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Buck still can’t sleep in Eddie’s room.
Unpacking helped, at least with being there during the day. He feels less… haunted. He stops expecting to turn a corner and find Eddie on the other side, stops expecting to be in the kitchen and hear Christopher coming down the hall to ask what’s for dinner. During the day, it feels like Buck’s house with happy memories of his family in every room. He almost thinks if he ran a hand over it, he would be able to feel them engraved in the plaster.
He’s okay until the sun sets, and the lights that Buck moved in aren’t quite as warm and homey as Eddie’s were, and the television isn’t enough to drown out the silence that used to be filled by Eddie breathing beside him on the couch or Christopher in his bedroom talking to his friends. He puts the baseball game on and that makes him feel worse, because he doesn’t like baseball unless Eddie is chattering in his ear about standings and stats and who he thinks is going to win the World Series that year.
He tries sleeping on the couch like he used to, but the mornings after are horrible. He wakes up groggy, caught in a time when this was Eddie’s house, and then he realizes he’s waiting to hear the morning routines of people who aren’t here.
After a week of only being able to sleep in the firehouse bunk room, he goes crawling back to his sister, miserable and exhausted. This time, when she opens the door, she doesn’t smile at his antics or roll her eyes fondly. She tilts her head to the side and says, “Oh, honey,” and ushers him inside.
He spends another week on her couch. He must really look awful, because Chimney doesn’t make fun of him once and Jee-Yun keeps hugging him for seemingly no reason. Which is great, because now he’s muddling up his niece’s joy and letting her pick up on his horrible, awful, bone-deep misery. His nephew’s first encounter with him is probably going to make the kid sad for life.
“Buck,” Maddie says one night just after she gets Jee down to sleep. “I know you miss them, but this – isn’t healthy.”
“I don’t know why I can’t – I still keep expecting them to be there,” Buck says, clutching a throw pillow to his chest. “During the day, I’m fine, but at night, I just – can’t do it.”
“You’ve spent nights there without Eddie before,” Maddie points out. “When he was in the hospital.”
The memory sends a shiver down Buck’s spine. “Yeah, but Christopher was there, and I wasn’t sleeping in Eddie’s room.”
“And now you’re alone,” Maddie says, not unkindly, not in the way it sounds. “Maybe you should move out, Buck. Eddie would understand.”
“No,” Buck says, shaking his head. “I did this so he didn’t have to worry about anything here. I’m not going to make all this worse for him just because I can’t let them go.”
“He wouldn’t want you to make yourself miserable for his sake,” Maddie says. She reaches over and rests a comforting hand on Buck’s arm, squeezing tightly. “Just think about it, okay? It’s killing me to see you like this.”
Buck nods, knowing he won’t entertain the thought at all. She kisses him on the forehead and says goodnight, and he has such a hard time falling asleep that he wonders if it’s the house that’s to blame at all.
–
Eddie calls the next night before Buck can decide if he’s going to get a hotel room or not. As soon as the video call connects, he says, “Woah, what the hell happened to you?”
Buck hasn’t told him about not being able to sleep. Or that he slept with Tommy, and that night was the only one he’s slept through since Eddie left. Or about the conversation they had the next morning.
“I had a long shift,” Buck deflects.
“Looks like you’ve had a couple.”
“You sure know how to make a guy feel special, Eddie,” Buck deadpans, glaring at him through the camera.
Eddie holds one hand up in apology. “Seriously, though. You alright?”
Buck sighs and collapses down on the couch, sprawling over it. Eddie has always had this innate, inexplicable ability to make Buck spill his guts. One look, one question, always timed and phrased perfectly, and whatever carefully crafted facade Buck has put up crumbles at Eddie’s fingertips.
“I’m having a hard time sleeping,” Buck admits. Eddie’s brow immediately creases with worry and his mouth opens, inevitably on an apology, but Buck cuts him off before he can say anything. “It’s fine, Eddie. I’m fine. I’m adjusting to a new place, that’s all.”
“Buck, you can’t do your job if you’re not getting any sleep,” Eddie says.
“I’ve been sleeping at Maddie’s and at the firehouse,” Buck promises.
“You’ve slept in that house a thousand times,” Eddie says. “What’s different now?”
Buck looks away from his phone, picking at a loose thread on his pajama pants for a moment. If he lies, Eddie is going to see through it. And he’s going to keep worrying, and Buck is the last thing that should be on Eddie’s mind at the moment. They shouldn’t be talking about Buck at all. They should be talking about Eddie and Christopher and how things are going in El Paso. But here Buck is, making it about himself again.
“Hey,” Eddie says, soft, startling him from his rapidly moving downward spiral. “You can tell me.”
Buck feels himself choking up despite his best efforts. “I’m not used to being here alone.”
There’s a long beat of silence. Eddie sighs, barely loud enough to be audible. Buck remembers those first weeks after Christopher left for Texas. Eddie was dragging, barely keeping it together, and it took two weeks for him to finally tell Buck that the house was just too empty. The silence ate him alive, kept him awake and staring at the ceiling. Buck went home, packed a bag with enough stuff to stay for the week, and helped Eddie drag his mattress out of the bedroom and into the living room floor.
Eddie slept like a rock for a week. After that, on the nights Eddie couldn’t bear the empty house, Buck would go stay over or Eddie would come to the loft, and they kept each other company across the chasm Christopher left.
“Listen,” Buck says when the silence has stretched on too long to bear. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, alright? Get some sleep.”
“Wait,” Eddie says before Buck can hang up. “Just – take me to bed with you.”
Buck pauses. “What?”
Eddie shakes his head. “Not – Jesus, not like that. I just meant – if it’s bothering you to be alone, then you don’t have to be.”
“Eddie,” Buck says, filled to the brim with so much fondness he’s afraid he might burst. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I can’t sleep here either,” Eddie says. It might be a lie for Buck’s benefit, but it might not, and Eddie will never tell even if he asks. “So it’ll help me, too.”
It can’t make anything worse, Buck thinks. He’s already not sleeping, so it might be nice to have Eddie’s company while he lays and stares at the ceiling until it’s time to take on the next day. “Alright. But you can’t complain about my snoring.”
“I never thought I’d say this,” Eddie says, a grin pulling at his mouth. “But I almost miss your undiagnosed sleep apnea.”
Buck rolls his eyes. “I don’t have sleep apnea.”
“Says you,” Eddie says. As Buck walks through to Eddie’s – his – bedroom, he watches Eddie walk through his new house in El Paso. It’s nicer on the inside than the outside gives away. During the day, there’s plenty of windows and lots of natural light. The wood ceiling is unique. The paint colors of every room Buck watches him pass through are warm and inviting, bright but not overly so. It’s a nice place. Buck wishes he’d been nicer about it when Eddie showed it to him. “You stopped breathing for three seconds that one time.”
“I had the flu, Eddie. I couldn’t breathe through my nose.”
“Sure,” Eddie says, collapsing onto his bed. From this angle, with the phone propped on his chest so Buck can only see his face and the same headboard from LA, it almost feels like he never left.
Then Buck opens the door to the bedroom, and he’s hit with reality all over again. Buck puts his phone on the charger and climbs into bed, rolling over onto his side so he can prop his phone up on the nightstand. “How’s Christopher?”
“Really good, actually,” Eddie sighs, not a completely weightless thing but still relieved. “We’re doing pretty good. I don’t think he likes the house.”
“The outside does have a very Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibe,” Buck says, pulling the comforter up to his chin.
“You’ve never even seen that movie, Buck,” Eddie rolls his eyes. He throws one arm up behind his head and Buck is suddenly overwhelmed with missing his touch. The way his skin was always warm but his hands were unbelievably cold. He regrets all the times he bitched at Eddie for sneaking up on him and shoving them up the back of Buck’s shirt, and wishes he had appreciated the way Eddie giggled every time Buck jumped just a little more. “I don’t know. I asked him about it when he stayed over the other night and he said he liked it fine, but I can just tell.”
“It’s a new place,” Buck says. “He’ll warm up to it.”
“I hope so,” Eddie sighs. “He said to tell you he misses you.”
“I miss him, too.”
“Maybe when everything gets settled, you can come visit,” Eddie offers, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “I think he’d like that.”
“Yeah. I’d love to,” Buck says, though the end of his sentence is warped by a yawn.
The corners of Eddie’s mouth turn up in a fond smile. “Get some sleep, Buck. I’ll be here the whole time.”
“You, too,” Buck says, reaching over and turning the bedside lamp off. “Night, Eddie.”
“Goodnight, Buck.”
–
The next morning, Buck wakes up so well-rested that he’s sure he overslept for his shift.
He rolls over and peeks at the alarm clock on his nightstand to find he’s actually woken up two hours before he needs to. The sun is barely peeking through the curtains as he rolls onto his back, stretching his stiff and aching limbs. It’s not until he goes to pick up his phone that he remembers Eddie is still on the line. He unlocks it and the FaceTime screen comes into view, showing Eddie curled on his side, hair flopping over his eyes, mouth slightly open and still sleeping peacefully.
Buck stares at him for too long, taking in the softened lines of his face. He’s never noticed before how much more relaxed Eddie looks in his sleep, like the years of stress and trauma melt away the moment he drifts off. Eddie is beautiful, objectively. That’s not an odd thing to notice, it’s just a fact. Eddie has always been beautiful. Chimney even said so.
It doesn’t mean anything. It’s perfectly normal to notice your objectively gorgeous best friend’s objectively gorgeous features. Who wouldn’t notice the sharp line of Eddie’s jaw or the strong slope of his nose or his full, pink bottom lip or –
Buck hangs the phone up.
He’s not in love with Eddie. Yeah, he misses him so much that it makes going through everyday life hard and yeah, the only two nights he’s slept through he was either distracted from thinking about the other man or he had him there in some capacity. Hen probably missed Chimney just as much when he went to look for Maddie, right?
When he gets to work, he asks her about it.
“You missed Chim when he was gone, right?” Buck asks while he helps her restock the ambulance.
Hen looks up, raising an eyebrow in question. “Is this a test? Did he put you up to this?”
“No, no, of course not,” Buck says, shifting to the other side of the ambulance to sit in front of her. “I just – he’s your best friend and your work partner. You missed him, right?”
“Of course I missed him, Buck,” Hen says, sitting her clipboard in her lap. “What’s this about?”
Buck shrugs. “I was just curious, that’s all.”
“Buck,” Hen says, putting her hand on his knee. “It’s fine to miss Eddie. We all do.”
Buck stares down at his hands, wringing them together. “It’s probably not keeping you guys awake at night, though, is it?”
Hen pauses where she was rubbing his leg and stares at him for a long moment. “Uh, no. It’s not. Buck, have you not been sleeping?”
“No, I – I have,” Buck rushes out. The last thing he needs right now is Hen telling Bobby that Buck is a liability on calls due to sleep deprivation. “Just – not at Eddie’s. I’ve been going to Maddie’s and sleeping as much as I can during our shifts.”
“It might help if you stopped thinking of it as Eddie’s and started thinking of it as yours,” Hen points out, tapping his leg once before going back to her clipboard. Buck takes his cue to get back to his checking, going back to the compartments and counting their syringes. “Have you slept there at all?”
“Uh,” Buck pauses and rubs at the back of his neck for a moment, trying to subdue the prickling sensation. “Yeah, twice.”
“Well, what did you do on those nights?” Hen asks like she’s about to figure out the most obvious answer in the world. “Maybe you could make a routine of it.”
“Uh, that’s – kind of the problem,” Buck says. “One of those nights, I – I had somebody over –”
“You’re dating again?” Hen asks, shocked.
“N-no, not exactly,” Buck says, turning back to find her looking at him expectantly. He feels heat rising on his face and he has to force himself not to look away in shame. “I went out to the bar with Ravi and we kind of, uh, ran into Tommy. And we – you know.”
Hen looks at him with an indecipherable expression. He doesn’t think he can bear her disappointment. “Tommy.”
“It – it was stupid, and I’m not seeing him again. We had a huge fight the next morning,” Buck admits. He doesn’t think he would see Tommy again regardless; sleeping with him was just a temporary distraction that wore off as soon as the act was over. His drunken, sleep-addled brain dreamt of Eddie anyway.
“About what?”
“About Eddie,” Buck says. “He – he said Eddie was competition and he was so happy that Eddie was gone. And I was so mad that I said some things to him that weren’t cool and he left.”
“He said Eddie was competition?” Hen says with a snort. “Jealous much?”
“That’s what I’m saying!” Buck exclaims. He should have gone to Hen in the first place, he should have known she would understand what having a close-knit friendship with a work partner is like.
“I mean, it’s kind of his fault for getting involved, especially after that whole basketball fiasco,” Hen says, rifling through the drawers and crossing things off her list. She doesn’t wait for Buck to respond before she keeps going. “I can’t believe he thought he could compete with Eddie. I don’t think anyone else who knows you two is dumb enough to think that.”
Buck pauses. “Wh- what do you mean?”
Hen’s head snaps up then. She looks like she thinks she’s said too much, but Buck needs her to say more. Right now.
“Nothing,” Hen says with a wave of her hand. “Hey, can you count the gauze pads?”
“We already checked those,” Buck says. “What do you mean, Hen?”
Hen taps her pen against her completely-crossed-off list and sighs. “I just mean – you and Eddie are close. Like, really close. So I get why he might be jealous, but it’s his fault for thinking he could come between you guys in the first place.”
“There’s nothing to be jealous of ,” Buck insisted. “Eddie is straight and we – we’re just friends.”
“Right,” Hen says, but Buck gets the feeling she doesn’t believe him. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. We agree.”
“Hen,” Buck says.
“We’re done in here, we should go see if Bobby –”
“Hen,” Buck says again. “Why do I get the feeling that everyone else knows something that I don’t? Tommy, you, my sister . Everyone is implying a lot of things and no one is telling me why. ”
“What did you say to Tommy? When he – implied whatever he did about your relationship with Eddie?”
“He said I was living in Eddie’s house, even though I explained I was just doing him a favor, and I told him that Eddie was a renter so it wasn’t even technically his house, and that Eddie’s straight. I thought, you know, that that would shut it all down, but he still didn’t believe me.”
“Buck,” Hen says gently, scooting down the bench so she’s closer and leaning forward like they’re sharing secrets. “You keep saying that Eddie’s straight. Not that you don’t feel anything for him.”
Buck’s mind short circuits and then jumps into overdrive. “I – Okay, he’s my best friend, I – Hen –”
“Don’t give yourself a stroke,” Hen says, her hand coming to rest on his shoulder. “But I am going to ask you – would your answer change if you knew Eddie wasn’t straight?”
Buck opens his mouth to say no, it wouldn’t change anything, he is not in love with Eddie, but all that comes out is a weak “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to know,” Hen assures him. “But if it’s eating at you this much, it might be worth thinking about. And if it does change something, then you can cross that bridge when you get to it.”
“There’s not going to be a bridge to cross, Hen. If I am – I’m burning that bridge. Forever.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hen assures him. “Just – think about it, okay? You’re gonna be alright, Buckaroo.”
Hen steps out of the ambulance and leaves Buck there with nothing but his reeling mind and the notion that he very well might feel something not completely platonic for Eddie.
Of course, the rest of their shift is nothing but simple med calls, the longest one lasting an hour and a half, so Buck has nothing to distract himself. He spends the rest of the day thinking, analyzing over every single one of his interactions with Eddie since he realized he was bisexual, and when those didn’t reveal anything, he went even farther into his memories.
Maddie asking him if his “boy crush” on Eddie meant he was ready to move on from Abby meant nothing at the time. It was just a joke, just his big sister teasing him. Had she known, even then, that Buck wasn’t straight? And when the elf at the Christmas carnival said he and Eddie had an adorable son, he chalked it up to a simple mistake. But if that was what it was, why hadn’t he corrected her? Was it not worth the time it would have taken, or had Buck wanted her to be right?
When he gets home that night, he’s still racking his brain for an explanation. As he walks past Christopher’s closed bedroom door, he pauses, suddenly struck with the memory of walking through Eddie’s house after the shooting. He remembers the blood caked under his nails and in his hair, hastily scrubbed away in the loft’s bathroom before Taylor drove him to Eddie’s. He remembers the long, fitful nights with no rest, waiting to hear if Eddie had woken up. He remembers the way it rubbed uncomfortably in his chest to know that Ana was going to be the person Eddie woke up to, and not Buck. He remembers and he remembers and –
He remembers wishing it had been him instead, because the thought of life without Eddie had been so painful it nearly sent him to his knees and left him gasping for breath. The world had felt off-kilter when Eddie’s life had still been hanging in the balance, uncertain, and Buck kept asking whoever or whatever was out there to take him instead. If somebody had to go, it just couldn’t be Eddie. Buck had lived too long without him and he couldn’t fathom the idea of doing it again.
As he stares at Christopher’s bedroom door, it hits him – people don’t feel that way about their best friend. They don’t try to claw through forty feet of mud, they don’t crawl into active gunfire, they don’t feel like they’re going to die every time the other person is in danger. They don’t lie awake at night, riddled with nightmares of life without them. They don’t sabotage house showings and take over leases and lose sleep over the prospect of never being in the same place as the other person again.
Buck left the bar with Tommy, and he had been thinking about Eddie. He kissed Tommy, and wished it was Eddie’s hands on his waist. He moaned Tommy’s name, and barely kept himself from saying Eddie’s instead.
He makes his way down the hall and into the bedroom, collapsing onto the bed with his clothes still on. He doesn’t trust his knees to hold him up long enough to change, so he falls onto his back and stares at the ceiling that he’s become so familiar with over the last month, wondering where he’s supposed to go from here.
He wonders if Eddie knows – if Eddie has always known. He’s a kind enough guy to ignore it, to not let it make things weird between them. Hell, if Buck told him, he’d probably let Buck down easy as anything and then pretend it never happened to save Buck the embarrassment.
He’s never going to get over it. This, he’s certain of. This has been lurking under his skin all this time – this love, this desire, this need to be near Eddie. It explains why sometimes close isn’t close enough. When Eddie hugged him before he left, Buck had an inexplicable urge to burrow into Eddie’s skin, as if he could get into that spot where his neck and his shoulder met, then Eddie could never leave him behind. This feeling has been there for so long that it might be an integral part of him. He might not be able to live without it, no more than he can live without Eddie.
Of course he’s in love with Eddie. Of course he is. Buck has never been able to have anything good without taking it too far. Why would Eddie be any different? Eddie is the best thing. Eddie, and his dark humor and sharp wit and soft eyes and softer heart. Eddie, who lets him screw up over and over again and still lets him come back anyway. Eddie, who showed him what it felt like to belong somewhere. Eddie, who showed him there was someone out there who could know him for who he really is and still think he was worth having around.
His phone rings in his pocket and Buck, for a split second, debates on declining Eddie’s call. He’s in no state for a conversation. But as his thumb hovers over the decline button, he can’t press it. He needs every bit of Eddie he can get like he needs air in his lungs, and these video calls are the closest thing to having him near that Buck is going to have for a very long time.
“Hello?” Buck says when he answers, his voice rough with disuse.
Eddie is beaming at him. “Hey. I got a surprise for you.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. One sec,” Eddie says. He drops his phone down so Buck is looking at his chin for a minute and then he hears the shuffle of a phone exchanging hands and Christopher’s face appears on the screen. “Hey, Buck!”
Buck perks up at the sight. He sits up on the bed, shuffling back towards the headboard. “Hey, buddy!”
“Dad said you were living in our house,” Christopher says. His voice is deeper than the last time Buck talked to him and his stomach rolls at the thought of how much time he’s missed. How he might miss the rest. “You didn’t turn my room into a gym or something, right?”
Buck laughs. “No, of course not. It’s still your room.”
“Cool,” Christopher nods. “In case I want it back or something.”
“It’ll always be here for you, kid,” Buck promises, earning a smile from Christopher. “How’s Texas? Tell me all about it.”
Christopher launches into a million stories at once – about chess club, about his friends, about the pool his grandparents installed in the backyard for him.
“What about school?” Buck asks.
Christopher’s enthusiasm dies a little bit. “It’s fine. I don’t like it as much as the one at home.”
In the background, Buck hears Eddie choke on whatever he’s drinking when Christopher refers to LA as home. “Still good though, right? And you’re still killing the science fair, surely.”
Christopher shakes his head. “I didn’t do it this year.”
“Why not?”
“You always help me with my projects,” Christopher says with a shrug. “Dad said I could have called you, but it wouldn’t have been the same.”
“Yeah,” Buck says, trying not to let on that he’s sad about it, too. “But you like Texas, yeah?”
“It’s fine,” Christopher shrugs. Buck wants to chalk it up to teenage nonchalance, but Christopher is his father’s son – in the way that he’s an absolutely awful liar. He looks up from the phone, presumably to wherever Eddie has wandered off to, and then he speaks in a whisper. “I’m supposed to play video games with Denny, so I’m gonna give you to Dad. Love you, Buck.”
“Love you too, kid,” Buck says. When Eddie’s face reappears, he’s still smiling. “You’re in a good mood.”
“I made it through an entire dinner without my parents at my throat and Chris wanted to spend the night here,” Eddie says. Buck watches the background change as he wanders through the house and then becomes steady when he props his phone up on something in the bedroom. His fingers start working the buttons loose on the shirt he’s wearing. “God, I hate having to wear these all the time, but my mom treats family dinner like we’re going to a Michelin restaurant.”
Buck tries really, really hard to focus on whatever Eddie is talking about, but it’s hard when he’s pulling the button-down and the white t-shirt he was wearing underneath off, leaving Buck to stare at the smooth, tan expanse of his abdomen. He blessedly steps out of the frame to peel his jeans off in exchange for sweatpants. Buck thinks he would have spontaneously combusted.
Eddie falls into bed and props his phone on his (bare) chest. “He tell you about the science fair?”
“Yeah. It made me so sad I wanted to cry.”
“Yeah,” Eddie hums. “He said my dad didn’t have time to help him and my sisters are hopeless with shit like that.”
“Oh, much like their brother,” Buck teases. Eddie flips him off. “He could have called me.”
“I told him that, he said it wouldn’t have been the same,” Eddie hums, the fingers of his free hand toying with his hair and loosening it from the product he uses to push it back. “I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s happy here.”
“You talk to him about it?”
“Not yet,” Eddie says. “We just had our come-to-Jesus meeting about Kim. Figured it’s best to space the hard conversations out.”
“Yeah,” Buck agrees, and then snorts at Eddie’s phrasing. “You guys are okay, though?”
Eddie nods. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re alright. You okay?”
“Yeah, why?” Buck half-lies, kicking his shoes and his jeans off. He debates getting up to change, but he just strips his jacket off and leaves his t-shirt on before sliding under the covers. The motions send flashes of Eddie’s skin through his mind again and he barely resists the urge to bury his face in the pillow and scream. “Just had a boring shift today. Nothing interesting.”
“I don’t know. You seemed off when you answered,” Eddie says, getting up close to the camera like it’ll help him see Buck better. He backs off after a moment, like he realized what he had done. “You sure you just had a regular boring day?”
Buck has had the most interesting day of his life and more interesting conversations in the last week than he’s had in the last five years, and then he topped that off by seeing Eddie half-strip on camera. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
They sit in companionable silence for a while longer, and Eddie is absorbed enough in whatever he’s reading that Buck gets away with some inconspicuous staring before they say goodnight.
Yeah. A regular, boring day.
–
For the next three months, Buck goes through his days carrying the realization that he is hopefully, embarrassingly, completely in love with his best friend, and then he goes home and falls asleep with Eddie on the phone.
It’s a good system. A healthy system. It’s fine.
Buck is now intimately familiar with the sound of Eddie’s breathing when he sleeps and every inch of his face, and he’s more hopelessly in love than he ever knew a person could be, but it’s fine, because he can deal with it. This feeling has existed for so long that Buck knew it like the back of his hand before he knew it. He can deal with it.
Eddie texts him a picture from his bathroom of a small tattoo on the inside of his bicep, a matching one with his sisters, and Buck is almost positive he didn’t need to be shirtless to show it off, but he sends back looks good, and tries not to bang his head off the firehouse’s dining table.
Maddie practically cheers when Buck tells her he figured it out. “ Finally,” she sighs like Buck just lifted the weight of the world off her shoulders.
“You knew the whole time, didn’t you?” Buck asks. She at least has the decency to look sheepish when she nods and she doesn’t even complain when Buck throws a piece of coffee cake at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it wasn’t mine to tell,” Maddie says simply. “You needed to figure things out about Eddie on your own.”
“Well, I did, and now I can barely look at him without wanting to wax poetic about his facial structure. God, Tommy can go to hell. This is his fault.”
“It’s his fault that Eddie has perfect bone structure?” Maddie asks.
“No, that’s just because the universe hates me,” Buck groans, dropping his face into his hands. “What do I do, Mads?”
“You could – tell him,” Maddie says bravely then winces when Buck squawks in disagreement. “Yeah, okay, I knew that was coming.”
“I cannot tell him, are you insane?”
“Fine. Just be in love with him forever and never tell him, that seems like a perfectly rational plan.”
Buck opens his mouth to argue with her, but his phone rings on the counter and he sees Eddie’s name flash across the caller ID. He tells Maddie he has to take it and then steps out into the backyard to answer. “Hello?”
Eddie’s breathing is short and ragged in his ear, like he can’t quite catch it. “ Hey , Buck,” he says, voice full of forced cheer.
“Hey,” Buck says. “You okay?”
There’s a long pause and Buck hears a distant sob like Eddie has dropped the phone from his ear. “ Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. I just wanted to hear your voice .”
“Did something happen?”
Eddie laughs wetly. “ Just my parents. You know how it is.”
“Yeah,” Buck says. He probably knows better than anyone what it’s like to never please your parents. “Whatever they said, it’s not true.”
“Buck –”
“Eddie, seriously. Whatever they said about – about you or about your parenting or about your life – it’s bullshit. They don’t know you. I do.”
For a few minutes, Buck just listens to Eddie breathe. It’s a sound that he never realized he loved until it was lulling him to sleep nearly every night. His heart breaks with every sniveling breath and every inhale cut short. He wants nothing more than to be there , to be able to reach out and touch Eddie, hold him, tell him it’s going to be okay. That he’s okay, that he’s loved, that he deserves that. But he’s eight hundred miles away, so all he can do is sit and listen.
“I really, really miss you,” Eddie says, so softly Buck almost doesn’t catch it.
Buck blinks back tears of his own and looks up at the sky. If he believed in anything, he’d be asking why this was happening to Eddie. He would be begging for a solution. He would be promising anything he could in return for Eddie and Christopher’s happiness. The sky stares back and it mocks him because he can’t even see the same stars that Eddie might be looking up at in El Paso.
“I miss you too,” Buck says, his voice trembling. He clenches his free hand into a fist and wills it steady when he speaks again. “So much.”
Eddie has to get Christopher home, but when they hang up, Buck can’t bring himself to go back into Maddie’s house.
After a while, she comes out to check on him. “Hey. Everything alright?”
Buck sniffles and wipes his eyes furiously. “Yeah.”
“Buck,” Maddie says, crossing the patio as fast as she can at seven months pregnant. “Oh, honey. What happened?”
“Nothing. Well, Eddie was – crying on the phone, he had a fight with his parents, and I just –” Buck clears his throat, his voice coming out too warbled, too weak. “I just miss him, that’s all. I wish he didn’t have to do this. I wish, for his sake , he didn’t have to be there.”
Maddie sits down in the chair next to him and takes his hand. “As bad as our parents?”
“Yeah. Worse sometimes,” Buck croaks, squeezing her hand tightly. “I wish I could fix it.”
“I know,” Maddie says, her gentle voice wavering. “But you can’t fix everything, and he doesn’t need you to. He just needs you to be there.”
“It just doesn’t feel like enough, Maddie.”
“Buck, I don’t think there’s been a day since he met you that you haven’t been enough for Eddie.” Maddie’s voice is full of conviction and her grip on his hand is strong, the metal of her ring digging into Buck’s skin. “He called you, didn’t he? Because he knew he could. That’s what he needs from you. And when that changes, you’ll know without needing to be asked. You always do.”
They sit together for a while longer until Jee-Yun gets bored with Chimney and comes looking after him. She crawls up in Buck’s lap and looks at him, head tilted to the side and eyes searching in a way that makes her look just like her father. “Are you sad, Buck?”
“ What ?” Buck says, wrapping his arms around her. “Of course not, I got you. What do I have to be sad about?”
Jee-Yun pats his cheek gently and then wraps her arms around his neck, squeezing him tightly. “Mommy says a hug always makes her feel better.”
Buck squeezes her gently. “Your mom is a wise woman.”
“Come on, bug, it’s bedtime,” Maddie says, rising from her chair and offering her hand to Jee, who takes it and slides off Buck’s lap. “Tell Uncle Buck goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Uncle Buck. Love you,” Jee says.
“Love you more,” Buck says.
The patio door slides shut and Buck looks to the sky again.
“If there’s anybody – any thing out there,” Buck says quietly. “My friend could really use a break.”
The sky doesn’t answer, so Buck forces himself out of the chair and into the house. He says his goodbyes and drives back to his empty house, spends the night staring at the ceiling and wondering if Eddie is doing the same.
Just outside, the cloud cover splits enough to see a patch of stars.
–
A few weeks later, Eddie goes radio silent for an entire week.
He doesn’t answer Buck’s calls, all his texts go unread. The only sign of life Buck has is the flashing blue dot of Eddie’s location on Find My Friends and one text he sent to Christopher that got a two word response of all good.
Buck is worried.
They talked a few times after Eddie’s fight with his parents – they wanted Eddie to give up custody and go home. Like there was a chance in hell that was ever going to happen.
He had still seemed so down the last time they talked. It was like El Paso was sucking the life out of him. His eyes were dark and his cheeks were sunken in, none of the perfect pink coloring to them that Buck had grown to love so much. When he smiled, the corners of his eyes didn’t crinkle anymore. Buck swears he saw a grey hair, but Eddie said it was a trick of the light.
If something was wrong, Christopher would let him know. He hopes so, anyway. Eddie’s abuela and tia Pepa are there, too, they know Buck would want to know if something was wrong.
But nobody reaches out, and Buck still can’t sleep.
Bobby sends him home early from a shift exactly seven days since he last heard from Eddie. He’s exhausted, Bobby says, and they can make it without him for a day. Buck is too exhausted to even argue.
If he hadn’t been so tired, he might have noticed that the door was unlocked even though he’s certain he locked it this morning.
If he hadn’t been so tired, he might have noticed two extra pairs of shoes by the door.
If he hadn’t been so tired, he might have noticed that the one door in the house he hasn’t been able to bear touching was standing wide open.
He collapses down on the couch and pulls the blanket off the back over himself, curling on his side in a miserable ball and squeezing his eyes shut. The silence is overbearing.
He read somewhere once that silence and exhaustion can make your brain do strange things. Auditory hallucinations are a common side effect of sleep deprivation. It’s normal to hear things that aren’t there.
A familiar voice says, “Buck? You’re home early,” and his chest aches. He ignores it.
“Buck?” A younger voice says. “Hey, Buck.”
He’s losing his mind. He’s miserable and he’s tired and he’s hopeless in love and he misses Eddie and Christopher so badly that he’s started hearing their voices and –
He’s so focused on trying not to fall apart in cries so loud it would earn him a wellness check from the neighbors that he doesn’t hear soft footsteps across the hard wood, the drag of socks across the rug. The hand on his arm makes him jump out of his skin, bolting upright on the couch and trying to blink the spots from his vision.
When his eyes focus, Eddie’s face materializes in front of him, face pinched with concern. “It’s just me, you’re alright.”
Buck laughs, more than a little hysterical, and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I’m alright. I’m alright, yeah, sure. I’m hallucinating, but I’m alright.”
“Hallucinating?” Not-Christopher says. “Dad, is he okay?”
“I – don’t know, buddy – Buck, look at me,” Dream-Eddie says. Buck’s mind is so thorough in its torment of him that he feels Eddie shift so he’s squatting in front of the couch. The motion sends a whiff of Eddie’s cologne through the air. “You hit your head or something?”
“You’re not real,” Buck says, too exhausted for more. “You’re not real . I need to get some sleep.”
Dream-Eddie snaps his fingers in front of Buck’s face. Then, a very solid hand grips his forearm and squeezes tightly. “Hey. I’m real. What is wrong with you?”
Christopher ventures closer and sits down on the couch beside him. The leather shifts with his weight. “Buck, are you high? It’s fine if you are, but –”
“Holy shit,” Buck says under his breath, eyes glued to Christopher’s face. He tears them away and looks down at the hand on his arm, still a vice, and puts his other hand atop it. He can feel Eddie’s always-cold knuckles, the calluses on his fingertips. “You’re here.”
“ Yeah, and you’re freaking me the hell out,” Eddie says.
“Oh my God. Come here, kid,” Buck says, turning back to Christopher and pulling him into a hug. The angle is a little awkward, but he comes willingly, his very real hands falling like weights on Buck’s back. “I missed you so much.”
“I missed you too,” Christopher says, voice muffled by Buck’s chest. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. You’re here, I’m perfect,” Buck says, his voice breaking as he presses a kiss to the top of Christopher’s head. He pulls back to look at him. He’s so much bigger than he was when he left, his features more mature. He looks even more like Eddie than he already did. “What are you doing here?”
“Surprising you. Obviously. But then you said I was a hallucination and made it weird.”
Buck laughs and turns to look at Eddie, who is still crouched and not any less concerned than he was a few minutes ago. “You could have called.”
“Defeats the point of a surpri – Jesus,” Eddie says, only barely making it back to his feet before Buck wraps him in a bone-crushing embrace. Eddie settles against him immediately, pressing his face into the crook of Buck’s neck and sighing. “Missed you, too.”
Buck is reluctant to let go, but he’s about to cross the line from emotional to weird in terms of hug length, so he steps back. Eddie’s hand lingers on his waist for a moment. “Are you –”
“We’re moving back,” Christopher exclaims, imitating the sound of a party kazoo with his mouth. “Because Grandma and Grandpa were assholes to Dad.”
“Watch your mouth,” Eddie chastises, pointing a stern finger before turning back to Buck. “But – yeah. That’s the gist of it.”
Buck’s head hurts. “I think you need to catch me up.”
–
They order pizza for lunch – Christopher nearly cries when it arrives because “all the pizza places in El Paso are terrible, Buck.” – and tell Buck everything that happened in El Paso.
“Wait, how did you get out of your lease?” Buck asks.
“Remember how I told you it was a fixer-upper?” Eddie says.
“Half the roof collapsed,” Christopher says, unimpressed. “Because Dad bought a death trap.”
“Anyway, they didn’t disclose any structural issues in my lease, so they basically had to let me out of it if they didn’t want me to sue,” Eddie shrugs. “I couldn’t have afforded the lawyer to sue, but they didn’t know that.”
After they finish eating, they go to finish unpacking Christopher’s room, and Buck is stricken by what an absolute risk at work and on the road he really is right now, because he failed to notice Eddie’s truck and the U-Haul parked at the curb.
Once they get sheets on the mattress, Christopher finds the box his Playstation was hidden in, and he’s pretty much done with unpacking for the day after that. It’s getting late anyway, and Buck is exhausted, and he has a shift tomorrow. He should go to bed.
Instead, he collapses onto the couch beside Eddie with two beers between them on the coffee table.
“So, how does it feel?” Buck asks.
“Good,” Eddie says with a happy sigh that puts a smile on Buck’s face. “Really, really good.”
Buck grins at him. “I’m really glad that you’re home. Even if it means I have to go apartment hunting now.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow at him. “Why would you do that?”
“I can’t just keep living in your house, Eddie,” Buck laughs away the ache in his chest.
“You paid the rent, didn’t you?” Eddie asks. “It’s as much yours as it is mine.”
“But it’s – it’s weird, right?” Buck says. He rubs at his chest with one hand, the ache persisting. “I mean, Tommy said as much when –”
“You talked to Tommy?” Eddie says, his face suddenly serious. “When?”
“Uh,” Buck stumbles. “Right after you left. I was at the bar with Ravi and we ran into him.”
“And he said it was weird that you live here?”
“No, he said that the next morning,” Buck says, and immediately knows that was the wrong answer.
Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline and he chuckles humorlessly. “The next morning. After you –” he gestures at Buck.
“Listen, it was a weird time. I was – we don’t need to get into it. That’s not even the point.”
“It’s kind of the point,” Eddie argues, pushing himself off the couch and grabbing their empty bottles before starting off towards the kitchen. Buck follows on his heels, catching the door as it swings shut. “So you’re seeing him again?”
“ No ,” Buck insists. “No. We had a huge fight and he left. We’re not back together.”
“About you living here?” Eddie asks, turning to face Buck. He leans back against the counter and crosses his arms over his chest like he’s putting a barrier between them.
“It was more about you in a general sense?” Buck tries, wincing at the memory. He drums his knuckles on the counter. “He, uh, he said he was glad the competition was gone.”
Eddie blinks. “As in – me?”
“Yeah. And then he implied it was weird that I was living here. And I told him that you rented, you didn’t own it –”
“– what a technicality, man, seriously –”
“And that you were straight,” Buck finishes, his mouth tasting sour. “And he left, and I haven’t talked to him since. I don’t know why any of this matters. Is it because I brought somebody back here? Because I didn’t think you were ever coming home, Eddie. If I had, I wouldn’t have –”
“It’s not about that,” Eddie cuts him off. He pauses then and looks up at the ceiling, rolling his head back and forth in indecision before amending his statement. “Okay, it’s – kind of about that, look – I don’t want you to move out.”
“Uh,” Buck stammers. “Okay.”
“I don’t want you to move out, because I – I don’t want you to date other people.”
Buck thinks he’s hallucinating again. “I don’t understand.”
Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath. “What if I wasn’t straight?”
Buck’s tongue has turned to lead in his mouth. “Uh.”
“You said,” Eddie starts over and takes a slow step towards Buck, his eyes gleaming in the kitchen light. “That I couldn’t be competition because I was straight. What if I wasn’t?”
“Then you would,” Buck falters, rubbing at the back of his neck. “You still wouldn’t be the competition.”
Eddie’s face falls almost imperceptibly. Almost. “Why?”
“Because,” Buck starts, taking a slow step towards Eddie. “If I thought you – wanted me, there wouldn’t be a competition.”
This close, Buck can see every detail of Eddie’s face. The beauty mark beneath his eye, the scar on his bottom lip, the patch of stubble he missed the last time he shaved. His eyes are dark and shimmering, enticing, framed by thick lashes that nearly knock Buck’s breath from his lungs.
“Don’t move out,” Eddie says again, his hands hesitating by his sides before they land on Buck’s waist. “Stay here. Stay with me. Please.”
“Eddie, I don’t think you got what –”
“I got it,” Eddie says, his tone insistent, nearly desperate. His eyes flicker to Buck’s mouth and back up again as his grip on Buck’s shirt tightens. “I’m gay.”
Buck’s knees nearly buckle. “Oh. Oh. You – oh.”
“Yeah, oh ,” Eddie says with a grin. “Do you get it now, Buckley?”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Buck says, stepping impossibly closer. Eddie has no choice but to step back against the counter. “I should probably tell you though – I love you. I know that’s – soon, but it’s the truth and I’ve been – dying since I realized and –”
“Soon? Christ, I’ve been waiting all my life for you,” Eddie says, and then he surges up and presses a burning kiss against Buck’s lips.
Every kiss Buck has ever had, could ever have pales in comparison to this one with Eddie. It’s like flying, like soaring, like the feeling when a parachute catches you after you’ve been free falling.
For the first time since Buck has lived in this house, it feels like home. Eddie is warm under his palms and his arms around Buck’s neck, hands in his hair, feel positively criminal, like he’s getting away with something he shouldn’t be allowed to have.
He gets both hands under Eddie’s thighs and lifts him up onto the counter, earning him a surprised but pleased soft moan as he fits himself between Eddie’s thighs. Eddie melts against him, like putty in Buck’s hands, under his mouth.
It takes every ounce of self-control he has to pull away from the warmth of Eddie’s lips, even though all he wants is to crawl inside Eddie’s mouth, Eddie’s skin , and never leave. He rests his forehead against Eddie’s and revels in the giggle that leaves his partner’s mouth.
“What’s so funny?” Buck asks.
“Nothing,” Eddie answers, leaning away. Buck looks up at him and Eddie looks back, a smile playing across his perfect mouth, and he laughs again. “It just – feels good to be honest with myself about you. I’ve been pretending for God knows how long that this – us – was completely platonic but – I think I’ve always been looking for you.”
Buck’s heart stutters in his chest. “Eddie.”
“I love you too, by the way,” Eddie says, one hand coming up to rub over Buck’s birthmark with his thumb. “God, I love you. I thought I was going to die down there without you.”
“I couldn’t sleep without you,” Buck says, running his hands up and down Eddie’s sides.
“If I get my way, you’ll never have to again,” Eddie says. He pushes Buck back and hops down from the counter, offering his hand. Buck takes it without needing to be asked. “Come on. You look dead on your feet.”
Buck lets Eddie lead him down the hall to the bedroom that was his, then Buck’s, and is now theirs. He watches Eddie take his clothes off and it’s even better in person even though Eddie laughs when he catches him staring,
He curls himself around Eddie’s back when they lie down and feels more at home than he ever has anywhere. Eddie hums when Buck presses a kiss to the back of his neck, something that might have been night, Buck.
Buck sleeps through the night and when he wakes up, it’s to Eddie’s lips on his.