and then twists the phone around to look at the photo again.

Its just – Buck has such a pretty dick. Especially like this, curved up towards his abs and with a loose fist circling the base. No wonder he took some more time in the shower – Eddie can see the steam clinging to Buck’s flushed skin, the drops of condensation along his torso, the way his blonde hair is a little darker from the moisture. It’s taken at an angle so Eddie can just see Buck’s chin tilted down, the barest hint of his smirk.

More messages start coming through while Eddie is still trying to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth and control an inappropriate semi tucked beneath his uniform pants. Thankfully, the messages push the photo up his screen, doing a better job of hiding it from traumatising their colleagues than Eddie has done.

@firehoseLA: hey, I just kissed you
@firehoseLA: and this is crazy
@firehoseLA: but here’s my insta,
@firehoseLA: so DM me maybe?

@elbombero118: Please tell me you did not just send me a dick pic
@elbombero118: In our place of work
@elbombero118: Followed by bastardised Carly Rae Jepsen lyrics

@firehoseLA: hey ur the 1 who was singing along on the drive here

@elbombero118: I was humming. If that.

@firehoseLA: I am prepared to compromise on mouthing the words
@firehoseLA: even though we both know you shouted along to the ‘I missed you so, so bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.’

Eddie’s in the middle of typing out his reply when Bobby clears his throat pointedly. Eddie quickly locks his phone, just in case Buck’s dick is still at the tip – top – of his screen. He slowly looks up to see Bobby standing in front of them, arms folded. Most of the team is also scattered around the couch area with matching unimpressed expressions.

“What?” Eddie asks, trying to sound somewhere between casual and innocent and not really managing either.

One of Bobby’s eyebrows rises. “Really? We’re gonna play that game?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Cap,” replies Buck sweetly. Eddie wonders if it’s too late for him to move his thigh away from pressed up all against Buck’s without being obvious about it.

“Something has changed,” Bobby says, unflinching. “Last time you were both on shift, Buck, you were about to get yourself transferred even if you had to start a fight to do so and Eddie was walking around with his tail between his legs like a whining hog.”

Both of them start protesting at the same time.

“I wasn’t that bad-”

“That guy had it coming!”

“-and I don’t think the Minnesota metaphor is -”

Bobby holds a single finger up to silence them. “The truth, please.”

Buck and Eddie look at each other. And Eddie knows him, knows him from every angle and shade and emotion, so he knows exactly what Buck’s face is saying. Buck has tilted his head a little to the left, and his eyes are just a smidge wider, and he’s checking to make sure Eddie’s following him. Buck thinks they should make up some platitude about being friends again, because he and Eddie agreed that morning that they wanted to keep this private for a little longer. Eddie gives the slightest duck of his chin as an approval that they’re on the same page.  

Except that when Buck says, “We had a conversation, and we’re friends again-”

Eddie says, “I’m going to marry him someday.”

There’s a moment’s pause.

Then Buck’s mouth drops open. “Eddie.” Which is nearly drowned out by the joint uproar of their team, crying out about bets and idiots and every curse word under the sun.

And Eddie has probably the dopiest smile on his face, because he doesn’t regret it. He can’t regret something so warm as sunshine, glowing from within him. He has Buck now and he’s starting to believe he’s going to have him for forever.

Bobby snorts, enough to get their attention again. Eddie has a split-second to worry, but there’s a small smile itching the corner of Bobby’s mouth. “Right,” Bobby says. “Now I’ve got to figure out how to write that on a personnel form.” 

Buck bites on his bottom lip, but still has to resort to hiding his face against Eddie’s shoulder to try and contain the grin bursting out of him. Eddie can’t help it either, feeling a little delirious from it, smiling so hard he can feel his lips stretch over his incisors.

So maybe Eddie knows everything about Buck, and vice versa, but maybe they can still surprise each other too.

The rest of the team are still shouting, and Ravi is doing some kind of victory lap proclaiming, “Y’all don’t watch enough Bollywood, it’s about the momentum!” and the rest of them are fishing in their wallets for cash.

Bobby smiles at them, ignoring the chaos of his own team behind him and says, “As long as it doesn’t affect your professionalism, I’m very happy for you both. Athena and I will have you over for dinner next week.”

“So no kissing in the bunks?” Buck asks, which Eddie is ninety per cent is a joke. Maybe eighty five.

“Definitely not!” Chimney calls from the other couch. “That is a public area that I try to sleep in - no PDA.”

Buck’s mouth plops open in outrage. “I’ve had to see you do plenty of PDA with my sister, you hypocrite!”

“No stealing fire trucks either,” Hen adds, and then soothes it with a wink. She says to Eddie, “I’m very happy for you both. You deserve each other.”

“Going to take that as a compliment,” Eddie says, and he’s smiling too hard for it to have even a little bite.

Chimney points his phone at Buck. “Speaking of your sister – have you told her? Please tell her. You know I can’t keep a secret, especially from her.”

Buck groans. His head falls back again. “Fine, I’ll call her later.”

“Now, please,” Chimney urges.

“What, you’re going to see her before I can call her after shift?”

Chimney suddenly finds his own phone incredibly interesting, even though they can all see the dark screen. “She, uh, might be coming round with Jee-Yun for lunch at the firehouse.”

Because Chimney is so deliberately avoiding all their gazes, he doesn’t see the way Buck presses his lips together to physically hide his beaming smile. He says, his voice only sounding a little warped from joy, “Fine, I’ll go call her now. Only for you, Chim.” He stands up, and Eddie manages to miss him immediately, and disappears downstairs to presumably have a private phone call with his sister.

Bobby nods, and says, “Seriously Eddie. We’re happy for you guys.” And Eddie refuses to cry this early into a shift, so he nods at Bobby back, and drops his gaze to his lap, to hide both his shining eyes and his small smile.

He wasn’t worried about his team’s reactions, not really, just like he’s not that worried about Christopher’s or Pepa’s or Carla’s. Obviously, if Christopher was upset (he won’t be), or if the team were annoyed, or Bobby demanded that one of them switch shifts or firehouses – then that would suck, but they’d cope. Because they’re facing it all together from now on, and they trust each other to do so. Eddie trusts Buck to have his back, and Buck trusts Eddie to not abandon him.

With that thought, Eddie manages to make it a very admirable five minutes before he stands and goes to find Buck. He hears Lucy say to the others as he starts down the stairs, “To be honest, I can see this being useful for us. It’s like training dogs to find weed, except we can just let one of them off the leash to find the other.”

“That’s not a very nice metaphor, Luce,” Hen reprimands. “They’re at least like pigs hunting out truffles.”

And Eddie considers taking offence, but then he finds Buck in the first place he looks for him, so maybe they have a point.

Buck’s on the phone in the locker rooms, slouched on one of the benches. He perks up at the sight of Eddie and holds out his hand to pull him close. Eddie lets himself be tugged into the space between Buck’s legs, and cards a gentle hand through Buck’s hair (styled differently today because he had to use Eddie’s pomade, which he famously hates, to which Eddie pointed out a drawer in the bathroom Buck is welcome to move his own shit into, which then devolved into making out against the sink). Buck knocks his forehead into Eddie’s stomach.

“Yeah, Mads, I know you told me so,” he says, and would sound put-upon if it weren’t for the happiness steaming from him. “Yeah, I know.”

Maddie says something else, apparently, because Buck rolls his eyes, and looks up at Eddie.

“Hey, Eds, you want to come for dinner with Maddie and Chimney and Jee-Yun next week?”

“I think we’re doing some kind of tour,” Eddie teases. “Bobby’s already invited us, I’m sure Hen will as well. Let’s do it.”

Buck grins, and then winces as Maddie says something else. “Yes, he’s here – no, he just walked in – no I’m not handing the phone over. Well, number one you already have his number, you can text him yourself, and number two, I’m not letting you do any kind of shovel talk. Uh huh. For one thing he’s a foot taller than you and- yes I do think you could hide his body but I also don’t think you could physically pick it up- No, Chimney would not help- Okay, maybe he would, but- Okay.”

Buck lets out a noisy sigh and holds his phone up to Eddie. Eddie might believe his act of being flippant by Maddie’s worrying, but there’s the tiniest crease around his eyes, as if Maddie could possibly say anything to scare Eddie off, or vice versa. Eddie takes the phone and holds it to his ear. “Hey, Maddie.”

“Hey, Eddie,” she replies, and Eddie can hear her smile even through the speaker. “Listen, can you do me a favour and pull a face like I’m really reaming you out? Just pretend I’m threatening you with everything under the sun.”

“That’s, uh, a bit graphic,” Eddie says obediently, schooling his face into a frown. “Oh- I didn’t know you could do that with a body and I’m a medic, are you- oh, yeah, okay. Uh huh.”

“What is she saying to you?” Buck hisses and tries to grab for the phone. When Eddie twists away from him – not far, never far – he instead focuses on grabbing Eddie and wrapping his arms around whatever he can reach. “Eddie- Eddie don’t listen to her!”

“You have what in your handbag?” Eddie exclaims and hears Maddie’s pealing laughter over the line. “I don’t that’s legal in the US, you know, Maddie.”

“Okay, okay,” Maddie giggles. “You can put him out of his misery. I love you both, and I’m very happy for you both. Buck spent at least six months pining, so I’m very glad to get my pinot grigio supplies back under control, at the very least.”

“Pinot grigio?” Eddie repeats, biting on his bottom lip. “Wow, fancy. I just had beer for all my pining.”

Buck is turning rose pink, ears burning, and his grip squeezes on Eddie. “Great, she’s telling you all of my secrets, then.”

Eddie grins, darts to press a quick, close-mouthed kiss against the top of Buck’s head, and then says, “We’ll see you soon for your lunchtime visit, Maddie. I’m going to pass you back to your brother now.”

Buck snatches the phone back and whispers angrily into the phone, rapid-pace, “I cannot believe you, I never threatened Chimney – yeah, but- no, but- if you want to go threaten Taylor now, you’re welcome to it, but I’m not sure it’s worth the flight to New York- yeah I know- you’re actually the worst. Okay I love you too, see you later.” He hangs up, tosses his phone to the side and refocuses on holding onto Eddie’s waist. “Ugh. Thanks for talking to her.”

Eddie shrugs. “It’s like I’ve told you before – I’ve got sisters. Two of them, actually, and younger siblings are always more annoying.”

Buck takes a second, and then frowns. “Hey!” He digs a finger into the space between Eddie’s ribs, and Eddie laughs.

“Kidding! I’m kidding.” Buck tugs, and Eddie comes to sit next to him. “She seems happy for us. So does everyone.”

“Yeah,” says Buck. “But they had to put up with me being really obvious about you for years. They’re probably just celebrating that.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I was also very obvious about you, so let’s not start that contest.”

Buck scoffs, bumps his shoulder into Eddie’s. “Yeah, because I’ll win.”

“I dropped a winch on my foot because I thought you gave your number out.”

“I described how in love I was with you – to you. That trumps everything.”

Eddie scoffs. “Also, don’t think you’re off the hook so easily for earlier,” he says, jabbing a pointed finger into the meat of Buck’s shoulder. “We’re sending dick pics, now? And through that account, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

Buck opens his mouth to reply, and then pauses, looking like he always looks when a thought occurs to him. He glances at Eddie, and asks, “Do you want me to delete the account? I mean, it’s only you I want to be showing off for.”

Eddie does not find that romantic, obviously, but he does shuffle closer so he can fit his hand to the curve of Buck’s thigh, for unrelated reasons. He says, honestly, “I don’t mind. I know I – before you kissed me, I would’ve thought I’d be more jealous. But… I know I’m the one who gets to touch you.” He squeezes Buck’s thigh, and smiles, “So you can post the photos all you like, because I know you’re coming home to me.”

Buck smiles, and his eyes are glittering a little bit. “Eddie, Christ. You can’t just say stuff like that. I’ve never hated the glass walls more.”

Eddie finds himself grinning too, like Buck’s happiness is infectious. “We could probably get away with a kiss.”

“I was talking more about you bending me over, actually, and-”

“Okay!” Eddie cuts him off, because if Buck actually declares his plan for fucking in the locker room, Eddie won’t be able to walk in here again without a Pavlovian boner. “We’re definitely not getting away with that.”

“Just a kiss then,” Buck says, like it’s such a hardship. He leans in quick, cups Eddie’s jaw in one hand and presses a kiss to his lips, chaste enough for acceptability but deep enough to leave Eddie aching.

He leans back, and Eddie gets a little caught on the sight. From the open garage door, through those same glass walls, the morning sunlight catches Buck’s eyelashes and paints them gold, makes his smile glow bright.

Eddie stands, pulls Buck up with him. “Come on,” he says, instead of everything else that threatens to burst from him. “Let’s go back to our team.”

Buck makes a small pout but gets up anyway.

And when Eddie says, “I love you,” before they leave, he knows Buck will reply, “I love you too.” And Buck does. Eddie knows that about Buck now, knows how he responds to kisses and love and warmth.

He knows Buck – knows him as Eddie and as a stranger, as his lover and his partner and his friend – but he still aches to know him more. The only comfort is that he has the rest of their lives to do so.

-

About six months later, @firehoseLA posts a photo that confuses most of his followers, considering it’s very clearly not of him.

The man in the photo is still gorgeous, of course, from what the camera captures. He’s brown, and muscular, perhaps a bit leaner than the usual @firehoseLA’s bulk. The photo starts from his smile, a laugh half turned away from the camera, wearing a sweaty t-shirt and gardening gloves. There are hundreds of comments within the first four minutes of posting, ranging from horny to concerned to curious.

The caption reads:

@firehoseLA: by the time you read this, I’ll have already proposed. Hopefully, the ring fits, and Christopher can get Hildy to work even without the dishcloth over her eyes. I love you.

There’s nobody in this world I trust more with me – all of me - than you.