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Eddie’s not too sure what to make of themed parties.
“You know, before, all I had to do was put on a nice shirt and call it a day,” he grumbles to Buck as they move around the kitchen.
Buck and Christopher laugh at him, but Eddie’s adamant about this. He has five shirts that he saves for special occasions, less worn and pockmarked than the rest, and maybe three pairs of pants — jeans, slacks and formal pants. He’s never felt the need to buy new outfits for every party the way Sophia does.
With just the parties thrown by the 118, he’d be buying a new outfit every three days.
“Karen wanted to make Halloween interesting this year,” Buck shrugs, sliding a plateful of chopped vegetables his way. “I think it could be fun. It’ll force you to wear something new, for once.”
“Yeah, Dad,” Chris chimes in, all too gleeful over Eddie’s dismay. “We’ll have to go shopping. ”
There’s literally no word Eddie hates more than that one.
Hen and Karen are hosting the whole station over for a Halloween party this year, one for just the adults with endless booze and songs that weren’t clean versions, with an offer for Toni and Clyde to babysit any kids if needed.
The catch? All their costumes had to be according to a theme — one that Karen had chosen out of a hat.
Dress like what you wanted to be when you were five.
Eddie doesn’t know if he remembers what he wanted to be when he was five, but he does remember what Chris wanted to be. He remembers his kid wanting to be a unicorn, an astronaut, a minion and one of the Teletubbies.
He’d obviously grown out of some of them (he still wants to work for NASA, though), but Eddie suspects that’s why Hen and Karen chose the age that they did — there would still be a fun mix of costumes even if they were all based around a central theme.
Buck’s been tight-lipped about his own costume, but Eddie genuinely has no clue what he’s going to wear.
“Come on, I wanted to be like ten things when I was five, and Maddie tells me that I actually wanted to be twenty. You just have to pick one,” Buck says. “It’s not like anyone’s going to call up your parents to make sure you’re not lying.”
“What if I just put on a cowboy hat and wear my regular jeans?” Eddie asks, only half-joking.
He knows next to nothing about when he was five years old, but he knows that he’s never actively wanted to be a cowboy in his entire life.
Buck sees through him immediately, snorting as he steals a carrot out of Eddie’s pan, darting out of the way before Eddie can smack his hand with a spatula. “Okay, let's not go that far. You were born and brought up in Texas but I’ll bet my entire life savings that you never wanted to be a cowboy.”
“Ask Abuela,” Chris suggests, the scritch-scratch of his pencil joining the sizzle of the vegetables. “She said you wanted to be a dancer once.”
Eddie curses himself under his breath as Buck’s head whips towards him.
Glee drips from his voice as he eagerly probes for more information. “A dancer?”
Eddie refuses to divulge any details, and the glare he shoots his best friend cements that in stone. “I did not want to be a dancer; I was just good at it. I wanted to be a baseball player. And that was high school, not when I was five.”
“High school?!” Buck gasps out before Chris giggles and shushes him, clearly sensing Eddie’s mock-indignation over being exposed.
“Let me keep a few secrets, Buck,” Eddie murmurs, his voice coming out rougher and breathier than he’d originally intended.
Buck’s gaze flares with something hot before he clears his throat and looks away. Eddie bites back a smile as he turns back to stirring the vegetables, dropping a bunch of garlic cloves into the pot. The back of his neck feels warm all over in a way that has nothing to do with the stove in front of him.
“I thought you said you were born with a bat in hand,” Christopher continues, humming to himself as he drags all of Eddie’s secrets into the open.
Eddie turns a playful glare on his son. “That’s just a saying, and where are you getting all this information anyway?”
“Tia Pepa,” Chris says cheekily. “Ooh, maybe she knows what you wanted to be. Buck, what are you going to be?”
Eddie perks up at that, turning his gaze onto his best friend. Hopefully, now that Chris is asking, Buck will drop a hint.
Or not.
Buck mimes zipping his lips, shooting Christopher a wink as he side-eyes Eddie. “I’ll tell you later, buddy. You can help me with my costume.”
Eddie makes a face but exhales with relief when Chris beckons Buck over to help with his homework, the conversation dropping.
He thinks about it as he makes their spaghetti sauce, boils the noodles, mixes it all together with enough cheese to clog their arteries, but comes up blank every time.
Chris is right about one thing — Eddie could ask his parents if they remember, but digging up old stories always leads to this awkward impasse made up of more regret than nostalgia. Most of his childhood stories are tainted with the realization that he never really was a child — not in the way he wants Christopher to be.
There was always something bigger to look after, and even after months of therapy and talking to his parents about it, Eddie can’t help but look at the memories that way.
Maybe one day, he’ll look back on them fondly, but for now, maybe he could poke around a few other places.
He’ll try the albums first.
The albums have nothing that would tell him what he wanted to be at five years old.
Eddie flips through multiple pages of him getting his hands dirty in the backyard, some of him standing at the school playground with a few of his friends from back then, some of him with Adriana and Sophia.
He finds an old one of him with his parents before he shipped out for basic training, and he zones out long enough that he’s still holding the picture when Buck comes back home with Christopher.
The guy staring up at him from the little 4x6 picture looks sullen, defiant, next to his parents who are grinning proudly. His father’s smiling widest of all, his mother’s smile a little more tentative.
But it’s the expression on 20-year-old Eddie’s face that catches his gaze. This Eddie looks nothing like the man he sees every day in the mirror. His too-bony jaw is set with a face that couldn’t grow a full line of facial hair yet, the uniform heavy on too-thin shoulders that would fill out massively in the coming months.
Eddie would come home for the first time not even recognizing his new skin outside of the uniform.
The defiance to take his life in his own hands doesn’t erase the fear in his eyes. There’s no trace of someone who’s about to become a father, no trace of the man who just walked down the aisle with the girlfriend he thinks he probably would’ve proposed to in a few years anyway.
They never had those next few years to get to know each other, because in barely six months, Eddie’s life changed in that way everyone used to tell him — you won’t know until you become a father, Edmundo .
Eddie really, really didn’t know, until he held a screaming Christopher in his arms and the kid — his son — quieted like he knew Eddie would do anything for him.
Like Eddie hasn’t failed him a million times.
“What’s that?” Christopher’s voice pipes up from behind him. Eddie startles violently, loose photos flying everywhere as he jumps.
“Hey, it’s just us.” Buck’s hand lands on his shoulder, firm and grounding. He squats down next to where Eddie’s sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, boxes of albums strewn around him.
“Jesus Christ,” Eddie hisses under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose before relaxing his expression as he answers Christopher’s question, turning a wan smile in his direction. “Nothing, bud. Just a few old photos. Trying to find something for Halloween.”
Even without looking at him, Eddie can feel Buck’s concern like a weight across his shoulder blades.
“Is that you?” Chris asks, pointing towards the photo still pressed tight between his fingers — tight enough for the beds of his nails to go white.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, relinquishing his hold on the photo to pass it to his son. He watches him carefully as he takes in what Eddie used to look like.
“You’re so skinny,” is all Christopher says, giggling as he takes a seat next to Eddie, peering over the mess of strewn photos.
He hates showing Chris any picture of him from the Army, hates when his son goes anywhere near the horror-filled landscape that was the military. Christopher is pure, doesn’t belong anywhere near a time where Eddie was carrying guns and fielding off grenades despite wanting nothing more than to just put people together, not tear them apart.
But it’s the truth of both their lives, and Eddie doesn’t want to make a habit of lying to him about it — especially as he grows older and the meaning of Eddie’s enlistment changes to him.
He remembers another photo that he knows Christopher will love, and digs through the rest of the album to find it.
It’s a little older, more worn at the edges from the number of times Eddie’s pulled it out to look over the familiar features, wanting to remember Shannon in, despite themselves, one of the best times of their lives.
“Here,” he says quietly, leaning back into Buck’s grip when his hand tightens on his shoulder as he realizes what photo Eddie’s just pulled out.
To his credit, he doesn’t even ask to look at them. When Eddie turns to look at him, his eyes are softly concerned, brow furrowed lightly, but fixed on Eddie.
Eddie manages a small smile back as he smooths the crease away with his thumb. Buck laughs quietly, squeezing his shoulder once. Eddie nudges him forward with a tilt of his head and an encouraging smile. With that hint of permission, Buck picks up one of the discarded photos.
His face does something weird, something Eddie’s never seen before, but before he can parse it—
“That’s Mom?” Christopher says, cradling the picture with two small hands.
Eddie’s attention turns back to him in an instant.
He doesn’t need to look at the picture to know what he sees.
A young Eddie with his arms around his pregnant wife, the soft swell of her belly with Christopher, just barely out of the first trimester.
To anyone else, maybe it looks like a sweet photo of a soldier and his wife. But he sees the white-knuckled grip Shannon has on his uniform, can feel the phantom tightness of the stiff cotton stretching across his skin. He sees the way his hand splays protectively over her belly, right over where Christopher was hardly the size of a lemon, his new wedding ring all too shiny for the way his bones had felt — dusty, crackling, crumbling to ash where they were wrapped in the Army’s uniform.
Despite the fear looming over them, they’re smiling, faces pressed together.
“Yeah. Six months before you were born.”
“She looks pretty.”
“Your mom…she loved sundresses a lot,” Eddie tells him. There’s still a box of Shannon’s old clothes in the attic that he couldn’t bear to throw out. “I’d get her one for her birthday every year.”
“Did you buy this one?” Christopher asks, tilting the photo. Eddie nods, his chest heavy with the reminder. “If you can buy Mom clothes, why can’t you get your own?”
It’s so sudden that Eddie has to laugh. Buck’s shoulders shake where they’re pressed against Eddie, and he passes another photo between them that makes Eddie groan out loud.
“Think your dad needs a little more help than we thought,” Buck teases. Christopher laughs brightly as he takes in what teenage Eddie thought was fashion.
Frosted tips, graphic, gaudy tank tops with huge holes on the sides, and board shorts. It’s a miracle anyone ever looked at him twice.
Buck’s amusement permeates the whole room, and Eddie privately thinks that his mirth is rich for someone who had highlights, a spray tan, and a puka shell necklace at 25.
He keeps that thought to himself as he starts picking up the photos around them, carefully sliding them back into their respective spots.
Christopher holds up the photo Eddie had given him. “Can I keep this?”
There’s a jolting, gut-reaction to say no, because Eddie doesn’t want Chris to see him like that, as a part of years Eddie tries more to forget. But he sees the hope in his kid’s face, and can’t bring himself to say anything but, “Yeah, but be careful with it, okay, kid? It’s the only copy.”
Christopher nods and gets up, making his way to his room. Eddie watches him go with the memory in hand, and wonders why he didn’t pull these out earlier.
“You okay?” Buck says softly, a hand coming to rest on his knee. Eddie’s eyes are still fixed on Christopher’s door, but he drops his hand over Buck’s, squeezing his fingers.
“Yeah. It’s just…” he struggles with the words, trying to articulate what it means to have Christopher keep that photo. “That photo is one of the last times we were…happy together. Shannon and I. After that, I got leave for when she went into labor, but I only just made it to the hospital before they gave her the epidural. My leave ended a week after Chris was born. He was so small, and I didn’t want to let him go but I had to. Then I came back…and suddenly I didn’t recognize anyone in my home.”
Buck stays quiet, turning his hand over to lace their fingers together. Eddie sighs, looking at him. “There’s a lot of good memories in this box, Buck. But…”
“There’s also regret, pain of missing out,” Buck finishes quietly.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, dropping his eyes back to the album he’s holding. The familiar cover registers in his mind and a smile breaks across his face. “Oh, you’ll love this one.”
He flips the album open, setting it on the floor between them in an effort to dispel some of the heaviness. This album is full of Christopher’s pictures — some silly, some old professional photos, some of him with friends from school.
Like predicted, a wide grin creeps across Buck’s face as they flip through the album together. Each memory swells in Eddie’s chest, but he can see the side of Buck’s face as he looks through Chris growing up. The feeling in his chest as he looks at the warmth in his best friend’s expression is a memory that he tucks away for later.
Eddie shares bits and pieces behind each memory, and Buck laughs like he’s reminiscing about being there himself. Each photo feels like he’s giving his best friend another glimpse into the person Eddie was before they came to Los Angeles.
They sit there for a good hour, Christopher wandering out at some point to re-join them and tell Buck about some of his photos, but by the end of it, finding a costume has completely slipped from Eddie’s mind.
He sighs, pushing one of the albums away as he resists the urge to pout like the photo of Christopher laid out in front of them. “All of this and I still have no idea what I’m going to dress up as.”
Buck just laughs.
In the end, it’s Adriana who laughs for ten minutes, then tells him that he once wanted to be a rockstar.
He stares at his sister’s grinning face on his phone, suspicious that she’s just making fun of him, but then, the memories hit him in quick succession.
“You used to look at the poster in my room all the time ,” she crows gleefully.
Eddie scowls at her, but he does vaguely remember the grunge-themed poster with harsh letters. The entire color palette of the poster had been black and dark green, and there had been a man posing with his arms crossed over his chest.
Looking back, Eddie thinks that man was probably his first crush, because Adriana kept that poster up for close to ten years after that, and every time Eddie saw it, it gave him a feeling he had no idea how to read.
He likes to think that twenty years has given him some wisdom about what that feeling was.
His phone chimes, pulling him from his thoughts. He minimizes his sister’s face and takes a look at his texts.
“I sent you a picture of the poster, and also a photo of us in front of it. I had it in one of my albums,” Adriana says, her voice softer than it had been a minute ago, when she’d been teasing him.
Eddie stares down at the picture, cringing at the bowl haircut his mom used to insist on. Despite himself, he smiles when he notices how tightly Adriana’s arms were banded around him as they posed for the camera.
They’re on her bed, a strange mix of Legos and playing cards spread out on her comforter, but right above their heads is that damned poster.
“You looked at it and said you wanted to be a rockstar too.” Adriana shrugs. “You don’t have to get too fancy to dress up as one.”
Eddie remembers that now — and he also remembers the way his parents had snorted when he told them, insisting that he needed to learn electric guitar to be famous.
This time, Eddie lets himself look at the lean biceps, the strong forearms dusted in hair, the breadth of the man’s shoulders and the gaping V-neck of his mesh tank top.
“Ahem, excuse me,” Adriana teases, her tone far too amused for the quip to land. “Can you thirst over him after I’m gone?”
Eddie scoffs, pulling her face back up to full screen. “Don’t be surprised if I decide to go to this party dressed like a stupid rockstar.”
“I expect pictures as payment,” is all she says before hanging up on him.
Eddie stares at the picture of Christopher on his home screen for far too long before he pulls up Adriana’s text thread again.
Eddie doesn’t even know the name of this man, the sharp, jagged text displaying the album name instead of the rockstar’s name, but that’s not important to him.
What’s important is that something yawns in his chest as the memory stretches — something Eddie’s been working to accept as attraction that stretches far back into his childhood, even.
If he decides to do this, he’ll get to explore another part of himself in real time.
He makes plans in his head to talk it through with Frank, but secretly, Eddie knows he’s already made up his mind.
He’s going to be a rockstar for Halloween.
It takes him two weeks to gather everything he’ll need.
Eddie doesn’t buy everything at once, and definitely doesn’t leave his house to buy everything .
He finds a mesh tank top a size too small on the discount rack, grabs a pair of fingerless gloves from one of his storage containers, finds cheap bracelets to wear, buys a bottle of black nail polish and gets out his tightest pair of skinny jeans — the ones he never wears anymore because of how much attention they draw.
Halloween’s always been something he throws himself into, and this year is no different. He goes all out with the props, even going as far as ordering clip-on piercings to put on as part of the whole ensemble.
So really, it’s a little silly how nervous he feels about a single pencil.
“It’s just a little stick, Eddie,” he mutters to himself as he stares down at it. “It’s just like black face paint, but for your eyes, in pencil form. You’re a firefighter. You save lives. You’ve been shot a million times. This can’t hurt you.”
It’s easier said than done.
When Adriana reminded him of her old poster, it’s like all the memories he had blocked came rushing back — it’s almost like he can still hear the phantom sound of his father’s scoff; the derision in his voice as he said to Eddie, that boy is indecent, Edmundo.
You will become a respectable man , when Eddie told him he thought the rockstar in Adri’s room was “so cool!” with the kind of innocence only children have.
Who knew years of repression took time to undo , Eddie thinks sardonically.
It’s funny how none of the rest of it made him feel like this. He put on the skinny jeans just fine, even if he nearly fell over three times trying to pull them up, and he had no problem wearing the little scrap of a shirt or fixing his hair, or painting his nails, or even putting on the piercings but he almost feels more scared of the little pencil of eyeliner than he did facing down guns in Afghanistan.
“Come on. You wouldn’t tell Chris to not do this,” he tells his reflection. “Why’s it so different for you?”
It’s another way Frank has been helping him contextualize and accept his own desires — if it’s not something he would deny Chris, there can’t be anything wrong with it, can there?
He might look insane talking endlessly to his reflection, but it helps — a little, at least.
His hands are still shaking as he lifts the little pencil up to his face.
He’s seen about a dozen videos on how to do this, watched them before he even walked into the little drugstore to pick up the first eyeliner that he saw, paid for it, and left as fast as he possibly could, but clearly all that theoretical knowledge is useless.
The pencil is supposed to make it easier for beginners, according to every video he watched, but the first touch of the pencil on his eyelid makes him blink instinctively, and black pigment smears across his face in a thick, then thin line.
Eddie swears up a storm, frustration swelling around the hammering heart in his ribcage.
He rushes to put down the pencil and wipe at his eye with a tissue, but somehow the paint gets even more smudged and he ends up looking like he has a black eye.
Eddie considers dropping the idea entirely. He could probably change into basketball shorts and a singlet, just tell everyone he’s a MMA fighter from one of the fights his dad used to watch on television, complete with a makeshift black eye. No one would doubt it, given Eddie’s own training in the martial arts.
It would be safer and less vulnerable than…whatever he’s doing right now.
But he doesn’t want to keep playing it safe — not in front of the people who’ve built him the safest home he’s ever had.
Okay, Eddie, deep breaths. He grips the edge of the sink, closes his eyes. Breathes in. Breathes out. Repeats. Opens his eyes again, stares at his ruined face sternly in the mirror. No. You are not chickening out. You owe this to yourself. You can figure out how to do this. How hard can it be?
Famous last words , Adriana sing-songs in his head.
Eddie rinses his face out, using the facewash Buck keeps here to scrub the makeup off. He wipes his drenched face with a towel, which leaves dark stains on the soft fabric, but he ignores them to determinedly pick up the eyeliner again.
The second attempt manages to go on much smoother. Somewhere in his panic, his hands have stopped shaking, and he’s able to hold his eyelid open with one hand so he doesn’t blink again.
The line is still wobbly — extremely wobbly — but it’s contained to his eyelid and not his whole face this time.
The secret, Eddie finds, is to do it in one quick motion, like sketching a straight line on paper.
It takes six tries, three more YouTube videos, a mess of tissues, and one ruined towel to line both eyes to his satisfaction. It’s not perfect by a long shot, and he’s certain Maddie and Hen are going to make fun of him before they offer to fix it, but it’s presentable.
He steps back, takes in his ensemble, the outfit and his hair and his face and his nails, and — okay.
Eddie’s not in the habit of bragging, or even generally feeling good about himself — which he’s working on, thank you very much — but something about this…
It makes him feel…confident.
It’s not — he doesn’t think he looks exceptionally attractive, or amazing or anything, but somehow he feels a little more self assured, can stand a little taller.
He’s still not sure how everyone — how Buck — is going to react, but for himself, for five year old Eddie, he turns around to leave for the party.
On a whim, he swipes the eyeliner pencil with his wallet, phone and keys, eyes lingering on the stack of bracelets, and the black painted nails.
His pants are tight enough that he couldn’t fit a feather, but he’ll store it all in his car, just in case.
Anxiety builds in his gut the whole way there, and Eddie finds himself constantly looking at his eyes in the rearview mirror to make sure they’re both still lined, and that his handiwork hasn’t somehow disappeared off his face in the last ten minutes.
His gaze roves over the rips in his skinny jeans, the thickness of the bracelets on his wrist, and he can’t stop fiddling with the ring looped through his bottom lip, or the magnetic bar in his eyebrow.
Eddie ends up having to give himself three more pep talks parallel-parked near Hen and Karen’s house before he finally climbs out of his truck.
He spots Ravi’s car parked three cars in front of him, sees Bobby’s car two paces behind him. A car vaguely the shape of Chim’s is parked down the street, but as Eddie casts his gaze around, his eyes land on a familiar gunmetal gray Jeep.
Buck’s already here.
Eddie’s still no closer to knowing what Buck’s costume is, but the idea of walking in for Buck to see him dressed like this warrants at least another two pep talks.
His sister’s voice echoes in his ears.
“It’s the confidence that makes this costume work, by the way. You have to strut your stuff,” Adriana had said bluntly. Eddie had made a face at her, a little creeped out by just how amused she was over his plight. “Just…be a cocky asshole for a night or something.”
Eddie won’t admit this even on the pain of death, but he keeps the advice in mind as he approaches the Wilson’s door.
Someone dressed like one of the monsters from Monsters, Inc. opens the door, raising a furry paw for a high-five. Eddie recognizes the voice echoing inside the full-head mask as Theriot as he slaps his palm against the paw.
“It’s so hot in here,” Theriot complains as he shuts the door behind Eddie.
“Shouldn’t have worn a full body suit with no ventilation, then,” Eddie says, grinning as the big head turns towards him. He can only see Theriot’s eyes from a transparent window in the costume, but they’re scowling at him.
Eddie laughs again, turning the man around to get to his zipper. “Here, let me open it a couple inches at the top for a bit to let the air flow.”
“My man,” Theriot sighs with relief, gratitude weighing his voice down. Eddie wrinkles his nose but slaps him on the shoulder, side-stepping the huge paws to take in the rest of the party.
He spots Hen dressed as Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the corner, talking to Chim, dressed as a race car driver. Maddie’s talking to Ravi near the coolers on the back table, dressed as a unicorn and Spider-Man respectively.
There are some with costumes like Theriot’s, where Eddie can’t see their faces at all. He’s pretty sure he just saw a dill pickle walk by him. The corner of the backyard has at least two Teletubbies’ costumes, and there’s one person dressed like a taco. He even spots Athena dressed like Little Red Riding Hood.
Eddie shakes his head as the anxiety about appearing too silly seeps out of him. He’d really been worried about nothing.
A whistle sounds behind him and Eddie turns to find Karen standing there with an eyebrow raised as she wiggles her eyebrows, dressed like a disco dancer. “Did you want to be hot when you were five?”
Eddie laughs, some of his nervousness abating. “No, but according to my sister, I wanted to be a rockstar, so here I am.”
Karen grabs his hand, inspecting the nails that had taken Eddie two hours to perfect, since he wasn’t magically ambidextrous. “You really went all out for it.”
“Yup. Had to be prepared in case there was a best costume contest or something,” he says absently, casting his gaze over for a familiar figure.
Laughter bubbles up in his chest as he finds the man he was looking for, unmistakable just for his height — and also the fact that he’s digging into the appetizers voraciously.
Buck’s dressed like a potato.
Eddie takes advantage of Buck not having seen him to look his fill of the other man. He’s gone all out too, with a little hat on his head, huge clip-on ears, and a huge beige costume printed with something that looks like a potato peel.
He’s not just any potato, Eddie discovers as Buck stretches within the constraints of his costume to grab yet another hors d’oeuvres from the tray.
There are comically large printouts stuck to his costume in random order that look like Mr. Potato Head from Toy Story . The lips are sitting high on his back, peeking over his shoulder while he has one arm stuck to his stomach and the other to his shoulder, instead of where it should be.
Buck rounds the table when Bobby, dressed like a hockey player, calls out to him and Eddie gets a look at the eye stuck to where his knee would be, its twin hanging precariously from Buck’s chest.
Something draws Buck’s attention his way, though, and Eddie’s not quick enough to turn around before he’s spotted.
Buck freezes when his eyes find Eddie’s, going comically wide.
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
It’s Eddie.
Eddie, dressed like that .
Buck’s gaze had completely skipped over him until he realized that the set of those shoulders was more familiar to him than his own, and Buck can’t believe he ever missed this, even for a millisecond.
His eyes are rimmed lightly in black liner that Buck can see even across the backyard, his thick eyelashes making it look like soot smudged on his eyelids. He’s in the tightest pair of pants Buck’s ever seen him wear, ripped strategically in places, and a tank top that’s more net than fabric. It sits flush against his torso, and Buck thinks if they were in broad daylight, he’d see Eddie’s skin gleam through the mesh.
That’s Eddie standing there, his hands periodically clenching at his side as he stares like a deer caught in headlights. His expression is a little wary, terrified of… Buck?
Buck’s heart drops, and he quickly pastes on what he hopes is an encouraging smile for him. He clearly stepped way out of his comfort zone tonight and it looks good on him.
Just like he’d predicted, Eddie relaxes and starts towards him. Buck nearly loses his mind when he notices the thin, silver hoop in Eddie’s nose, and sway of his hips and flash of skin above his waistband as he makes his way through the crowd to wear Buck’s standing — probably drooling all over the half-melted pastry in his hand.
It’s insane how sexy he looks as his confidence builds with each step, until he’s walking with that straight stance that Buck’s used to seeing him in.
“Mr. Potato Head?” Eddie laughs as he sidles up to him, and Buck nearly has a coronary as his teeth flash white, eyes crinkling merrily at the corners, creasing the eyeliner.
The eyeliner .
“Chris helped color all the attachments,” Buck chokes out on a thin breath, eyes still wide and fixed on his best friend.
This close up, Buck can take in the smaller details of Eddie’s costume. An earring dangles from one ear, an industrial piercing through the upper curve of his ears. There’s a similar bar pierced through his eyebrow, and a hoop through the corner of his bottom lip that matches the one in his nose. They look real enough that Buck briefly wonders if Eddie got new hardware put in just for this party.
His eyes drift further. A thin silver chain rests around Eddie’s throat like a choker, and his hair is ruffled to perfection — despite the fact that it’s probably because he keeps running his hand through it, and not because he deliberately set it that way.
His stubble only makes him look rougher along the edges, but in all entirely, Eddie looks hot .
“What the fuck happened to you?!” Buck asks, only barely managing to keep himself from swallowing his tongue as he drags his eyes down Eddie’s costume.
“It’s a costume party, Buck,” he answers in that warm, exasperated way of his as he motions to himself. “I’m dressed up.”
“As what? ”
Eddie’s cheeks turn red as he mumbles under his breath, and the blush only makes him look even more endearing. “A rockstar.”
At least ten different ways come to Buck’s mind about how Eddie could rock his world, but he manages to swallow all of them before he embarrasses himself.
“I can see that,” he manages to choke out, then chokes on his drink when Eddie runs his hand nervously through his hair again, and Buck sees the black nail polish, tipped at the end of a pair of fingerless gloves.
Really, he can’t be blamed for his reaction. Eddie himself is everything out of thirty-year-old Buck’s fantasies (and is pretty much the reason any of his present-day fantasies even exist) but Eddie dressed like this…
Eddie dressed like this is straight out of every single one of Buck’s teenage fantasies.
He gets a reprieve when Bobby and Hen join them, and Eddie’s attention shifts from studying his face to their other friends, but the downside is that there are now more people to observe him .
Hen sends him a funny look after the fourth laugh Buck forces out, eyes valiantly trying not to shift in Eddie’s direction and failing spectacularly, and Buck knows that every nefarious thought running through his head is printed on his face.
“I see Maddie over there, I’ll be right back,” he excuses himself quickly, dragging an ice cold water out of the cooler on his way. Despite himself, he knows he can feel Eddie’s eyes on him the whole way.
“What happened to you?” Maddie says as soon as she catches sight of him.
“Nothing, why?” he says, placing the water bottle on his neck and sighing as the chill seeps through his overheated skin. The condensation drips into his costume, but that discomfort is a hell of a lot better than his best friend reading every depraved thought off his face.
Maddie doesn’t look convinced, and Buck swears under his breath when she peeks over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of the man of Buck’s dreams.
“ Oh ,” Maddie breathes out, nearly vibrating with her excitement. A wolfish grin creeps up her face. “He looks just like that one guy from the band you were obsessed with when you were fourteen.”
“Yeah, thanks, Maddie,” he mutters, turning around to look out at the rest of the party.
Part of him wishes that he’d dressed in something…sexier, but then he looks at Eddie dragging his hand through his hair again, his head thrown back as he laughs brightly. His head cocks to the side as he talks to Theriot, and there’s something innately sexy about the smirk that curves over Eddie’s expression as he jokes with the other man.
Suddenly, he’s never been more glad for his shapeless costume.
The fire in his blood doesn’t relent.
Buck had thought — hoped — that the shock of seeing Eddie look like that would wear off, and things would go back to normal, but he hasn’t been able to take his eyes off Eddie for more than ten seconds the whole night.
He’s pretty sure everyone has noticed — except for the one person he actually wants to notice — but he just can’t bring himself to behave normally. Not when Eddie looks like that , when it’s all he can do to keep his hands and mouth to himself and not attack Eddie like a dog in heat.
He feels like he’s losing his mind .
Eddie swallows his drink, the choker around his neck bobs with the movement, and Buck almost walks into a table.
Eddie grins widely while talking to Hen, making his eyes crinkle and appear even darker, and Buck trails off mid-sentence in his own conversation with Ravi.
Eddie’s hand wraps around a pool cue, black nail paint glistening in the light, gloves cracking under the grip, and Buck swallows down the wrong pipe and spends the next two minutes in a coughing fit.
Eddie’s hips swivel as he dances with Theriot and Karen, clearly letting loose tonight, and Buck knocks straight into Bobby in an effort to keep his eyes on Eddie.
(Bobby had smiled knowingly, but thankfully hadn’t said anything in face of Buck’s stammering apologies.)
What’s worse is that Eddie seems intent on enjoying Buck’s company — hanging around Buck, bringing him a drink, teasing him about his costume, rushing over to pat his back when he hears Buck coughing from across the room.
He drags Buck into countless photos, muttering something about sending them to Adriana, and it’s all Buck can do to paste a wide grin across his face instead of focusing on the perfect puzzle piece fit of Eddie’s body against his own — even through the stupid potato costume.
Pretending to be a normal person who’s definitely not in love with his best friend has never been harder.
“How did you even get in and out of your car?” Eddie asks randomly, leaning against the pool table with his legs crossed at the ankles. Buck’s gaze lingers on the lazy pose, and the way the light gleams over the dips and divots of his biceps before he shakes his head to himself.
“I had to push the seat all the way back,” he confesses, fiddling with the label on his bottle. He still has to drive home, so he can’t even drown himself in alcohol to use as an excuse when Eddie inevitably catches him staring.
Then Eddie bends over the table to take his shot and Buck promptly bites his tongue hard enough to make it bleed.
“So.”
Buck startles, looking away from Eddie and his obscenely tight pants to find Maddie next to him, with a dangerous glint in her eye. Buck swallows. “Maddie! I thought you were checking on Jee?”
She ignores his poor excuse at a subject change. “The rockstar’s really doing it for you, huh?”
Oh.
Oh no.
Buck carefully looks to a distant point beyond her shoulder, his peripheral vision attuned to Eddie like always — if only to make sure he doesn’t overhear them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Buck. Even I looked twice at that ass in those pants, you’re trying to tell me you haven’t noticed the man you’re in love with looks hot as fuck right now?”
“Maddie!”
She smirks. “What? You know I’m right.”
“You – I –” Buck sputters, plastic crinkling under his fist as he twists his bottle. “Not so loud! Just–”
Buck grips her arm and whisks her across the room to a secluded hallway, lets go of her to rub both hands over his face. “Yes, okay, I know what he looks like, and I haven’t stopped looking at him all night. I’m barely hanging on to my self-control right now, you don’t have to announce it to the whole world!”
“What I don’t understand is why you think you need self control at all. What you need is to tell him how you feel.”
Buck fixes his sister with a Look. “Maddie. You know why.”
“No, I really don’t,” she shoots back. The expression on Buck’s face must say something, because Maddie’s expression softens. She takes his hands and squeezes. “Buck. I promise you, he’s not going to take it badly. And on the impossible chance that he does, you two are the forever kind of friends — the ones that can get past anything.”
Buck’s shaking his head before she’s even finished. “I can’t risk it, Mads. You know I can’t.”
“I know why you think that. But you deserve love, and you deserve him.” She leans up on her toes to kiss his cheek, squeezes his hands again. “I’m going to go find Chim now, but just think about it, okay? Promise me you’ll try.”
Buck closes his eyes. Nods. “I’ll try.”
“Good.”
Maddie slips away, leaving Buck alone with his thoughts in the dark hallway.
It’s not that Buck hadn’t thought about telling Eddie how he feels.
(Mostly laying in bed, imagining various scenarios where Eddie kisses him and he never has to leave the Diaz house and they all live happily ever after.)
It’s just…no matter how worth the risk might be, losing the Diaz boys is unfathomable. He can’t lose them, he just can’t — especially considering how slim the chances are that Eddie will return his feelings, no matter what Maddie seems to think.
No , he abruptly thinks. He’s not going to wallow in sadness about his hopeless love life in the dark at his friend’s house. He’s going to go back to the party, enjoy his family’s company, be normal with his best friend, and table these thoughts for when he’s back alone in his loft.
With newfound determination, he walks out of the hallway.
…Only to come face to face with the object of his desires.
There’s a joke in there somewhere about Eddie also being the bane of his existence — which is true just for the torture he’s been put through tonight — but Buck can’t find it in himself to make it.
Not when his world has narrowed to soot-rimmed eyes and sandalwood cologne.
“Buck! Where were you? Is everything okay?” He cranes his neck to peer behind him. “Is Maddie okay? You guys flew out of the room like a house on fire.”
There’s a lot to be said for how Eddie looks , driving Buck crazy with how attractive he is in this ensemble, but the concern in his voice as Eddie watches him with that familiar furrow between his brows proves to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Because no one’s ever been so in tune with Buck like Eddie is, and just that thought has him keeping his promise to Maddie in mind and curling his fingers around Eddie’s wrist.
If anything, the concern in Eddie’s face only gets deeper, but Buck just shakes his head. “Not here. Can we…just come with me?”
“Yeah, of course,” Eddie says readily, following without hesitation as Buck tugs him out through the Wilson house to the front door, then out the door. Buck carefully avoids looking at anyone directly, even though he feels more than one pair of eyes on them rushing out the door.
Buck’s Jeep is parked further than Eddie’s truck is, and he takes those extra precious seconds parsing the flutter of Eddie’s pulse under his fingertips as he thinks about what he’s going to say.
Eddie leans back against the passenger side door with his arms crossed over his chest, hands grasping the opposite arm, while Buck just paces back and forth, muttering to himself as he tries to scrabble for words.
“Buck? What’s going on?” Eddie asks after a good five minutes. The gravel crunches under Buck’s shoes as he spins back around to look his best friend in the face.
Eddie’s toying with the lip ring with his teeth nervously, and Buck decides that actions speak louder than words anyway.
In two strides, Buck’s got Eddie pressed flush back against the car, boxing him in as he tilts his head down. Eddie’s hands hover over Buck before landing on his shoulders, staring back wide-eyed as he searches Buck’s expression.
Buck’s costume presses between them as he leans in. “Can I?”
Two words, and Eddie’s eyes flare hot before he tilts up and takes Buck’s lips with his own.
The kiss jolts Buck into place, his world narrowing to nothing but Eddie, Eddie, Eddie . Every single sense is overwhelmed with Eddie surrounding him, his hands creeping up to tangle in Buck’s hair as he swipes his tongue across Buck’s lip. Buck’s costume hat tumbles to the ground, and if possible, he presses even closer as if he could crawl under Eddie’s skin and stay there forever.
There’s nothing but the scent of Eddie’s sandalwood cologne, nothing but the biting press of fake metal pressing into Buck’s skin, nothing but the twist of Eddie’s fingers in his hair. There’s nothing but the feel of Eddie’s body pressed against him, even through the stupid costume, nothing but the feel of mesh catching on his fingers as Buck drags his palms up Eddie’s sides to hold him close.
Eddie tilts his head to keep him where he wants him as they exchange biting kisses that cement Eddie’s place as Buck’s home and leave him bereft with the sheer swell of everything that he feels for him.
“Eddie,” he murmurs reverently against the other man’s lips.
Eddie hums low in his throat and pulls back. Buck looks across the bare inches that separate them with unrestrained awe.
He looks debauched like this, from all the places Buck’s left his affection. His lips are swollen and spit-slick, and Buck can’t resist dropping another kiss to them, drawn to him like two magnets turned to finally let them connect.
He’s about to move away when Eddie deepens the kiss like he can’t get enough of Buck either, and that feeling lights a whole other fire under his skin.
Somewhere, Buck finds it in him to pull away again, to study him again. Two of the fake piercings have been knocked askew, and Eddie winces as he tugs them off. The lip ring looks dented from the bruising pressure of their mouths, and the sight shouldn’t make Buck feel smug, but it does.
Secretly, Buck’s glad that he leaves the nose ring in.
“I can’t believe our first kiss was like this, with me dressed like a potato,” he blurts out, cursing his own awkwardness.
Eddie throws his head back and laughs again, his hand dropping to tangle with Buck’s. “It was a good first kiss, though.”
“Yeah?” Buck breathes out.
Eddie smiles and shakes his head. “Yeah, Buck.”
“I’ve wanted this for so long,” he confesses quietly, rubbing his thumb absently over Eddie’s knuckles. “And then you walked into the party and…”
“Is that what you and Maddie were talking about?”
Buck winces, but nods. “She was trying to convince me that you wouldn’t go running for the hills if I told you I was in love with you.”
Panic swarms at him as the words escape him, but before he can retract them, Eddie snorts out a laugh. “It’d be pretty hypocritical of me to run when I’m in love with you .”
Buck’s brain goes offline for a good thirty seconds.
Ten minutes ago, he was convinced that Eddie didn’t return his feelings, but now…now it’s like every dream he’s ever had for his future has been handed to him on a platter made of Eddie Diaz.
“I was worried what you’d think about the costume,” Eddie admits, gesturing to himself. “It’s not something you’ve ever seen me in.” He thinks for a moment, and then tacks on, “Well, it’s not something I’ve ever worn, either.”
“By all means, feel free to make this permanent,” Buck allows a lascivious grin to curve his mouth, pulling another laugh out of Eddie. He reaches for the zipper on his side, noting that some of Mr. Potato Head’s body parts are now trampled under their feet. “Get me out of this so I can kiss you properly.”
Eddie’s still laughing as he helps Buck take off the heavy costume and toss it off to the side, leaving him in white pants and a tank top. He sighs as the cool air rushes across his sweaty skin, but the heat in Eddie’s eyes only makes him flare hotter.
Their second kiss is slower, softer. This kiss speaks of days spent in each other’s company, wanting and pining, speaks of futures where Buck is Eddie’s and Eddie is Buck’s. Buck’s hands explore the planes of Eddie’s body, making their way up to cup his jaw and hold him close. Eddie’s hands brace themselves on Buck’s waist as he tilts their foreheads together, sharing breath in the bare inch between them.
“Come home with me?” Eddie asks quietly. “Not for…anything. But, maybe we can talk, and maybe we can do more of this.” He holds up their hands, smiling cheekily.
Buck smiles back and squeezes his hand, dipping his head to steal one last kiss. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”