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It starts with a post on Ravi’s Instagram story, which should have been harmless. Just something Buck could swipe past before the toothpaste even finished foaming in his mouth.
Ravi does not post much. When he does, it's always a little strange. A blurry photo of an apartment with ‘available’ typed underneath like he remembered why he took the photo halfway through posting it. A clip of a Frolf game where he misses the catch, laughs about it, and shares it anyway. Once it was just a sink. No caption. No explanation. Buck had stared at it for a solid minute trying to figure out if he was supposed to appreciate the faucet or call someone about a leak.
It fit though. Ravi had a whole life outside of work. Friends who throw pop-up dinners, who know each other’s dogs by name, who never forget birthdays, even the ones that belong to the pets. Friends who probably never have to wonder if they are suppose to be somewhere, or if they are just tolerated.
Usually, Buck swiped through without thinking.
Tonight, he hesitates.
Because tonight, it's not an apartment listing or a Frolf fail or a rogue kitchen sink.
Tonight, it's a bar.
He flicks the story forward, toothbrush still clutched awkwardly in his hand, foam dripping down his chin in slow, sad betrayal.
The first photo is a group shot. A dozen people squeezed together so tight their heads blur into each other, a fire emoji slapped lazily across the top with ‘casual hangout ’ like it's nothing special to belong like that. Some of the faces Buck half-recognizes from float shifts or training days, people he talked to once and never again, but most of them he doesn’t know.
Ravi is in the middle, grinning wide, arm slung over someone Buck definitely does not recognize.
And tucked off to the side, blurred but unmistakably there, is Eddie.
Buck frowns, thumb hesitating against the glass.
Eddie is not supposed to be there.
Eddie had said he was meeting a few people from Dispatch. Linda. Sue. Maybe a couple others. At the sad little jazz bar off the highway, the one with sticky floors and a jukebox that could be counted on to choose the exact wrong song every time, the place where Buck had spent nights pretending not to notice when Eddie’s knee bumped against his under the table.
Not here.
Not this.
This is glitter and eyeliner and someone’s elbow caught mid-spin. This is neon reflecting off spilled drinks and bad decisions. This is the kind of place Buck could have gone to, if someone had wanted him there.
He swipes forward again, the toothbrush slipping lower in his grip, useless.
The second story is a drink, bright and sharp, a tequila sunrise sweating against a scratched-up table, a rainbow stir stick drooping sideways like it gave up halfway through the night. Behind it, someone dances out of frame, all glitter and motion, the whole world moving without Buck in it.
He stares at it long after the image fades.
The third post loads. Another group photo, Ravi squeezed between two other guys Buck has never seen before. One with glitter dusted along his cheekbones, the other in a crop top that says ‘love is love is love’. They are laughing, pressed close, already stitched into each other’s stories.
Buck’s stomach turns, sharp and low.
He thought he and Ravi were good now. Friends, even.
He’s on Ravi’s Instagram Close Friends list. They went out for drinks a couple of times. Buck thought that meant something.
Good enough that someone might have thought to say, ‘hey, you should come too’.
He swipes again, faster, like speed will save him.
The fourth story pulls back for a wide shot. Neon flooding the walls. Posters for drag shows slapped wherever there was space. A mirrorball turning slow and lazy overhead. A guy shirtless and sprawling across the floor, trying and mostly failing to do the worm, while a girl perched on someone else’s shoulders waved a tiara around like she was christening a ship.
Buck barely sees any of it.
Because the last story loads.
It's blurry, bodies crammed into a booth too small for them, drinks knocked over, laughter caught mid-breath, the whole scene vibrating with motion.
And there is Eddie.
Far right.
Soft.
Laughing.
A cocktail balanced between his fingers, the tiny paper umbrella still clinging to the rim. His sleeves rolled up like they always are when he lets himself relax, his smile so loose and easy it feels like getting hit across the ribs.
And Buck sees it.
Sees what he has been trying not to find.
An arm slung around Eddie’s shoulders.
A thumb hooked under the collar of his shirt, resting against bare skin, casual and familiar like it belonged there.
Eddie is not pulling away.
Eddie is not even noticing.
Buck’s heart stumbles so hard he nearly drops his phone.
Not just a bar. A gay bar.
Which is fine.
Of course it's fine.
Eddie is gay.
Eddie told him months ago, rinsing cereal bowls like he was telling Buck they were almost out of milk.
Buck had said it didn’t change anything.
And it hadn’t.
Until Eddie kissed him.
Until Buck kissed him back like it was breathing.
Until it became easier to share a bed than explain why they couldn’t. It made it easier for Eddie to reach for Buck in the dark, easier for Buck to say yes, every time.
But now Eddie is smiling with someone else’s hand around his neck.
Laughing with someone else in some random bar booth.
And Buck is standing barefoot in their bathroom, toothpaste sliding sticky and stupid down his chin, feeling something crack open in a way he's pretty sure he won’t be able to close again.
There is a man sitting next to Eddie.
Touching Eddie where Buck’s mouth had been the night before.
Buck zooms in.
Even sitting down, the guy looks tall. Dark wavy hair. A shirt half-unbuttoned in a way that says ‘I am not worried about things like consequences’. The kind of guy who probably owns matching luggage and knows what mezcal actually is without having to Google it. The kind of guy who probably never gets weird about putting moisturizer on his face.
Buck takes a screenshot.
Then another.
Then a third, tighter, just Eddie’s neck and the stranger’s hand.
Then one more, even closer, until it's nothing but pixels.
The toothbrush falls out of his hand, hitting the tile with a wet little splat.
He does not pick it up.
Instead, he opens his messages with Ravi. The last thing there is from weeks ago, Ravi asking if he wanted to join a dodgeball league Buck had ghosted on because he thought it was a joke, or maybe because he thought it was too much, or maybe because he was stupid.
He types.
buck: hey
buck: who’s the guy from your story
He stares at the screen, foam drying sticky against his chin, heart hammering a miserable rhythm that makes his ribs ache.
ravi: what guy?
Fair question.
There were a lot of guys.
buck: the one with his arm around eddie
buck: hahaha
He adds the ‘hahaha’ like it will somehow disguise the fact that he's two seconds away from flinging his phone into the sink and following it.
Then he sends the screenshots.
All of them.
Wide shot. Cropped. Zoomed in. Then zoomed in so tight it barely looks like a human neck anymore.
In a few of them, he even circled the offending hand or added sad little arrows pointing to where the real problem was, like he thought Ravi might somehow miss it.
He regrets it immediately but does not unsend them.
Just stands there like an idiot, foam drying tacky against his chin, staring down at his phone and waiting for a reply that does not come.
When Ravi finally answers, it's not even an answer.
ravi: dude
ravi: are you okay
Buck blinks at it, thumb hesitating for a second before moving again, too fast, too messy.
buck: how long was that guy’s hand there
buck: does eddie even know him
There is no reply.
The bathroom is too quiet. The fridge hums faintly in the distance, and Buck can hear his own heartbeat thudding miserable and thick behind his ribs. He flips back to Instagram without thinking, watches the story again, watches the hand that never moves, never shifts away, just stays there easy like it belongs, while Eddie smiles and laughs and leans into a life Buck cannot reach.
Still nothing from Ravi.
Buck goes back to his messages and types again, helpless.
buck: is he going home with him
buck: ravi
The cursor blinks at him, blank and useless, and he feels the stupid hope drain out of him like toothpaste sliding down the sink.
He opens his chat with Eddie, the empty text field staring back at him like a challenge he already knows he will lose.
He thinks about typing ‘when are you coming home’, but the words get stuck somewhere between his teeth and his throat, heavy and aching.
Thinks about ‘do you want a ride’, but that feels worse, like offering himself up to drive Eddie straight into someone else’s bed.
Thinks about ‘emergency at the house’, and he even types it, sees the letters line up in neat betrayal on the screen, sits there staring at it long enough for the foam to dry rough across his skin.
Deletes it.
The bathroom feels too still now, too empty around him, the mirror reflecting nothing but a guy who does not know when to quit and a toothbrush lying facedown on the tile like it gave up first.
He knows he should stop.
Knows he should wash his face, rinse out his mouth, turn off the lights, crawl back into bed and pretend he's still the kind of person Eddie might come home for.
Instead, his fingers move again, traitorous and stupid.
buck: why would you post that
It's not what he means, not even close, but it's the only thing that will fit inside the hollow space cracking wider by the second.
The screen buzzes almost immediately.
You have been removed from Ravi’s Close Friends list.
Buck stares at it, the letters blurring a little, the cold tile leeching up through the soles of his feet, the bathroom suddenly feeling too big and too small all at once, toothpaste flaking dry at the corners of his mouth.
He taps back into Ravi’s story anyway, stubborn and pathetic, heart dragging behind the movement like maybe there is still some way to undo the last twenty minutes if he just presses hard enough.
But it's gone.
The green ring is gone too.
He's just regular friend now, not a close one.
Buck stands there for a long moment, foam sticky on his chin, toothbrush abandoned on the floor, heart beating slow and awful in his chest, and thinks, yeah.
That about covers it.
It's 3:04 a.m. when Buck hears the door creak open, careful but not careful enough.
He keeps still. Not because he's asleep. Not even because he thinks it will help. Just because he does not know what else to do with himself, and lying motionless feels easier than doing anything that might make this worse.
There is a shuffle across the kitchen. A low muttered curse. The sound of a cabinet creaking open and the fridge humming louder behind it, like the house itself is holding its breath with him.
Buck stares at the dark, heart pounding so hard it makes his chest ache. Every stupid part of him hoping, even now, that if Eddie came back home, then maybe nothing happened. That maybe tonight is not already lost.
The bedroom door opens. A slow breath of cooler air slips inside.
Buck does not move.
He smells Eddie first. Alcohol, unmistakable. Sweat too, damp and clinging. And something sharper underneath, something foreign. Not the soap they keep by the sink. Not anything Buck recognizes as theirs. The edge of something that feels like it belongs to somewhere else. Someone else.
The bed dips behind him. The mattress squeaks low under the weight.
Eddie climbs in without hesitation, all sprawling limbs and messy breathing, finding Buck’s body like a ship finding the dock in the dark. His arm flops over Buck’s waist, heavy and sure. His forehead presses clumsily against the back of Buck’s neck.
He sighs against his skin. A deep, wrecked sound that seems to rattle out of him without permission.
Then Buck hears it. Soft and slurred and so unbearably fond it physically hurts.
“Best pillow. M’gonna keep you. Forever.”
Buck shuts his eyes tighter.
He can feel Eddie smiling against him, feel the lazy, boneless happiness in the way he burrows closer like Buck is the last good thing left in the world.
It would be easier if Buck could believe it meant anything.
It would be easier if he did not know exactly how easy it is to love the thing right in front of you when you're too drunk to remember who else you could have had instead.
Eddie shifts again, tugging Buck a little closer, breathing heavy against the curve of his shoulder.
“Wanna wrap you up,” Eddie mutters, voice sticking on the edges of the words, slow and thick. “Carry you around. Pocket Buck.”
The ache that floods Buck’s chest is immediate and sharp.
It sounds like something you say when you love someone.
It sounds like something you say when you're too drunk to remember not to say it out loud.
It sounds like something that could almost be real.
But Buck knows better.
Knows he's warm. Knows he's easy to hold onto. Knows he's soft enough to fit into whatever space Eddie needs filled.
Knows, deep down, that if Eddie had found someone else tonight, someone taller, someone glossier, someone who smiled a little easier under neon lights, maybe that would be the body he was curling into now.
Maybe Buck is not special.
Maybe he's just here.
Maybe he's just easy.
It's almost funny, if he thinks about it the right way. He has spent months pretending not to want more, pretending that wanting Eddie was something he could tuck down under the ribs and the jokes and the silence between them.
And maybe Eddie has spent the same months pretending Buck is just a body he trusts.
A friend with a good heart.
A best friend with a big enough dick and a soft enough mouth to make experimenting feel less terrifying.
Maybe Buck is not what Eddie really wants.
Maybe he's just the first thing Eddie thought to reach for when the world tilted sideways and he realized he could.
Buck breathes in slowly, the smell of Eddie’s skin clogging in his throat. He lets Eddie’s arm tighten around his waist. Lets Eddie’s mouth brush sloppily against his neck, a clumsy, thoughtless kiss.
He lets himself be kept.
Because tonight, being Eddie’s pocket-sized consolation prize is better than not being wanted at all.
Tomorrow, maybe he will have to be brave enough to ask what he's really worth.
Tonight, he just stays.
Buck wakes up first.
That part’s not weird. Happens plenty. Sometimes he wakes up to the smell of coffee, or Christopher thudding down the hallway, or Eddie cussing out the toaster like it personally wronged him. Sometimes he wakes up to Eddie’s arm slung across him, the faint smell of shampoo in the pillowcase, Eddie breathing slow and even against the back of Buck’s neck like some giant, affectionate barnacle.
Today’s one of those mornings.
Buck stays still for a second. Half folded into Eddie’s body, Eddie’s hand still resting low against his stomach. Their legs tangled. Breath syncing up easy, same as everything else. Skin pressed close in all the places it matters and a few that definitely shouldn’t.
It should feel good.
It should feel easy.
Instead it feels like standing at the edge of a roof with no railing and realizing you’re too dumb to do anything but lean closer to the drop.
Eddie shifts behind him, muttering something soft and incoherent into the back of Buck’s neck. His fingers twitch, brushing lazy across Buck’s ribs like Buck’s just the furniture he likes touching.
Buck shuts his eyes tighter.
Tells himself not to spiral.
Not to turn every clumsy, half-drunken touch into a promise.
Not to think about neon lights and glitter and someone else’s hand fitting too easy against Eddie’s back.
Maybe Eddie stayed out because he was having fun.
Maybe he stayed out because coming home meant facing whatever this thing is between them.
Maybe if Buck weren’t here, Eddie would have gone home with someone taller, someone shinier, someone who doesn’t get misty-eyed at Subaru commercials and doesn’t even try to lie about it.
Eddie exhales again, slow and warm against the nape of Buck’s neck, and Buck feels it like a hook dragging straight through the space between his ribs.
He breathes through it. Lies still. Tells himself he’s fine.
Eventually Eddie groans and drags himself out of bed in stages like gravity personally offended him. His footsteps shuffle uneven across the floor.
Buck stays in bed a minute longer. Staring at the ceiling. Letting his brain chew a hole through itself.
When he finally hauls himself up, he brushes his teeth with grim determination, very pointedly ignoring the fact that it’s the same toothbrush he let hit the bathroom floor yesterday.
He pulls on yesterday’s sweatshirt without thinking about it. Smells like before. Good enough.
When he steps into the kitchen, Eddie’s already there.
Mug in hand. Hoodie lopsided on one shoulder. Looking like the stupid, impossible thing Buck’s brain keeps telling him he might still get to have.
Eddie hands him a mug without looking. Their fingers brush. Buck pretends it doesn’t short out every nerve ending he has.
He says thanks. Holds the mug like it’s a bomb. Smiles like he doesn’t feel anything.
They move around each other the way they always do. Jackets. Keys. Boots half-laced. The casual choreography of people who know all the steps but none of the lyrics.
“Ready?” Eddie asks, standing by the door like none of it matters.
Buck smiles back. It hurts something vital behind his ribs.
“Yeah,” he says, and locks the door behind them.
The station is normal.
Normal the way sinkholes are normal once you live inside one long enough.
Chim’s arguing about breakfast burritos. Bobby’s already halfway through his coffee. Hen catches Buck’s eye, seems to think better of it, and says nothing.
Buck grabs cereal because cereal doesn’t ask hard questions.
He pours the milk too fast. Lets it overflow onto the counter.
Leaves it there.
He sits at the table like a guy who absolutely, definitely did not spend the night wondering if his not-boyfriend got fingered against a sticky bathroom wall while he was at home zooming in on screenshots like a lunatic.
Eddie moves around the kitchen like nothing’s wrong. Same stolen toast. Same easy grin. Same way of existing like Buck isn’t quietly coming apart at the seams across the room.
Buck stares down at his cereal.
Watches the flakes sink. Watches the milk turn weirdly watery. Watches his whole pathetic brain stage a coup against common sense.
And because he’s Buck, because self-destruction is just his natural state of being, he says it.
“You came in late.”
It’s tiny. Almost nothing. Buck barely hears it himself over the sound of his own heart trying to die quietly in his chest.
Eddie glances over, eyebrows pulling together slightly. “You told me to have fun. You said you weren’t gonna wait up.”
“I know,” Buck says. His voice comes out thin, like maybe it has to squeeze through something stuck in his throat. “I just didn’t know the jazz bar stayed open until three in the morning.”
Eddie’s mouth twitches, not a smile exactly, but close. “It doesn’t. We finished up at the bar with Dispatch. Then we ran into Ravi and some of his friends, Figured I'd tagged along.”
Buck nods. Too fast. His neck actually hurts from how much nodding he’s done today.
“Right,” he says. “I saw. Ravi posted a story.”
There’s a silence big enough to build a condo in.
“You looked like you were having fun,” Buck says, casual the way a car crash is casual.
Eddie watches him now, steady and too careful, like he’s trying to figure out whether Buck’s about to spontaneously combust.
“Is this one of those times where I have to guess what you’re mad about?” Eddie asks.
“I’m not mad,” Buck says, and it’s mostly true.
Mad would be cleaner. Angrier. Less sad and stupid and full of hope.
Eddie waits.
Buck stabs his cereal once with his spoon, like it personally offended him.
“I just didn’t know where you were,” he says. “And you didn’t text. You didn’t say you were changing plans. And then I’m just lying there thinking… what if something happened? What if you didn’t come home, and I had to explain to someone that I didn’t even know where you went?”
The words stumble out faster now, tripping over themselves before Buck can stop them.
He doesn’t mean for it to sound like that. Doesn’t mean to sound like he’s asking for more than he’s allowed to ask.
But it’s already out.
Eddie’s face softens immediately.
“I’ll text next time,” he says, quiet but firm.
Buck nods. A tiny, desperate thing.
He doesn’t ask about the guy.
Doesn’t ask about the hand.
Doesn’t ask if he’s just the best-friend-with-benefits consolation prize until someone better comes along.
He just sits there.
Spooning limp cereal into his mouth.
Tasting none of it.
And he knows.
Knows he can’t survive much more of this.
Knows he’s going to have to ask, really ask, before he breaks open and there’s nothing left.
Soon.
Because if he doesn’t find out what this is, he’s going to drown in what it’s not.
It should not matter this much. That is what Buck tells himself for the sixth, maybe sixteenth time as he makes another slow, humiliating lap outside the locker room.
He's not pacing. Pacing would imply he has a destination. He's just moving wrong. Hovering with terrible ideas. Standing still badly.
Totally normal behavior.
The kind of thing people definitely do when they are about to ask the guy they have been accidentally, pathetically in love with if maybe he wants to stop pretending they are just friends who occasionally wake up wrapped around each other like sea otters.
Because that is the plan.
Ask Eddie out.
Make it real.
Take whatever soft, aching thing they have built between them —the way Buck wakes up warm and wanted, the way Eddie always reaches for him without thinking — and drag it into the light.
Just a date.
A real one.
A line between maybe and yes.
They have done dinner.
They have done each other. Loudly. Enthusiastically.
At least once half-naked on the couch during a Marvel movie neither of them finished.
It should not be this hard.
Buck’s heart feels like its trying to hammer straight through the back of his throat.
He catches sight of Eddie through the locker room's windows, still towel-damp from the shower, hair curling a little at the ends. His bag is half-packed. He's humming under his breath, smiling a little like whatever he's thinking about is better than anything the rest of the world could offer.
Buck moves toward him before he can think better of it, trying to walk like someone who has not been emotionally bleeding out for the past twenty-four hours.
“Hey,” Buck says, and it comes out almost normal if you squint.
Eddie glances up and smiles, and Buck feels it land somewhere dangerous between his ribs.
“Hey,” Eddie says back.
“So—” Buck starts.
Immediately panics.
“Actually, never mind.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow, towel slung lazy around his shoulders. Amusement pulls at the corner of his mouth like he already knows Buck is two seconds from throwing himself in a locker and pulling the door shut.
Buck lets out a laugh that sounds more like a small animal dying in a paper bag.
“Forget it. Dumb.”
Eddie does not push. Just keeps packing like Buck has not just self-immolated six feet to his left.
Which is fine.
Except Buck can feel the moment slipping out of his hands, slick and impossible, and it's either say something now or regret it forever.
He tries again.
“Tonight. We’re off.”
Eddie straightens a little, interest sparking. “Yeah?”
Buck nods. Too fast. Neck probably going to sue for damages later.
“Thought maybe we could do something. Just us. Dinner, maybe. Or that bonfire spot you liked.”
For a second, Buck thinks maybe he actually did it.
Then Eddie hesitates.
Shifts his weight.
“I can’t tonight,” Eddie says finally, voice light but too light. “Adrian —he’s on B shift— we ran into each other last night. He had extra Lakers tickets. I said I would go.”
Buck nods.
And nods again.
And does a third nod just to round out the existential devastation.
Adrian.
The name drops like a rock into his stomach.
He thinks about the Instagram story. The neon. The way Eddie smiled loose and easy in a booth Buck was not sitting in. The hand that rested too casually against Eddie’s back, like it had the right to be there.
It's just a game, Buck tells himself.
Just making plans with a coworker.
Nothing overly personal.
Except Eddie smiles again, and says, almost laughing,
“I mean, he asked if I wanted to grab drinks first too, so it sort of turned into a whole thing.”
Buck freezes so hard he almost drops his bag.
Drinks first.
A Lakers game.
Maybe dessert after.
Maybe a late-night text about how much fun they had.
Maybe an invitation back to Adrian’s place.
A whole night.
A whole thing.
That is a date. That is the textbook definition of a date. If you googled “what is a date,” it would just be a photo of Eddie getting picked up by Adrian in a car with better gas mileage than Buck’s truck.
Buck’s brain short-circuits trying to do the math.
Maybe Adrian volunteers at a soup kitchen on weekends.
Maybe Adrian knows how to fold a fitted sheet.
Maybe Adrian gets to fall in love with Eddie and actually have Eddie fall in love with him back.
“Cool,” Buck says, smiling so wide his jaw aches with it.
“Cool, cool, cool. Have fun.”
He drops onto the bench. Yanks at his sneakers, pretending to fix laces that are already tied so tight they might cut off circulation if he tugs any harder. Part of him almost hopes they do. It would be something to focus on. Something other than the way his heart is busy trying to chew its way out of his chest.
Eddie slings his duffel over his shoulder, casual and loose like none of this is new to him. Grins like Buck is just one more thing in the room, a chair, a locker, a fixture he has no reason to look twice at.
“I'll meet you at the truck,” Eddie says, already halfway through the door.
Buck nods without lifting his head.
Keeps nodding even after the door swings shut, like momentum is the only thing he has left to work with.
The room goes quiet around him.
He stays seated.
Staring down at the floor like maybe, if he focuses hard enough, the tiles will shift and spell out whatever version of goodbye he was too stupid to see coming.
He breathes out slow through his nose, the only sound in the too-big room, and lets his brain fill the silence with the inevitable.
It's a date.
Of course it's a date.
It was always a date.
The drinks. The game. The easy way Eddie smiled when he talked about it, like maybe there was a version of him that got to want things without apologizing for it.
And Buck?
Buck was never even an option.
He was just the warm-up act.
The conveniently-shaped best friend.
The placeholder.
By the time Buck gets out of the locker room, he already knows exactly how he's going to spend the rest of the night.
Googling ‘how to tell if your best friend broke your heart without even noticing’.
Eddie is in the bedroom getting ready, and Buck is doing his best not to have a full-scale psychological meltdown on the couch.
It's not going well.
Eddie is picking a shirt like it matters. Standing in front of the mirror, smoothing the sleeves, adjusting the hem, fussing with the collar, focused in a way that makes Buck want to sink his teeth into something. Maybe the couch. Maybe the drywall. Maybe his own knuckles, just to stay tethered to the earth while his brain melts out of his ears.
It's just a Lakers game.
Just a hangout.
Nothing important.
Except Buck knows that shirt.
He knows it like he knows the weight of Eddie collapsing against him after a long shift, the way Eddie’s skin feels underneath his palms, warm and solid and real. He knows the way that fabric bunches up when Buck pulls Eddie closer, the way it smells like soap and skin and sleep when Buck buries his face against it. He knows how it tastes, even, clinging to the edge of his teeth as he mouths at Eddie’s ribs, desperate and grateful and already half-gone.
He has taken that shirt off with his teeth.
Has kissed his way down Eddie’s body, slow and messy, until Eddie gasped for him like he was something vital.
And now Adrian is going to see it.
Buck tips his head back against the cushions like he's just stretching, but his whole body feels like a live wire.
His heart is tripping unevenly against his ribs, his brain flickering through the worst-case scenarios too fast to catch all at once.
Eddie in that shirt.
Eddie out of it.
Eddie laughing into someone else’s mouth, leaning into someone else’s hands, getting touched like Buck never even existed.
Behind him, Eddie says it easy, like it's nothing. Like he's not lighting a slow fuse right under Buck’s ribs.
“Adrian said he hasn’t been out much since the twins were born. Got married young. You know how that goes.”
Buck blinks at the celling
“Wait,” Buck manages, voice scraping dry and thin, “he’s married?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, reaching for cologne, casual and unbothered, like he's not actively rearranging the scaffolding of Buck’s whole fucking life. “Wife teaches CPR. That’s how they met.”
Married. Twins. CPR classes.
And Eddie still said yes.
Something cold curls inside his stomach.
Is Adrian cheating?
Is Eddie — oh God — is Eddie okay being the other guy?
Buck can see it too clearly.
Eddie laughing into someone’s mouth behind a bar. Eddie tangled up in bedsheets that smell like someone else’s marriage.
He swallows hard.
“Is she… cool with this?” Buck asks.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, distracted, digging through the dresser. “She’s the one who told him to go out more. Try new things. Meet new people.”
Buck shuts his eyes and breathes shallow against the pressure building under his ribs.
Not cheating.
Permission.
A carefully managed disaster.
The kind of marriage where you pour two glasses of wine at the end of the night, laugh over dinner about who fucked you best, toast each other for surviving the week.
He can see it too clearly: Adrian coming home, still flushed and smiling, sitting across the table while his wife leans in and asks for details.
Buck thunks his forehead against the fridge. Once. Twice. A third time for good measure.
Because somehow that is worse.
Not that Eddie might be a secret.
But that Eddie might just be a story.
Another adventure to toast over risotto. Another night to log between soccer games and mortgage payments.
And it burns, low and awful, because Buck remembers too well how it felt—
Eddie’s mouth hot against his neck, breath hitching, whispering wrecked and hopeful if we can try something else.
The way Buck had slid a finger in alongside his cock, feeling Eddie seize and sob around him, shaking apart like Buck had reached straight into his chest and pulled something sacred loose.
The way Eddie had gasped out Buck’s name, like it was the only thing he knew.
And now someone else might get that.
Someone else might press Eddie down into the mattress, fuck him open slow and careful, watch him fall apart.
Someone else might make him sob, soft and broken, against their mouth.
Someone who would never even know how precious it was.
Buck shoves off the couch like he can outrun it.
Yanks open the fridge like maybe salvation is hiding behind the mustard and three different containers of forgotten leftovers.
It isn’t.
Behind him, Eddie’s voice floats out, stupidly casual.
“We should all hang out sometime. You, me, Adrian.”
Buck slams the fridge shut, harder than he means to, loud enough to make the magnets jump.
“You and me and Adrian?” he croaks, voice cracking sideways.
You.
Me.
Adrian.
Together.
It lands hard, splintering apart inside him, and Buck grips the counter just to stay upright.
Because that is what Eddie is saying, right?
That is what he's asking for?
A threesome.
A polite, casual, totally normal best friend threesome.
Friends who trust each other. No weirdness. No jealousy. No crying during cleanup.
Would Buck be expected to—?
Would he have to watch?
Would he have to kneel there and let someone else put their hands all over Eddie, listen to Eddie make those broken, gasping sounds for someone who was not him?
Buck swallows hard.
He has always said yes to Eddie.
Every wrecked whisper. Every reckless ask. Every tiny piece of himself Eddie was willing to hand over.
But this.
This would break him.
He couldn’t do it.
He couldn’t touch Eddie with one hand and feel someone else’s hands on him at the same time.
He couldn’t kiss Eddie while someone else fucked into him from behind.
He could not share him.
Not Eddie.
Not ever.
His chest is aching, his lungs pulling tight, when Eddie keeps talking, like he cannot hear Buck shattering apart right there in the kitchen.
“Actually, you’d probably get along better with his wife,” Eddie says, light and thoughtless. “They’re good people, you’d like them.”
Them.
Plural.
A complete set.
Buck nods too fast, forehead still pressed against the fridge, trying to stop the free-fall inside his own head, but it hits him all at once, sharp and obvious and cruel.
Eddie is not asking for a threesome.
It's a foursome.
Or not even that—not really.
Not for Eddie.
Eddie is gay. Painfully, profoundly gay. Gay enough that he once told Buck, dead serious over beers in the kitchen, that he would throw himself into oncoming traffic before voluntarily touching a woman ever again.
Which means Buck would not even get to touch him. Would not even get close.
No, Buck would be across the room fucking Adrian’s wife while someone else wrecked Eddie into the mattress like Buck was never even there.
She would probably be really nice about it, would probably smile at him in that soft, forgiving way people smile at rescued dogs who don’t understand the rules yet.
Maybe she would pet his hair. Maybe she would tilt his chin up, whisper something sweet and unbearable about how good they look together, how pretty Eddie is when he falls apart like that.
Maybe she would tell Buck to look, and Buck, stupid and obedient and hopeless, would do it—would look and see the only thing he ever wanted being loved better by someone else.
And Buck—
Buck would die.
Or cry.
Definitely cry. The kind of ugly, body-shaking crying you do when your heart breaks loud enough for other people to hear it, naked and humiliated and trying to smile through it like it doesn’t matter. Like it hasn’t already ruined you.
And Adrian’s wife would just keep stroking Buck’s hair, all patient and understanding, and tell him it's okay, that polycules are not for everyone, that sometimes it takes time to learn how to share. And Buck, stupid and cracked apart, would probably try to nod and pretend that this is not killing him inside.
Buck swallows hard, around the wreckage of whatever pride he has left.
Feels his mouth move on autopilot.
“Actually,” he says, voice splintering sideways, “I don’t really… do that anymore.”
“Do what?” Eddie asks, distracted, still hunting for his wallet.
“You know. Group stuff. New people. Expanding horizons.” Buck waves a helpless hand through the air, a useless gesture toward the smoldering ruins of his dignity. “I’m more of a one-on-one kind of guy these days.”
Eddie hums, easy and unbothered, like Buck didn’t just bleed out in the middle of the kitchen.
“Fair enough.”
His keys jingle. Jacket tossed casually over his shoulder. He flashes Buck one last smile, careless and devastating.
“I won’t be too late.”
The door swings shut behind him with a soft, final click.
Buck slides down the cabinets, slumping boneless onto the floor like the world’s saddest Roomba.
He stays there for a second, dazed, like maybe if he doesn’t move, none of this will be real.
Then he lets his forehead thunk against the fridge. Once. Twice. Three times, slow and hollow.
Because he can see it now, too clear to fight.
Sharp as broken glass.
Eddie, loose and flushed and gasping, falling apart for someone else.
Buck, stranded across the room, naked and miserable, smiling politely while the only thing he ever wanted slipped right out of his hands.
If anyone other than him ever gets to touch Eddie like that, Buck is going to end up dead.
Or in prison.
Or both.
And if he does not figure out how to survive it soon, he's going to lose Eddie for real.
Buck hears the key scrape in the lock sometime after midnight, loud and sharp in the dead weight of the apartment.
He tells himself he's fine. That it's fine. That adults come home late all the time without it meaning they have been stolen out from under you by someone taller, shinier, and better at everything. He even tries believing it for a second, until the door clicks shut and his heart starts hammering so hard he can feel it vibrating in his teeth.
Footsteps cross the floor, steady and unhurried. The tap runs. A glass clinks faintly against the counter. All of it normal. All of it somehow catastrophic. Buck lies there, dead still, every sound a new piece of evidence he cannot use, a fresh reminder that he has no proof of anything except the unbearable feeling that he has already lost.
The bedroom door creaks open. Buck shuts his eyes tighter, willing his body into the shape of sleep, like if he fakes it hard enough he might actually disappear.
The mattress dips a moment later, Eddie’s weight dragging the bed down just like it always does. No hesitation. No guilt. No seismic shift to mark the end of whatever fragile thing Buck thought they were building.
Eddie slides in close, warm and familiar, fitting against Buck’s back like a puzzle piece. His arm wraps around Buck’s waist, his breath drifts against the back of Buck’s neck, soft and steady like nothing at all has changed.
And maybe it hasn’t.
Or maybe it has, and Buck is just too stupid to feel the crack splitting under him.
Because Eddie smells the same. Moves the same. Holds him like he always does.
Which is objectively, cosmically, unfair, because if Eddie had come home smelling like someone else’s soap or hesitated before climbing into bed, Buck could have worked with that. He could have started mourning properly, made a list, built a shrine, stared tragically out a window for a while. Instead he's stuck here, trapped under the same easy weight of Eddie’s body, wondering if somewhere between last night and tonight he stopped being the thing Eddie reached for first.
It's almost impressive, how fast his brain offers up the images.
Eddie stretched out on expensive sheets, laughing into someone else’s mouth. Eddie’s thighs shaking around someone else’s hips. Eddie saying yes to someone who does not even know to kiss the mole beneath his eye, who has never seen the way Eddie’s hands curl tight in the sheets when he comes.
Buck breathes through his nose and focuses very, very hard on not combusting where he lies.
Maybe Adrian’s bed is bigger. Maybe the pillows are softer. Maybe Eddie did not even think about Buck at all when he said yes, when he tipped his head back and let someone else touch him like it was easy.
Maybe Buck was just a layover. A safe harbor. A conveniently shaped landing pad until the real thing came along.
Eddie sighs against the back of Buck’s neck, burrowing a little closer.
Buck almost opens his mouth.
Almost says it, reckless and stupid.
Tell me you didn’t.
Tell me you didn’t let him have you.
Tell me I’m still enough.
But he doesn’t. Because if he asks and Eddie hesitates even a little, Buck knows he will shatter apart so hard the neighbors will feel it.
So he stays silent.
Staring at the wall like maybe if he concentrates hard enough, it will offer him answers. Or maybe just knock him unconscious and put him out of his misery.
Time passes, slow and stupid, and Buck lies there trapped inside his own skin, counting Eddie’s breaths like they might anchor him to the version of his life where he still matters.
Maybe he will fall asleep eventually.
Maybe he will just dissolve quietly into the mattress and save everybody the trouble.
Honestly, at this point, either option feels like a win.
The morning sun spills through the curtains, warm and slow and too soft for the wreckage Buck has made of himself.
It brushes over his bare shoulders, catching on the rumpled sheets and the sweat cooling on his skin, painting everything in a haze that feels almost kind if he didn’t already know how stupid that was.
There’s weight at his back. Heat.
An arm draped heavy over his waist, the familiar, steady push of breath at the nape of his neck.
Eddie.
Buck knows it without opening his eyes. Knows it like gravity. Knows it the way his heart knows how to stutter wrong around the places Eddie left hollow.
It should feel good. Should feel simple. Should feel like what it’s always been, but his body is smarter than his brain sometimes. His body knows the difference between being kept and being left with no one else to keep you.
He lies there, blinking up at the slow-moving ceiling fan, feeling Eddie’s body mold against his, every easy touch carving him open wider, until he isn’t sure what’s going to pour out first, the love or the grief.
Eddie shifts behind him, mouth brushing the curve of Buck’s shoulder, a breath first, then a kiss.
It shouldn’t mean anything.
It means everything.
“Morning,” Eddie mumbles, voice wrecked with sleep and full of the kind of careless fondness Buck would throw himself off a building to protect.
Buck swallows against the knot in his throat. “Hi.”
Eddie’s hand slides lower without hesitation, warm and certain and already on a mission, and Buck lets himself press back into it before his brain can catch up. His hips tilt instinctively, chasing the contact, chasing anything that will make him feel like Eddie is still his to have.
Eddie hums against his skin, lazy and content, and Buck feels his mouth ghost across the back of his neck.
“Too much?” Eddie mutters.
Buck shakes his head, a tiny desperate movement. “No.”
And then, before he can stop himself, quieter, rawer: “It’s not too much. I just— Is this enough?.”
The world tilts sideways.
Eddie’s hand stills over his stomach. His breathing slows.
“Enough?” Eddie asks, and his voice is so close it feels like a secret being whispered into the hollow of Buck’s bones.
Buck squeezes his eyes shut. “When it’s me.” The words stick, splintering apart in his throat. “When it’s my hands on you. Does it feel good?”
There’s a pause that stretches too long.
Then Eddie leans in, mouth hot and sure against the back of Buck’s neck, and says it like it’s the only thing he has ever been certain of.
“You always make me feel good.”
Buck makes a broken, wrecked sound, barely human, pressing his forehead into the mattress because otherwise he's going to come apart before they even get started.
Eddie kisses a slow line down his spine, hand sliding lower, patient and greedy all at once, and Buck gasps when he feels the slick slide of fingers teasing at him again, careful and sure.
“You got any more questions,” Eddie says, voice rough with it, “or can I finger you now?”
Buck lets out something halfway between a sob and a laugh.
He nods so hard he nearly headbutts the bed.
“Yeah. Go ahead.”
And Eddie does.
He works Buck open with slow, reverent care, every stretch and slide of his fingers pushing Buck closer to the edge of something Buck has no name for.
Buck arches into it helplessly, body shaking, mouth open against the sheets, feeling every greedy drag of Eddie’s hand like it’s carving a home into him, like it’s writing something permanent into the softest, most breakable parts of him.
By the time Eddie finally pulls his fingers free, Buck is wrecked. His thighs are trembling, his mind blank with need.
Eddie shifts behind him, presses him gently down onto his stomach, and Buck goes easily, pliant and desperate, clutching the sheets like they’re the only thing holding him together.
The mattress dips under Eddie’s weight. The wet sound of slicked fingers. The slow, terrible patience of it as Eddie lines up against him, steady and sure.
Then the press, the stretch, the slow, endless slide inside. Buck almost sobs with how good it feels, how right, how ruinous.
Eddie fucks into him slowly, so careful it feels like worship, like Buck is something that could break if he isn’t held the right way.
Buck fists the sheets, gasping every time Eddie rocks into him deep, every slow drag that presses all the way through him like Eddie is trying to leave fingerprints where no one else will ever reach.
When Eddie’s hand finds him, wraps around him and strokes him in time, Buck chokes out a wrecked, high noise against the mattress and comes so hard he sees stars. His whole body convulses under Eddie’s weight, legs shaking uncontrollably, every nerve ending blown wide open.
But Eddie does not stop.
Keeps moving, keeps pushing into him with slow, greedy thrusts, chasing his own release.
Buck whimpers, shaking, still gasping for air, completely lost under the weight of it, the heat of it, the way Eddie is everywhere.
“Fuck,” Buck gasps. “Eddie—”
Eddie groans against his back, thrusts faltering.
“You’re so fucking good,” Eddie mutters. “Always so good for me.”
Buck turns his face against the sheets, desperate, aching, brainless with it.
And because he's Buck, because he has no filter left, because he has nothing left to lose, he blurts it out, voice shaking:
“Am I the best you’ve ever had?”
Eddie shudders above him like the question tears something out of him.
“Yes,” he gasps, rough and fierce. “Christ, Buck. No one could ever come close.”
And just like that — just with that — Buck breaks again.
Another orgasm punches out of him, shocking and brutal, whole body jerking, gasping so hard it feels like drowning.
Eddie moans brokenly into his skin and comes inside him, clutching Buck so tight it feels like a promise.
They stay like that afterward, tangled up and wrecked, sweaty and trembling and too close to separate if they tried.
Eddie stays inside him, heavy and real, breathing hard against the back of Buck’s neck.
Buck blinks dazedly at the mattress, brain static, body humming like he’s been wired straight into the earth.
The words crawl out of him, hoarse and stupid.
“Were you telling the truth?”
Eddie stirs, sluggish against his skin. “What?”
Buck turns his head a little. “That I’m better than him.”
Eddie pulls out carefully. Buck flinches. At the loss. At the sudden emptiness. At the fear that he already knows the answer.
He lets Eddie guide him onto his back. Lets him touch. Lets him see everything he's about to lose.
They stare at each other, breathing hard.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Eddie asks, voice hoarse.
Buck swallows, opens his mouth, and it all spills out.
“I don’t want you to date anyone else.”
Eddie just blinks at him, wide-eyed.
“What,” he says, stunned.
“I don’t want to be in a polycule,” Buck mutters, miserable. “I don’t want to have to fuck Adrian's wife while he gets to fuck you.”
Eddie stares at him like he has lost his mind. “When did this turn into you fucking his wife?”
“Don’t make me do that, please. If—If you wanna experiment with other guys. Or couples. Or whatever. That’s fine. You should, if you want to. I just— I can’t stay.”
Eddie stares at him like he grew a second head.
“I can’t keep living here, sleeping beside you, with you, and pretend I’m okay with someone else getting to touch you. I would lose my mind.”
The silence that follows is too sharp. Too loud. It feels like waiting for something to shatter.
Buck almost jerks when Eddie finally speaks, quiet and steady and right against his skin.
“Buck.”
He stays still, locked in place.
“There is no one else,” Eddie says, low and rough. “There has never been anyone else. There won’t be.”
Buck makes a small, broken noise and curls tighter into himself, fists pressed to his face. He feels Eddie’s hand slide up his sides, warm and steady, like he's trying to hold him together from the outside in.
“You don’t have to worry,” Eddie murmurs, forehead pressing gently against Buck’s temple. “I only want you.”
Buck lets out a long, shaking breath. His chest feels too tight to hold it.
He stays like that for a second, fists covering his face, before he mutters, muffled and miserable, “In that case, the texts I sent Ravi are— really bad.”
He feels Eddie’s body jerk like he's trying not to laugh, like he does not want to interrupt, but he cannot quite help it.
Buck drags his hands down his face and groans. “I texted him so much I think he blocked my number.”
Eddie’s breath hitches against his skin. Buck feels it, the way Eddie is trying to hold it together and failing.
“I sent him screenshots,” Buck says, wrecked. “Zoom-ins. Like… circles and arrows. I made a whole case file.”
Eddie is laughing now, full and bright and wrecked, his chest shaking against Buck. His hand spreads over Buck’s stomach like he's afraid he will fly apart if he lets go.
Buck groans louder. “I deserve it. If I was him, I would have blocked me too.”
Eddie leans in further, close enough that Buck can feel his breath against his skin. He presses a kiss to Buck’s birthmark, soft and certain, like he's claiming it.
“You are fucking insane,” Eddie says, voice hoarse with laughter, wrecked with love. He stays there a second longer, like he can’t quite pull away, like Buck’s skin is gravity.
Buck tips his head back a little, desperate without meaning to, and Eddie catches him like Buck is magnetic, kisses the curve of his neck, open-mouthed and greedy.
“You lost your mind over me,” Eddie breathes, and it sounds like awe, like something too big to be just a joke.
Buck lets out a wrecked, helpless sound, clutching at Eddie’s forearm where it wraps tight across his stomach.
“You thought you had to fuck someone’s wife just to stay close to me,” Eddie says, half laughing, half wrecked.
“I was trying to be supportive,” Buck mutters miserably, voice breaking on it.
Eddie exhales against him, all warm and shaky, and Buck feels the shift, the air between them tipping over into something heavier.
Eddie braces a hand beside Buck’s head, crowding into him like he cannot get close enough. His voice roughens at the edges.
“You’re mine,” Eddie says fiercely, like it’s the easiest, most certain thing he has ever said. “No polycule. No wife. Just you.”
“Yours,” Buck says, wrecked, like the word alone could undo him.
Eddie noses at his jaw, kisses his cheek, the corner of his mouth, his throat — anywhere he can reach without pulling away, like Buck might disappear if he stops touching him even for a second.
“You make me lose my goddamn mind,” Eddie mutters, voice scraping raw. “You live in my house. You sleep in my bed. You let me fuck myself on your cock until I’m crying. You let me fall apart in your mouth. You think that’s casual?”
Buck huffs out a wrecked sound, clutching tighter at Eddie’s sides like he could hold on that way. “I thought I was just… helping you explore.”
“You're such a dumbass,” Eddie says, voice rough and aching with it, “and you're mine.”
He kisses Buck hard, open-mouthed and messy, all teeth and tongue and breath, grinding them together until Buck forgets how to think at all.
When they come again, it's not like falling. It's like landing, hard and sure, like hitting solid ground and realizing it's not going to give out under them.
Afterward, still tangled up in each other, sweaty and shaking and barely breathing, Eddie pulls Buck tighter in against his chest, like he could fold him up and keep him there forever.
He kisses him slow, mouths the words against his temple like a secret he wants written into Buck’s bones.
“I love you.”
Buck smiles into his shoulder, stupid and wrecked and more whole than he has ever been. “I love you too.”
They stay like that for a long time, hearts beating against each other, breath syncing up without meaning to.
Eventually Buck mumbles, voice small and almost slurred, “Just promise me you won’t see him again.”
Eddie snorts into his hair, amused and fond and already half asleep. “And you're never meeting his wife.”
“Good,” Buck whispers, and then he laughs, helpless and breathless and so filled with love he doesn’t know what to do with it.