Archive of Our Own ^beta

The email comes when Buck is at Eddie’s, which is the only reason Eddie sees the wedding invitation at all. They’re hip-bumping each other at the sink, Buck on drying duty because he apparently wastes all of Eddie’s hot water even though cold water does not get the grease off properly, seriously, Eddie, there are so many articles about it, when Buck’s phone pings with a notification.

The subject line is You Are Cordially Invited!, which is maybe why he’s already half braced for the blow when he opens it and finds that it’s a wedding invitation.

To the holy matrimony between a Kyle Pittsman and—of course—one Ali Martin.

“I didn’t know wedding invitations were virtual now,” Eddie says, warm over his shoulder.

“Save the trees, I guess,” Buck says. His gaze is still caught on the byline and thinks, maybe a little nonsensically, that it’s a good word, cordial, even if it’s not what he’s feeling right now. Even if he doesn’t really know what exactly he’s feeling right now.

Eddie hums. He’s close at his shoulder; Buck hears the gentle rubber snap of him pulling off the dish gloves, and it’s on the edge of his tongue, we still have the big pot to do, the one that’s always a hassle to wrangle in the sink because it’s just a little too wide and gets water all over the floor, but then Eddie is moving in closer, hip against the sideboard, chest a breadth away from Buck’s arm as he leans in to the invitation.

“Is it,” he says, finally, “etiquette, now, to invite your ex to your wedding?”

“Ali and I are friends,” Buck says. “I think.” Their split had been mostly amicable, if sad, and it had helped that they’d always gotten along well; their first few dates probably looked more like two friends catching up to an outsider than anything strictly romantic. They still have each other on social media, still like each other’s posts, even if they don’t really talk much. Last thing he’d seen she’d moved to Orange County for work, but then the next day he’d been tagged in a video of Eddie’s shooting and hasn’t logged back into Instagram since. That was nearly a year ago.

He hadn’t even known she was seeing anyone.

“Did you not invite your ex to your wedding?” he says, to clear the weird feeling in his chest.

Eddie laughs. It’s his kitchen laugh, the laugh he only really does around Buck in the house: something low and soft and warm. Buck calls it his home laugh in his head and aches every time. “Didn’t have any.”

“No? You, ladykiller Eddie Diaz with the mushroom cut?”

“Asshole,” Eddie says, knocking their hips together, and then keeps them there, for a while. “It wasn’t a mushroom cut.”

“It was unfortunate, is what it was.” The invitation blurs a little in front of his eyes. It’s kinda pretty, at least for an email. White and blue, like an eggshell; the font curls around Kyle and Ali’s names like ropes of ivy. Ali Pittsman, he tries out. Or maybe Pittsman-Martin, double-barrelled: kinda a mouthful, but Ali had always taken pride in her name.

As though Eddie can sense him getting a little lost, he touches their shoulders together. Grounding. “Are you going to go?” he says, softer.

“Why wouldn’t I go,” Buck says. It comes out a little defensive, like a snap-trap.

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Because she’s your ex?”

His voice is mild, and Buck feels any remaining defensiveness dissipate in a rush. He’s not about to pick a fight because his head feels like twirled spaghetti. “No, I’ll go,” he says, with a sigh. “Sign of good will, and whatever.” He turns his phone off, like that’ll erase the image from his head—and then a thought occurs. “I have the worst timing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Taylor and I just broke up.”

Eddie’s eyebrows do that bitchy I know thing. “So?”

“So my ex’s wedding is the last place I want to show up single.” Buck rubs his forehead. “Maybe I should have held off breaking up with her. We could have stuck it out another two months.”

He’s mostly joking, because as guilty as he sometimes feels about it, the moment his apartment door clicked behind her he’d felt a breath he felt like he’d been holding for years loosen from the very caverns of his chest. Also, Taylor was bad at weddings. Not in the get uproariously drunk and speak now type way, but she was always more of a cynic than she was a romantic: they’d been to only one wedding together, back when they were just friends who on occasion had sex, an old colleague of hers, and she’d spent the entire thing murmuring in Buck’s ear about how the constitution of marriage was a scam, how she could never see herself at one of these, how she’d bet her Louboutins on them sleeping in separate beds by the end of the decade. “They say up to fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, you know,” she’d said scornfully over the rim of her champagne. “Makes you wonder why anyone would spend a mortgage on the whole thing if they have a fifty-fifty chance of ending back in the courthouse in twelve years.”

In retrospect, that should have been the first sign, because Buck’s always been more of a romantic than he has a cynic, even now that he finds himself on the wrong side of thirty still single. He’d always loved the idea of getting married, starting a family, raising kids. And if that’s shifted over the years—raising one kid in particular with one man in particular—well, that’s between him and his bathroom mirror.

Still. He would have gritted his teeth through it anyway. Even if he knows Taylor’s smile would have gone extra plastic at the sight of Ali’s hair, grown back to her natural strawberry blond, beneath the veil.

Eddie’s eyebrows get somehow even bitchier, but in the way they do when Buck’s being self-deprecating. “Buck.”

“I’m kidding,” Buck says. By email. He bets that saved some money. “I think.”

“Buck,” Eddie says again, but this is a little gentler. “You know that you don’t… have to go, right? I know it’s for good will, but you don’t have to ever do something you don’t want to.”

Now Buck’s eyebrows are probably getting bitchy too, in the way they do whenever Eddie starts therapizing. Mostly because it’s good advice and he doesn’t like having a rational option to choose from when the self-destructive ones are so much more fun. (That’s also mostly a joke. Who knew that therapy actually worked.) “I know,” he says. “But I… I want to.” He pauses. “Is that weird?”

“Maybe a little,” Eddie says, but it’s kind. “Especially if you’re getting to a place where you regret breaking up with Taylor.”

Buck has to smirk, then. It had sucked, at the time, that his best friend and his girlfriend didn’t get on—actively disliked each other would probably be a better term for it—but in the aftermath of their break-up, as impartial as he’d tried to stay for Buck’s sake, Eddie had been pretty invaluable for making Buck feel better about his decision. It was easy to not have to stagger through the did I make a mistake? part when he was around every corner not-so-subtly preening about Taylor’s absence.

“I’m not regretting breaking up with her,” Buck says. “I’m just being dumb.” Eddie makes a questioning sound, and Buck, a little embarrassed, explains, “It just… would have been nice to go with someone, is all. Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely over Ali, and I’m happy for her and everything, but…”

“But you also want to show that she’s not the only one who could move on,” Eddie says.

Yeah. That’s pretty much right on the money. Always Eddie, to see him, ugliness and all. It’s a shit thought to have, because the last person Ali Martin’s big day is about is him, but—

Well, but. He’s thirty-one and in love with his best friend, who is decidedly not in love with him. He thinks he’s earned the right to be a little uncharitable.

Then Eddie says, very casually, “Just take me.”

Buck—blinks. “What?”

“Take me,” Eddie says, like Buck’s very much not been trying. Buck’s face must say huh with multiple question marks, because Eddie elaborates, “You want to go with someone, right? Then take me. I’ll be with you the whole evening, we get a day trip out of it, and—well, you don’t have to show up to your ex’s wedding alone.”

It makes sense, is the worst thing. Eddie’s his closest friend, so much so that even just friend feels insufficient in describing what he means to him—so plausibly, if Buck was going to pretend to be in a relationship with anyone, it would be Eddie, right? Except there’s the issue of Buck being totally, irrevocably in love with him, probably since the first day they met and Eddie was recklessly slow-motion stripping in the locker room like he wasn’t aware he was kickstarting a five-year exercise in futility, and this feels like the sort of treacherous situation Buck can absolutely see going haywire.

It would feel like… taking advantage. Like Buck using Eddie’s kindness against him in the hopes to cop a proper feel of the corded muscles in his back with a hand in the dip of his waist. And he’s still been working with Dr Copeland about punishing himself, about allowing himself to have good things, but he thinks even she and her pursuit of happiness would raise some ethical eyebrows at this way of going about it.

(Besides. Eddie came out two months ago and they are still decidedly Just Friends. Buck’s come to terms with the fact that maybe Eddie just isn’t interested in him.)

“Eddie, man, I can’t ask you to do that,” Buck says.

But Eddie just laughs. “Why not? It’s easy. We get mistaken for a couple all the time anyway. This time we just get to eat hors d’oeuvres while we do it.”

“That’s not how you pronounce it at all,” Buck says, but probably quite fondly. Then he remembers the situation at hand and schools himself accordingly. “And that’s—different.”

“How?”

“Because…” He scrounges for an excuse. “Because we weren’t doing anything. But if we go together we’re going to have to—ham it up. And I don’t want to take advantage of you or make you uncomfortable—you know, because of the whole…”

He trails off, a little awkwardly; tries to save it with a vague hand-wave in Eddie’s direction which he thinks ends up just making it more offensive.

Amused, Eddie finishes, “…The whole me being gay thing?”

Buck squirms. “I just… don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

Eddie’s smile comes a little softer, and he reaches up to squeeze Buck’s shoulder. “Buck,” he says, gentle. “I wouldn’t have volunteered if I had an issue with it. I’m just helping out a friend in need.”

And, okay. Buck only is so strong. “Are you sure?” he says again, finally, but in a way that feels a little like succession. “Because that would… actually be really nice. Having you there too.”

“Of course,” Eddie says. His eyes are liquid in the waning evening light. Conveniently so are Buck’s knees. His hand is still on Buck’s shoulder, and Buck’s just selfish enough to wish he wasn’t wearing one of his high-neck sweaters, because Eddie’s thumb is sat right over his clothed collarbone, and Buck still remembers the heat of it against his bare throat that day after the tsunami.

If this is all he can get of Eddie—scraps, in thumbs on necks and the ability to call him his boyfriend for a four-hour ceremony—then he’ll take it. Eddie’s enough that just scraps will suffice.

And maybe Buck would feel bad about it, but the man’s practically offering himself up on a plate. He only has so much resolve. He decides, then and there, in Eddie’s kitchen, with the big pot still to be washed and Eddie’s hand still on his shoulder, that he’ll let himself have this. He’ll let himself have Eddie for a day, and he’ll indulge in it the way Eddie indulges in his fancy seven-dollars-a-pint dulce de leche ice cream that’s reserved for special occasions like birthdays and good report cards. He’ll take everything Eddie will give him and he’ll pretend for four glorious hours that the life he wants is the life he has—that Eddie and Christopher are his.

And then afterwards, once the ceremony is done and Ali is Pittsman, or Pittsman-Martin, and he’s dropped Eddie off at his place and goes to sleep in his empty apartment that sometimes still smells a little like Taylor—then afterwards, he’s going to move on. Or at least try.

He’d be more than happy to live off scraps of whatever Eddie gives him, but he also maybe thinks he deserves more than scraps. Deserves to be loved in full. And through no fault of his own Eddie’s not going to give that him, so he’s gotta—start trying to find someone else to fall in love with. Someone who’ll reciprocate.

It’s gonna fucking suck, to be honest, but at least he’ll go out on a high note.

“Okay,” Buck says, and then, before Eddie can say anything else, “We gotta wash the pot.”

“Oh, I hate this pot,” Eddie says, predictably, and he takes his hand off Buck’s shoulder, and the two of them attempt to wrestle it in the sink and get water all over the floor and themselves, and Buck nearly pisses himself laughing when Eddie slips on a wet tile and nearly takes out his whole spice cabinet.

So yeah. No way this could go wrong.

*

Bobby doesn’t even blink when Buck and Eddie request the same Wednesday off, just signs off on it without so much as a flinch and says, “Are you taking Christopher on a trip?”

“Not just this time,” Eddie says. “Buck’s got a wedding, I’m his hot date.”

Bobby doesn’t blink at this either. Buck wonders if he also thinks they’re together. It wouldn’t be the first time. “Pity,” Bobby says. “Athena’s cooking for us that Wednesday. You’ll miss her smoked brisket.”

“What!” Buck says, and immediately forgets about Eddie and weddings and his own impending heartbreak. “No, Bobby, get her to come another day, that’s not fair—”

Not even the rest of the 118 seem particularly surprised by their going together. Buck comes out of Bobby’s office grumbling about favouritism and how just because he was going to add salt one time shouldn’t mean he’s disqualified from Athena’s brisket for life, and Hen and Chimney, sitting playing chess at the kitchen island, look up as he comes toward them, amused.

“What happened this time?” Hen says.

Buck sulks all the way to the Keurig. Eddie settles in beside Chimney and looks at the chess board as though he has any idea how to play chess. “Buck’s upset he’s missing Athena’s brisket,” he says. “Who’s winning?”

“Me,” Hen says, “clearly,” and Eddie nods knowledgably like this is clear and like he’s not pulling this all from his ass, as though he knows a rook from a bishop. “Why are you missing it? Are you going away?”

“Ali’s getting married,” Buck says.

Everyone pauses. Even Ravi, who is pretending he’s reading on one of the couches, looks up at this.

“Ali?” Hen says, slowly. “Like, your ex-girlfriend, Ali?”

“Ali, who dumped you after your leg got crushed, Ali?” Chimney adds, incredulous.

“Yes, thank you, Chim,” Buck says. “That Ali.”

Chimney and Hen exchange frowny looks. Ravi says tentatively, “And she’s invited you to her wedding?”

“Yeah, we’re friends,” Buck says. “It’s not weird.”

Ravi has the decency to at least hide his judgmental look behind his book. Hen and Chimney just look at each other in that way that means they’re touching their invisible Best Friend Antennae and being disapproving through their psychic bond, and then pointedly focus on their chess game.

“Well, I think it’s nice,” Eddie says, like they hadn’t almost had this exact play-for-play conversation last week. Buck in the very least appreciates the support—Eddie always has his back. “A sign of good will on both ends.”

“Are you taking anyone?” Chimney says.

Buck says, “Eddie said he’d come with me,” and wishes, privately, selfishly, that someone would say something about it. Like, of course he did, like, you two can’t go anywhere without the other, like, that’s also maybe a little weird, because while he’s being greedy he wants just once for someone to affirm it, that he is in fact a sad stray animal following the smell of food, but he’s not crazy. But of course, no one does, because Buck and Eddie have been a tag-team for a very long time and of course he did goes without saying. Because the sky is blue and Buck and Eddie would follow each other anywhere.

“Oh, nice,” Hen says, and Ravi says, “There will probably be good food there too,” and then Chimney does a chess move that has Hen wrinkling her brow and Eddie, belatedly, doing the same, like he momentarily forgot he was pretending to understand what was going on. “Check and mate, Wilson,” Chimney says. He nudges Eddie. “That was the classic scorpion twist. You know how it is.”

“A classic for a reason,” agrees Eddie.

“Hmmm,” Hen says.

Buck switches on the Keurig, stares morosely at his reflection and tries not to read into their lack of reaction too much. He mostly succeeds.

Honestly, he isn’t planning to devote much time to thinking about the wedding. It’s a while away, for one, and he’s mostly got everything he needs to in order—dutifully ordered the happy couple a nice lamp off their Bed Bath & Beyond wishlist, reinstalled Instagram to like Ali’s engagement post, and tries not to think about Taylor. Mostly he’s just preoccupied with Eddie, because he has a countdown now for how much longer he gets to be greedy with him. If Eddie’s noticed that he’s become a little more tactile, he hasn’t said anything, like maybe he knows Buck’s already grieving the way he can put his head in Eddie’s lap mid-shift and doze off.

So the wedding itself creeps up on him without much warning, and before he knows it Chimney’s clapping him on the shoulder telling him to have fun tomorrow and Hen is messaging their 118 group chat instructing them to send pictures. The morning of, he gets up early, folds himself carefully into his suit, and then makes a detour to a bakery for warm pastries and coffee on his way to Eddie’s.

He's got a quip prepared about buttering Eddie up before their hour drive (it involves careful angling of the all-butter croissant label on the brown paper bag, it’s gonna be a killer) as he haphazardly parks on the kerbside in front of his house and honks the horn, but it immediately dries up on his tongue when Eddie comes out the door a few moments later in the charcoal-grey suit he’d worn to Hen’s wedding. Buck’s seen him in this suit before, obviously—nearly swallowed his tongue the first time, too—but Eddie had still been working through the hilliest parts of his PTSD then, still a little thin and pallid and hollow behind the eyes.  

But it’s been a year, and though he still sees Frank once a week he’s lost the hollowness to his eyes, the dark circles the beneath them. He’s always been beautiful to Buck, bright-cheeked or no, even in the depths of recovery when he was rail-thin and spitting acid in grief, but now—

Now, with the mid-morning sun at his back as he descends the front porch and heads towards the car, an easy smile Buck knows he worked blood sweat and tears to get back at his lips, hair styled In That Way and wearing the suit Buck had nearly had an aneurism at seeing the first time around, he’s… well. He’s completely, utterly, totally stunning.

Goddammit, Buck thinks grimly.

“Hey,” Eddie says, when he gets near enough, and Buck’s so dizzied he can’t even make the butter joke, just kind of gapes at him as Eddie opens the car door and slides into the passenger seat. Christ, but does he look good. Buck had spared the bare minimum brain cells on the wedding, opting to just re-wear his suit from Hen’s wedding as well instead of buying a new one, but Eddie had gone out to get his re-tailored, having gained back some weight since the last time he wore it.

It was a little out of character for Eddie, who buys his clothes in packs of six from Target and off-the-clock pretty much exists in flannel, to spend fifty dollars getting a suit let out for a more flattering fit, and Buck had kept quiet during the fitting itself, just sat on a chair and watched over the brim of the bridal magazine he was absently flicking through. But on the way home, in Buck’s car, sharing a bubble tea because Eddie gets a headache from a full one and Buck had already spent a dangerous amount on iced coffee that week to justify two, he’d asked, what’s with this sudden interest in fit?

If he’d expected Eddie to get shy or embarrassed at him pointing it out, he would have been disappointed. Eddie just took a long suck of the straw, wincing as a boba popped against his tongue, and said, simply, I’m just trying to invest in myself more, is all.

Buck knows that that was one of Eddie’s biggest therapy hurdles—self-worth and the whole kitchen sink. Not for the first time, he’d been completely in awe of his best friend’s bravery and dedication to bettering himself, for himself, even in an act as simple as tailoring a suit because he believes he’s worth the money. 

Only it’s inconvenient now, because Eddie looks fucking gorgeous and in less than twenty-four hours Buck’s meant to be quitting him cold turkey. His thighs, Jesus Christ.

Buck is very brave about it and doesn’t say a word, just pulls the car away from the kerb and says, “I bought croissants.”

“The ones from Daily Bread?” Eddie says, and makes a pleased sound when he peers into the paper bag. “Good morning to me.”

“I thought if we were gonna be boyfriends for the day you should reap the benefits of the Buckley experience.”

Eddie glances up at him, eyes bright. “Oh, yeah?” he says. “Does the Buckley boyfriend experience also come with napkins?”

Buck, who has heard Eddie quietly grumble about greasy fingers every time Hen has brought croissants to the station, passes him the stack he’d filched from the bakery on his way out. Eddie’s face lights up, eyes softening, and Buck just—aches, over and over.

“Damn,” Eddie says, carefully folding his croissant in the napkin. “I might have to extend Boyfriend Buckley’s warranty.”

Buck’s hands tighten a little around the steering wheel. He thinks he deserves an award for the way he doesn’t drive the car directly into a tree. “Ha,” is all he can manage, intelligently.

“Speaking of,” Eddie says, “should we… discuss? What we’re going to do?”

Buck spares a glance over at him. He has flakes of pastry around his mouth and all over his lap, and without really thinking about it Buck reaches out to dust them off. Eddie doesn’t even blink, just makes an appreciative sound around a mouthful of croissant, and Buck tries not to think about the corded muscle of his thigh and the thin fabric that separated his hand from toughing bare skin.

Then he properly comprehends Eddie’s question, and this time does accidentally swerve the car a little. “Uh. What do you mean?”

“Well.” Eddie wipes at his mouth, and puts his croissant down. His eyes are bright, mouth in an amused little smile, like he’s just glad to be here, and were Buck any less annoyed at himself for letting Eddie talk him into this he’d think how nice it was that he was looking happier these days. “What’s our story, you know? How did we get together? How long have we been together? We don’t want someone to call our bluff; we need to get our story straight.”

“That’s bi-erasure,” Buck says, just so Eddie can roll his eyes. “I doubt we’re gonna get interrogated on the finer points of our relationship, Eds.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Oh, did you want me to get out this car? Because I think I can probably still make it back to the station on time—”

“Chimney wouldn’t buy you croissants,” Buck says, a little surly, and Eddie laughs, letting go of the door handle like he’d actually been about to do a drop-and-roll out the car in the middle of the freeway. “And no, you’re right. Yeah, we can work out a story.”

Buck was mostly afraid that hearing Eddie devise a story about how they could theoretically get together like it was just simple make-believe would be what killed him, and it turns out he was right, because Eddie, motherfucker, says, “I think it’s safest if we keep it close to reality, just to avoid either of us putting our feet in our mouths. We met at work, grew closer, and from there… we fell in love.”

Buck’s mouth is a little dry. “How did it happen?”

Eddie thinks. “At my house,” he says. “In the kitchen, maybe. We’ve just put Christopher to bed. We’re doing the washing up.”

Buck can envision it so easily: the two of them, bumping elbows, flicking dishwater at each other, laughing softly, mindful of Christopher asleep just down the hall. “You’re in the washing up gloves, with the flowers,” he finds himself saying. “The ones I got you for Christmas. I’m talking to you about a documentary I just watched. The one about the frogs.”

“You just want an excuse to bring up tree frogs,” Eddie says.

“Their feet self-lubricate, Eddie!” Eddie just smiles at him, because this is a spiel he’s heard before, and Buck goes kinda warm all over. “Anyway, I’m talking to you about tree frogs. We’re washing up the big pot. We’re both covered in water.”

He doesn’t know why he’s fixating on the minutia; thinks maybe it’s to avoid fixating on the way that having Eddie’s hand, warm and damp from the inside of the glove, on his elbow, in his kitchen, both of them covered in water, a future ahead of them that involves them going to weddings together and meaning it, is all he’s really ever wanted.

“I tell you about tree frogs,” Buck says. He’s surprised his voice is so steady. After the wedding he’ll probably cry in his car about this. “And you laugh. And you look at me. And maybe we’ve been dancing around the idea for a while—the idea of us—so you look at me and I look at you, and we both just know that it’s going to happen tonight, that we’re going to—I guess stop dancing. And then you kiss me.”

He doesn’t quite dare look at Eddie as he speaks, afraid his face is betraying exactly how much he yearns for it, years for a life where Buck can talk about tree frogs and Eddie kisses him after, and also equally afraid of whatever Eddie’s face is doing. There is a moment of pregnant silence, wherein Buck starts rethinking ever developing embryonically enough to have a mouth, and then Eddie says, finally, voice inscrutable, “I kiss you?”

Yes, please, Buck thinks. “You’re braver than I am,” is all he says aloud. There’s a reason Eddie is still going around unkissed, after all.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Eddie says, but when Buck dares risk a glance at him, he’s smiling softly. “It’s a good story, though. Believable.”

“That was the aim,” Buck jokes. His throat is, like, bone-dry. He clears it a little uncomfortably, straightens in his seat, like he’s able to physically move away from it. “Um. What else do we need? For the story?”

If Eddie hears anything in his voice, he doesn’t comment on it, just hums thoughtfully. “How long have we been together? A year? Two?”

“Two,” Buck says, immediately. Not for any reason in particular—not because two years ago Buck stood across from Eddie with his blood in his mouth and thought oh. That’s circumstantial at best. “Two—two’s good.”

“Shows you moved on first,” Eddie says, around a mouthful of croissant, because deep inside Eddie is kind of a bitch, and Buck loves him so fucking much he could choke on it. “That’s good. She only met her fiancé in the last year, right?”

“I think so.”

Eddie nods, satisfied. He finishes the last of his croissant, wiping his hands on his napkin, like he’s not about to dive back into the pastry bag within ten minutes. Buck absently sets a timer in his head.  “Okay, so we got together two years ago,” he says. “We’ll pick a random date—I don’t know, May 13^th.” His eyebrows come together as he mentally parses through the months. “What’s our catalyst? What made us stop dancing around each other?”

“You got your sexy new therapy haircut,” Buck says.

Eddie snorts. “Yeah, okay,” he says, like Buck’s kidding. “I guess if we want to keep it realistic, we can just say that we had a tough year and we had to lean on each other a lot throughout. And from there it just kind of… happened.”

Buck’s throat feels thick. “I like the haircut story better.”

His eyes are still on the road, but in his peripheral he sees Eddie glance at him, expression fond. Buck’s heart thumps, a little. “Fine, you can tell the haircut story,” Eddie says. “We’ll merge them. Hard year and also I got a haircut.”

Buck snorts, maybe a little hysterically. “You should get that on a T-shirt. I had a shit year and all I got was this haircut.”

Eddie laughs. “And you still fell for it, anyway.”

Buck’s heart fucking stops for a second before he realises Eddie’s referencing their imagined story. “Yeah, well. Men who actively work on their mental health is super sexy.”

“Mm,” Eddie says, lips pressed together in the way that Buck knows he’s fighting a smile. Good, he thinks he’s kidding. He doesn’t need to know that seeing Eddie sat at the kitchen table frowning down at his therapy homework—a worksheet about watershed moments in his life—sprung Buck to half-chub. It’s one of his more confusing boners, to be honest, although maybe it’s also just Eddie, who is beautiful existing even ordinarily on a dining chair chewing on the end of a Bic. “Okay, so we’ve been together for two years, we got together on May 13^th because we were spending so much time with each other in recovery, we kissed in your kitchen. Do we live together?”

Buck laughs. “They’re not gonna ask us if we live together, Eds.”

“They might,” Eddie says. “We’ll say yes. It’s not like we’ve never lived together before.”

Oh, yeah—after the shooting, and then again, during the pandemic. Buck probably would have even let Taylor seize his apartment without much argument if only because he knew Eddie would offer up his couch without a question. It’s probably the most selfish thought Buck’s ever had, and every time he visits Eddie’s now and sees it the feeling that bubbles in his throat is half sour, half wistful. “That’s true,” Buck says.

“Also, we’re probably going to have to—you know. Physically sell it.”

Buck blames it on Eddie’s legs for looking so good encased in his dress pants, but he says, confused, “You mean, like, with money?”

Eddie laughs. “I mean PDA, Buck.”

“Oh.” Yeah, that was not Buck’s finest moment. Recognising Eddie’s thighs are something of a road hazard, Buck forcibly pulls his eyes away. “Right, yeah. Uh, well—is there anything you don’t want to do?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, dude.” Buck glances at him. Eddie’s already watching him, eyes soft. “I mean—I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. And I know you said you were okay with it,” he adds, when he sees Eddie open his mouth, “and I trust you, but… I mean, I was still scared shitless even months after I came out to everyone. And—you know, like I said, you’ve always been braver than I am, but I just want to, you know. Make sure that I’m not pressuring you into anything.”

He’d been comfortably out as bisexual since his early twenties, but he still remembers the first time he’d been kissed by a man in public, not just in a shadowy club or the safety of an apartment. His chest had tightened a little, palms clammy around the shoulders of the guy he’d been casually seeing, and for the rest of the day he’d walked with a tightness to his spine that he hadn’t had since high school, when he played football and braced himself for tackles.

And it’s been nearly a decade since he first kissed a dude and thought, how about that, but this is still new for Eddie—as in, just this year new. He still visibly braces himself too whenever he mentions men in romantic contexts at the firehouse, still hesitates a little before using male pronouns. Buck does trust him when he’d said in the kitchen that he wouldn’t have offered if he wasn’t totally okay with it, and maybe it’s different, playing a part that you don’t mean as opposed to a declaration of genuine love (and fuck, if that one isn’t a hit straight to the solar plexus), but the last thing he wants to do is force his best friend to hold his hand in public to pettily stick it to his ex-girlfriend if it’s going to make him uncomfortable.

Eddie’s eyes are gentle. “You’re not,” he says. “You could never make me uncomfortable, Buck. I trust you with me.”

Somehow this hurts more than just I trust you. New mentally healthy Eddie is fucking sneaky, now—sometimes Buck doesn’t even know he’s been therapised until hours later. He wonders, vaguely, if Frank’s therapy homework is disarm Buck. “I know,” he says, because before they were ever friends, ever co-parents, ever intrinsically, ingrainedly, inextricably tangled in each other’s lives, they were partners on the field. Trust came before pretty much anything else. “But I’m also pretty sure you’d be opposed if I tried to have sex with you on the wedding cake.”

Eddie blinks. “I mean,” he says, after a moment where Buck considers the merits of just swan-diving out the car into oncoming traffic, “wouldn’t everyone?” Then, like he’s almost afraid of the answer, “Have you… had sex on a wedding cake before?”

Buck actually has to think about this. “I had sex with a wedding cake decorator once,” he offers, finally. That had been kinda fun—she’d tasted like spun sugar, and afterwards he found a Winnie the Pooh fondant decal on his asscheek.

“Not the same thing, man,” Eddie says, with a laugh. “But okay, I get your point. Though I’m not paying this much for the Buckley Boyfriend Experience for you to try and get it on with me on a cake. I’d think it at least comes with a hotel room deal.”

“You’re not paying anything, asshole,” Buck says, and tries not to fixate on hotel room. If ‘disarm Buck’ was Eddie’s therapy homework he’s doing a fucking good job of it. “Okay, so, what are you thinking?”

Eddie thinks about this for a moment. He hasn’t shaved in a couple of days, and Buck wonders which cosmic being he pissed off this bad that means he has to get through a wedding with a stubbled Eddie pretending to be in love with him. “I’m okay with the usual stuff,” he says. “You know, hand-holding, hands on backs, that kind of thing. We pretty much do that anyway. I’m—I’m okay with cheek kisses, and stuff.”

“And stuff,” Buck repeats, highly amused.

Eddie’s cheeks are a little flushed. “I don’t know, man! Usual couple stuff. I don’t mind doing that.”

“Don’t mind?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I am comfortable and okay with holding your hand in public, Buck,” he deadpans. “I will not run out screaming if you kiss my cheek.”

“I’m just making sure,” Buck protests, but Eddie’s smiling at him, his kitchen smile, something warm and small and private that he only gives Buck whenever he’s being indulgent, and Buck finds himself smiling back. “Anything else?”

“Well—” And at this, for the first time since getting in the car, Eddie looks almost… embarrassed. He coughs. “Are you okay with kissing?”

“Like,” Buck clarifies, unnecessarily, “on the mouth?”

Eddie nods.

“Uh.” Now’s Buck’s turn to flush red. Christ, it’s like whatever cosmic being put Eddie in that stubble and his front seat is actively trying to kill him. “Are… you okay with it?”

Eddie gives him the bitch eyebrows, but he’s fighting a smile, like Buck being flustered is amusing. It’s good to know that one of them is having fun here. “I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t okay with it, Buck.”

“Okay,” Buck sasses, and Eddie laughs. “But you’ve never kissed a dude before. Don’t you want it to be, like… with someone you care about?”

“I care about you,” Eddie says.

Buck wants to cup his head between his hands and—do something. Kiss him, maybe. Or bang it hard on the steering wheel. “You know what I mean.”

“Sure,” Eddie says easily. “But I trust you; I care about you. If you end up being my first gay kiss then so what? Besides, I’m thirty-five—I’m a little too old to be caring about first kisses. But if you’re not comfortable—”

“It’s not that,” Buck says quickly. Of course he wants to kiss Eddie—that’s not even a question. But it would be completely taking advantage in a way that even hand-holding or enjoying the feel of my boyfriend Eddie in his mouth could never be. It would be everything he’d been dreaming of, but he’d never feel good about it. He can’t let himself be this selfish.

Besides, quitting loving Eddie after knowing what he tasted like would pretty much be impossible.

“I just… I don’t know, man,” he continues, quieter. “I still feel like you might regret it if I’m your first. Don’t you want it to mean something?”

“You’re my best friend. That means something.”

The kiss/head-banging urge comes back, a little more intensely. “Eddie…”

“Okay, how about this,” Eddie says. “We’ll play it by ear, okay? We’ll just see what the situation demands of us and we’ll roll with the punches. Who knows—we might not even have to hold hands, let alone to kiss. And we can—I don’t know, introduce a codeword, if either of us feel uncomfortable.”

Buck still feels all tangly inside, but he has to smile a little at that. “A codeword?”

“I don’t know how else to convince you I’m okay with this,” Eddie says softly, and Buck’s lips twist, wryly. He doesn’t know how to convince Eddie this has nothing to do with him and everything to do with Buck. “Come on, pick a word. Something we don’t say in casual conversation. Like tree frog.”

Buck narrows his eyes. Eddie grins guilelessly back.

“Not tree frog,” Buck says. “But maybe… honey.”

“You don’t want me to call you honey?”

“My parents used to call each other honey,” Buck says. “It’s… I don’t know. I don’t think I could ever call someone it, now.”

Eddie nods. “Okay,” he says. “Honey. That’s our codeword. If either of us feel uncomfortable, we just say honey.”

“Deal.”

They bump fists over the gearshift. Eddie’s hand is warm against his; Buck bets if he kissed him right now he’d taste of pastry and sugar.

Instead of doing that, he just says, “Can you pass me a croissant?” and, “I made a playlist for this car ride specifically” and pulls up the Encanto soundtrack, only because he knows Eddie hates it from Christopher insisting it plays twenty-four-seven around the Diaz household. Eddie passes him the croissant, groans at the music choice and fights Buck for the aux cord, and as he laughs Buck tries not to quantify every moment with a countdown timer.

*

The wedding is taking place in little church up in Anaheim Hills, something dusty-bricked and surrounded on all sides by grass and trees. There’s a little tent further up where Buck can only assume the dinner will take place, but as he and Eddie trek up the hill from the car park, he can see that the gentle stream of guests is being directed into the church.

He hasn’t been nervous even once in the lead-up—he means, when was the last time he saw Ali? Four years? Five?—but for some reason as he and Eddie approach he feels his palms get a little damp. He’s unsure if it’s seeing her again, or the fact that as soon as they step inside the church he and Eddie will be boyfriends. (He spares one thought to his vaguely Protestant parents and has the urge to let out a hysterical laugh.) He doesn’t realise that he’s fallen quiet until Eddie’s fingers gently slip around his wrist, and he looks up.

“Hey,” Eddie says, soft. His eyes are careful, warm. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah,” Buck says; forces himself to exhale. Some of the tension leaves his shoulders. “Sorry. Just got a little in my head.”

Eddie gently squeezes his wrist. “It’s normal to be nervous about seeing her again.”

Buck doesn’t think that’s it, but he lets Eddie believe it, only because the alternative is I’m nervous to know what it’s like to hold your hand and have to give you up tomorrow. But Eddie’s always been uncanny when it comes to reading him, because the circle of his fingers around his wrist gently slips down to his palm, lacing their fingers together. Buck’s kinda clammy, but Eddie doesn’t say a word, just squeezes.

“We can do this,” he says. “We’ve done so many more terrifying things.”

“Think I’d rather be in a burning building, actually,” Buck says, just to make Eddie laugh. He squeezes their joined hands again, and then tugs him forward.

“Come on,” Eddie says. “Let’s schmooze.”

As they draw nearer the church, Buck realises he recognises the woman stood at the door, welcoming people in: Ali’s sister Kate, whom he and Ali used to grab lunch with every now and then back when they were together. He’s assuming Kate knew he was coming, but he still feels almost disconcerted when they come closer and her eyes light in familiarity.

“Buck!” she says, when they draw near enough. The fact her smile is so genuine alleviates the tiny insane part of Buck’s brain that wondered if he’d been invited on accident. “Hey, so glad you could make it.”

“Me, too,” Buck says. Eddie squeezes his hand, just once, and Buck remembers he’s there too. “Uh, Eddie, this is Ali’s sister Kate. Kate, this is my, um…” His mouth, traitorously, dries up, and he can only really look a little helplessly at Eddie, unable to get his mouth to form the words my boyfriend. Luckily Eddie just smiles amusedly at him, and says to Kate, “Eddie. Nice to meet you, Kate.”

“You too,” Kate says, but the way her eyes do an approving once-over, and then flick to Buck with a raised eyebrow, tells him that the nature of their relationship isn’t lost on her. “We’ll catch up later?”

“Of course,” Buck says, and when she passes him a programme she shoots him a wink. He feels the back of his neck heat, and Eddie is absolutely smirking as Buck tugs him down the aisle to their seats in the pews. “Well, that went well.”

“My, um?” Eddie teases as they sit.

Buck groans, and presses his forehead, briefly into Eddie’s shoulder. “I panicked, okay.”

“I think she bought it, anyway.”

“The hand-holding might have been a tip-off.”

“Mm,” Eddie says, at which point Buck realises they’re still holding hands. Eddie presumably realises this at the same time, because he immediately loosens his grip, and ordinarily, Buck would let him go: just leave his lonely empty hand starfishing a little on his thigh before tucking it away and ordering himself to behave. But it’s his last day, and he’s letting himself be greedy, letting himself take more of Eddie than he normally would—so he reaches out and snags his hand back, linking their fingers together and resting it atop his thigh. Eddie glances at him.

“Can’t slip once, right?” Buck says. It’s the flimsiest of excuses—they’re alone in a pew, near the back, shoulder to shoulder, and their entangled hands are mostly obscured from view except for the non-existent people sat next to them—but he can’t even bring himself to care. He wants to hold Eddie’s hand, so he’s going to hold Eddie’s hand.

And maybe Eddie gets that, or maybe he actually believes Buck’s bullshitting, because he squeezes their linked fingers, keeps them on Buck’s leg, and with his spare hand takes the programme and opens it. Buck takes the other side, and they hold the programme between them each with one hand, the other holding each other, and Buck tries not to think, we can do this forever. We can hold hands for the rest of our lives because then both our spares form another pair for us to hold programmes or children or another part of each other.

He's reminded, at once, of one of the 118 picnics, where Bobby brought out a grill and he and Michael made everyone burgers with a jalapeño relish that Buck still dreams about to this day. (Bobby also refuses to give him the recipe, citing Nash family secrets; Buck’s currently got May in on a long con to get it out of him.) Anyway, Hen and Karen had been there too, and Buck remembers seeing them across Bobby and Athena’s yard, sat on deck chairs talking to Maddie. Hen’s arm was around Karen’s shoulders, and Karen’s hand on her leg; there was a plate balanced on both of their knees, and Buck had watched as they kept holding each other, just used their free hands to cut up their burger into bite-sized pieces for their new little foster Chloe, Hen with the fork and Karen with the knife like a cutlery tag-team.

He’d thought about it a lot, especially before he and Taylor broke up, when she’d take him to events and joke at the table to her friends how all he was good for was against-the-wall sex. She wouldn’t hold his hand at the table, but sometimes she’d trace her foot up his calf underneath it if she was feeling frisky. He thinks about it even more now that they’re no longer together. He wonders when someone will love him enough not to let go of his hand.

For now, he stays holding Eddie’s, holding the programme, and pretends he means it.

*

The wedding ceremony is beautiful—of course it is: Ali Martin designs buildings for a living, it wasn’t going to be anything less than show-stopping. Kyle Pittsman ends up being a tall, reedy-looking man in glasses who’d probably tower over even Buck, and Ali’s hair is back to blond, touching her shoulders and clipped back on one side with an array of sparkly butterfly-shaped pins. She looks truly beautiful, and as she and Kyle share their first kiss as Pittsman-Martin (Buck called it) all he can feel is happy for her.

He spares one thought towards Taylor, and tries to imagine him attending her wedding in a couple of years; finds he can’t. He and Ali had been good friends with not a lot of chemistry; he and Taylor had fantastic chemistry, but they weren’t friends. He thinks only one of those arrangements leads to genuine friendship down the line, and, well. It’s Ali’s wedding he’s attending now.

He can’t really find himself to be all that sad about it.

After they’ve promised to love each other through sickness and health—Buck actually deserves financial compensation for not looking at Eddie during, like, seriously—sickness and health, it’s like they were fucking written for them—Buck needs to dunk his head in an ice bucket—and shared their first kiss as a married couple, the wedding party all meander outside for canapes and photos. Eddie’s hand finds Buck’s back, sliding low around his waist, and Buck’s between his shoulder blades.

“That was a nice ceremony,” Eddie says.

Buck glances at him. His eyes are a little distant. “Thinking about your own wedding?”

“A little.”

“What was it like? Did you have turtle doves and an ice sculpture? On an entirely unrelated note, if yes, do you still have the mould somewhere?”

Eddie laughs, and his eyes clear. “No, nothing like that. We did it in our backyard. Shannon’s mom wanted her to wear her wedding dress but she was already showing by then so she couldn’t fit. Sophia threw rice. Mom cried.”

Buck raises his eyebrows. “Tears of joy, right?”

Eddie snorts. “Yeah, exactly.” They drift toward a standing table with flutes of champagne; Buck still needs to drive home, but free alcohol, right? “What about Maddie’s? How was that?”

“God.” Buck tips his head back, trying to remember. It was so long ago. “I drove up to Boston for it. I was… what, seventeen, I think?”

“Your parents didn’t come with?”

It’s Buck’s time to snort now. “Yeah, no. They thought she was making a mistake.” Eddie’s hand squeezes his hip, just once, and Buck eases. “I mean, it was a beautiful wedding. Something kinda like this—you know, big church, white dress, the whole thing. Doug’s parents paid for it, so you know they didn’t cut corners. Pretty sure we had lobster at the reception.”

“Christ,” Eddie says, with a laugh. “My abuela made tamales. Shannon’s dad bought us a cake from the store.”

“Did it say Happy Birthday?”

“It said congratulations, but there was a cap and gown on it, so…” Buck laughs as well. “No, it was just plain white. I don’t think any of the adults really wanted to acknowledge it; the baker probably asked what he wanted to be piped on the top and he didn’t say anything, just to curb the shame of knowing his nineteen-year-old got knocked up out of wedlock.”

“Jesus,” Buck says, softly, sobering a little. “I forget you guys were that young.”

“Wear condoms, kids,” Eddie says, but a little wry. Buck gets it—his textbook teen mistake gave him one of the greatest joys of his life. Buck’s, too, but he can’t think about that at an actual wedding or he might just cry. “I don’t know. I think I’d kinda like something like this.”

Buck’s breath catches, just a little. “A wedding?”

“Yeah.” Eddie shrugs, but his face is completely unselfconscious. Christ, but does therapy look good on him. “I don’t know. Me and Shannon’s wedding… it wasn’t ours, you know? I think the only thing we had control over was the music. And honestly, if she’d never fallen pregnant, I don’t know if we ever would have even gotten married. But truly committing to someone makes it worth it, right? I don’t know if I’d want the church, or, well, the white dress—” Buck laughs a little, mostly because the alternative is bursting into tears. “But a ceremony with friends and family would be really nice.”

“Yeah,” Buck says, through a tongue that feels three sizes too big for his mouth. “That sounds nice.”

“I’d just need to get a husband first.” Eddie then looks at him, as though he hasn’t just done the figurative equivalent of putting his heart through a meatgrinder. Buck doesn’t blurt you have me, but it’s a near thing. “How about you?”

“How about me what?”

“Are you a big wedding kind of guy?”

I’m an anything kind of guy if it’s you. “Well,” Buck says, and then he pauses. “Actually, I don’t know.”

“No?”

“I think I was, once upon a time.” He’d always loved grand gestures: used to think there was no sweeter or surer declaration of love. His promposal to his high school girlfriend Tasha had involved half the marching band and most of the cheerleading squad; he broke onto the roof of a hotel to set up a candlelit picnic dinner for a girl he’d been hooking up with during his brief stay in Poughkeepsie. But then he got older, and experienced his first proper adult relationship with Abby, and had trainwreck after trainwreck since, and now he’s in love with his best friend, and even as he looks at him now, the handsome line of his nose, his kind eyes, all he can think is that the most romantic evening would be any evening spent with Eddie at home.

Eddie is watching him. “And now?”

“I don’t know,” Buck says. When you’re at your worst, and they’re at their worst… “I guess now I think I just like keeping things simple.”

Eddie’s eyes are soft, and almost liquid-clear. Buck wishes he could know what he was thinking. Then Eddie laughs a little, shaking his head and breaking whatever strange heaviness had descended upon them, and takes a sip of his champagne. “So what you’re saying is you didn’t learn from how unbearable Chimney was after Bobby and Athena got married in private.”

“Well, Chim would come, duh,” Buck says. “He’s my brother-in-law. Technically. He and Maddie are still figuring it out. But he’d be there because Maddie would be there too.”

Eddie’s eyes are bright. “Just Chim and Maddie?”

“Bobby, too. Need someone to cater for free.” Eddie snorts so hard Buck’s pretty sure champagne comes through his nose. “Which would mean Athena would come too, and Harry and May. I suppose Hen as well, and I guess if she insists, Karen and Denny can come. I guess Ravi’s kinda growing on me too.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, which, fair. They had a rocky beginning, but now Buck loves Ravi. Ravi seems to only tolerate him in return, but Buck’s got a multi-step plan to them becoming good friends. He’s thinking of proposing a joint TikTok account. “Uh-huh.”

“And of course, Chris,” Buck continues. “Need a best man, don’t I?”

“And that’s it?”

“Can’t really think who I’m missing out on.”

“Just think who’s holding your hand right now and doing you a really big, really generous favour.”

“Not ringing any bells, sorry.” Buck strokes one hand consideringly up the line of Eddie’s back, delights a little in how he shivers with it, and then pretends to have a realisation. “Oh! Oh—this is awkward.” He pulls a face. “You thought…”

“You’re such an asshole,” Eddie laughs, but he bumps them a little closer, hand in the dip of Buck’s spine, and Buck’s a little helpless against it, legs moving against their volition. “Not a wedding guest. The disrespect.”

“Well, of course you wouldn’t be a guest,” Buck’s mouth says, without really thinking, and Eddie’s face stills a little, eyes widening. Buck has one moment to think fuck before Eddie says, quietly, “I wouldn’t?”

And Buck—Buck has been convinced for years that his being in love with Eddie has been tragic and unrequited, the kind of sad private thing that he can only keep to himself, close and nervous-spined in his ribcage, but Eddie’s voice right now—the way he said, I wouldn’t? not like he was confused, but more the opposite, like he knew exactly where he’d be—is almost—

Could maybe be—

Buck looks at Eddie, and Eddie looks at Buck, and Buck thinks, is he…? Hope’s dangerous at this point, but Buck’s about to break his own heart anyway, and in an insane, mad surge of bravery, he says, “Actually—”

“Buck!”

Buck whirls around so fast he’s surprised he doesn’t get whiplash, dropping his hand from Eddie’s back as though he’s been burned. Eddie glances at him, sharply, but Buck doesn’t look back at him—can’t, without properly comprehending the fact he was about to fucking confess to him—and instead watches as Ali’s sister Kate approaches, holding the hand of a man Buck can only assume to be her husband. Her spare hand is caught in a wave, and Buck lifts his own so it’s not tempted to curl back into the tempting breadth of Eddie’s shoulders.

Fuck. Fuck. His body is still shivery with anticipation, but the receding kind that’s leaving him feeling small and kinda stupid.

What was he thinking?

“Buck, hi,” Kate says again, when she gets near enough. “Sorry, I tried to catch you earlier but Mark insisted on doing the rounds.”

Mark smiles a little sheepishly. Up close, Buck kind of recognises him; they’d double-dated a few times, he and Ali and Kate and Mark. Mark hadn’t said much, mostly just sat back and let his wife do all the talking. Or, girlfriend, back then. They’re sporting matching wedding rings now. “That’s okay,” Buck says. “Eddie and I were just getting acquainted with the champagne tower.”

“Oh, don’t mind if we do,” Kate says, and Buck hands her two flutes with his free hands. Eddie’s is still in the dip of his back, and Buck burns. “Have you guys tried the hors d’oeuvres? They’re coming around on trays and are to die for.”

In his peripheral, Eddie smirks a little, and despite himself Buck has bite down on his own. “Uh, not yet.”

“Well, keep an eye out,” Kate says. Ali once told Buck that Kate could probably talk for Team USA, and he kinda gets it now. “Mark, you remember Buck. Ali’s ex, the firefighter who saved her in that quake.”

“Oh, yes,” Mark says, a little awkward.

“And this is Eddie,” Kate continues, casting a significant look her husband’s as though silently telling him not to say anything about Buck’s change in proclivity from Ali. “Buck’s partner.”

She probably uses partner because she’s unsure whether Eddie is Buck’s boyfriend or husband—and doesn’t that send something delicious down his spine—but Buck’s heart skips a beat anyway. He’s been referred to as Eddie’s partner more times than he can count, but they’ve all been within the contexts of work: Buck and Eddie, partners on the field. But hearing it like this, away from the firehouse, warms Buck from the inside out—because even away from the ambiguity of whatever thin line they’re crossing today, there’s no better word for what Eddie is to Buck other than partner. They’re not just friends; boyfriend feels fantastic in his mouth, but still a little trite, and with a rapidly-approaching expiry date. Husband is probably the closest word, and—yeah, they’re nowhere close.

But partner—yeah. Eddie is Buck’s partner, on and off the field, the two of them as an inextricable unit, from now until whenever Eddie says so. Buck’s good with that.

“Oh,” Mark says, and then again, “oh,”, poorly disguising his surprise and becoming suddenly, incredibly interested in his champagne. “That’s nice.”

Buck feels Eddie’s hand on his back tense. “Thanks,” he says, a little shortly. Despite himself, and the fact his blood is still pumping from the adrenaline of nearly telling him how he felt and leaving him a little light-headed and cornered, Buck throws all caution to the wind and slides his hand around his waist, underneath his jacket, hand framing his ribs. He taps his fingers: one, two. Their on-duty signal for I’ve got you.

And maybe it’s his imagination, but he thinks Eddie eases a little.

Kate elbows Mark. “Sorry about him,” she says, “he’s from Mississippi,” and Mark has the decency to look a little apologetic. “Eddie, you and I didn’t get to say hello to each other properly earlier. It’s good to meet you.”

Eddie blinks a little, but Buck feels the rest of the tension leave his body, hand still splayed against his ribs. Eddie is solid and warm through his shirt; Buck absently swipes his thumb back-and-forth, just once, before realising what he’s doing, and freezes. “You too,” he says, and uses his free hand to shake the proffered one Kate is offering.

“You’re very good-looking, I must say,” Kate tells him, and both Buck and Eddie blink. Mark looks like this is just another regular Wednesday for him. “Sorry, that’s not a come-on, I’m a model scout. I’m very attuned to handsome men. Do you tweeze your eyebrows?”

Buck bites down on a hysterical bark of laughter. Up until recently, Eddie used two-in-one shampoo and conditioner and used the same razor head for a year. Does he tweeze his eyebrows. Hen would hoot.

Eddie says, slowly, “Uh. No?”

“Hm,” Kate says. “You have a good interocular distance. And a strong nose. Do you have Scandinavian roots?”

Eddie blinks, but this one is kinda impressed. Buck vaguely remembers he doing something similar to him when they’d first met, which was the first time he discovered he had German ancestry. “My mother’s Swedish.”

“I thought so.”

“Honey,” Mark says. “Not in public, please.”

“I’m paying compliments,” Kate says, but she settles anyway, rolling her eyes affectionately when Mark looks down at his champagne again. “So, Eddie, what is it you do?”

“I’m a firefighter.”

“Oh, is that how you both met?”

Showtime. “Yeah, Eddie got assigned to our fire station,” Buck says, squeezing Eddie’s hip. Eddie glances at him, so fondly that Buck kinda cracks in half with it. To bottle that look and bring it out on sad days. “We had a bit of a rocky start, but now I can’t imagine life without him.”

It’s maybe a little too honest, but it’s worth it, for the way Eddie traces a knuckle up his spine. Buck blames that, for what he says next.

“One of Eddie’s first shifts was actually the earthquake where Ali and I met,” he says, and it’s only when Eddie stiffens a little and Mark’s eye widen from where he’s busying himself with his champagne that Buck realises the implications. “Not that—not that our relationship was anything other than platonic—”

“Buck,” Kate interrupts, amused. “It’s okay. I’m not going to smite you for moving on.”

“We got together two years after Ali and I broke up,” Buck hastens to add, even if Kate is smiling. He’s cheated once before, and he still feels shit about it. He’s not going to make that a second time, even if it’s only in the head of a woman he’ll probably never see again.

“Baby,” Eddie says, with a warm laugh in his ear, and Buck’s knees immediately turn to goo. “It’s okay. I think she gets it.”

Christ. Buck is still moving on after this, but he thinks he’ll allow himself one last Eddie wank before then. You know, now that all the hairs on his neck know what it is like to stand on end because Eddie’s low raspy voice murmured baby into his ear.

Kate is watching them with something like amusement and affection on her face. “I get it,” she says. “Mark and I—we go way back. We knew each other in middle school. But we only got together in college because he stopped insisting on buzzing his hair and I finally dumped my terrible high school boyfriend.”

Next to her, Mark shakes his head a little, like this terrible high school boyfriend still haunts him.

“So trust me,” she says. “I know a thing or two about falling in love with a best friend. You don’t even realise it’s happened, do you? You just wake up one day and realise you haven’t gone on a date in a year and one of the girls in your Psych lecture wants to set you up with her brother, but you’d just rather be with your best friend watching zombie movies and getting platonically fingered.”

“You don’t need to tell them that part, dear,” Mark says, faintly.

Kate waves him off. Buck sort of just feels like the ache is hollowing deeper and deeper inside him. He’s aware he’s still holding Eddie’s side beneath his suit jacket, feeling his pulse in the palm of his hand, inches away from his beating heart, and Eddie’s hand is still on his back. He’s turning thirty-one next summer; he hasn’t gone on a date in a year. And tomorrow he’s forcing himself to get over the man he’s been in love with since he learned what meaningful love was, which means he’s reinstalling dating apps, and visiting bars alone, and maybe adopting an animal, like a cat, or a turtle, because they get cool terrariums and he has too much empty space in his apartment.

But it doesn’t mean that every single first date he goes on for the next two, three, five years, he’s not going to be sitting at a restaurant table and wishing instead that he was at Eddie’s kitchen sink, washing the big pot and talking about tree frogs.

“Yeah,” is all he can say.

Something about his voice must betray his heart because Eddie looks at him, concerned, but before he can say anything Kate’s eyes land on something over his shoulder and light up. “Oh, and speak of the devil!” she says.

And before Buck has the chance to make a break for it, Ali (Pittsman)-Martin is gliding in front of him for the first time in four years.

She’s even more beautiful up close. At some point over the course of the afternoon she’d changed into a different dress to the one she wore down the aisle, because she’s now wearing a wine-red cocktail dress, something that shows off the flattering lines of her collarbones, and her eyes are dusted distractingly in a grey shimmer that brings out the green in them. “Hey, stranger,” she says to her sister, and the two hug. “How long has it been, twenty minutes?”

“Must be so,” Kate says gravely, as they pull back. “I was just getting reacquainted with your ex. He’s brought his very handsome firefighter boyfriend.”

For the first time, Ali notices Buck and Eddie, and does something almost like a double take. Buck doesn’t know what he’s expecting her to do—somehow is half-anticipating the awkward, grimacing small-talk that always accompanies bumping into an ex even though she’d invited him—but then she smiles, something genuine, like she’s glad to see him, and something settles a little in his chest. “Buck,” she says. “Hey. It’s good to see you.”

She sounds like she means it. Buck pulls himself together and says, “Yeah, you too.”

It is. Good to see her, that is. He’d harboured some resentment towards her in the year afterwards, on days when his leg would flare up and he’d sit at the bottom of his stairs unable to reach his own fucking bed and needing someone to blame, so blaming the woman who got him the damned apartment in the first place who didn’t stick around long enough to help him move around inside of it. But he’s grown since then, gained an almost-father, an almost-son and an almost-partner, and now face-to-face with her he’s mostly just happy for her.

“I think that’s our cue,” Kate says, and steals one last flute of champagne from the tower. “Al, I’ll chat to you later. Buck, lovely to see you again—good to meet you, Eddie.”

“You, too,” Eddie says, and she raises her glass at him as she swans away, pulling Mark with her. Now it’s just Buck, Eddie and Ali alone. Buck and Eddie’s arms are still around each other, and Buck’s not sure he can let go if he tried.

Just for that, he takes another glass of champagne. When at an open bar, right?

There is a moment of silence as the three of them glance at each other, before Ali says, “Okay, we’re not making this awkward. Buck—are you good with hugs?”

“I’m great with hugs,” Buck says, a little surprised, but when she holds open her arms he steps, a little reluctantly, away from Eddie’s embrace to wrap his own arms around her. She’s so little—he’s gotten so used to only embracing people as bulky as he is in the past year that he’d forgotten what it’s like to hug someone half his size. It’s short, friendly, warm, and when she pulls back she’s smiling.

“I’m really glad you could make it,” she says.

“Me, too,” he says. He means, his heart has sort of repeatedly been stepped on ever since Eddie first offered to come with in his kitchen all those weeks ago, but it’s been mostly self-inflicted, and he gets to walk around holding Eddie and calling him his partner, so—life could be worse. As though he can hear his thoughts, Eddie puts his arm back around his waist when he steps away from Ali, and Buck kinda warms from top to toe.

Not that he hadn’t expected him to, but it’s nice, is all.

“This is a great venue, by the way,” he adds. “And you look beautiful.”

Her smile softens a little, like she hadn’t expected the compliment, but is glad for it. “Oh, well—thank you. You don’t clean up too bad yourself.”

“Yeah, from the ankles up you almost look respectable,” Eddie says, because he’s an old man who can’t fathom that wearing sneakers with suits is in and kinda cool, actually, and yes, he’s having to wear the dumb half-socks, but at least the one benefit of still living alone is that no one has to see them.

“It’s a look,” Buck argues. “Go on TikTok, all the kids are doing this.”

“You’re thirty.”

“Just because I didn’t go viral last year,” Buck says, because honestly Eddie’s ego has been doing dangerous things since he got his own Famous Birthdays page. Eddie grins at him, eyes bright, and Buck is going to say something else when he remembers Ali is still there, and glances at her.

Her gaze is a little assessing, flicking between the two of them like a tennis match. He realises, belatedly, that he should probably do what Eddie came here for, which is introductions. “Uh—Ali, you remember Eddie.”

“Eddie Diaz,” Ali says, but when she holds out her hand, her eyes are a little bright, too. “I don’t think I could ever forget the man who saved me from falling from a twenty-storey building.”

Eddie ducks his head, ears pink. “It’s good to see you, Ali,” he says, and shakes her hand. His side flexes under Buck’s hand with the movement; Buck is definitely not thinking SFW thoughts right now. “Thank you for letting me tag along.”

“Of course,” Ali says. Her genuine amiability is honestly kinda surprising. Or maybe Buck just dated Taylor for too long. “Honestly, between us, I was actually really glad when I saw Buck RSVP’d a plus-one. I mean, everyone thought I was crazy anyway for wanting to invite him, but we’re friends, and I wanted him to be here. And seeing that you’d been able to move on too… well, it’s nice.”

Buck smiles a little. In a strange way, he kinda gets her. Especially with relationships that ended amicably, it’s nice to know the world still goes around and they can find love elsewhere. “Well, I’m really happy for you, Ali.”

“Me too,” she says. “In all honesty, I can’t really say I’m surprised to see that you were the plus-one, Eddie. I’d always distantly wondered if you two ever ended up together.”

Oh no, Buck thinks. “Oh?” Eddie says.

“Buck would talk about you all the time,” says Ali, with a laugh. “Eddie’s such a good dad. Eddie’s really strong. Eddie was so good on this rescue today. And even just the way you stepped up after the firetruck accident, in the way I couldn’t, which I’ve never thanked you for. It was just really evident you guys cared about each other a lot.”

Is this what dying feels like?

“I was just doing what anyone would do,” Eddie says. His voice has gone a little stiff, probably at the reminder of the firetruck accident. Buck doesn’t think any of the 118 had ever expected he and Ali to get married, but he knows they still rankle on his behalf at how their relationship ended—Eddie especially. It’s cowardly, is what it is, he’d told Buck one night, Buck sat on his couch with his broken leg elevated, Eddie folding laundry. It’s someone not wanting to stick around when life gets tough. But that’s not how relationships work. You can’t just dip at the first sign of difficulty—that’s not how you forge a strong lasting bond with someone. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if she never has a long-term relationship ever again—

(He’d still been working things through with Shannon at the time. Buck had patiently let him talk it out.)

“Not anyone,” Ali says. “Not me.” Apparently, Buck’s not the only one who went to therapy. Her eyes are gentle, and she reaches out to squeeze his arm. “And I’m really, really sorry about that, Buck. I never got to apologise to you for the way we ended things—or rather, I ended things. It was immature and selfish of me, and I’m really sorry.”

…Buck had come because he heard there was an open bar. Now he’s trying not to cry as Ali’s relatives spin on the dance floor. “It’s okay. Thank you, um, for saying that.”

She squeezes his arm again, and then turns to look at Eddie. “Thank you for stepping in,” she says. “And stepping up. It’s been so many years, so I know that I’m probably just a blip on your radar now, but it… it really means a lot to me, to know that you’ve found happiness, the both of you. I really couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome for you guys.”

I was just doing what anyone would do. Not me. Buck doesn’t let himself read into that. Eddie was just doing what anyone else would do—and their friendship had still been so new, so green at that point. There’s no way it was anything other than Eddie being kind.

No way.

“Well, thank you,” Eddie says, sincerely. “We really appreciate that, Ali.”

“You probably paid so much money for your makeup,” Buck says. “You can’t cry in it.”

“I’ve cried like four times already, this mascara isn’t going anywhere,” Ali says, but she carefully dabs at her damp waterline with the very tip of her fingers anyway, like she’s taking out contacts. Buck’s reminded of Maddie when she was pregnant, who would cry at everything and walked around perpetually smudgy-eyed. It was kinda adorable; at a point he and Chim stopped pointing it out and let her go outside with mascara streaks. “Well, now I need to know everything. How long have you been together? How did it happen?”

Buck looks at Eddie. “You want to take this one, baby?”

The name falls off his tongue mostly by accident. He aches, for how easily it comes, and how hard of a time he’ll have to make it leave.

Eddie rubs Buck’s back a little. “Well,” he says, and Buck braces himself for the story they worked out in the car earlier, the elaborated version of what they’d given Kate and Mark—but then Eddie, fucking Eddie, says, “It was only a while ago.”

Buck’s hand spasms a little against his side. That was… very much not what they’d agreed on.

“You know, we’d been best friends for so long,” Eddie continues. “He’s been in my life—my son’s life—for six years. There’s a lot to lose, there; it’s a lot to risk. But I told one of our friends, a few years ago, tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone. And I guess that’s sort of stayed with me. On the job, we put our lives on the line every single day. We’ve both had our fair share of close calls, me maybe moreso than anyone. And there was a point last year where I was struggling a lot, and wasn’t sure if I even deserved to see the sun rise. But every day Buck was there—looking after my kid, taking him to school, taking me to appointments. He made me feel like I deserved to see the sun; deserved to live to the next day. And I realised I didn’t want to do that without him.”

That wasn’t two years ago. That’s—he’s talking about his PTSD.

That was this year.

“The decision was easy from there,” Eddie says. His hand is still on Buck’s back. Buck’s fingers are numb against his ribs. “I was right—tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone. But I knew I’d be the luckiest man on earth if all the ones I got I could spend with him. And I was tired of waiting. So I told him in my kitchen, after we’d put my son—our son—to bed. And I suppose we just… went from there.”

Buck doesn’t think he can breathe. His blood is a roar in his ears.

He’s vaguely aware of Ali clasping her hands over her heart, telling him, “That’s so lovely, Eddie,” but all he can really concentrate on is every single point he and Eddie are touching; the champagne glass stem in his fingers that he’s a little afraid he’s going to drop. He puts it, a little heavily, back on the table, half-full, and Eddie glances at him.

“Everything okay, baby?” he says, softly. So softly Buck thinks he’s just bleeding all over the floor now.

“I’m okay,” Buck says. He can barely hear his voice over the pounding in his head. “I’m just—I just need the bathroom. Excuse me, Ali,” he says, to her, and she nods at him as he detangles himself from Eddie’s grasp, and steps away. But Eddie takes his arm before he can move far.

“Are you okay?” he says.

“I’m fine,” says Buck. “I’ll just—I’ll meet you after, honey.”

He sees the realisation cross Eddie’s face, and then the beginnings of what looks like complete devastation—but he’s already walking away.

Buck’s not even aware of his legs moving. His head is whirring; he feels like he might be sick. He politely shoulders past people to get to the bathrooms at the back of the tent, which are blessedly empty, and then locks himself in a stall and quietly hyperventilates.

What the fuck. What the fuck.

It’s one thing for the two of them to concoct a believable story in the car, something plausible that made Buck ache all over, but it was fine, it was fine, because it wasn’t for them: it was something they were packaging up and distributing across the wedding tent. Buck could objectively look at it for what it was—a story. That’s all. He’s the one who tortured himself with images of the flush to Eddie’s cheek with steam, the way he always complains about water getting in the washing up gloves, the holes in the toes and heels of Eddie’s socks because he always rewears old pairs until they fall apart.

But this—

If he thought Eddie was capable of it, he’d have thought this cruel.

He doesn’t know why he changed the story. He doesn’t know why he told Ali all that—all about his PTSD and the hard year and how Buck was at his house more than he was his own apartment. That’s not the pre-packaged story they’d agreed on. That was real.  

He made me feel like I deserved to see the sun; deserved to live to the next day. And I realised I didn’t want to do that without him.

Buck’s hands are shaking; he balls them into tight, hurting fists on his thighs. He doesn’t know what to do with this.

If someone asked him if he thought Eddie felt the same way before, he would have said no. It’s fine—it’s something he’s come to terms with. He tortures himself with it, sometimes: reading too much into pats on shoulders and end-of-shift hugs, kitchen laughs and you’re coming home with me tonight, right?, and when Eddie came out there had been something selfish and arrogant in the back of his mind that had thought, could he—might he—?

But he wasn’t, and he didn’t, and Buck is—fine. He’s fine. He’s achieved everything he’s wanted to: he got to hold Eddie’s hand, slip a cold under his suit jacket to steal the warmth from his side, got to hear himself be referred to as boyfriend and partner. Got to call Eddie baby and got to hear Eddie call him baby back. It’s the end of indulgence for him, the harsh reminder that self-care fucking hurts sometimes, but he got everything he wanted. He can move on in peace.

But then—but Eddie—

Buck presses one of his clenched fists into his eye, pushes hard enough until he sees stars.

Someone knocks at the door, politely, and Buck realises he’s been in here having a breakdown for too long. He flushes the toilet though he didn’t use it, steps out the stall and lets a grateful older gentleman in instead, then steps up to the sinks and splashes himself hard in the face with water.

Get it together, man. You have another hour at this thing.

His expression stares back at him, kinda ghoulish in its devastation and dripping water. He wipes his face, nods at himself, and then leaves.

And immediately bumps into Eddie who is waiting outside.

“You can’t use the codeword and run away,” Eddie says quietly, and Buck rubs his forehead. Eddie looks—kinda mad, actually. “That’s not what we designed the codeword for.”

“I didn’t run away,” Buck says. “I needed the bathroom.”

“You were in there for fifteen minutes.”

“Do you want a minute-for-minute breakdown of what I did?”

“Christ, Buck—” And at this Eddie frustratedly pushes himself off the wall he was leaning against, folding his arms. He’s stood only a few feet away from Buck, close enough to touch, probably, but Buck feels every inch between them like they’re canyons. “No. I don’t. I want you to talk to me.”

Buck’s throat feels kinda thick. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Maybe what happened back there?” Eddie steps closer; it’s lodged in Buck’s throat, the words please don’t, but they don’t come out. Eddie’s eyes are so gentle Buck aches, and aches, and aches. He thinks of his knees, perpetually bruised from skateboarding accidents, when he was younger; how he’s experimentally press on the bruises, leave them hurting for days longer than they normally would. He thinks this whole thing could have been avoided if he wasn’t such a masochist who liked poking dirty fingers into wounds and keeping them open and hurting for years on end.

“I mean,” Eddie continues, and his voice is a little quieter now, eyes wide and kinda confused, “was it—was it Ali? Her being there? Or me, was it me, the way I was touching you? I thought—I mean, I don’t know what I thought, but Buck, please—you gotta tell me. We’re meant to be honest and open with each other about these things. You can’t just codeword and run. That’s not how this works.”

He looks… hurt. Buck feels like shit. There was probably a way of navigating this in a way that didn’t hurt both of them, but Buck’s feels a little like a bull in a china shop. No right moves left, now; only wreckage.

“It wasn’t,” he says, and then scrubs a hand across his face. “It wasn’t Ali.”

“So it was something I did.”

Buck crosses his arms across his chest, gripping his elbows. “Why did you tell Ali all that stuff? About us?”

Eddie’s face falters, so infinitesimally Buck almost misses it. Almost. “What?”

“That wasn’t the story we agreed on. We agreed—two years ago, in your kitchen. May 13^th. We agreed on fucking May 13^th, Eddie. You—you told Ali something completely different.”

“So?”

“So? What if she talks to Kate?”

“We barely told Kate anything. And I think Ali has other more important things to be talking to her sister about on her wedding day than her ex-boyfriend.” Eddie frowns at him. “Why are you lying to me? Seriously, what’s this actually about?”

“Why did you tell Ali all that stuff?”

“Buck—”

“No, I’m fucking serious, Eddie.” He feels like he’s trembling all over; he’s gripping his elbows so hard he’s surprised they haven’t shattered in his hands. “Why? Why did you tell her that?”

“Because it’s the truth.”

And. Uh.

“Is that what you want to hear?” Eddie says. He scrubs a hand across his face; he looks tired. He leans against the wall again, as though all his strings have been cut. Buck has lost all feeling in his hands. (What. What. What what what.) “I told her that because it was the truth. Because it was when I realised I was in love with you. Because I’ve—loved you for years, probably since you bitched at me in the gym like a little kid on my first day at the 118, but I didn’t realise it until recently, because I was so focused on trying to make myself better that I didn’t realise what I had in front of me. And then Kate talking about knowing when she was in love with her best friend was rather spending an evening indoors with them than anything in the world, and I just… wanted it.”

Buck can’t quite breathe. “Eddie…”

Eddie powers on, as though he didn’t hear. “I shouldn’t have offered to come with you here, pretending to be your boyfriend—I want to say it was some great show of altruism, but actually I’m just selfish, and I guess I just—wanted to pretend, for an afternoon. Just wanted to know what it would be like to hold your hand. And I think when Kate said that I just… forgot. That it was pretend. So I know it wasn’t the story we planned to tell, and I know that—I know that this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s the truth. So. I’m sorry.”

“Eddie,” Buck breathes. He thinks maybe he fell into the mirror in the bathroom; or maybe he splashed himself so hard he straight up died, and this is what heaven is: standing across from a bright-cheeked Eddie Diaz, twisting his watch around and around on his wrist, because I’ve loved you ringing in Buck’s ears.

Because this isn’t seriously happening. Right?

Eddie looks at him. Buck realises he’s said his name, but he has no follow-up, nothing to offer, because every word he was meticulously, torturously turning over in his head for the softest blow, the quickest kill shot, has disappeared on the tip of his tongue, so all he can do is look back.

He kinda feels like he’s about to die again.

The silence must stretch on too long, because Eddie drops his gaze; twists his watch one more time, before pushing himself up. “I’m sorry, I should go—”

“No,” Buck says quickly. “No, Eddie—”

“I meant it, you know.” Eddie looks at him. The distance between them becomes devastating again. “About how it’s a lot to risk. How there’s a lot to lose. And I—” He swallows, audibly. “I can’t lose you, Buck. And I know that’s selfish, and maybe I’m asking too much of you, but all… all I’m asking is that you give me time, to get over you. You’re still my best friend. You’re still Chris’s best friend. You’re the most important person in my life, and I just—I need you, man.”

“You wouldn’t be a guest at my wedding because you’d be at the altar with me,” Buck blurts.

“…What,” Eddie says.

“Okay, full disclosure,” Buck says, “I was… not expecting to do this now. Or ever. I was—planning on keeping this to myself forever and maybe dying with it. But—earlier. When we were talking, about my wedding, about who I’d want there, and I said you wouldn’t be a guest. You wouldn’t—or at least, not in my head, not every time I’d imagined it. Because every time I imagined it I was marrying you.”

He's probably bright fucking red as he speaks, because he could never have dreamed about ever saying these words aloud, ever verbalising his greatest hope, and now he’s doing it, and Eddie’s stood across from him, cheeks flushed, a small, disbelieving smile spreading across his face, wearing the charcoal-grey suit from Hen’s wedding that Buck kinda wants to peel off his body and put his mouth to every inch of uncovered skin which Eddie might actually let him do.

“So,” he says. “I didn’t codeword out because you made me uncomfortable. I codeworded out because I was scared. Because you were saying all these things, these—beautiful things, and I didn’t want to let myself believe that you meant them. And it hurt too much to be standing there next to you holding your hand and pretending like I was fine.” Eddie is still standing staring at him like he’s not quite letting himself hope that this is real life—Buck’s pretty fuckin’ familiar with that feeling himself—so he musters up every last ounce of bravery he has and bridges the gap between them, taking Eddie’s nervous shaking hands between his own. “You could never lose me over this, Eddie. Honestly, I think you might have the opposite problem.”

Eddie’s smile is fucking breath-taking. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Buck says. “But maybe you should kiss me, just to double check.”

Eddie looks at him for a moment. Then he carefully, gently presses his hand to Buck’s chest; backs him up, slowly, until Buck’s back hits the side of the outhouse. If Buck were any less punch-drunk he might consider that he’s about the last first kiss of his life probably less than a foot away from a dude peeing, but it’s hard to think straight when Eddie’s chest brushes his own, when his hands settle on Buck’s waist, when his dark eyes flicker across Buck’s whole face as if taking him in.

Buck kinda feels like his heart is about to beat out of his fucking chest and into Eddie’s. “I’m literally going grey over here, Diaz—”

Eddie kisses the words straight out of his mouth, and Buck goes fucking boneless. He sighs a little into the kiss, opening his mouth immediately, and he’d maybe feel embarrassed at how nakedly he keens for it, how so very desperately he’s aching for Eddie’s touch, only Eddie’s hands flex around his waist, pushing him harder into the wall, licking into his mouth. Buck’s hands find his hair, his shoulders; Eddie’s pull his shirt from the waistband of his pants, palming the warm skin of his back that his hand had been sitting on the whole fucking day.

He's not planning on kissing anyone else ever again, but he doesn’t think he could even if he wanted to. He kinda feels like he’s about to burst with happiness.

Eddie pulls away, but not far; keeps their foreheads knocked together. “I had a plan, you know,” he says, and Buck would love to respond but he thinks he’s momentarily forgotten human speech. “I was going to do it tonight—I had a speech planned. It was going to be our kitchen confession but real.”

Buck’s brain finally comes back online. “I was just going to die with it,” he says. “Didn’t I say, you were braver than me?”

“More selfish, maybe,” Eddie says. “But you foiled that, so.”

The idea delights Buck. “Here you are instead. Ravishing me outside a men’s bathroom.”

“Maybe you should try being ravishing in other places.”

“Oh, I can show you which other places you can ravish,” Buck leers, and grinds down a little on Eddie’s thigh which has slotted a little between his own. Insultingly Eddie laughs, like that wasn’t the smoothest come-on of his entire life, and kisses him on the nose. Like a child.

It’s hard to be indignant, though, because then Eddie kisses his forehead, his cheeks, his eyelids, and finally his mouth. This one is different from their first kiss: it’s sweeter, almost. Something that they’d give each other before bed, on their way out of the door in the morning and as a hello when they return back in the evening. It’s telling that that makes Buck harder than anything else they’ve done, and maybe Chimney had been right, when he said Buck got off on routines and cohabitation. So what if he’s sprung to half-chub at the thought of Eddie kissing him goodbye in the morning. It’s their future.

“The answer’s yes, by the way,” Eddie says.

Buck’s brain takes a moment to come back online. He doesn’t know how Eddie’s still stringing cogent sentences together. “For what?”

“To being your groom. To being with you at the altar.” Eddie frowns at him, eyes bright. “That was a very bad proposal that you gave me, right?”

“Excuse you,” Buck says, affronted, and then Eddie’s previous statement properly registers. “Wait—really?”

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Did the love confession against the men’s bathroom not tip you off to the fact I kinda want to spend the rest of my life with you?”

He just. Says that. Like it’s a totally regular thing to say that isn’t throwing Buck’s entire world off his axis. An hour ago, he was planning his sad private Eddie send-off, probably with a miserable scroll through their text messages and then a guilty jerk-off, and then indulging himself with General Tso’s take-out—and now he’s got the man of his dreams in his arms tell him he wants to the spend the rest of his life with him. He kinda feels like floating. “A little, but I guess you could remind me again.”

“You’re such a pain in the ass,” Eddie says, laughing against his cheek, and Buck’s arms are still around his shoulders, and he presses the sides of their faces together, feeling the happiest he’s maybe ever been. “I take it back, I never want to see you again—”

“Sorry, we’re engaged now,” Buck tells him gravely, clinging when Eddie tries jokingly pulling back. “Too late. You’re stuck with me.”

“We don’t even have rings.”

“Then we’ll get some on the drive back.”

Eddie tries to pull back again, and Buck lets him; slips his arms down from his shoulders until his hands are framing his face. He can’t count the number of times he’s wanted to cup this face in his hands, and now he gets to, stroking Eddie’s lovely jawline from ear to the gentle cleft in his chin. God, he’s so in love with him. He can’t believe he gets to keep him.

Eddie’s eyes are disbelieving—but a little wary, too, as though he can’t tell whether Buck’s kidding or not. “Wait,” he says, finally. “You’re serious?”

“I’m serious, baby.” Buck kisses him again, just because he can. When he pulls back, Eddie’s face is fucking radiant. “I love you. I’ve loved you for years—probably since I bitched at you like a little kid.” Eddie laughs, a little surprised. “Today was going to be the last day I was going to let myself love you, because I didn’t think it was healthy to keep pining after you for the rest of my life. Now today gets to be the day we start our life together. I’d marry you today if Maddie wouldn’t have my head. I guess I can just make do with the promise that we will.”

“Baby,” Eddie says, eyes a little damp. “I can’t believe you proposed me to me five feet away from a urinal.”

“Are you going to say yes five feet away from the urinal?”

“I’d say yes at the bottom of a coal mine,” Eddie says, and Buck kisses him: because he can. Because he thought he was going to leave here without Eddie, but now he gets to leave holding Eddie’s hand and meaning it and keeping him for the rest of his life.

“I don’t know about you,” Buck says, when they pull away. “But I think I’ve kinda had enough of weddings that aren’t ours right now and sort of want to kiss you someplace where there isn’t a dude taking a shit a metre away. Want to blow this joint?”

Eddie smiles, so widely Buck aches with it—but the good kind of ache, this time. The breaking of ground to allow in new shoots. “I thought you’d never ask.”

(They kiss one last time, though. Just for good luck.)