“It’s not that I’m unhappy, with anything, you know?” Buck is saying as he picks at the label on the beer bottle sweating condensation in his hands. “Dr Salazar said—she said some people just—go back to their lives, and appreciate it all a bit more. And—” he stares fiercely at the faded photo of Eddie and a much younger Chris on the refrigerator, “I do, God, I do, but she also said that for other people to—find their equilibrium, they need to make a change?”
Eddie shuts the fridge door, second beer in hand, and takes a seat across the kitchen island from Buck. He’d shown up three hours later than he’d said his appointment at the cardiologist’s had ended, but Eddie hadn’t asked where he’d been in that time. He’d opened the door to a Buck who looked bone-tired and unsure and—despairing, almost.
Eddie just greeted him with a hey and led the way to the kitchen, listening to the moment of silence quickly broken by the patter of Buck’s footsteps as he followed. He’d made his way through a first beer while Buck reassured him that physically, everything was fine, more than, but. He’d trailed off, and they sat in the quiet for minutes before Buck had blurted out I don’t know how to get my water to find its own level, Eddie, and Eddie had blinked at him and asked what he meant.
Now, he nods slowly at Buck, twisting open his beer. “I don’t think it’s a—set standard of rules,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other—you can feel both.”
Buck still looks a little anguished about it, and Eddie adds, gently, “I know it’s frustrating, not having a clear idea of how or when you’ll feel—settled, again.”
Buck sighs wearily and looks down at the bottle in his hands. “It’s not—I love being a firefighter. I don’t doubt the choice to be one at all—it’s what I was meant to do, it makes me feel like I have purpose. But it’s a full-time job. It’s—almost all of what I do. And I know there was a time where I, uh, thought it was the only thing I’m good for—this isn’t that, I promise. I’m just—what if I’m missing out on other things in life, you know?” He looks up, catching Eddie’s eyes with a look that is equal parts disconsolate and pleading.
“Wh—Buck.” Eddie puts his beer down on the countertop. “What are you talking about? You’ve seen and done more things than anyone I know. It’s not like you spent the first 25 years of your life locked in an attic, just existing. You were out there trying more things than the average person experiences in their whole lifetime!”
Buck laughs wryly. “No, I mean—not necessarily big things, like, I don’t need to know if I’d be better suited to a different career. I’m happy doing what we do. But there’s so much more.”
Eddie waits while he frowns and takes a sip of his beer that is surely lukewarm from the heat of his hands by now.
“It’s just that—I died,” he continues, voice unsteady enough that Eddie wonders if this is the first time he’s acknowledged that out loud. Buck wipes the lingering moisture from his lips with the back of his hand. “I died, and there’s so much more. There’s so much more I want to do, things I don’t even know I want to do yet, and I almost had the chance to have and live them taken away. I don’t want to die and regret missing out on everything else, Eddie.”
“So let’s make a list,” Eddie says. “Let’s do them.”
Buck’s head snaps up.
Eddie’s already on his feet, opening the drawer above the condiments cabinet and grabbing the large notepad they use for grocery lists. It was part of an astronomy themed stationery set Chris and Buck bought at the planetarium gift shop last year, and he rummages for a second before emerging victoriously clutching the matching ballpoint pen with the little Jupiter bobble swaying gently from a spring on top.
“A… list?” Buck asks, shifting uncertainly as Eddie thrusts them across the table at him.
“Yeah. Everything you wanna do. We’re gonna do them,” Eddie says, feeling a little manic with the way he’s grinning at Buck. “And it’s not an exhaustive one, we’ll keep adding things. Every time you think of something new you wanna try, it’s going on the list.” He nods at the notepad in Buck’s hands in a manner he hopes is more encouraging than unhinged.
Buck looks down at the lined yellow paper in front of him, eyebrow raised skeptically.
“That’s it? It’s… that simple?” he asks.
“It can be,” Eddie replies, confident in a way that has more to do with the lengths he knows he’ll go to every day of his life if it means easing Buck’s distress than the one and a half beers he’s downed on an empty stomach. “I mean, I don’t know what kind of things you have in mind, but if it doesn’t end in bankruptcy or, uh, mortal danger, then we’ll make it happen.”
Buck looks up at him, big blue eyes filled with undisguised wonder, perhaps at the absolute certainty with which he’s promising this, nothing short of a vow, and Eddie has to turn away at how naked it makes him feel to be on the receiving end of it.
“Right, um, so you get started on that,” he mumbles, opening a cupboard and pulling out the big saucepan with the dent in it. “And I’ll just, uh, get started on dinner. Red-sauce pasta okay? We need to finish the ground beef from the weekend.”
“Y-yeah,” Buck says from behind him. “Yeah, Eddie, that sounds great.”
Half an hour later, the kitchen smells mouth-watering, if Eddie says so himself, the combination of roasted garlic and bubbling meat sauce enveloping the small room and wafting deliciously out the window he cracked open to let some fresh air in. He hefts the colander of freshly cooked pasta out of the sink where he drained it and unceremoniously dumps it back into the empty saucepan.
“Okay,” Buck says behind him, crunching on a carrot he stole when Eddie was chopping vegetables earlier. “I think I’ve got some ideas down.”
“Yeah?” Eddie replies, giving the sauce a final stir before leaving it to simmer. He spins around and splays his palms on the kitchen island, leaning towards Buck. “Let’s hear ’em.”
“Oh,” Buck says nervously, chewing on his lower lip, “Um, right.” He tears the sheet of paper off the pad and stares down at it for a second, hesitant. He’s clutching the edges so tightly it’s beginning to crumple.
Eddie finishes the last of his beer, waiting patiently. Buck’s face goes through several complicated emotions before he scrunches his nose and all but flings the paper at Eddie.
“Don’t laugh,” he says, smiling at Eddie like he knows he wouldn’t, really, but unable to keep the anxious underline out of his voice anyway.
Eddie smooths out the edges of the paper for a second before really looking at it. It’s a neat, numbered list—of course it is, there’s a reason Clipboard Buck is so efficient even if he’s objectively a nightmare—in Buck’s familiar handwriting, letters round and boyish. He scans it quickly, noticing some are bigger-scaled, more commonly bucket-list, and some, his heart clenching when he reads them, are so very ordinary in ways that bleed with yearning, honest and simple. There aren’t as many things as he expected, given that Buck spent a solid thirty minutes hunched over the notepad, but he clears his throat and begins at the top.
- SEE THE NORTHERN LIGHTS
“One, see the northern lights,” Eddie reads aloud. He smiles at Buck, who’s stopped chewing on his lip in favour of chewing on his thumbnail, not that there’s much to chew on with how short they keep them for work. “Okay, nice, this one is totally doable. Couple days off work, quick flight to the closest place you can see them from—what is that, like, Canada? That’s still closer than flying to the east coast. I’m surprised you haven’t seen them before, actually, when you were driving across the country? Anyway, done.”
Buck is still biting his nail nervously, and Eddie pushes down the urge to swat at his hand in a way that would certainly have Chris rolling his eyes with an exasperated stop fussing, Dad if he did it to him. He shakes himself, exhaling, and looks back at the list.
- GO WHALE WATCHING (BUT LIKE IN A NICE WAY. JUST WANNA SEE THEM HANGING OUT IN THE WILD)
“Two, go whale watching—oh!” Eddie says. “Hey, this one is so cool! Is this from after those couple weeks we helped Chris with that project on animal communication? I still have that playlist of whale songs on my phone, did I tell you it came up on shuffle when I gave Hen a lift home last week? Five years of working together at our f*cking job and I’ve never had her look at me with that kind of alarm.” He snorts at the memory and looks at Buck, grinning.
Buck’s stopped chewing on his nail, corner of his mouth shiny with a little bit of spit. Eddie should not be endeared by that, but he’s long past reining himself in when it comes to feeling fond about things Buck does that he’d be, at best, mildly grossed out by if it were anyone else. Whatever. Buck’s looking at him, hand still hovering near his mouth. The nervous stiffness in his jaw has eased and he looks slightly encouraged by Eddie’s enthusiasm.
“Yeah?” he says, sounding it like a question. “Yeah,” he repeats after a beat, surer. “I loved literally everything we learned about them, you know? And it’s not like we can drive over to the aquarium and see one—thank God for that—but, I dunno, I just have this feeling, you know? That if I see one, just—so f*cking big and so alive, in front of me, it’ll. Something will shift.” He looks at Eddie a little desperately, like he’s begging for understanding. “Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, softer than he’s been all evening. “I— Yeah. I know the feeling.”
Buck’s eyebrows pull together, tugging up in that way they do when he’s feeling a lot and doesn’t yet know how to say it in words. Usually, Eddie would give him the time he needs to sort through his emotions and figure out what he wants to convey, but Chris is going to be home soon, and Eddie— Eddie just isn’t equipped for him to walk in on his two primary caretakers crying together in the kitchen, even if it’s in a good way, because that’s definitely where this is headed.
He clears his throat and, remembering his son again, says, “Oh, and we can absolutely combine those first two! There are loads of whale watching places further north, right? We can make a holiday of it—Chris will actually hyperventilate if you tell him he gets to see a whale in the flesh.”
Buck’s eyebrows have done something Eddie can no longer translate. He is not well-versed in the way Buck’s face has screwed up, and he feels a stir of worry when Buck turns away from him, staring out the kitchen window and jamming his fist against his mouth.
And, oh, sh*t. Eddie’s just invited himself and his son along on what Buck may have intended to be a solo journey of living and learning, hasn’t he. Okay, no problem, he’s just gotta gently backpedal in a way where Buck doesn’t feel bad or like he’s excluding them from this thing he is absolutely allowed to want for just himself.
“Um, that was, uh, super presumptuous of me,” he laughs awkwardly, running a hand through his hair. “Sorry, I just got caught up in—” he gestures at the list with one hand. “This is an incredibly personal thing, and you—you should get to do it the way you need to. I don’t even know if Chris’s next time off from school matches up with, like, northern lights and whale migration. And we’ll support you through all of this—” he shakes the paper at Buck in a way that’s only slightly crazed, “—anyway, we don’t have to actually be there in person to have your back.”
Buck turns to him slowly, clenched hand lowering from his face to reveal an incredulous expression.
“Eddie,” he breathes out, disbelief clear even if Eddie’s not sure why. “Wha—you can’t be serious.”
Eddie tilts his head quizzically, inexplicably nervous. “No, I just didn’t wanna assume—”
“Eddie. That was—” Buck flaps his hand to the side, “—me having a— Eddie. I came here an hour ago feeling, I don’t know, unmoored, I guess, and you… You haven’t just handed me the map, you’re getting in the boat with me, and you think you’re overstepping?”
Eddie shrugs, because yeah, he might be.
Buck exhales around a laugh that’s just as deranged as Eddie felt earlier. “I have spent. My whole life, doing things alone, or with people who weren’t—permanent. And you, you’re here, including yourself and Chris in—” he gestures at the list in Eddie’s hand, too, “—all this stuff I wanna do, because you include me in everything you and Chris do—Eddie. I always want you in the boat with me.” He ends, chest heaving a little with the vehemence with which he’s spoken, eyes shining with too many emotions for Eddie to parse.
Eddie’s too busy dealing with the way his own stomach’s dropped twenty stories in three seconds, anyway. He knew all that, even before Buck put it into such deliberate words—with an unexpected nautical theme, was that from all the whale talk, or?—but hearing it so baldly, the mutual recognition of the ingrained way they fit together… Jesus. He swallows tightly, reminding himself that Chris is on his way home so he should examine this particular feeling later.
He meets Buck’s eyes and says, “Well, that’s good, because you’re sh*t at navigating and I hate driving. Steering. Sailing. What kind of boat is this—whatever. We wanna be in the boat with you too, Buckley.” He grins at Buck, whose eyebrows are doing that emotional tugging up thing again, and quickly glances back to the list.
- TAKE A POTTERY CLASS
“Three, a pottery class, huh?” he asks with a smile. Buck, whose nervousness seems to have completely disappeared, shrugs with a grin.
“I dunno, I wanna make stuff with my hands. Stuff I can give to people and they’ll actually use. I thought about maybe carpentry, but that seemed a bit—obvious,” he says, stretching out his—massive—arms in front of him and looking at them bashfully. “I kinda like the thought of someone like me making something you have to be gentle with.”
Christ, Eddie thinks, is there anything this man says to me tonight that isn’t going to make me want to lie down and weep?
“Well,” he manages, “I will graciously accept your finest coffee mug, then.”
Buck smiles up at him softly, and Eddie makes himself tear his eyes away from it and back to the paper in his hands.
- GET A DOG. OR CAT. OR ANY KIND OF PET (NOT A SNAKE THOUGH)
“Get a pet… wait, why not a snake?” Eddie asks. “You love snakes! I’ve seen the photos Chris has of you with your entire face smushed against the glass at the zoo—I’m not saying it’s normal, why anyone would want to whisper sweet nothings to a f*cking python is beyond me, but I’ve seen the pictures, and you love snakes.”
“First off, I did not have my entire face smushed against the glass—” Buck breaks off as Eddie immediately unplugs his phone from where it’s charging to scroll through his camera roll, “—Eddie, stop, I didn’t, the angle was deceptive, it just looks like that from where Chris was standing, Eddie—” He’s laughing as Eddie thrusts his phone in his face, undeniably damning photograph bright on the screen.
“Fine, I love snakes and I needed that Burmese python to know just how perfect and precious she was!” he says, giggling as Eddie pulls his phone back, triumphant.
“So?” Eddie prompts, pocketing his phone. He’s not expecting Buck’s delighted expression to rearrange itself into something almost guilty.
“I, uh. I didn’t always love them? Or, I guess, I didn’t know anything about them, so I didn’t know—” he sighs and scrubs a hand across his face. “There was a call, when I was still a probie,” he explains. “I had to—kill one of this woman’s pet snakes. And—I don’t regret it, she needed to breathe and it was strangling her, but I probably would’ve hesitated a bit more, knowing what I do now.”
Eddie scrunches his face sympathetically. “You did what you had to do to save her.”
Buck nods, still looking upset. “I know. I just—I don’t think I could have one, even a little one, and like. Look it in the eyes without feeling guilty, you know?”
Eddie wants to smooth out the wrinkle on Buck’s forehead, but the kitchen island is too broad to lean across without the action looking far more deliberate than he’d like. He settles for blowing out a breath and telling Buck, “Okay, no snakes. You can still visit your beloved scaly friend at the zoo with Chris, though I do think you should find out if you can tip the cleaning staff because leaving smudges on the enclosure walls in the shape of your entire face every single time you go there is pretty rude, bud.”
Buck chucks a stick of carrot at him and he dodges, laughing.
“Kidding, kidding,” he says. “So, other animals. I guess it depends on whether you want the cuddly kind or just a little guy to have around, right? A cat or a dog would meet the warm and furry criteria, but I dunno, with the hours we work? We—you’d have to figure out day care. What about a tortoise or lizard or something? You can leave them alone for longer stretches, right?”
Eddie’s distracted from the start of Buck’s answer by his phone ringing loudly, and as he digs it out of his jeans he hears Buck snort in that specific way that means oh my God, Eddie, you’re not a senior citizen can you just keep your phone on vibrate like a regular millennial, but also in a way that’s incredibly fond. Eddie knows at this point it’s just ribbing for the sake of ribbing; Buck knows he never wants to accidentally miss a call from or about Christopher. He glares at Buck anyway, no heat to it, and clicks answer.
“Hi Sam,” he says, sitting down at the counter as Buck stands and rounds the island to grab the pasta bowls from a cabinet. “All okay?”
“Hi Eddie!” a cheerful voice comes down the line. “Yes, all good, just wanted to ring and let you know we’re just leaving ours, so I’ll have Chris dropped off in like ten minutes. Sorry again that we can’t keep him for dinner, we couldn’t get out of this family thing we have.”
Eddie reassures her it’s no problem, thanks her, says he’ll see her soon and hangs up. He spins around in his seat to see Buck’s stirring the pasta sauce again.
“Lila’s mom?” he asks Eddie, and he hums affirmatively. “I like that kid. She always has stickers.”
“Oh, I’m well aware. Whoever gets your locker at the station in like thirty years is gonna be either delighted or horrified by the décor you’ve accessorized it with,” Eddie says, amused.
Buck twists his torso to point the ladle at Eddie, grinning. “Don’t think I haven’t seen the ‘purrito’ cat pun sticker inside yours, Diaz.”
“Hey, it’s funny and—a nod to my heritage, so you cannot shame me for that,” Eddie retorts, turning away from Buck and smoothing out the paper once again. “Plus, it’s a cat in a burrito, Buck. It’s scientifically impossible to have a bad day if you start it with that.”
He scans the list absently for the next thing as Buck laughs quietly behind him. Beside number 5 is something Buck’s scratched out messily. Next to that, it looks like he started writing something else, and then scratched that out too, but not as hard.
Eddie peers closer, curiosity taking the lead before he remembers he should, yeah, probably be respectful of Buck’s privacy. It’s obviously something he doesn’t want to share with Eddie right now, and that’s fine. He places the paper on the counter and clears his throat. Under the mess of dark scribbles is the next item of business, labelled 6.
- READ MORE BOOKS THAT AREN’T NON-FICTION
“Si—uh, next is: reading more books that aren’t non-fiction,” Eddie tells Buck, who hums in recognition. “Any particular genres of fiction? Like fantasy or mystery or, uh, harlequin romance novels?”
“Yes,” Buck says, a nonchalant blanket agreement to his question, but when Eddie turns to him, even facing away it’s obvious the tips of his ears have gone red. “I know I already read a bit, but I dunno. The educational stuff is really interesting, like I love learning about science and different cultures and everything, but I think I maybe need a break from—from the self-help sh*t. I don’t know that it’s helping all that much.”
He sounds rueful enough that Eddie wants to spin him around, smack a kiss to his head and tell him firmly good, good that he’s no longer hanging everything he believes will make his life better on the words of some idiot who found their own version of peace and decided to tell everyone else that the only way to get there is by doing the exact same things they did, context and lived experiences be damned.
He doesn’t, because he thinks he’s already barely straddling the line of lunacy tonight, but he does say, “Perfect, I know for sure Abuela’s gonna have a long list of bodice-ripper recommendations for you.”
Buck snorts, ears still flaming, and Eddie goes on, voice slipping into something more genuine. “No, Buck, that’s really great. I actually think—you know Linda, from dispatch? She was definitely in a book club when I was working there last year, and from what she told me it was pretty diverse in the kind of stuff they were reading. I can ask her if they still meet up, if you wanted? Even if it’s just to get some suggestions to start with, figure out what you might like?”
Buck clicks off the stove and turns to Eddie, and oh, the flushed red of his ears is matched by twin spots of pink on the apples of his cheeks. He smiles at Eddie, mouth curved small and happy, and says, “Yeah, Eddie, that sounds really nice. I’d love that.”
Eddie smiles back, can’t make himself stop, and they’re just in his kitchen two feet apart grinning at each other goofily when the doorbell rings, making Eddie slip out of his chair with a start.
Buck begins plating up their food while Eddie traipses to the front door to collect his child. He makes polite small talk with Sam for a minute—he really does like her, one of the few single parents of Christopher’s friends’ who doesn’t flirt shamelessly with him, but she’s in a rush to get to their own dinner plans. They wrap up quickly, Eddie wishing her a good night and taking Chris’s jacket as he slinks in with a big smile and hey, Dad, followed immediately by a dramatic sniff and a saucy and the house doesn’t even smell like smoke!
He retaliates with an alright, smartass and ruffles his curls obnoxiously before sending him to wash up. Heading back to the kitchen, he meets Buck precariously balancing three bowls of piping hot pasta and three empty glasses. Eddie allows the part of his brain that always seems to short out at the impressive visual reminder of how large Buck’s hands are a second to reboot before attempting to take something from him, but Buck shakes him off with a co*cky grin and saunters—wobbling gently the whole way—to the little table in their dining room.
“Grab the water jug?” he calls over his shoulder as he sets down everything in his arms one by one.
Eddie grabs the jug that’s been cooling in the fridge and idly wonders if among the many jobs in his youth Buck ever waited tables, and how long that lasted if he did, hearing the loud clatter from the next room followed by a “Nothing broke!”
He spies the list on the counter and grabs it too, deciding they can speed through the last few till Chris joins them.
He takes the seat opposite Buck, who’s smiling guilelessly up at him, oblivious to the smattering of pasta sauce now staining the light blue fabric of his very tight polo. Eddie lets the wave of affection roll through him, rocking his heart gently in his chest, before announcing the next goal on the list.
- MILK A COW
“Seven, milk a—Buck,” he huffs a laugh. “Wait, did you spend all that time on that ranch and not milk any cows?”
“Wasn’t that kind of ranch,” Buck tells him. “And it seems like an important life skill to have. In case of the apocalypse or something.”
“The apocalypse?” Eddie repeats, eyebrows raised. He leans forward, elbow resting on the table, hand cupping his cheek.
Buck shrugs. “Depending on what kind of apocalypse, I guess. But can you imagine surviving the end of the world and then never having cheese again?”
“Cheese,” Eddie says slowly. “You want to learn to milk a cow so you can eat cheese. In the apocalypse.”
Buck nods, reaching for the jug to pour them each a glass of water.
“You want to learn to milk a cow, but not to make cheese?” Eddie asks, lips twitching.
“Eddie,” Buck says haughtily, “there will be so many books to teach us how to make cheese. Bobby owns at least two. But who will teach us to milk the cows? You can’t learn that in a book.”
Eddie has to press the heel of his palm to his mouth to hide the smile threatening to slip through.
“Besides,” Buck adds, “do you really want to be the one to tell Chris he can never have a grilled cheese again? We’d have a second apocalypse on our hands.”
Eddie snorts then, tells himself it’s just fond and not anywhere in the vicinity of adoring, and says, “Fair enough. We’ll get you to your cows.”
- BE A PART OF A GROUP HALLOWEEN COSTUME
“Eight, group Halloween costume,” Eddie reads. Oh, and this is one of the things Buck wants that is so very normal, unextraordinary in its request, and so soaked in longing for belonging that Eddie’s whole body aches.
He’s not going to tease Buck here, ask him if he never did this with the many friends he made in and out of college in his early twenties. He’s just going to make it happen.
“Done,” he says, looking up at Buck. “I don’t know if we can wrangle Chris in this year, he might have outgrown matching Halloween costumes—” Buck’s eyes widen and Eddie stumbles quickly past the fact that apparently his very first thought was a f*cking family group costume, “—but Chimney is pretty easily convinced if the outfits are cool enough, and if Chim’s on board, we can count on him to annoy Hen into joining too.”
“Yeah?” Buck asks uncertainly. “I don’t want to derail everyone’s Halloween plans, I just thought… I’ve always wanted to—I thought it might be fun?”
“It will be,” Eddie agrees. “We’ve got plenty of time before the end of October. I doubt anyone’s got their costume sorted yet.” He makes a mental note to corner Ravi and Lucy and bully, blackmail, or bribe them into changing their meticulously planned complementary costumes of Gay Little Benoit Blanc Knives Out Outfits or whatever they’ve dubbed it to something they can all do together. Hell, he’s not above begging.
- WATCH A WHOLE HORROR MOVIE ON THE BIG SCREEN
“Watch a whole horror movie on the big screen,” Eddie says aloud. “I mean, this one is pretty easy.”
“Hmm?” Buck responds distractedly, having finally noticed the splotch of pasta sauce on his shirt. He roots about in his pocket for a tissue to dab at it, forehead furrowed in concentration.
“We can do this tomorrow, even. Chris has a sleepover, we can go see something scary at the movies. Check that off the list.”
Buck looks up, brow still creased but in a decidedly more alarmed way. “Eddie,” he says worriedly, “we don’t need to do that first, that one’s pretty boring.”
“Oh yeah?” Eddie asks, amused.
“Yeah,” Buck says shiftily. “Also… with all the stuff with my heart recently…”
“You mean your heart that you spent half an hour assuring me is in perfect physical health?” Eddie enquires, grinning.
“Yes,” Buck glares at him, “That heart, but it feels mean to subject it to jumpscares so soon after it got stopped by lightning, Eddie.”
Eddie just grins at him, thoroughly entertained.
Buck sighs and says, “I can’t just go see a horror movie with 24 hours notice. I need to psych myself up for it.” He scratches dolefully at the red spot on his shirt.
“Okay, fine, we’ll keep that on the backburner,” Eddie tells him. “Stop smearing that around, I know you want to go soak it before it stains—”
Buck looks up at him, surprised, and he continues, “—go grab a change from my room and put whatever you need to put on that, we can do a load of laundry after dinner. And drag Chris out too, he has one hundred percent forgotten we’re supposed to be having dinner now!” He raises his voice at the end of the sentence, directing it towards Chris’s bedroom.
There’s a scuffle of sounds and Chris shouts, “Coming!” and Buck and Eddie exchange unbearably fond smiles before Buck ambles off in the direction of Eddie’s bedroom.
Eddie carefully folds the piece of paper in his hands and tucks it into his wallet, slipping it back into his jeans.
Five minutes later, Chris is plowing through a story about Lila’s British grandfather that Eddie is not sure is entirely age appropriate. He’s plowing through the pasta with equal vigour, and Eddie is too distracted with wondering how he’s managing to talk and eat and breathe so efficiently all at the same time to chastise him for talking with his mouth full.
Chris pauses to take a gulp of water, and Buck chimes in with a question—about Lila’s grandfather’s sixth wife? Christ. Eddie turns to look at him, and is immediately split into equal parts giddiness, at the sight of Buck looking so at home in Eddie’s very soft, very worn Texas Rangers baseball sweatshirt, and good-natured exasperation, at Buck earnestly asking Chris questions with his own mouth equally full of pasta.
He opens his mouth, reluctant to interrupt to remind them both of basic table manners, but then Chris answers and Buck is throwing his head back, peals of laughter spilling out, and Chris is giggling, pleased.
And all Eddie can do is grin at his favourite boys, happy and safe and knocking knees with each other under the table. It feels like the sun itself is leaking into their little dining room, golden warmth bathing the three of them in its glow.
He brushes his fingertips gently against where Buck’s list lies in the wallet in his pocket, and he starts to plan.
______
“Chris!” Buck yells, flinging open the front door of the Diaz house.
Eddie bangs his head on the bottom of the sink as he flinches violently in surprise. He winces, rubbing his skull as tenderly as he can with just his wrist and standing up from the squat he’d been in while scrubbing crossly at the barest hint of mold that’s been taunting him from the bathroom baseboard for weeks now.
“Chri—oh, hi Eddie,” Buck says, whirling down the corridor and staggering to a stop at the bathroom door. He grins as he takes in Eddie’s bright pink rubber gloves and hair that’s probably standing every which way from just having rubbed at the bump on his head. “This is a good look for you.”
Eddie grumbles unintelligibly and goes to flatten his hair, pausing just before he makes contact as he realises he definitely shouldn’t unless he wants to get hydrogen peroxide everywhere. He did not heed the seductive call of frosted tips in the 2000’s, and he will not be convinced now either, thank you very much. Buck, still grinning amusedly, steps forward into the bathroom and reaches out one hand to smooth down Eddie’s hair gently.
“Is this—oh, has the mold come back?” Buck asks, noticing the sponge and spray bottle on the floor, distracted from whatever he’d originally blown into the house shouting about.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, still grumbly. They have a decent exhaust fan to ventilate their bathroom, but the window only opens a crack, and both he and Chris enjoy taking searing hot showers despite living in LA, where even late September isn’t really much of a fall. It soothes their muscles, Eddie after long shifts of often-constant laborious activity, and Chris with growing pains and general body aches post-physical therapy.
The build-up of steam and humidity in the little room is an endless source of encouragement for the mildew, whose tenacity for existence Eddie would admire if it didn’t make him feel like Sisyphus every six f*cking weeks.
“Maybe we could—what if we just gut the window? Put in one that actually opens all the way, and then it’d air out properly?” Buck suggests, looking at the window thoughtfully, like he’s already planning how best to redesign it.
Eddie often forgets Buck’s considerably lengthy stint in construction and is never quite ready for the tug in his gut that makes an appearance whenever Buck displays such casual competence. It’s not a thing, it’s not some weird appreciation for stereotypical masculinity; he feels it when Buck’s over for breakfast and cracking eggs with one hand, or when he does all the dishes in record time and saves gallons of water, or during quarantine, when Eddie watched him put a clean fitted sheet onto his king-sized bed in about twenty seconds without breaking a sweat.
And the sole reason he only seems to get this tug around Buck is that it’s probably just surprising to see him whip out this adeptness minutes after Eddie witnesses him knock over the glass of orange juice he’s only just freshly squeezed, or get soapy suds all down his front from pouring out too much dishwashing liquid, or—actually, Buck is insanely proficient at all things laundry-related, Eddie can admit, recalling the swiftness with which he wrangled the duvet into its cover and how he’s always able to get any stain out of any fabric. Anyway. That’s the only reason Eddie’s gut-tugging is exclusive to Buck.
Buck’s still looking at the window contemplatively when Eddie reaches the end of this very reasonable train of thought. One of his hands has come up to rub his chin as he thinks, the other arm crossed over his middle. He’s clutching a yellowing paperback in this hand, and Eddie tilts his head to try and read the title on the spine.
“Wh—oh,” Buck says, noticing Eddie’s shift in attention. “Oh yeah, I almost—is Chris home? I just finished reading this for book club and I think he’ll love it.”
“Oh, was this your pick for Children’s Lit month?” Eddie asks, moving his head back into an upright position as Buck offers him the book to take a better look. He slips off his gloves to hold it. The Phantom Tollbooth, the cover reads, with an illustration of a kid and a—dog? Rabbit? Capybara? Some large, furry animal with a clock, of all things, inside it. It’s a battered, well-loved edition, and when Eddie flips open to the front page, it’s inscribed with a faded happy birthday, Gerri in spidery blue handwriting.
He looks up at Buck in question, and Buck tells him with a fond smile, “Geraldine from book club lent it to me. She said she got it as a birthday present back in the sixties, and it was her favourite growing up. I didn’t know what to pick for this one—all Jee’s books are still like, ninety percent pictures, and I wanted to try something Chris hasn’t already read so he could have it after, if it was good.” He scratches the back of his head self-consciously.
“Oh,” Eddie says, and he knows his face is doing what Hen likes to call his “cow-eyes”. Another Buck-specific physical reaction his body likes to practice that he will not be examining further. “Aw, Buck, he’ll be so excited to read something from your book club.”
“Yeah?” Buck asks happily.
“Yeah,” Eddie confirms, flipping through the book carefully. “He’s still at the park, but he’ll be home for dinner. Can you stay? Then you can give it to him yourself.”
“Yeah, I can stay,” Buck says, taking the book when Eddie hands it back. “Actually, if we’ve got a couple hours… I’m gonna go pick up some stuff from Home Depot. Then we can get the window done tomorrow morning?”
He looks at Eddie expectantly, and Eddie just looks back for a minute, still momentarily surprised at the way Buck’s natural state is to be readily champing at the bit to help, even after all these years. He wonders if everyone is lucky enough to have a person like Buck in their lives, or if Eddie just hit the best friend jackpot (Eddie hit the best friend jackpot).
“Or, um, I don’t have to sleep over,” Buck says after a moment of silence. “If you have plans in the morning, I can just come back whenever.” He sounds polite, but not nervous, not like he’s second-guessing his welcome at Eddie’s house. Or—it’s not even polite, just considerate. If this was a year ago, Eddie would’ve caught an anxious lilt to Buck’s words; now, he’s just comfortably weaving his day alongside Eddie’s.
“Oh, no, no plans, and even if we did, you could stay over,” Eddie tells him, the obviously, Buck unsaid but clear in his tone. “That sounds great, actually, I’ll come with you and we can pick Chris up on the way back. Give me, like, five minutes to finish up here?” He pulls the rubber gloves back on.
“Cool,” Buck grins, backing out of the bathroom. He pauses at the threshold, just looking at Eddie, and Eddie raises an eyebrow at him in question, pink-gloved hands coming up to rest on his hips.
“No, just taking in this—particular sight,” Buck says, waving a hand at all of Eddie and still grinning. “Once we put that son of a bitch in the ground for good—” he points threateningly at the speckling of mold, “—I’m gonna miss getting this version of you every other month.”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “What, harried and homicidal?”
Buck laughs, bright, and shakes his head. “Just—” He flaps his arm at Eddie again. “Yeah,” he nods to himself nonsensically, and disappears down the hall with one last flash of his grin.
Eddie stands there for another second, bemused, before picking up the spray bottle of Pepa’s homemade mold killer and aiming it at the smattering of little black spots on his bathroom skirting.
“Hasta la vista, baby,” he tells it, and pulls the trigger.
A while later, Eddie rests his cheek against the passenger window, chilled from the A/C, and looks over at Buck. They’re in Eddie’s truck—they’d taken it so they could dump their home makeover shopping haul in the cargo bed at the rear and still have space for Chris in the backseat—but Buck’s driving. Eddie hadn’t even thought about it, just grabbed his keys from the hook by the door and tossed them to Buck, who caught them in one hand, mid-conversation—he didn’t even stop talking, just snatched them out of the air while striding out the front door, and that tug in Eddie’s gut made a cheerful appearance, goading him to—what exactly, he’s not sure, but he knows the literal pot-stirring in his stomach can’t mean anything good.
Buck’s singing softly to the stereo, as is Chris, who’s simultaneously reading the first chapter of the book Buck handed him as soon as he got into the truck.
It’s one of the songs on the mix they usually play while cooking together—Buck’s been on an oldies kick recently, and Chris has been loving listening to vintage tunes. Eddie would worry he’s raising a music snob if not for the fact that he knows Chris knows every word to every song on Carly Rae Jepsen’s EMOTION, because, as Buck informed him the night he found them both hunched over three different laptops, the TicketMaster website buffering evilly, bubblegum pop is good for the soul, Eddie. And she’s an incredibly underrated lyricist. ‘Before you came into my life I missed you so bad?’ More profound than anything Morrissey ever said.
Right now they’re both singing along to Dancing in the Dark, and even if Eddie hadn’t listened to his Born in the USA CD till it was scratched and skipping as a teenager, he would be helpless to do anything but sit and listen to them, smile soft and humming along quietly. The song fades out, and Chris says from the back, “I really like that one. Makes me think of when we were in Texas, Dad, remember? Driving back from the doctor?”
And, oh, if that doesn’t make Eddie’s heart feel like it’s bursting at the seams. In that slice of time he was in Texas and Shannon wasn’t anymore, Chris’s doctor’s appointments were a lot more frequent than they are now, and a lot more daunting to an Eddie freshly swimming in post-discharge PTSD and navigating single parenthood. The drive to the clinic was flat across El Paso and would take nearly an hour.
Eddie remembers those early days, buzzing with nerves every other week as he left their house and his parents’ suffocating barrage of rigid instructions and outright condescension. He remembers playing his (second, much less destroyed) Bruce Springsteen CD there and back, stress falling away from him in sheets with every song and every glance in the rearview mirror at his son’s contented smile. He remembers thinking on one of those drives back, what if we just keep driving, just me and Chris?
He didn’t realise Chris remembers this much from those days. He didn’t realise that this thing he’s been affectionately watching Chris and Buck have together is just as much a Chris and Eddie thing, in Chris’s mind.
The look Buck is giving Eddie right now is so very warm, and he meets his eyes before twisting around to face Christopher. “Yeah, bud. Those are some of my favourite memories with you.”
Chris smiles back, no rolled eyes or sighs of tolerance that have recently been the more common response to Eddie’s parental sappiness. It’s the same contented expression as the six year old in Eddie’s backseat in Texas, just happy to be with his dad.
“Well,” Buck says, jamming his finger down on the back button of the stereo, opening notes of Dancing in the Dark filling the car once again, “That means you know all the words, and that means we get to be serenaded by one Eddie Diaz.” He winks at Chris in the rearview mirror.
Eddie groans, and Chris giggles and says, “Yeah, come on, Dad!” He and Buck encouragingly sing, I get up in the evenin’, and I ain’t got nothing to say, I come home in the mornin’, and Eddie sighs, grin too big to be disguised as long-suffering, and joins in with a yell of I go to bed feelin’ the same way!
Buck lets out a whoop and Chris laughs delightedly, and then they’re all singing the chorus at the top of their lungs, voices intertwined together in a way that’s achingly familiar and brand new all at once, like Eddie’s hearing it for the first time and the hundredth time, and he thinks maybe, just maybe, this is a Buck-Chris-and-Eddie thing.
When they’re back home, truck unloaded, pizza they picked up cooling in open boxes on the coffee table, the Jumanji reboot playing on the television, Eddie turns to Buck, remembering what he’d meant to ask him on the drive back before he got distracted.
“Hey, what are you doing next weekend?” he asks him quietly. Or, it’s not so much that he’s quiet as it is that between Jack Black shrieking on screen and Chris chewing in loud smacking sounds while he tries to keep his mouth open as much as possible, pizza still too hot to eat in a normal and well-mannered way, Eddie’s regular-volume voice seems soft.
“Ummm… nothing, I don’t think,” Buck says, opening and squinting at the calendar app on his phone. “Probably go see Jee-Yun for a bit at some point, but no concrete plans. Why?” He blows on his own slice of pizza before taking a bite.
“Okay, good,” Eddie says. “Um, okay, I was gonna keep it a secret till we got there, but you’d have figured it out when I told you to dress accordingly anyway, so. We’re going to get you to your cow.”
“Really?” Buck says excitedly, at the same time that Chris leans forward on the other side of him to ask, “Cow?”
“Yep,” Eddie confirms with a grin, taking a bite of his own pizza and immediately regretting not blowing on it first. He chews gingerly as Buck turns to Chris to explain.
“I have this—I made this list of things I wanna do, and your Dad’s helping me do them.”
“Like… Like a Make-A-Wish list?” Chris asks worriedly, pizza forgotten in his lap.
“What? No, no, no, definitely not,” Buck says, panicked. “No, no, I’m fine, Chris, it’s just. I realised there are so many things I wanna experience, and there’s nothing I’m waiting for, so why not do them now, you know?”
Chris looks mostly placated by Buck’s quick reassurance, but Buck’s still frowning, like he himself isn’t fully convinced by what he’s just said.
“So, cow?” Chris prompts when no one elaborates further. He picks up his abandoned pizza slice, uncaring of the splotchy grease stain that’s soaked into his khaki shorts.
“Yeah, Buck wants to learn how to milk a cow,” Eddie tells him, nudging Buck and shaking him out of his reverie.
“Oh, cool,” Chris says. “I’m coming too, right?”
“Of course,” Eddie says, Buck nodding agreement.
Satisfied, Chris settles back into the couch to watch the movie, and everyone goes back to making their way through the pizza like there’s a cash prize on the line now that it’s at an edible temperature.
Later, when Eddie’s getting fresh bedding out of the linen closet so he can make up the couch for Buck, he catches him sneaking out of Chris’s bedroom and into the laundry room. Eddie follows him, leaning casually in the doorway with an armful of sheets and watching as he grabs a bottle that Eddie definitely did not purchase himself. He pours some on whatever he’s holding and jumps about half a foot when Eddie clears his throat dramatically.
“Alright?” he asks, amused.
“Y-yep,” says Buck, blushing. He goes back to daubing liquid on the fabric he’s holding, and, oh.
“Didn’t want Chris’s shorts to stain,” he explains to Eddie, pinkness fading. “A grease stain in the crotch is the last thing anyone needs, but especially if all your friends are twelve year olds.”
Eddie holds the sheets in his arms a little tighter, feeling absurdly like he might drop them otherwise. He thinks, somewhat deliriously, that being around Buck so often feels like when you’re little, sharing a bed with a friend, comforter drawn over your heads and a flashlight in between you. Like you could tell this person anything, and they’d tuck it in their heart-pocket and keep it safe for you. He thinks, also, about how when you’re a kid and you wake up the next morning, there’s always that doubt that this person who now knows this about you will react differently in the light of day. He thinks, finally, that Buck has never made Eddie feel anything less than looked after, in every way, in every light, from the day he clasped his hand in that parking lot with a grin and a promise.
“Right,” he says softly, “Well, uh. He’ll be grateful to not have some mortifying nickname tormenting him for the rest of his school life.”
Buck smiles at him, lopsided, and goes back to the task at hand. Eddie floats all the way to the living room, laying out sheets and pillows in a daze.
He’s running out of ways to catalogue the things he only ever seems to feel around Buck, he thinks, and he’s running out of reasons to pretend he can’t look at them close enough to figure out what they mean.
_____
By the time the weekend rolls around, Eddie’s not really given that particular topic much further thought. Beyond the now-familiar gut-tugging, things are the same, work is the same, and he hasn’t seen Buck outside of work since then.
The most recent flip-flopping of his insides made itself known the morning after he’d found Buck scrubbing Chris’s shorts, when he woke up to Buck bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, wearing one of the t-shirts he keeps at Eddie’s in case of emergency sleepovers and a toolbelt slung low on his hips. Why anyone needs a sleep shirt that tight Eddie doesn’t know, but the twist in his belly didn’t feel like a complaint.
And if the feeling stayed all through him having to watch Buck’s arms flexing and biceps bulging, muscles in his calves going taut and relaxing as he lifted and assembled parts for the new window, well. Eddie, like anyone with eyes, can be appreciative of another man’s impressive physique. Everyone feels some level of attraction to undeniably good-looking people being strong and capable, regardless of gender. He knows, in a very objective way, Buck is hot. And he’s good at this. This is just admiration for a job well done.
Anyway, since installing a window that opens much more functionally, Buck’s been too busy to hang out outside of work. It doesn’t mean he’s been any less available to Eddie, still texting him seemingly every thought he has about parallel universes—he’s been reading a lot of sci-fi/fantasy for Children’s Lit month, even more than the book club is officially tackling, and is currently on a Diana Wynne Jones kick—and potential Halloween group costume ideas, and research on dairy farming, excited about their upcoming excursion.
This mostly means Eddie’s been able to push the need to think about any unidentifiable physical reactions he has around Buck to the back of his mind.
Now, getting dressed on a Saturday afternoon in jeans and a t-shirt, clean but old, suitable for romping about a farm, he’s all but forgotten it.
His phone buzzes as he’s grabbing some water bottles from the kitchen and stuffing them into a tote bag they’d got free at the zoo when they renewed their family annual pass for the third time.
Buck: outside!
He’d instructed Buck to just text when he got to their house, both for the time-crunch they’re on and because he didn’t want to field curious questions about the cardboard box spilling bubble wrap and instruction manuals onto his kitchen counter.
He thumbs-ups the message and calls out to Chris that they’re leaving as he makes his way down the hall. He yanks on his boots, hikes the tote bag up higher on his shoulder, opens the front door, and nearly passes out.
Buck’s leaning against Eddie’s truck, grinning at him in the afternoon sunshine. Buck’s leaning against Eddie’s truck, and Buck—Buck is wearing denim f*cking overalls. He’s got on a tight cream Henley, and he’s wearing overalls in a classic blue wash, and he’s swinging a wicker f*cking picnic basket in one hand, grinning at Eddie.
“Jesus,” Eddie says faintly, “Christ.”
“Hi Eddie,” Buck chirps, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
“Uh,” Eddie replies eloquently. His tote bag slips slowly down his arm and he doesn’t move to stop it. It hangs at the crook of his elbow, matching the way his jaw, too, has slipped to hang open.
“I brought sandwiches,” Buck tells him cheerfully, waggling the picnic basket at him.
“Hi Buck,” Chris appears behind Eddie, shuffling past him with an unimpressed look when Eddie remains unmoving, taking up the doorway.
This shakes Eddie out of his stupor, and he blinks, hard, several times.
“Hey, bud,” Buck smiles at Chris.
“You, uh, when I said dress accordingly…” Eddie says feebly, reaching behind him to shut the door.
“He had to commit to the bit, Dad,” Chris informs him, deadpan. He reaches up for a high five from Buck, who enthusiastically obliges, before climbing into the backseat.
“Yeah, Eddie,” Buck says, mimicking Chris’s faux-serious tone but smirking back at Eddie. “Let it never be said I’m not dedicated.”
“Right,” Eddie says weakly. “Okay.”
Buck hoists the picnic basket into the backseat beside Chris and shuts the door. He spins around and holds out his hand for the car keys, and Eddie gives them to him on autopilot.
He stands there in front of Buck, making no move to walk around the truck to the passenger seat. Buck looks at him, eyebrow quirked in amusem*nt.
“Okay?” he asks, biting back a grin.
Eddie reaches out, slowly, like he’s moving through honey. He rubs the pad of one finger along the denim strap of the overalls, feeling the twilled fabric. He taps his finger once against the metal buckle holding it all together. Real, then. This is not some kind of hallucination, he did not open his front door into a dream about one of the parallel universes he’s been told so much about this week. This is his actual life, and apparently today that means watching his best friend walk around looking like f*cking Pippi Longstocking.
“Okay,” he echoes back faintly, turning to get in the truck.
He puts the destination details into Buck’s maps app and spends the next hour in a daze, listening to Buck and Chris chat and sing and point out funny billboards on the drive towards Santa Clarita.
By the time they’re pulling onto a winding dirt road at a sign that proclaims ‘The Butter Barn – 1 mile,’ he’s feeling a little less insane. On either side of them, lush green fields roll out, grass swishing gently in the breeze. He spots some sheep grazing to their left, and on their right, a chestnut mare drinks out of a trough as a spindly foal frolics around her.
Buck slows the truck to a snail’s pace, all three of them gazing out their windows, thoroughly enchanted.
They drive over the crest of a gentle hill and a cluster of big buildings comes into view. They’re big and brick-red with white trimmings, straight out of a storybook, and Eddie nods in agreement at Chris’s gasp of delight when he sees them.
Buck parks carefully between a minivan with a ‘baby on board’ sticker in the rear window and a truly ancient looking dark blue Dodge Spirit, both absolutely spattered with mud. When Eddie swings himself out of the passenger seat, he sees his truck was not spared the same treatment, brown muck clinging to the sides.
He grabs his sunglasses from the glove compartment and jams them on. Chris is getting out on Buck’s side, but Eddie opens the back door anyway to grab a faded red baseball cap before rounding the car to join them.
“They have ducks,” Chris says excitedly, looking at a tiny pond to the side of the buildings. “And ducklings!”
Eddie uses the opportunity to plonk the cap down onto Chris’s curls, ignoring when he squirms away, groaning “Dad.”
“It’s hot out,” Eddie says firmly, no room for argument.
“What about you and Buck?” Chris grumbles.
“We’re more used to being out in the sun, and we’re a lot bigger,” Eddie says, at the same time that Buck goes, “Well…”
Chris and Eddie turn to look at him and he smiles sheepishly.
“I did have a hat that, uh, matched the whole—” he gestures sweepingly to his outfit. “But Maddie took it and hid it from me when I was showing her. She said there are, uh, ‘limits to just how much of a public menace I can be.’” He makes exaggerated air-quotes and shrugs.
“Thank Christ,” Eddie mutters, and herds them both toward the main farmhouse before he can begin envisioning Buck in this get-up complete with a—straw? Cowboy? Some kind of hat that surely would’ve made Eddie lose what little grip he has left on his sanity.
They make their way to the farmhouse, stopping to ooh and ahh at the various animals they see along the way. By the time they reach the entrance, a short, plump woman has come out to greet them. She’s dressed—normally, Eddie thinks with a snort, in a chambray shirt and jeans that have grass stains all over. She smiles welcomingly at them, waving.
“Afternoon, y’all,” she says warmly, Southern accent treacly and sweet. “You must be the Diazes?”
Buck physically stumbles beside Eddie, nearly falling forward and righting himself at the last second. They all look over at him in concern, and his face is bright pink.
“Sorry—I’m okay,” he breathes out, eyes darting nervously to Eddie.
“Yeah, that’s us,” Chris confirms to the woman, who smiles back.
“Well, lovely to have you here at The Butter Barn,” she tells them. “I’m Carmen, I believe I spoke on the phone with Eddie?”
Eddie nods, stepping forward to shake her hand. “Yeah, thank you so much for having us.”
Carmen smiles and clasps her hands together. “We have two other families here today, but they’re just doing the regular tour—seeing how we run the dairy and meeting our residents.”
There’s a bark, and she grins. “Here’s one of them now,” she says, and is promptly bowled backwards by a shaggy border collie.
“This is Max,” she tells them, scritching behind the dog’s ears while he pants happily in her face. “He’s nearing eleven this winter, but don’t tell him that, he still thinks he’s a puppy.”
He climbs off her and turns to Chris, tail wagging.
“Don’t worry,” Carmen reassures them after a quick glance at Chris’s crutches. “He may act like a barn animal with me—” she pretends to glare at Max, who is oblivious, nosing gently at Chris’s hand, “—but he does actually have good manners, don’t you, Maxie?”
Max snuffles sweetly and begins to lick every inch of Christopher’s exposed skin. Chris drops to sit on the ground, giggling around a lapful of wriggly dog. Buck and Eddie only have their attention torn away when Carmen continues speaking a minute later.
“Right, where was I,” she says, blowing an unruly dark curl out of her face where it’s escaped from her ponytail. “Oh yeah—my husband, Diego, you’ll see him about, he’s busy with the other two groups. I’ll be taking y’all around too, don’t worry, you’ll get to meet all the critters and we can take a walk by the milking machines if y’all are interested, but the others should be gone by five-ish? And then we can move on to the main event.”
She stops, eyes sparkling. “Actually, Eddie, you mentioned this was specifically for your…” She trails off, looking at them kindly.
“Oh, um, for my—for Buck,” Eddie tells her, after a second of confused silence.
Buck gives Carmen a bashful wave, says, “That’s me.”
“Right,” she says, taking it in stride. “Well, Buck, how’d you like to start off by meeting our girls? See who you get along with best, and then you’ll both be more comfortable for the milking.”
“Ye—yes,”Buck agrees, stumbling over his words in excitement. “That sounds great.”
“Excellent,” she says, clapping her hands together. “Shall we head to the barn?”
All three of them nod enthusiastically, and she laughs, calling Max so Chris can get up too.
They spend the next half an hour in a sprawling barn occupied by twenty-odd cows. Buck and Chris are going from one to the next, stroking damp, quivery noses and getting licked by fat, wet tongues for their trouble. Eddie and Carmen trail behind, making quiet conversation.
“You’re from Texas?” Carmen is asking, and Eddie nods.
“We used to live in El Paso,” he tells her. “Haven’t been around one of these guys—” he pauses to gently rub between the ears of the light brown cow beside them, “—in a minute, not since I was a teenager. My friend’s family owned a ranch.”
“Houston,” Carmen inclines her chin to herself with a smile. “I met Diego in college and moved back here with him when we got married. It’s a different kind of farm than my parents’ would’ve wanted, but—” she shrugs. “I love it.”
Chris lets out a mix between a gasp and an exclamation, which comes out as a breathy yip, and they look up to see where his attention has wandered. Carmen laughs and calls over to him, “Those are the calves there in the back pen! You can go say hello, they would love to meet you.”
Chris, transfixed on the calves, moves faster than Eddie has ever witnessed, hanging his entire skinny body over the gate to get closer.
Carmen laughs again and says, “Hold on, I’ll come open the gate, we can go in and say hi properly.”
As she heads to Chris, Eddie looks around for Buck. He finds him outside a corner pen, whispering quietly to a cow with gently curling hair in brown and white patches. She’s chewing calmly on the edge of his sleeve as he talks to her, and Eddie feels nearly bowled over by the wave of affection the sight invokes in him.
“Making friends?” he asks as he approaches them.
Buck turns to him, eyes bright with happiness. “This is Peaches,” he tells Eddie. “I think she’s the one.”
Eddie laughs, fond and soft, and reaches out to pat her head.
“Didn’t think I’d fall in love so quickly,” Buck adds to him, grinning goofily. “But that’s probably respectful, right? Seeing as we’re about to go to second base.”
Eddie snorts. “Is it the big, brown eyes that do it for you? Look at those lashes.”
Buck grins at him and extracts his sleeve from Peaches’ mouth. It’s soggy with spit, and he rolls it up to his elbow, unbothered.
They’re interrupted by Chris calling them over to say hello to the calves, who are skinny-legged and wide-eyed and want to suckle on Eddie’s fingers. They spend some time in the milking parlour, where Carmen explains how the machines work, and then wander around the farm, meeting the chickens and dogs and goats and an elderly pony.
They see Diego walking around with a young couple and a family with three small children, and he waves cheerfully at them before continuing his own tour.
The sun’s less direct and Eddie’s just about to suggest they take a break to go hydrate when Carmen re-emerges from the farmhouse, having left them with a bag of birdfeed for the ducks and chickens. She’s carrying a tray with some glasses of iced tea, and Eddie hurries over to help her.
“How about we drink these and then head on down to the barn to get Peaches, hm?” she asks, handing Chris a glass and assessing them, hand on her hip. “You feel ready?” She looks at Buck.
He nods eagerly, draining the last of his drink. “Let’s do this.”
In the barn, she hands Buck a halter with a lead rope and he carefully buckles it onto Peaches the way she shows him. He leads her out of her pen to a clean, washed stone area, equipped with a sink, a couple of buckets, a stool, and a post to tie Peaches’ rope onto.
Carmen ties her up with a quick-release knot and points Eddie in the direction of a wheelbarrow full of hay. “Could you grab some of that and bring it over, please, Eddie?”
Eddie obliges, hefts an armful of hay up and drops it down before Peaches, who contentedly begins eating.
Carmen vanishes and reappears with a tottering, patchy-coloured calf in tow. She brings her up to Peaches, who lifts her head in greeting.
“Seeing her calf and being near her while she’s being milked is good for the milk, for Peaches, and for the little one here,” Carmen explains to them. She hands Chris one of the buckets containing some kind of feed. “Calf starter. Lots of proteins and grains to help her grow strong. Do you wanna feed her while your—Buck milks her mom?”
Chris nods excitedly and crouches beside Peaches, letting the calf stick her head into the bucket and chomp messily.
Carmen and Buck wash their hands, and then she resituates the stool so it’s alongside Peaches’ udder. She beckons Buck over.
Eddie watches their bent heads as Carmen explains to Buck how to hand-milk. She positions an empty bucket below and gives him a quick demonstration, then offers him the stool.
Buck’s hands are hesitant on the first pull of Peaches’ teats, and Carmen quietly tells him something that Eddie can’t hear but must be encouraging. He rolls his shoulders back, wiggles out some of his nervous energy, and leans forwards determinedly.
On his next pull, the quiet space between them rings loud with the stream of warm milk hitting the bottom of the bucket. Buck laughs softly, delighted, as Carmen claps him approvingly on his shoulder.
He builds up a rhythm and Eddie gets lost watching his hands move, confident and with purpose.
When the bucket is half-full, Carmen instructs Buck to stop. They stand, Buck hoisting the bucket easily, and Carmen deftly herds the calf to her mother’s udder. They watch her drink her fill, and then Carmen leads her to Peaches’ pen for the night.
“Before we say bye to Peaches—do y’all want a photo?” she asks them, whipping a camera out of her bag.
“Yes, please,” Eddie says immediately, and Buck and Chris nod too.
She lines them up, arranging them so they’re bathed in the warm evening light spilling in through the massive barn doors. They’re positioned like so: Eddie on the left, Chris to his right, holding Peaches’ lead rope, Peaches herself, looking into the camera with big, dark eyes, and then Buck, his own cheek smushed against Peaches’, beam splitting his face, bucket of milk in hand.
Eddie looks at him, stomach somersaulting, and Carmen clicks it.
They say goodbye to Peaches, Buck with a kiss to her nose. The four of them amble back to the farmhouse, Carmen taking the milk from them to quickly pasteurize it.
Buck retrieves the wicker basket from the truck, and they lay out their picnic on a blanket by the pond. Eddie’s hungrier than he realised, and the other two must be too, inhaling Buck’s neatly cut sandwiches in peaceful silence as they watch the ducklings swim in strings.
Every time Eddie looks at Buck, he’s smiling this small, quiet smile. Little bit proud, a lot satisfied, and—something else.
When they finally pack up their basket and head back to the farmhouse to say goodbye, taking a meandering route so Chris can wave to every animal he met, the sun is low in the sky, the light golden and muted.
Carmen meets them inside and hands them three glass bottles of fresh milk.
“Tastes better when you’ve done it yourself,” she tells Buck with a wink. She motions to the shelves behind her and says, “We have a little farm shop, too. No pressure, of course, we just find a lotta folks enjoy taking home fresh country food.”
Ten minutes later, arms laden with delicious goods, she walks them to where they’ve parked. Eddie says goodbye, thanking her profusely and promising to visit again. He’s helping Chris get situated, long afternoon of being outdoors in the sun leaving his kid sleepy and struggling with the seatbelt, and hears Carmen and Buck talking quietly on the other side of the truck.
“It’s not often we get a call from someone who wants to hand milk a cow,” she’s telling Buck. “We don’t usually go for it because you never know with newcomers—if they’ll be gentle enough, if they’ll spook the cows. It’s an incredibly intimate thing.”
Eddie doesn’t have to see Buck to know he’s nodding hard when he says, “Thank you so much for allowing me to, and taking the time to teach me. It really means so much,” his voice heavy with gratitude.
“Our pleasure,” Carmen tells him. “It was really your man—Eddie, who convinced us. The way he talked about this being something you needed to do, but mostly, just the way he talked about you. Said my cows would never meet a kinder, gentler person. I’m glad we could make this happen for you, but really, it’s him you should be thanking.”
“Oh,” Buck says, voice thick. “Um, yeah, he—”
He’s cut off by Eddie shutting the car door with a jerk. His ears feel hot, and when he looks up at Buck, he can’t read his expression. He says a final goodbye to Carmen and gets in the car himself. A minute later, Buck’s hugged her goodbye and is backing the truck out, back down the winding dirt road.
They drive in comfortable quiet for a while, radio crooning low. Ten miles down the highway, Buck glances at Eddie in the passenger seat.
“Hey Eds?” he says quietly.
Eddie hums in question, looking at him.
“Thank you,” Buck tells him. “That— Finding this place and bringing me here and—thank you.”
Eddie reaches across the car and squeezes Buck’s shoulder gently. “Any time,” he says, soft and sincere.
Buck chews his bottom lip, looking at the road ahead of them. He glances quickly in the rearview mirror at Chris drowsing in the backseat.
“The other night,” he begins hesitantly, voice low. “When—when Chris asked if it was a Make-A-Wish list—” he shakes his head like a wet dog. “I realised—maybe it was, a little bit. At least in my own head. And that’s—that’s not what I want. That’s not what I want it to be.”
He looks at Eddie, and Eddie’s surprised to see something like desperation shining in his eyes. He waits, and Buck looks back out at the road.
“I want to do these things. But—I don’t want to do them because I might—die. I want to do them because I’m here, now.” His fingers tighten around the steering wheel as he emphasises the end of his sentence. “And—not for the sake of ticking it off a list. For—for being here, living this, for me but with you, and Chris, and—everyone at book club, you know?”
Eddie smiles at him, his gentlest one, and says, “Yeah. I know.”
Buck looks at him, relief stark in his eyes.
“Also,” Eddie says, voice light, “not that I thought even once that any of this was for the sake of ticking off a list, but, for what it’s worth—” He shifts in his seat as he digs in his pocket, retrieving his wallet.
Buck glances at him in surprise when he pulls out the square of ruled yellow paper and unfolds it carefully.
“Wanna tick it off anyway?”
Buck grins and a few minutes later pulls the truck into a drive-thru parking lot, stopping safely. Eddie roots around the glove box for a ballpoint pen that he has to shake several times to get working, and hands them both—pen and paper—ceremoniously to Buck.
“Okay,” Buck admits, ticking off the number seven with a flourish and self-satisfied grin, “That felt good.”
“Yeah, well, you earned it. You are now a fully certified cow milker,” Eddie grins at him. “Now we just wait for when you can put those skills to use…”
“The apocalypse,” Christopher mumbles helpfully from the backseat.
“Eddie, come on, I know you don’t believe in jinxes, but even you wouldn’t tempt fate with an apocalypse on the line,” Buck says nervously. “Take it back.”
“Fine, I take it back,” Eddie says, rapping gently on Buck’s head with his knuckles for good measure. He twists back in his seat and looks at Chris. “Why have you both been doomsday prepping behind my back?”
“I told you, Eddie, the cheese,” Buck reminds him with a sigh.
Chris nods at Eddie in sleepy agreement. “Gotta have cheese in the apocalypse, Dad.”
Eddie squints at his son. “Didn’t you also want to learn how to milk a cow, then, Chris? If this is so crucial to the quality of your lives post-the end of everything as we know it?”
Chris rubs a fist at his eye, yawning. “Dad,” he says, voice full of long-suffering patience despite his sleepiness, “we’ll have Buck with us. He can teach me then, or you know, when I’m older. Depending on when the apocalypse hits.”
“I see,” Eddie says, stomach flipping. He looks at Buck, who’s grinning at Chris in the rearview mirror, and his stomach flops the other way.
Buck glances at him, eyes uncertain for the briefest moment. Eddie doesn’t know what his own face is doing but whatever Buck sees there washes away his hesitance.
“Don’t worry, Eddie,” he tells him cheekily. “I’ll teach you too. Can’t have you slacking off at the end of the world.”
Eddie squawks indignantly as Buck and Chris giggle, and they spend the rest of the journey home listing all the dairy-based dishes that would make an apocalypse a little more bearable.
Back at the Diaz house, Eddie piggyback-carries a mostly asleep Chris to bed while Buck puts away their farm produce haul in the fridge. Chris is too old for this most of the time, but the warm day out and being on his feet for so long has exhausted him past the point of complaint tonight. Eddie pulls the comforter around him carefully, wincing a little at the prospect of getting the full-bodied manure smell out of the bedding tomorrow.
When he goes to the kitchen to offer Buck a beer, he finds him already holding a bottle, sipping slowly and staring curiously at the half-opened cardboard box on the counter. He slides a second beer carefully down the kitchen island towards Eddie.
“Have you been online shopping, Eddie?” Buck asks, pretending to be shocked. “Or is your phone listening in on your conversations and buying you sh*t again?”
Eddie scowls. “They didn’t have it in-store, so I had to—yes, I bought it online,” he grumbles.
“What is it?” Buck asks, rounding the counter toward it. He absent-mindedly pops a bubble on the edge of bubble wrap closest to him.
“It’s, uh, it’s—for you, actually,” Eddie admits, scratching his chin self-consciously. “Just for—after today. Thought you and Chris would like it.”
Buck’s eyes are wide with genuine surprise. “For—me?” he repeats.
Eddie nods yes, and then nods encouragingly at the box. “Go ahead.”
Buck puts down his beer and carefully peels back layers of brown paper and bubble wrap. Eddie watches his long, capable fingers as they wrap around the object inside.
“Is this a—” he begins, and Eddie opens his mouth to explain what the odd little contraption actually is, but Buck barrels on, voice filled with wonder. “Is this an ice cream maker, Eddie?”
“Oh, uh—yeah,” Eddie says. “I thought—we got fresh cream and strawberries at the farm shop, and we have your milk, so I thought we could make ice cream tomorrow?”
Buck is beaming at him, obviously delighted. Eddie smiles back, breaking eye contact to take a sip of beer.
“This is—the most fun gift I’ve ever gotten,” Buck says, turning it around in his hands. “Thanks, Eddie.”
Eddie grins and heads to the living room, asking Buck what he wants to watch tonight as he goes.
Just as he’s almost out of earshot, he hears Buck whisper, “Ice cream in the apocalypse? Gamechanger.”
Two backlogged episodes of the Stanley Tucci cooking show later, Eddie’s tucked himself into bed with pepperminty breath. Buck’s comfy on the couch, latest children’s novel of the month in hand even though his eyes were already drifting shut when Eddie said goodnight.
His phone chimes, and it’s Buck, to the 118 A-shift groupchat. Eddie opens it, and it’s the photo Carmen took of them—Buck gave her his email details for the soft copy. His phone beeps as the follow-up messages come through.
Buck: day out with the diazes!!!
Buck: i can milk cows now
Buck: @bobby is this something you can add to my employment record. like under special skills
A little heart pops up as Bobby likes the photo and replies no Buck.
Ravi and Hen also like the photo in quick succession, Ravi enquiring why Buck is dressed like a character from Little House on the Prairie. Then Eddie’s phone is buzzing with a private message from Hen.
He swipes it open. It’s a forward of the photo Buck sent on the group, along with the message how are you upstaging the actual f*cking cow with your cow-eyes here, Eddie.
He frowns and opens the photo to zoom in. It’s like he remembers: Buck, beaming against Peaches, Peaches staring serenely into the camera, Chris smiling as he holds her, and—Eddie, gazing at Buck with the kind of simple, plain adoration he knows he’s never consciously felt for anyone other than Christopher. There’s a smile tucked into the curve of his mouth, soft but irrefutable in who it’s cast towards, and—his eyes. Jesus. Hen is—not wrong. He’s f*cking shining, just looking at Buck.
And there’s that tug in his gut again. Insistent, familiar, and—Eddie’s not stupid. He knows if he would only let himself look at this assortment of reactions he has around Buck, not as separates, but as a whole, he might realise the staggeringly obvious, completely terrifying, and no longer avoidable truth—the reason he looks at Buck like a man in love.
Eddie scrolls through his contacts, types can we meet? soon, if possible, and sends it to Frank.
_____
“What do you mean not everybody has some level of attraction to everyone, regardless of gender?” Eddie demands, leaning forward in his seat.
Frank sighs. “Well, attraction is complicated. Do you mean it in an aesthetic appreciation sense, or is it more physical, or romantic?”
Eddie looks at him, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish.
Frank sighs again. He’s been doing that a lot since Eddie walked in here ten minutes ago.
“Eddie, I’m a gay man. I can appreciate when a woman looks attractive. But I don’t feel attraction to women the way I do men. When I met my husband, the thought that he was attractive was present. But so were the other things—the nervousness, wanting to be close to him, imagining our lives together. You mentioned having a recurring physical reaction around Buck—if this is a crush, I’d say butterflies come with the territory.”
Eddie nearly falls out of his chair. “The—Those are butterflies?”
Frank levels him with a look. “Is it—an unfamiliar feeling for you?”
Eddie drags his hands over his face, flopping back in the chair. “I mean—I don’t know? I didn’t get them when I—with people I’ve been with in the past?”
Frank nods at him. “Your two past relationships were both with women, right?”
Eddie tips his head back, staring at the bumpy white ceiling of Frank’s office. “I mean. I wasn’t not attracted to them. There were so many things about them both—I loved Shannon, Frank. She was my friend, and my wife, and the mother of my kid.”
Frank waits, patient.
“I—obviously, we were… I was happy with her, for a long time. And—romance of it aside, I know that was rocky, later—we had a kid together! It’s not like I wasn’t able to be with her physically! Sometimes—sometimes that was the only thing I felt I was able to do right.”
“Eddie,” Frank says gently, “being able to have sex with someone is not the same as wanting to have sex with someone, or enjoying having sex with someone.”
Eddie stares at the ceiling, vision swimming a little. He brings up a clenched fist to scrub at his eyes.
“Of course,” Frank goes on, “you know you don’t have to want to have sex with anyone.”
The silence lies heavy as they wait for Eddie to sort through the mess of boxes labelled Every Slightly Charged Human Interaction I’ve Ever Had that have tumbled out the door he’s just cracked open in his head. And, f*ck.
“I know,” Eddie sighs eventually. He drops his chin down to his chest, staring at the carpet. “But…”
Franks lets him muster up some courage, and then, eyes still trained on the carpet, Eddie’s saying, “I think… Listen, I loved Shannon. A part of me will always love Shannon. But I didn’t feel like that—I didn’t feel like this with her. And definitely not Ana.” He snorts derisively.
“I—If I think about other times I’ve reacted like that, uh—reacted physically to another person I also thought was attractive, it’s—they’re all guys,” Eddie admits quietly. “If you know what you’re looking for, I guess that’s pretty—pretty f*cking obvious, but I—didn’t know. I didn’t know they were butterflies. I didn’t know, how to recognise them, and— I didn’t think about it. Like—I was perfectly fine dating women, or I thought I was fine, but… Maybe—” he scrubs his face again. “Maybe I don’t have to settle for fine.”
Frank nods at him, face neutral as ever. “It takes many people a long time to get to the point where they allow themselves to reach for the things they want. I know you struggled with that too, and I think it’s a credit to the work you’ve done to see where you are right now.”
Eddie blinks hard and wipes his palms on his jeans.
“So, am I… Am I gay?” he asks tentatively, not to Frank directly, but the room at large.
Frank tilts his head. “Well, that’s not for me or anyone else to—”
“Oh my God, wait, am I in love with Buck?” Eddie cuts him off as he remembers the catalyst for this crisis, flopping back again and throwing his hands up with a loud groan.
Frank sighs again.
“Oh, God,” Eddie says, hands coming to cover his face as he mentally speeds through the last year of his body involuntarily reacting to Buck just—existing. “I’m—I’m very gay about Buck.”
Through his fingers, he can see the corner of Frank’s mouth twitch almost imperceptibly.
“Okay,” Eddie sighs, muffled. He slowly drags his hands down his face and looks at Frank, not even surprised by how quickly his mind has confronted and accepted this once it involved Buck. Like maybe it’s okay that it took him so long to know this thing about himself, because if it took waiting for Buck? He’d have waited a lifetime.
“I guess now—Okay, Frank, how do you feel about tackling thirty-five years of repression? Gay variety, this time round.”
He settles back in the chair, and Frank’s mouth nearly gives in to the smile.
Eddie takes the scenic route home. He doesn’t know what the standard processing time for a sexuality revelation is, thinks maybe his lack of denial or even panicked apprehension in Frank’s office is not the norm for most men in their thirties when faced with this realisation. He’s not ruling out the possibility of that happening in the near future, however, and the drive home ends with Buck, nearly as reliable a fixture in the Diaz house these days as the blue couch he’s always so comfortably sprawled upon.
So, yes, Eddie’s not spiralling out just yet, but Eddie’s also not quite ready to walk through his front door to the very man who is the reason for Eddie’s non-spiral.
There are three things Eddie is mostly sure of, and these are:
1. He’s not straight. Frank encouraged him not to get caught up on labels he isn’t comfortable with yet, but he is for sure not straight. Eddie Diaz is definitely an enjoyer of men.
2. He has feelings for Buck. He thinks his new understanding of the gut-tugging—the butterflies, when combined with what he has been assuming was platonic love for his closest friend, is pretty indisputably big, fat, romantic love. He’s not too bothered by this. The love was already there, even if he was misinterpreting it, and that doesn’t feel like a change. It’s not scary to love Buck.
3. The knowledge of the nature of his love, however, has beckoned him through another mental door that’d been wedged shut. And this? This is a problem. Because now Eddie knows that the lurch he feels when Buck’s biceps are straining against his sleeves stems from him wanting to—reach out and touch and caress and bite. The swoop he feels when Buck’s looking at Chris with a satisfied grin, kitchen a mess and homemade strawberry ice cream smeared at the edge of his lip, is Eddie wanting to lean across the kitchen island and plant the softest kiss to that plush pink mouth. The hitch in his chest when Buck is tucked into the corner of the couch, completely absorbed in one of the books he’s been reading, no reason for him to be at Eddie’s house other than he just—wants to. Eddie’s not entirely sure what desire that invokes exactly, but he’d make a fairly confident guess it involves wanting to sit on that couch beside Buck, haul him into his lap and keep him there for as long as he’s allowed.
The problem is that Eddie’s not allowed. Eddie’s opened this door to endless want, and Eddie can’t have.
It’s not necessarily that Buck’s straight and Eddie’s a man—he honestly doesn’t know where Buck lies on the spectrum, but he’s always exuded that easy comfort in joking flirtation and exaggerated innuendo with people of all genders that comes with someone being very secure in their sexuality. It's not that, though.
It’s the fact that if he did act on any of these… inclinations, if he said something to Buck that made him uncomfortable, Eddie doesn’t know if he’d be able to live with himself. Not that Buck would ever say that, but Eddie’d know. The only way this ends is Eddie walking through his front door to a dip in the cushion on the right-hand side of his unoccupied couch, a dip perfectly moulded to and now forever devoid of Buck.
And selfishness aside, he knows what they—he and Chris—mean to Buck. He knows, even if no one’s said the words—he lets his mind flit to Chris agreeing with Carmen, yes, we’re the Diazes, before wrenching himself away. Even if no one’s said the words, they function as a family. And he cannot take that away, from himself, from Chris, and sure as hell not from Buck. He won’t put Buck in a position where he feels he has to take a step back to, especially if it’s to protect Eddie’s feelings.
So, yes, third and last: Eddie won’t say or do anything to let Buck know, because Eddie will not risk jeopardizing the way things are.
By the time Eddie has resolved himself to this final fact, he’s turning onto his street. He parks and rests his head on the steering wheel, exhaling heavily. Nothing has changed, he reminds himself, not really. He’ll just go on loving Buck the way he has been, and if it aches a little now? It’s an ache he’ll bear gladly.
He lets himself into his house, kicking off his sneakers and wandering to the living room. The TV’s off, but he can hear Buck and Chris murmuring to each other quietly. When he gets there, neither of them are on the couch. They’re both sprawled out on either side of the coffee table, and in between them lies a large reusable shopping bag, gaping open and spilling spools of yarns in every colour of the rainbow and more onto the table.
They’re both focused on the yarn they’re each holding in their hands, but as Eddie rounds the couch Buck looks up with a smile.
“Have I accidentally walked into a retirement home, or are we just planning on entertaining a thousand cats?” Eddie enquires, mouth quirking up to one side.
“Dad,” Chris sighs, and Eddie can hear him rolling his eyes.
Buck grins bigger and holds up the project in his hands, two long wooden needles with what can only be described as a giant knot of yarn dangling from them. “Geraldine from book club taught me how to knit!”
“Not terribly successfully,” Eddie mutters, reaching out to pinch the edge of the mangled swatch of yarn Buck’s presenting him with.
Buck pouts, eyes still bright with humour. “Well, she’s teaching me,” he amends. “It’s an ongoing process.”
Eddie lifts an eyebrow skeptically, but it’s probably softened by the way he’s smiling with the entire rest of his face. He flops onto the couch, knee brushing Buck’s shoulder where he’s sat with his back against it.
“You too, Chris?” he asks.
Chris shakes his head, frowning as he carefully loops a strand of yarn around the single hooked needle in his hands. “I’m—I’m crocheting,” he says distractedly.
Eddie raises both eyebrows and glances at Buck in question. Buck looks rather sheepish and refocuses his gaze on his knitting.
“Okay, so Geraldine first tried teaching me to crochet, but, uh. My hands were too big to hold the needle properly. So she showed me how to knit instead.” He blushes prettily before adding, “But Chris is great at it. Look, his doesn’t even have any holes in it.”
Eddie looks up while Chris pauses what he’s doing to show Eddie his progress. It’s pretty cool, a little circle of intricately woven yarn.
“Oh yeah, that’s way better than Buck’s,” he tells Chris with a grin. “What are you guys making, anyway?”
They both shrug in response. Buck’s needles clack together at odd intervals, and Chris puts his project down to go hunt for a snack in the kitchen.
Eddie’s eyes drift to the table, where beside the yarn is a pair of blue plastic kids-size knitting needles. Buck must catch him looking, because he says, “I figured two needles would be pretty fiddly. I mean, they’re pretty tough to hold even with the size of my hands.”
Eddie hums in agreement, and Buck goes on. “Thought he’d probably wanna try ’em out anyway. I got the crochet hook as a back-up if he wasn’t having fun with it. And I think he’s enjoying it? We’ve been doing this for—” He stops to peer at the clock on the wall, “—over an hour, jeez.”
Chris wanders back in, packet of the gross cardboard-flavoured lentil chips Buck keeps buying held between his teeth and a bowl of hummus in his hands. He sits back down and quietly resumes crocheting.
“It’s nice,” Buck says, “Repetitive and… meditative, almost. And you have something tangible at the end of it.” He cheerfully smooths out the creation in his hands, unbothered when it does nothing to fix the lumps and holes.
Eddie leans back into the cushions, just watching them craft in companionable silence. Eddie watches them, with the knowledge that it was not only Buck’s first thought to include Chris in this wholesome, creative, non-screen activity, but that every next thought he had was to include Chris in ways he’d be able to participate while all the time not trying to limit Chris to something by making assumptions about his disability.
Eddie watches them, with the knowledge that he’s never known as much casual love and care as there is inside this very room.
Eddie watches them, with the knowledge that it is going to be f*cking agonizing to love Buck this much, this way, with a name to it, and not run his hand through the blond hair inches away from his fingertips, run them down the back of his neck and to the side to cup his cheek, tilt his jaw, lean down for a slow, sweet kiss.
Eddie watches them and breathes around the ache, heavy in his sternum, high in his throat.
“Eddie,” Buck’s saying, and Eddie swallows hard around it. “Can we add this to the list, actually?”
“Uh—oh, yeah, of course,” Eddie replies, scrambling to dig out his wallet. He smooths out the paper and moves to hand it to Buck. “Um, pen, one sec…”
“Table,” Chris says helpfully, not looking up.
Eddie gets up to find it, still holding the paper. There’s a mess of stationery across the dining table where Chris seems to have finished and then immediately abandoned his homework in favour of crafting with Buck. He picks up a pen at random and heads back to the couch, frowning slightly at the list in his hands.
“Hey, you still haven’t crossed off reading more fiction,” he tells Buck, handing it over.
“Oh,” Buck says, uncapping the pen with his teeth and writing 10. LEARN TO KNIT WITH GERALDINE at the bottom of the list in his neat print. “Yeah, well, that’s ongoing as well, right? I haven’t read enough yet—I gotta earn that tick.”
“Buck,” Eddie says with a laugh, “You’ve been a part of the book club for—what, six weeks now? We’re in the first week of October! You must’ve read more books than the rest of us read in a whole year.” He gestures around the living room, evidence of Buck’s total embracement of every sort of fictitious literature visible in the paperbacks piled neatly on the side table and stacked intimately against Eddie’s own on the shelves.
Buck looks up, following the sweeping movement of his arm.
He frowns. “sh*t, Eds, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I was just. Leaving all my stuff all over your house.” He meets Eddie’s eyes, apologetic, and Eddie feels hysterical, wants to laugh, wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, wants to ask how he can’t see that every piece of himself he leaves in Eddie’s home feels like sunlight through stained glass, painting Eddie’s insides. But he doesn’t, because how could Buck know, when Eddie didn’t even know himself till so recently?
Instead, Eddie shakes his head and smiles. He knows it must come out a little wistful at the edges, but he doesn’t think Buck is looking hard enough to pick up on that.
“Nah, don’t be—how else am I gonna make sense of half the things you suddenly start talking about mid-conversation?”
Buck huffs a laugh, turning back to his knitting.
“I like knowing what you’re reading. I like knowing what you think about things,” Eddie adds after a second, quiet and sincere.
He can’t see Buck’s face from this angle, but the tips of his ears are unmistakably pink, pinker than they were a minute ago.
“I’ll remind you that you said that next time you’re trying to nap at the station and I’m telling you the full plot of the most convoluted murder mystery you’ve ever heard at 3am,” Buck jokes.
Eddie snorts a laugh. “You make them so much more complicated than they are, I don’t think you know what’s happened in them half the time.”
“Hey,” Buck protests, “they’re supposed to be confusing, Eddie. I am the target audience for a juicy mystery, just ask Athena.”
Eddie snorts louder. “You’re the target audience for being easily entertained, is what you are. And I’m not sure you want to open that can of worms and remind Athena of anything to do with you and the, uh. Legal side of the law.”
Buck huffs indignantly but doesn’t attempt a rebuttal. Eddie stands up, allowing himself the smallest squeeze of Buck’s shoulder when his hand grazes it.
“Besides,” he says, “I like it even when it’s 3am and I’m trying to nap and you’re telling me the world’s worst story with so many plot holes and time jumps every one of those authors is turning in their graves.”
He heads to the kitchen to see what they have for dinner, and he thinks he can feel the weight of Buck’s eyes on his back as he walks away.
_____
“Hmm… We do need a new set of bowls for the station,” Bobby is saying as Eddie comes up the stairs into the loft.
He’s leaning against the kitchen counter while Buck beats a bowl full of eggs next to him. Buck pauses, whisk in the air, and says, “Really?”
Eddie walks into the kitchen and Buck’s gaze shifts from Bobby to him.
“Eddie!” he says, waving the whisk in greeting, and Bobby reaches out a hand in alarm to grasp his wrist, stilling him from splattering raw egg back and forth. Buck lowers the whisk back into the bowl meekly and then looks back up with a grin. “Bobby’s gonna come with me to my first pottery class on Thursday!”
“Oh?” Eddie asks, looking at Bobby.
“Why not?” Bobby grins at Buck. “It’ll be nice to sit down for dinner and be like, hey, I made everything on this table.”
Buck rolls his eyes as Bobby laughs, and Eddie feels warm the same way he does when he’s being a corny dad and Christopher is groaning good-naturedly.
“Eddie, you should come too,” Buck says to him, eyes bright. There’s a twinkle to them, and then he adds, “We can re-enact Ghost.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow at him. “Ghost?”
“You kinda have the same haircut as Demi Moore anyway,” he tells Eddie, smirking.
Bobby snorts, and Eddie sputters indignantly, opening and closing his mouth. Buck looks positively gleeful.
“Why—Hold on, does that make you Patrick Swayze?” Eddie asks with an incredulous laugh. He resolutely does not think about his back pressed to Buck’s shirtless chest, his broad, warm hands encompassing Eddie’s as they’re coated in wet, slippery clay, dirt dripping down—no, he’s not thinking about it.
Buck puffs out his chest, still grinning. “Uh, yeah, obviously.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Eddie informs him, taking a seat next to Hen at the table. “Absolutely not. You can re-enact Ghost with Bobby.”
“Ew,” Buck says, and Bobby scrunches up his face in distaste.
“Eddie prefers Dirty Dancing, anyway,” Hen tells the room at large, not looking up from where she’s hunched over the crossword.
Eddie finds himself sputtering incomprehensibly for the second time in as many minutes. He glares at Hen.
“How would you even know that?” he demands.
“Because you’ve made Karen watch it with you at wine night three times in the last year and a half,” she says, voice droll even as she pencils in an answer.
Eddie looks back over to the kitchen, to where Bobby is biting back a smile and Buck is looking like Christmas came early.
“No, you’re right, that’s a much better Patrick Swayze,” Buck says. “Oh, I could absolutely Dirty-Dancing-lift you.”
Eddie feels the blood rush to his face. He wonders briefly if beating his head through the solid wood of the table would be conspicuous. He gulps as discreetly as possible, but Hen glances up at him with an amused, pitying expression anyway.
“You will not be lifting anyone like that until your PT scores are better,” Bobby tells Buck, effectively wiping the co*cky smirk off his face. He sticks his tongue out at Bobby, who flicks him with the end of a dish towel for his trouble.
Either way, neither of them are looking at Eddie, much to his relief, and he’s further saved from coming up with any kind of response by Chimney sauntering into the loft.
“What’s for breakfast?” Chim asks, grabbing Hen’s empty coffee mug as he walks past to refill it when he pours his own.
“Frittatas,” Buck says, and after that the loft slips into a slow, companionable morning hum as Bobby and Buck make breakfast while Chim and Eddie supply Hen with unhelpful suggestions to her crossword clues. Ravi looks half-asleep, clutching the coffee jug Chim handed him, and Lucy’s scrolling through Instagram while his head slumps closer and closer to her shoulder.
The morning is peaceful, and by the time they’re all sipping their post-breakfast coffees, the conversation has rolled around to Halloween, only two weeks away.
“We literally never have actual Halloween off, you can come to the party at Bobby’s and then go to your Gen Z rave,” Hen is telling Ravi, who looks like a teenager whose parents have insisted on supervising his party.
“But we need time for our costume change, Hen,” Ravi whines, slouching back in his seat.
Lucy nods in agreement, though she looks a lot less cranky about it. “They’re pretty elaborate. Daniel Craig didn’t skimp on the details of that 60s loungewear set and neither will we. Do you know how much of a bitch it is to hand-stitch terrycloth?”
“But your boyfriend is literally the one supplying us with all that leather!” Chim says, looking at Ravi pleadingly.
Ravi turns pink and mutters, “Yes, but you don’t have to phrase it like that.”
Hen and Lucy snort laughs at the same time. Eddie takes a deep breath, trying to figure out the best way to steer this conversation back to where he needs everyone to be: in harmonious agreement about the group costume he’d painstakingly convinced them to be a part of.
Chimney had been pretty easy once they’d floated the idea of the T-Birds gang, lured in by the leather jackets and greased coifs, and Hen was left with no choice once Karen messaged the group chat with a PINK LADIES DIBS ON FRENCHIE!!!! But Eddie did not offer to cover two B-shift swaps for Lucy while she goes on yet another family reunion—“Other side,” she’d told Eddie with a grimace—and, more embarrassingly, actually beg Ravi, basically halfway to kneeling before Ravi, alarmed, had traded his participation for help with speaking Spanish to woo his boyfriend, only for it all to fall apart with a fortnight to go.
“Your boyfriend is literally a costume designer, I’m sure he can help speed up the costume changes without sacrificing on quality,” he tells Ravi now. “Plus, you know us. We’ll be wrapping up so early you won’t even have the chance to be fashionably late to your next thing.”
Ravi sighs long-sufferingly as everyone around the table chimes in to agree, raising his hands in defeat. “Fine, okay! But you’re all picking up your costumes from my apartment this weekend, I’m not lugging all that leather—” he glares at Chim, “—to the station.”
Eddie looks at Buck as everyone agrees readily. He’s grinning wide, dimple in his right cheek out on display. He catches Eddie’s eyes, and the grin somehow spreads wider.
Eddie knows if either of them had mentioned the genuine reason for wanting to do a group costume, further than don’t you want to look like a fifties greaser and are you really gonna tell your wife to return the pink wig she immediately bought online, there would have been zero grumbling, no hesitation. Everyone in this room would do most things to see Buck happy, cliché Halloween costumes barely scratching the surface.
But Buck didn’t bring it up himself, and Eddie knows why, knows even now the worry of asking things of the people who love him lurks, so he’d determinedly orchestrated it himself, because while everyone in this room would do most things to see Buck happy, Eddie can’t think of a single thing he wouldn’t do.
_____
The 30th of October dawns bright and pleasantly cool, wrapping up their shift before a precious 72-hours off. Their last call, while not serious, ran long, and once they’re changing into their civvies it’s well past time for breakfast, stomachs rumbling in discordant chorus. It’s also Friday, which means most of their partners and children are out for the day already, so when Bobby suggests, “Breakfast at the diner on Valley?,” everyone else nods eagerly.
Eddie opens his mouth to decline, but Buck’s already shaking his head. “Christopher’s school has a teachers’ conference today,” he explains, before turning to Eddie. He’s not hesitant, exactly, but he looks like—like he’s waiting for Eddie to tell them the rest, like he’s drawing some kind of boundary in his head about how much mundanity he’s allowed to share about Chris on Eddie’s behalf.
Like you’re not helping with his class bake sale or going over his math homework or making sure he eats vegetables with dinner at least thrice a f*cking week, Eddie thinks, swallowing a laugh of disbelief that would’ve come out more hysterical than he’s able to explain. Like you’re not parenting him and loving him just as much as me.
“Yeah,” he says instead, clearing his throat. “He’s got the day off. He’s got plans all weekend with school friends for Halloween, they’re having a sleepover and going to a funfair, so we promised we could do all-day breakfast and watch as much Scooby-Doo as we can manage today—though that might not be very long, depending on when Buck starts breaking out the Scooby voice.”
Buck grins at him, unabashed, and then everyone’s saying goodbye to them and planning to meet at Bobby and Athena’s at eight the next evening.
Buck follows him home, and they both kiss Carla on the cheek as she leaves in the most calm and collected rush Eddie has ever witnessed, running late for brunch with her niece.
It’s nearly 10, but Chris is still asleep when Eddie peeks his head into his room. He never thought he’d feel this nostalgic for the child with an excessive zeal for life at the asscrack of dawn, but nearing teenagehood has come with drastic changes to his son’s sleep cycle, and he misses unrushed early mornings with his kid.
He heads over to the kitchen, detouring to his bedroom to pull on a hoodie—late October has the temperature pleasantly in the 60s this year. Buck’s already got out the mixing bowls, measuring out flour for waffle batter.
It’s so familiar, and when they’re all piled onto the couch, elbows knocking and trying not to spill syrup, Eddie is once again struck by the feeling of rightness that washes through him every time they’re like this, when he only has to reach out and touch, when he only has to glance over, to listen to the soft laughter, to know they’re safe and content and exactly where they belong.
It's near 5 in the afternoon when Eddie picks up his phone from where it’s been lying face down on the coffee table. Chris is sprawled on his stomach by their feet, hands propping up his face as he sleepily watches Scooby-Doo! and the Loch Ness Monster—they’ve been alternating between cartoons and the live action all day. Buck is sunk deep into the cushions, half-watching the movie as he reads one of book club’s October picks—Detransition, Baby, for LGBT+ History month. Every time Eddie spies the blatantly queer covers of whichever novel he’s currently on, his stomach lurches—not in the way he’s come to expect, but as a reminder that he’s figured out this thing about himself and not told anyone other than his therapist.
He wants to come out—especially to Buck—but he’s not sure he wants to make a big announcement of it, and he doesn’t know how to just slip it into conversation. The longer he leaves it, the harder it gets to convince himself it won’t affect the relationships he has, with his friends, with his family, with his colleagues.
He scrolls through the—many notifications on his phone, frowning slightly at the sheer number of texts before swiping open the 118 A-shift-and-family groupchat to read them properly.
“Oh, sh*t,” he says out loud. Buck glances up at him.
Eddie hands over his phone. “I think everyone’s got food poisoning. And I mean everyone—even Bobby sounds miserable.”
He watches Buck scroll through everyone’s tragic complaints: Chim’s when will death take me for the love of God please, Hen apparently so far gone Karen has messaged a string of skull emojis on her behalf, Lucy texting a photo of her bathtub that looks like it was taken from the floor captioned this is where i live now, Ravi with a wretched i have never known suffering like this, and Bobby mournfully apologizing for inflicting this ailment upon them by taking them to a diner with a less than perfect Health Department rating.
Buck looks up at him, eyes wide with concern even as he says, “Ruh-roh.”
Eddie kicks at him with one foot even while he’s reaching for his own phone to ask if there’s anything he and Eddie can do to help, picking up medicine or groceries or covering any errands.
Maddie replies with a mostly reassuring We’ve got it covered, nothing else to do but ride it out, I’ll keep an eye on him, which Karen thumbs-ups and agrees with. Athena says she’s sent Bobby to lie down, and Hen takes her head out of the toilet long enough to send don’t worry boys we’ll be fine by tomorrow, no way I’m missing karaoke duetting with my wife while she— The text cuts off and Karen informs them it’s because she is once again heaving her guts out.
Buck promises that he and Eddie are on standby for anything anyone needs and then meets Eddie’s eyes, blowing out a breath. “Damn. We really dodged that bullet, huh?”
Eddie huffs. “Would’ve been even worse with two of us and one bathroom.”
Buck looks surprised at the implication that of course he’d have stayed at the Diaz house and ridden this out with Eddie, instead of slinking back to the loft to be gross and sick with plenty of space, but alone.
“Uh, yeah,” he says, grin slowly spreading, looking down at his hands. “I think we all know I am not a, uh, perfect patient at the best of times, much less when everyone else is already at death’s door themselves.”
Eddie pokes his thigh with a toe. “As if you wouldn’t be trying to play Florence Nightingale the second you knew one of us was ill too, your own health be damned. We could both have a fever of 103 and I’d probably still have to wrestle you into bed to stop you from bulk-cooking soup.”
Buck’s eyebrows rise and Eddie realises, belatedly, that the imagery of wrestling Buck into his bed is not particularly desexualised by the context of being unwell. Christ. He clears his throat, and Buck turns away, his eyes landing on the garment bag with Eddie’s T-Bird costume slung over a dining room chair.
Eddie follows his gaze and looks back at Buck. “I’m sure everyone will be fine by tomorrow—I know that’s literally the last thing you’re thinking about, but it’s probably just a 24-hour bug.”
Buck looks like he’s about to say something, but then his phone buzzes. He looks at it and stands up, stretching his back out. His t-shirt rides up, revealing a strip of pale skin and the smattering of dark blond hair snaking down into the waistband of his jeans. Eddie rips his eyes away and back to the TV, swallowing.
“Maddie wants me to pick up some stuff from the pharmacy,” Buck tells him, pocketing his phone. “And my costume is at the lof—my place anyway, so I’ll go there after? And just come over tomorrow to get ready with you?”
Eddie nods, and Buck leans down to gently tug at a curl on Christopher’s head. “Hey, bud, have a great time tomorrow, yeah? Eat, like, three corndogs at the funfair for me.”
Chris looks up with an indulgent smile. “Okay, Buck. Don’t worry, when I recap the horror movies we watch, I’ll leave out the worst bits.” He pats Buck’s leg kindly, and Buck gasps, affronted.
“I think I can handle an uncensored verbal recap of a scary movie without a problem,” he says huffily, eyes twinkling anyway. “I don’t enjoy that this is apparently my brand now.”
“I’ve seen you cover your eyes when we watched Coraline, Buck,” Chris says patiently, turning back to the TV.
“I—Listen, that movie is objectively terrifying. And I only couldn’t look when she was talking about sewing on the button eyes!” Buck protests, grinning as he heads to the door, grabbing his jacket and slipping it on.
“Or at the mice!” Chris calls from the living room.
Buck laughs softly, shaking his head. “Fine!” he acquiesces. “Give me the watered down, kid-friendly version! It’s only my dignity!”
He opens the front door and calls back over his shoulder, “Bye, Eddie, see you tomorrow! Text if you want me to pick anything up!” And then he’s gone.
Eddie stretches his legs down the length of the couch, digging his toes into the warm fabric where Buck had been sitting. He could text Buck and tell him to come back here after picking up his costume, but that would be insane, and revealing, and Eddie is trying to be less of both those things. He turns his face into the back cushion and sighs around the ache.
Eddie stands with his hands on his hips, studying the greaser outfit Ravi’s boyfriend Nico put together for him, now laid out on his bed. The leather jacket is fine—artfully distressed to look vintage, with “T-Birds” painted on the back in white. But the black t-shirt looks like it was made to fit Christopher, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to get his ass into jeans this skinny.
He glances at the digital clock on his bedside table; it’s just past 6pm, Buck should be heading over now.
But then his phone buzzes, and when he picks it up it’s to a slew of apologetic texts from their friends. He reads them as they come in, one after the other.
Hen: Guys, I’m so sorry
Still feeling tender
Not sure I’m up for any kind of party tonight
Karen: We’re both gonna bail
it’s still a pajamas and plain toast situation
Ravi: i cannot believe i’m not only voluntarily staying home from the party of the year, but i can’t even muster up the strength to decompose on cap’s couch
Lucy: [image attached of bathroom ceiling]
Bobby (Cap): I’m so sorry everyone
Apology breakfast on me next time
Chimney: Ugh Cap don’t talk about food
There’s nothing left in my stomach but my body WILL try to puke again
Maddie: He’s not joking
I had dreams soundtracked to his dry-heaving
Ravi: gross
Lucy: gross
Bobby (Cap): sorry Chim
Athena: Raincheck on the party then
We can get dressed up and make a mess of our house any time
Everyone just take care for now
Buck: feel better soon everyone!
@ravi @lucy are you guys on your own?
do you need anything? can swing by and drop stuff off
Ravi: nah, nico’s at my place
he keeps making me drink tea
i love him so much but i f*cking hate tea
thanks though buck
Lucy: i’m good thx
Buck: <3
Eddie: Look after yourselves!
Keep us updated and let us know if you need anything at all
Hen: Buckaroo, Eddie, you two should still go out
Karen: YESSSS it’s Halloween there must be a million parties to crash
Chimney: Yes, please let me live out my leather dreams vicariously
Ravi: oh god chimney please never say that again
Chimney: :D
Ravi: hold on actually
me and lucy still have tickets for our party
and goddamnit someone should use them
Lucy: omg yes
go forth, shake some ass, make us proud
Ravi: hold on i’m attaching them below
[tickets attached]
Gay American whor* Story
eddie PLEASE don’t tell anyone there u know us if ur going to spend all night sipping a beer and not slu*t dropping even once
Eddie can feel his eyebrows climb up into his hairline at the name of the party Ravi and Lucy were going to. He almost drops his phone when it rings loudly, blinking at the caller ID photo of Buck and Chris dressed in silly costume props at May’s graduation party before picking up.
“Buck?” he asks.
“Hey, Eddie,” Buck says. “Um. Uh. So…”
Eddie waits, looking at the fading evening light coming through his bedroom curtains.
“Um. Do—would you still want to go out tonight? Just us?” Bucks asks in a rush.
“Oh. Uh, yeah, why not?” Eddie says, absently smoothing out the black material laid out before him.
“To the, uh, to the party Ravi’s given us tickets for?” Buck asks hesitantly.
“Uh,” Eddie says, rotating Gay American whor* Story in his head. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m down if you are.”
Buck exhales in an audible whoosh. “Okay, nice, that’s great,” he says fast, “I, uh, I don’t think it starts till, like, 10, though? Is that okay?”
“Buck,” Eddie says balefully, “I am in the prime of my life. Are you suggesting that starting the night at 10pm is a problem for me?”
“Yes,” Buck replies, matter-of-fact.
“Well. I’m a man of many moods, I contain multitudes, or whatever. I can be offended by that insinuation and horrified at the prospect of leaving the house at 10, and do it anyway,” Eddie says. “Are you still coming over to get ready?”
“Oh, the costumes!” Buck says, followed by a moment of silence.
“Yeah, I’m sorry the whole group costume thing fell through. We’ll make it happen another time,” Eddie promises, resolving to at least try and make this a fun night out for Buck.
“No, no, that’s fine, I was just—thinking,” Buck tells him. “Um, actually, you go ahead and get ready. I’ll come pick you up at nine-thirty, we can get an Uber. I, uh, have an idea.”
“Ominous,” Eddie says, and he can hear Buck grin through the phone.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, “Drink some coffee, old man. We’re gonna paint the town. See you soon.”
“Hey,” Eddie grouses, and Buck hangs up mid-laugh.
Eddie looks back at the outfit on his bed, sighs, and goes to put the coffeemaker on. At least now he has an extra two hours to wrangle his ass into these jeans.
Eddie’s got a lot of practice gelling his hair, and now, looking at himself in the mirror, he allows himself a pleased smile. He looks good, if he says so himself. It’s not quite the signature Danny Zuko elephant trunk style, but he’s slicked most of it back in a way that it’s still got volume. He twists a strand in the front round his finger and lets it fall over his forehead in a curl.
He takes a step back to assess the rest of his outfit—Jesus, this t-shirt is cutting off the circulation in his biceps and his nipples are definitely noticeable through the thin fabric stretched across his chest. The jeans did take twenty minutes to get into; he had to sit on the floor and tug them on via an elegant mix of yanking and wriggling. He’s never been so glad Christopher’s not home and there was no one to witness him: red-faced, sweaty, and swearing liberally in two different languages.
The doorbell rings. His phone clock informs him it’s 9.26pm, too late for trick-or-treaters in their neighbourhood, and Buck has a key. He goes to open the front door, frowning, and then his entire brain shuts down. He’s vaguely aware that he thinks I’m having an aneurysm, knuckles going white where they clutch the doorframe.
Buck’s standing on his porch, wearing a skin-tight off-the-shoulder black crop top that ends an inch above his navel. Buck’s standing on his porch, long, long legs clad in leather pants that look like they’ve been spray-painted on. Buck’s standing on his porch, hip co*cked, somehow steady in the scarlet stilettos that are giving him an extra five inches on Eddie.
“Tell me about it, stud,” Buck—f*cking purrs, and Eddie drags his eyes back up to his face.
And Jesus Christ, this is so much f*cking worse, because Buck is wearing mascara, and his already impossibly pink lips have been lightly daubed with lipstick of some kind, his mouth curling up into a cherry-red smirk as Eddie’s own jaw remains somewhere in the vicinity of his basem*nt.
“Eddie?” he grins, and Eddie chokes out loud. “Well? What do you think?” He spreads out his arms like ta-da, spinning in a slow circle and stumbling a bit as he turns back to face Eddie.
“You—” Eddie manages. He leans heavily against the doorjamb. “Uhhh.”
“Too much?” Buck asks nervously. He runs a hand through his hair, which he’s left unstyled, natural curls teased out slightly to give them more bounce than their usual tight coils. “I know we couldn’t do a group costume, but I thought maybe—it’d be fun to have matching costumes anyway?”
Eddie closes his mouth, if only to f*cking swallow the saliva pooled under his tongue. He’s f*cking drooling, Jesus, get a f*cking grip, Diaz. He sends a quick prayer of thanks to whichever hom*osexual angel made sure his jeans are too tight for his dick to get visibly hard. Which, it’s trying.
“Uh. Sandy?” he gets outs, not quite capable of stringing a coherent sentence together just yet.
“Sandra Dee, at your service.” Buck winks at him, grinning, but there’s still an unsure edge to his expression.
“You, uh,” Eddie tries. “You look really good.”
“Yeah? Not too much?” Buck asks again.
“Not too much,” Eddie promises, taking in a shaky breath as discreetly as possible. “It’s—really good.”
Buck’s cheeks turn a rosy pink. “I mean, I did just go over to Ravi’s and harass him and his boyfriend till Nico agreed to open up his studio and find something that’d fit me,” he admits, blushing. He stops for a minute, taking in Eddie. “You look great, too.”
“Mmm,” Eddie says, abruptly turning around and walking back into his house so he doesn’t have to look directly at Buck while his brain takes its own sweet time to come back online. “Uh. Shoes. Then Uber?”
He glances back to check with Buck, whose eyes snap up from where they’d been staring level with—Eddie’s ass? Which—okay. He knew these f*cking jeans were too goddamn tight. He just hopes it’s more flattering than ridiculous.
“Sure,” Buck replies, voice cracking. Huh. He clears his throat and lingers by the door, phone out to book an Uber. Eddie pulls on his work boots—none of his sneakers fit the vibe, or so Hen had insisted when they’d all been in this together—and grabs the leather jacket. Minutes later, a sleek grey sedan is pulling up. Eddie shuts the front door with a slam and hurries past Buck, certain that if he has to walk behind him, looking at his endless legs stride forwards in high heels, no amount of tight denim and sympathetic angels could keep his dick down, and someone’s eye will get taken out. He’s not sure he could live with the mortification of that particular horny Halloween injury.
The drive to the venue passes quickly despite the tense, taut silence that they sit in. Their Uber pulls up alongside a queue of people in varying stages of dress, some nearly completely bare save for glitter coating smooth, bronzed skin, and some in elaborate costume, one dude in a full f*cking suit of armour. Loud chatter mixes with voices singing merrily along to the music spilling out the inconspicuous metal door, and as Buck and Eddie start to make their way to the end of the line, the bouncer calls out to them.
“Tickets?” he asks. He’s tall, taller than Buck, and nearly as broad, dressed in a smart velvet suit and wearing a full face of makeup.
“Um, yeah,” Buck replies, fishing out his phone and pulling up the PDF Ravi had sent on the groupchat.
The bouncer scans the QR codes and grins at them, devilish. “Happy Halloween, hom*os. You’re in for a sexy, spooky time.” He pushes open the door with a flourish and gestures for them to go through.
Eddie looks at Buck, heart pounding. Buck meets his gaze, uncertainty in his eyes for a split second before he blinks and it disappears. Then he’s grinning and stepping through the door, twisting his head back to look at Eddie as they enter.
The door swings shut behind them. The corridor is dark, dimly lit by strings of fairy lights lining the ceiling. The pulsating music gets louder as they walk down the hall, and Eddie can’t tell if the heavy reverberation in his chest is from the bass or from staring directly at the ripple of muscle across Buck’s bare upper back as his arms swing with every step forward.
Then they’re rounding the corner, and Buck’s holding aside a curtain made of intricate strands of hundreds of glass beads, and Eddie steps through.
The room is huge, majority of it covered in a dance floor with lit-up floor tiles. A bar runs along the far side, and along the wall on the opposite end of the room is a stage with a runway. The other walls are lined with tall tables and bar stools, small candle-lit carved pumpkins decorating each one. The second level is a balcony that rings around above the dance floor, more tables with proper seating upstairs. The walls are all adorned with festive bunting, crêpe paper bats and skeletons and ghosts fluttering in the A/C. The biggest disco ball Eddie has ever seen hangs heavy from the middle of the ceiling, skull-shaped and reflecting beams of light from the AV system set up on the second floor.
They’re not quite fashionably late, but the room is already packed anyway. People singing, laughing, dancing with their hips close. People tossing the hair of their wigs over their shoulders to lean in intimately and whisper into each other’s ears over the music. People cheering at the bar and downing colourful, deadly-looking shots.
Nearest to them, a lesbian Morticia and Gomez are making out like it’s their last night on Earth. Beside them, an Indiana Jones and a very hench Lara Croft are grinding against each other, slow, sensual, and completely out of beat to the music, but from the way Indiana Jones is mouthing at Lara’s neck, Lara’s head thrown back against his shoulder in bliss, Eddie doesn’t think either of them are even aware.
Eddie, however, is suddenly very aware he is at a gay party, in a gay club, surrounded by other gay people. This isn’t the first time he’s been to a queer event; Ravi and Hen and Karen have dragged them all out to various gay bars over the years, but this is the first time Eddie’s been in a place like this since he had his own big gay revelation.
His mind flashes back to the bouncer giving them both a once-over and saying happy Halloween, hom*os. Like all it took was one look at Eddie for him to know. And maybe that should make Eddie nervous, that this man knew on sight this thing that’s evaded Eddie for years, but also maybe, just maybe, it’s Halloween and they’re at a gay bar and it’s not that deep, and even if it was? Is it such a bad thing, to be recognised by community? To have someone see something in you that’s there in them too? Something new, and scary, but looking around at the people in this room, open and loud and so full of joy, Eddie thinks maybe something wonderful, too.
“Do you want to get a drink?” Buck asks him, half-shouting to be heard.
Eddie nods and follows behind him as they snake their way through the crowd towards the bar. He leans his elbows on the sticky counter when they get there, craning his neck to read the themed specials scrawled on the chalkboard.
“Beer?” Buck asks loudly, eyes scanning the laminated drinks menu on the bar counter.
Eddie shakes his head, and when Buck raises an eyebrow quizzically, he leans in to talk directly into his ear. “And let Ravi be smug for the rest of time? We’re getting the most dangerous co*cktails on the menu, Buckley!”
His lips brush the shell of Buck’s ear as he pulls away, and he feels rather than sees Buck shiver. They both turn back to the chalkboard quickly, Eddie grateful his otherwise-audible swallow is drowned out by the music.
“Oh!” Buck grins next to him. “I know what we should get.”
Eddie nods at him to order for them both, and turns to lean his back against the bar, watching the dance floor again. He clocks several people looking appreciatively at Buck, who’s draped himself over the bar to be heard by the bartender. Eddie’s not looking, but he knows Buck’s calves are well-defined even through the trousers, and his ass—filled out this last year as he’s bulked up—is straining against the leather at this angle, and the broad strip of skin visible at his waist where his crop top has ridden up reveals perfectly biteable twin love handles, also courtesy of all the muscle he’s put on recently.
Eddie’s not looking, but he knows exactly what Buck looks like. He knows what the hungry looks in the eyes around them are for. Eddie—he knows he has a possessive streak, and being aware of it usually allows him to refuse to give in to it, but. Buck is next to him looking like a wet dream, and Eddie kind of wants to drape himself over him, let every person gazing greedily know that he’s not theirs, never will be. Except he’s not Eddie’s either.
And then Buck’s turning to Eddie, having placed their order, and the smile he gives him is so happy, and his mascara is a little smudgy from sweat, and he wobbles a little bit in his heels as he spins into Eddie’s space, and suddenly the possessiveness isn’t about him looking like sex on legs for everyone to see. Suddenly, the clench isn’t in Eddie’s gut—it’s higher. That everyone else in this club is looking at Buck and only seeing the way his body looks right now—of course he’s the most beautiful man in this room, but Eddie gets to know it’s for the way he’s somehow singing the words wrong to the Ghostbusters theme, and the way he gasps delightedly when the bartender brings over a massive fish bowl of deep purple liquid, and the way he points to the jar of bright blue crazy straws and clasps his hands excitedly when the bartender plonks a couple of them into the drink with a sigh. That anyone could look at Buck and not see all this? Eddie might not have him the way he wants, but he’s the luckiest son of a bitch alive to get to have him this way.
“We’re drinking the Creature from the Black Lagoon,” Buck announces, presenting Eddie with the fish bowl of murky violet alcohol. “And look!” He prods at the little figurine of The Creature that sits at the bottom of the co*cktail with the end of his straw. “Total immersion.”
“Jesus,” Eddie says, grasping the straw Buck’s nudged his way. “This bowl is bigger than your head, Buck.”
“My head?” Buck says in mock-offense. “What’re you implying, Diaz?”
Eddie takes a long sip of the co*cktail. It’s sweet and tastes a little like those candy hearts kids used to bring to school on Valentine’s Day. “I’m not implying anything, I’m saying your head is massive,” he tells Buck with a grin. The fact that he can’t even taste the copious amounts of alcohol he knows is in this is probably going to bite him in the ass later.
Buck huffs dramatically, eyes twinkling. “Do you wanna sit?” He gestures to the tall tables along the adjacent wall.
Eddie nods, and swiftly grabs the co*cktail bowl from Buck with a steady there, cowboy when he picks it up and sways dangerously in his heels. Buck shoots him a grateful smile and picks his way through dancing partygoers before sitting down at an empty table. The bar stools are high, but with his long legs and the stilettos, his feet still brush the ground. Eddie deposits the co*cktail on the narrow table and takes a seat by Buck, rather than across from him. He’s closer to the wall, and this way he can watch the room and watch Buck, who’ll have to turn his head to look back at Eddie. Which he immediately does, swivelling in his seat till his body faces Eddie rather than—the entire rest of the party they’re at. Eddie flushes a little at his undivided attention.
“The costumes here are insane!” Buck says, sipping the drink. “Did you see the throuple that’s dressed like the Predator, Alien, and Sigourney Weaver?” He squints into the crowd and points them out to Eddie, who whistles, impressed.
A guy dressed as a nondescript pirate with his shirt unbuttoned to his navel is in their line of sight, and winks when he sees Buck pointing, giving him a filthy once-over. Eddie bristles even as Buck frowns and drops his hand, turning back to Eddie.
Pirate-guy doesn’t take it for the brush-off that it is, though, and saunters over, resting his elbows on their table and smirking at Buck.
“Hey, handsome,” he drawls, and Buck leans towards Eddie so imperceptibly it would be unnoticeable if Eddie wasn’t so attuned to his every movement.
“Uh, hi,” Buck says, clipped.
“You been here before? I’d have remembered you,” he says, completely ignoring Eddie, who is doing his best to maintain a polite, blank expression and not glare daggers like he so desperately wants to.
“Uh, no. First time,” Buck says with a tight smile. “For both of us.” He looks at Eddie.
“Well, you picked a good day. You look real good,” Pirate-guy leers, leaning closer. “The rack on you in that… outfit.” He ogles Buck’s chest obviously.
Buck flushes, and Eddie knows him well enough to tell it’s an uncomfortable flush, not a flattered one, despite the polite smile still pasted across his face.
“Yeah, he looks f*cking fantastic in that outfit, which, coincidentally, just so happens to match mine. Almost like on purpose. Almost like we’re here together,” Eddie smiles simperingly at the guy, stark contrast to the way his voice drips with sarcasm. He can feel Buck’s wide-eyed gaze on him, and then Buck’s shifting into Eddie’s orbit much more overtly.
Pirate-guy looks between them for a second, disgruntled, before muttering, “My bad,” and slinking off into the crowd.
Eddie allows himself five seconds to glare at his retreating figure before checking in on Buck. He’s looking at Eddie with something like surprise.
“Sorry,” Eddie starts. “I didn’t—didn’t mean to imply we’re together, but I thought—it seemed like he was making you uncomfortable?” He looks at Buck, suddenly unsure. “Did I—f*ck, I shouldn’t have assumed, maybe you were okay with—”
“He was incredibly creepy, Eddie,” Buck assures him. “The literal third thing he said to me was about my tit*.”
Eddie swallows, maintaining eye-contact and steadfastly refusing to let his gaze travel lower. “Right,” he says.
Buck looks at him, bemused, before ducking his head and blowing into his straw obnoxiously, causing the surface of their co*cktail to erupt into bubbles.
Eddie snorts in amusem*nt and the lightness settles around them again. They whisper loudly to each other, pointing out the most outrageous costumes and commenting on little moments of drama unfolding around them. A couple of queens get on the runway across the room, singing along to the music, an interesting set of synthy pop, campy musical classics, and anything remotely spooky remixed for optimal bump-and-grinding. They sway along in their seats, and steadily drain their drink, and several more people come up to them to flirtatiously compliment Buck on his costume. Much less creepily, though, and always moving on quickly after glancing at the way Buck is plastered to Eddie’s side, not having bothered to move after sidling closer when Pirate-guy had come over.
They reach the bottom of their co*cktail bowl, and Eddie offers to go get the next round.
He’s on his way back, hands clutched around yet another basketball-sized fish bowl, contents bright blue this time, when he spies a tall, lanky person in a—f*cking Beetlejuice costume, leaning against their table and talking to Buck. This time, Buck doesn’t look put out—he’s leaning towards the person too, talking animatedly with his hands. His heart sinks, just a little, before he sternly tells it no, this is supposed to be good night out for Buck, and if that means Eddie needs to give him space, or, Jesus Christ, wingman him, he’ll do it and he’ll do it with a smile.
But then Buck spies him and his whole face lights up. He says something to the person, who looks up at Eddie too. They smile, mysterious as they give Eddie a calculating look, like they’re sizing him up.
Buck stands up as Eddie approaches, stumbling a little, half-uncoordinated and half-tipsy. “Eddie!” he exclaims, wrapping an arm around Eddie’s shoulders. The fish bowl sloshes a little at his exuberance, and Eddie hastily sets it down. “This is Jack. He’s from El Paso too!”
Eddie looks at Buck, amused. “I was gone for, like, ten minutes, Buck. How did you already manage to get there in conversation?”
Buck goes pink, or pinker, from where he’s already flushed from the alcohol. Jack grins at them.
“Oh, I got one sentence in and then he gave me your entire life story,” he tells Eddie. “Nice to meet you, Eddie Diaz, father, firefighter, formerly of Texas.” He reaches out a hand to shake Eddie’s.
Eddie looks away from Buck and grips Jack’s hand. His palm is large, and his eyes sparkle good-naturedly as he looks from Eddie to Buck.
“Nice to meet you. Did he give you my Social Security number too?” Eddie asks, smiling.
Jack laughs as Buck stretches out an offended, “Heyyy.”
“Only the first three digits,” Jack tells Eddie, “But I own a ranch, and he did mention the fact that you can’t ride a horse. Damn tragedy for a guy outta Texas.”
“Oh, I can ride a horse,” Eddie assures him, raising an eyebrow at Buck.
Buck’s forehead furrows in confusion. “Uh, then why did you refuse to that time we took Chris to that equine therapy place?”
“I never said I couldn’t,” Eddie grins at him, “Just used to a more, uh, rodeo kinda scene. Not quite the same as a walk around a paddock.”
Buck stares at him, mouth ajar and eyes just about ready to fall out of his head, and Jack laughs again. Eddie is so glad it’s never come up before, because this look of shock and—something murkier, the same something that had Buck’s voice cracking as he took in Eddie’s costume a few hours ago, is very flattering to his tipsy ego.
“Alright, you boys have a good night. I just came over because I saw Buck all on his own,” Jack says. He looks from Buck to Eddie, slight lilt to his mouth, and says, “See you around,” before melting into the throng of people around them.
Eddie turns to Buck. “He seems nice.”
“Mm,” Buck says, frowning, “so you’ve just been casually tossing around the nickname cowboy while being an actual real-life one yourself? How long were you gonna harbour that particular secret?”
“I was never a cowboy, that was all you,” Eddie says, laughing at Buck’s pout. “Don’t sulk, I don’t think you can even classify that as a secret, Buck, I just—forgot to mention it.”
“I think my best friend gatekeeping his checkered past as a former horse girl warrants a little sulking,” Buck says, petulance morphing into a saucy grin. Eddie would like the record to show just how brave and strong he is for resisting the urge to kiss it right off his face, especially when he continues with a teasing, “And in the grand scheme of Venn diagrams, it totally falls under cowboys. I’m revoking your right to call anyone else that ever again, cowboy.”
Buck’s attention shifts to the cerulean blue co*cktail Eddie brought over and Eddie’s saved from having to come up with a reply that doesn’t make it obvious just how hot under the collar the nickname makes him when the tables are turned. Buck stirs the drink idly. “What’s this?”
“The Lake Placid,” Eddie tells him, tapping the bottom of the glass bowl. “It’s got the crocodile and everything.”
“Nice,” Buck grins, peering through the drink to see the little plastic reptile.
They both stay standing, slurping their drink and watching as the drag queens conclude their performance with generous amounts of machine-made fog and a shower of silvery confetti on the far side of the room. People start flocking to the dance floor once more, and Eddie’s eyes keep coming back to Buck, who’s gently swaying from side to side and watching the dancers with poorly concealed longing.
And listen, Eddie is a good dancer. His mom put him in classes as a kid, and that sh*t sticks. But he doesn’t know if he’ll survive dancing with Buck, not now, not when Buck looks like this.
He’s saved from making any decisions when a gaggle of kids in their early twenties catch sight of Buck and beckon him over to dance with them. He laughs and shakes his head, running a hand through his hair before Eddie nudges him forward. He turns to Eddie, confused.
“Go dance!” Eddie shouts over the music. “You’re not old enough to be sat in the corner all night yet!”
Buck laughs. “Neither are you,” he points out.
“I’ll join in a minute,” Eddie promises, taking a long, pointed sip of their drink.
Buck looks like he’s on the fence, but when Eddie nudges him forward again he goes with a laugh. The group of kids cheer raucously as he approaches them, bouncing on his feet. Eddie watches him sing along loudly to the pop song playing, jumping around endearingly (and a little concerningly, considering the height of those heels). There’s not an ounce of coordination in his body, and Eddie’s never been fonder. Then the song changes.
It’s a sultry, smooth remix of I Put A Spell On You. Eddie watches, as before his very f*cking eyes, Buck’s springy energy transforms, melts into a sensual swing of his hips, arm muscles rippling as he stretches them languidly above his head.
His eyes are closed, head tipped back, lips parted. He rolls his whole body, movement swelling and ebbing like a wave. He steps slightly away, and Eddie’s awarded a view of his shoulders, broad and strong and bare, straining obscenely out of his tiny black top.
The straw falls out of Eddie’s mouth. His tongue is bone-dry, sticking to the roof of his mouth despite having just swallowed a mouthful of booze.
Buck puts a hand in his own hair and drags the other one down his chest, leisurely and deliberate. He rolls his hips, deliciously slow, and Eddie’s brain short circuits for the second time tonight.
He feels depraved, dick aching so hard he nearly turns to face the wall so he can press the heel of his palm against it for some relief. But that would mean tearing his eyes from Buck, and wild horses couldn’t drag Eddie away from this sight, much less something as inconsequential as an ill-timed boner.
Buck looks debauched, chest rising as he sways, so graceful it looks like he’s made of liquid, flowing into every next movement with an ease Eddie’s never seen on him. He looks like sin and he looks like heaven.
Eddie has never been this turned on in his entire life, has never wanted to touch every inch of another person this badly. He feels hedonistic in his want, and wonders faintly if it was the Catholic repression, the gay repression, or a mix of the two that stopped him ever feeling this way till now. Or maybe it’s just Buck that unlocks this in him.
Buck sways to face him once again. The sheen of sweat on his chest highlights the smattering of dark blond hair visible above his neckline, damply dusting the swell of his pecs. His body manoeuvres itself into another lazy roll, muscles moving like molten metal, and Eddie can feel the heat even from here.
The kaleidoscope of light from the disco ball paints his face in fragmented flecks, illuminating the hinge of his jaw, the slope of his nose, the fluttering of his eyelashes where they’re still shut. Eddie’s heart throbs in lewd time with his dick.
Turning towards Eddie, his eyes open, half-lidded. The light across his face makes them glitter as they catch Eddie’s, gaze heavy. The DJ transitions the song into the next one, upbeat and boppy, and Buck’s eyes snap open fully, disbelieving grin spreading across his face as his whole body jerks upright, fluid grace gone in an instant.
“Eddie!” he hollers across the space between them, “It’s our f*cking song!”
And it f*cking is.
I GOT CHILLS, the entire dance floor cheers, THEY’RE MULTIPLYING.
Buck is looking at Eddie, face like sunshine, arms spread at his sides, waiting. And Eddie is helpless, one half of a magnet, drawn towards him by something greater than conscious thought and animal locomotion.
He walks to Buck, force of his own grin making his cheeks ache even as he lets his hips swing, lazy and loose. Buck’s eyes widen even more, thrilled that Eddie’s playing along. He grabs Eddie’s hand and twirls him close as the crowd screams it’s electrifying!
They stay pressed close for one, two, three beats of the music, grinning and bright-eyed. Then Buck twirls him out, steps back, sings you better shape up, ’cause I need man, Eddie helplessly swaying towards him even as he turns away. Buck throws him a cheeky look over his shoulder, whirls back around with a and my heart is set on you, and Eddie, Eddie is too lovedrunk to feel heartsick about it.
Buck wiggles his shoulders, to my heart I must be true, and Eddie grabs him, one hand in Buck’s and the other on his hip, fingers digging into warm skin. Buck steps close and they spin around in a messy sort of waltz, shouting the chorus with hundreds of other people.
Eddie hears the DJ beginning to fade the song out and grins wickedly at Buck, dropping him into a dip at the very last you’re the one that I want! Buck gasps in surprise and then dissolves into giggles as the kids around them hoot playfully.
Eddie pulls him back upright gently and they grin at each other, panting and sweaty. He can feel Buck’s hot breath on his face and has to fight the urge to use the arm curled around his bare midriff to tug him even closer.
“f*ck,” Buck laughs, “I need something to drink, I am so thirsty.”
They weave their way to the bar to procure a couple glasses of water, and then head back to their little table. Eddie watches Buck down the water, throat bobbing, and has to take another gulp of his in an effort to simulate sticking his brain in a cold shower.
Buck looks at him, eyes shining and cheeks ruddy, and opens his mouth to say something, before pausing to smile at something over Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie turns, and Beetlejuice Jack from before is making his way over to them.
“Hi,” he smiles at Buck, and the warm, bright feeling inside Eddie fizzes out. This is once again the part of the night where someone nice and attractive—and most excruciatingly not Eddie—hits on Buck, and Eddie doesn’t get to have an opinion about it.
But then Jack is turning to Eddie, gaze warm and attention unwavering. “Eddie, I know we haven’t actually even had a conversation tonight, but you have a really nice smile, and from what Buck was telling me about you— I don’t want to interrupt y’all’s night out, but would you be interested in maybe getting coffee with me sometime?” He smiles at Eddie, head tilted slightly as he waits for an answer.
Eddie can’t hear the music for the roaring in his ears. His chest is so painfully tight, a catch he can’t breathe around. He stares at Jack, breaths coming shallow. Jack just looks at him expectantly, and after half a minute—or maybe more, Eddie’s heart is beating so fast and his breaths are coming so slow he can no longer measure time with any kind of accuracy—Buck clears his throat. Eddie’s head snaps to him, and Jack turns, too.
“Um, I’m not sure—” Buck starts, then looks properly at Eddie, brow furrowing in concern. “Eddie, are you okay?”
Eddie’s clutching the edge of the table so hard his hand is trembling. His whole body may be trembling. Jack reaches out, to steady him maybe, but Eddie flinches back so hard his elbow slams into the half-full fish bowl of alcohol, sloshing it violently. His elbow throbs, but it’s a faraway kind of feeling.
“f*ck, Eddie, are you—did you hurt yourself?” Buck’s asking, but Eddie is whirling around, eyes searching desperately for an escape from this room that suddenly feels like it’s collapsing in on him, as heavy and suffocating as forty feet of dirt. He catches sight of the neon emergency exit sign, and then he’s lurching across the room, ignoring Buck’s worried voice as it fades into the distance.
He heaves the door open and finds himself in an alley. The cool night air washes against him, and he shivers as it blows across his sweat-soaked body. Outdoors is—better, but this alley is still small, and his blood is still thundering in his ears, and he needs to keep moving. He turns and makes his way to the road.
He’s halfway down the next street when he hears Buck calling him.
“Eddie! Eddie!”
He glances back over his shoulder and sees Buck emerge from the alley, look both ways before catching sight of him and hurrying left. Eddie keeps walking.
“Eddie—will you just wait up,” Buck shouts, following him. Eddie doesn’t slow down.
They walk down several dimly lit streets, Buck trailing behind in silence. Normally, he’d have caught up to Eddie pretty quickly, legs making lengthy strides. Tonight, after jumping around the dance floor, Eddie knows his knee must be just the wrong side of achy to allow him to move that fast. He feels sh*tty about taking advantage of that, but not sh*tty enough to slow down. He needs to—he needs to calm down, and figure out why the f*ck he reacted like that to some perfectly pleasant dude asking him out.
A park springs up on their left, a playground and some picnic benches, all empty at this time of night. Eddie swings open the gate and beelines to one of the benches, taking a seat and resting his forehead on the table. The night breeze is refreshing on the back of his neck and his heart is slowing. He hears the gate squeak open again but doesn’t look up.
The wooden planks of the bench creak as Buck takes a seat beside him, a rustle of fabric as he heaps Eddie’s abandoned jacket on the table before them followed by the thunk of the heels that he must’ve taken off at some point. They just sit, quiet except for the wind in the trees.
Eventually, Eddie turns his head to look at Buck, cheek squished against the table.
“Sorry,” he croaks.
Buck smiles gently around the crease of worry Eddie can see on his face. “Nothing to be sorry for,” he says. “Just—are you okay?”
Eddie sighs and nods, wooden surface rough against his cheek as he does. “Just—panicked, I guess,” he says ruefully, and Buck breathes a relieved laugh at the admission.
“Okay. You don’t usually, uh,” Buck starts. “You get hit on all the time at work. By guys, even. In lot less appropriate ways. You don’t usually react like this.”
Eddie meets his eyes for a second, but has to look away when he asks, softly, “What happened?”
What happened? What happened is that Eddie likes men, and tonight he was in situation where a man who also likes men looked at Eddie in a way that was not platonic, or wildly inappropriate, and told Eddie, with no room for misinterpretation, that he wanted to take him on a date. What happened is that Eddie has barely let himself think about his sexuality beyond it explaining what he feels for Buck. What happened is that Eddie likes men, and tonight that went from being a concept to being very, very real.
He picks his head up off the table and sits up, staring ahead. He can feel Buck’s gaze on him.
“Buck,” he says. “I’m—I’m queer.”
He chances a glance at Buck, whose eyes have widened the tiniest bit in surprise, and then looks away, barrelling on before he can chicken out. “I’ve been talking about it with Frank for a while now, but I—I figured it out by f*cking accident.” He laughs a little self-deprecatingly. “And, I don’t know, I know most people figure this stuff out about themselves when they’re, like, fifteen years younger than I am, but… It’s like being able to read. It’s like I’ve spent all this time getting through life because I’ve memorised the way words look, but now I can read. All these things—make sense. The way I feel things, the way I experience—so many f*cking important things, Buck, I know why now. It’s not just—I’m not f*cking broken, the thing with Ana, when it just felt like I was forcing it the whole time—it’s not because—listen, that relationship was f*cked, I know, but at least now I know it wasn’t because there was something in me that made me incapable of—loving someone like that. Being loved the way I—I’m just gay.” He laughs, chest loosening for the first time since he fled the club. “Or, queer, I don’t know yet. Not straight. Definitely not straight.”
He scratches at the table with a nail, feeling a little self-conscious. Buck’s uncharacteristically quiet, and when Eddie chances another glance at him he’s surprised by the way his eyes are glassy with brimming tears, his eyebrows doing that emotional tugging-up thing they do.
“Eddie,” he breathes, and that’s all the notice Eddie gets before he’s being hauled into a patented Buck Hug. Buck sniffs loudly where his nose is mashed against the top of Eddie’s head and says, thickly, “I’m so happy for you. You— Eddie.” He holds him even tighter, and Eddie huffs a fond laugh.
Buck lets him go and scrubs at his own eyes, laughing embarrassedly. “Sorry—why am I crying, Jesus.”
Eddie rests an elbow on the table, cupping his cheek and looking up at Buck with a smile. “Heart too big for your own good, Buckley,” he says softly.
Buck shakes his head like a dog and leans forward with a grin. “So, how long have you known? What do you mean you figured it out by accident?”
sh*t. That’s not a story Eddie wants to tell, tonight or ever. “Uh. Like, six or seven weeks? Early last month.”
Buck nods seriously and opens his mouth, probably to repeat his second question, which would be disastrous, so Eddie continues quickly. “I didn’t know—that this is what any of this sh*t, attraction, was supposed to feel like. But Frank’s been really patient with me. And—it helps, I guess, that I’ve only ever been with two people. Women. And—Ana was a sh*tshow, the whole time. I was thinking about what Christopher needed, not what I wanted. I didn’t—I didn’t realise there’d be a difference. And with Shannon—we were so young, and I did love her, so much. I was just too young to know it maybe wasn’t the kind of love you have for someone you want to spend the rest of your life with? And all our friends were having sex, and she wanted to have sex, and—I was fine with that. But then she got pregnant. I don’t—if that hadn’t happened, I don’t know that we’d have gotten married. And it’s not something I’ll ever regret, you know—” he says fiercely, as if Buck of all people would ever think even in passing that Eddie would trade Chris for anything, “—but I wonder, now, in, uh, less-than-heterosexual hindsight, if we hadn’t gotten pregnant, and we hadn’t gotten married, would I—would I have made different choices? And learned this about myself a decade and a half sooner?” He exhales and looks up at the cloudy night sky.
“Hey,” Buck says softly, and Eddie hums in acknowledgement. “There’s no right timeline for this. Everyone’s circ*mstances are different. The only thing that matters is that you’re here. Like you said—you wouldn’t change Chris. And being who you are, especially with whatever implied stigma of figuring it out later in life, is—f*ck, Eddie, it’s just the bravest f*cking thing. And I know everyone thinks that’s trite to say, but it’s not, it’s just true. Chris’ll be so proud of you, whenever you decide to tell him. You’re his f*cking hero—hell, you’re mine.” His voice is thick with emotion, and when Eddie meets his eyes, they’re the most earnest he’s ever seen them.
Eddie smiles at him. “Yeah? I don’t—it’s not that I don’t want to tell people, I’ve been trying to work up to telling you for weeks. It’s just—I don’t know that I’ve figured it out yet, you know? Attraction? I don’t know whether to call myself—gay, or queer, or—I don’t know. Frank says it’s compulsory heterosexuality? Where you don’t know—you can’t tell if you’re only feeling or thinking things because you think you’re supposed to? And I’m still figuring out how to tell when something’s that and when something’s a genuine thought.” He sighs.
Buck nods at him, eyes sympathetic. “I—I’ve never experienced that, and it sounds like it makes everything a hell of a lot more complicated.”
Eddie shrugs. It does suck spectacular ass.
Buck looks up at the sky for a second, and then back at Eddie with a soft smile. “I think—I know it’s easy for me to say, and a lot harder to live it, but. Experiencing love is more important than defining it, you know? And you deserve to experience so much love, Eds.”
Eddie feels flayed open, his heart raw and exposed. He has to turn away from the sincerity with which Buck’s looking at him.
They sit in silence for a while, watching the clouds skid past. Buck tries to hold in a shiver next to Eddie, fails, and visibly trembles with it. Eddie drags the leather jacket off the table and drapes it across his shoulders.
“Let’s go home,” he says, and Buck nods, slipping his arms into the jacket sleeves.
They’re standing on the curb, waiting for their Uber, when Buck pipes up suddenly. “Hey,” he says, “I guess me and Shannon have that in common.”
Eddie stares blankly at him. He cannot think of a single f*cking thing Buck has in common with Shannon, and he’s honestly worried to hear what exactly it is Buck thinks they have in common.
“We both got to be your best friends, you know, platonically taking care of Chris, and with, like. All the sex appeal of, er, long johns.” He wrinkles his nose playfully.
Eddie lets out a strangled laugh. Oh, he is taking hit after hit tonight. And now he’s thinking of Buck in fuzzy, old-timey thermal underwear, snug and hugging his— Eddie is not God’s favourite child.
“Right,” he says weakly, sagging in relief as their Uber pulls up and distracts Buck from this line of conversation.
In the backseat, illuminated only by intermittent streetlights, Buck leans against him, heavy and warm along Eddie’s side. And Eddie knows this isn’t Buck’s deliberate intent, to make sure Eddie knows nothing has changed or will change in the level of comfort they have with each other just because Eddie likes men now. He knows this isn’t premeditated reassurance about that, this is—this is just Buck, filled with so much love and pride for Eddie that he just wants to be close, wants to physically press it into him if he can, tipsiness making him looser about it.
Eddie tips his head against Buck’s and shuts his eyes tight. Lets himself soak up the love Buck is pouring into every point of contact. Lets this be enough.
The next morning Eddie makes his way down the hall, knuckling sleepily at his eyes. The house is unusually cold, a draft blowing through, and he realises the sliding door to the backyard is wide open.
Buck’s sat on the steps leading into the garden, cradling a mug of coffee in his hands. He’s wearing one of Hen’s millions of cardigans, a soft lavender knit, unbuttoned to avoid stretching it out across his broad torso.
He’s talking in a hushed voice, and Eddie thinks he must be on the phone, lazily climbing down the first two steps to sit next to him. But Buck looks up at him, pillow-crease that’s etched into one cheek disappearing into a smile line when his mouth quirks up, and there’s no phone. There is, however, a small brown sparrow perched on the grass in front of him.
“Morning,” he whispers, handing Eddie the still-steaming mug. Eddie accepts it gratefully, sipping and letting it spread warmth through his insides. “This guy was chirping at me through the window. I gave him a strawberry.”
Eddie hums and hands him back the coffee. He cranes his head back towards the house to try and get a glimpse of the wall clock. “I gotta go pick up Chris in a little bit,” he whispers back to Buck, unwilling to crack the quiet they’re sitting in. “Do you wanna come?”
Buck pouts and murmurs, “Told Maddie I’d drive Jee to the Lees’ house. They were all supposed to have lunch, but I don’t think she got much sleep staying up with Chim.”
Eddie nods, steals the mug back for another sip. “Is your leg okay?”
Buck slowly stretches his knee out. “Uh, yeah. Yeah.”
“Sorry I made you speed-walk in heels last night,” Eddie apologises quietly, bracing a hand on his shoulder as he stands up. Buck looks up at him, surprise flickering across his expression.
“Speed-walking?” he echoes before smirking. “That’s what you’re worried about? Not the part where you dipped me like the leading lady in a romcom?”
Eddie snorts, squeezing his shoulder and absconding back inside with the coffee.
“I mean, I know you love Dirty Dancing, but I didn’t realise I was Baby till last night,” Buck calls after him, laughing softly when Eddie flips him off over his shoulder.
When he emerges from the shower, Buck has his shoes on, ready to head out. “See you tomorrow?” he asks Eddie.
“See you tomorrow,” Eddie confirms. “Unless everyone else is still so sick Bobby just pulls our shift.”
Buck grimaces and slips out the door. Eddie turns to the coffee table, upon which rests two little piles of neatly folded costume garments.
“I’ll get them dry-cleaned together,” he’d offered Buck last night, and Buck had insisted on being the one to pick them up when they’re ready.
He thinks back to the joke Buck made last night, about him and Shannon occupying similar roles in Eddie’s life. Thinks about how with Shannon, doing laundry was never a joint effort, her already having a routine down that didn’t involve Eddie, and that it never really bothered him. How most domestic chores were just chores, not any different to when he divided them with his sisters as a kid, or with his unit in the army. Split-responsibility. He thinks about how with Buck, it never feels like a utilitarian division of labour. With Buck, responsibilities aren’t split—they’re shared. Shared in a way that Eddie feels supported and supports in turn. Shared in a way where he knows if he drops the ball, Buck’s there to catch it, catch him, not point accusatory fingers or tell him he’s not pulling his weight. With Shannon, laundry was a thing to be done to keep the cogs of a household running smoothly. With Buck, laundry feels like being loved.
And maybe that’s dramatic, and maybe Eddie’s just in love this time, but he feels hysterical about the parallels that Buck has drawn. Parallels that are damning for any potential love confession Eddie might someday have tried to make, because—Eddie is not a teenage boy and so Eddie is not going to lament about being friend-zoned, but Buck drew a very clear, very friendship-shaped line in the metaphorical sand last night, no room for doubt.
And so maybe from where Buck’s standing, he and Shannon do share that role. But for Eddie? Yes, Shannon was his friend, a good friend, even if never as close as Buck so quickly became, and co-parent to Christopher, but that’s where the similarities end. So much of his relationship with Shannon rested on a fourteen year old’s infatuation, the magic of when you’re a kid and someone lovely wants to hang out with you. He’d clung to that and let romance and love get muddled along the way, let himself forget about passion in a partnership. Buck makes him weak in the knees, heart-eyes on regular public display, makes him want to kiss every inch of his skin, want to press him into the bedsheets and not ever come up for air. Buck makes him want to buy a ring and get down on one knee and know he’s never meant anything more when he asks, this time. Buck has him starry-eyed and waxing poetic about goddamn laundry.
Eddie scoops the costumes into a bag and thinks maybe, as long as he can have the feeling, this feeling of sharing a partnership, he can survive not having the rest of him. Maybe this feeling is love enough.
_____
It’s their second shift of the week, and the rest of A-shift is in much better health than they’d been on Monday, pallid cheeks and an endless font of self-pity from everyone who’d spent the weekend in gastrointestinal hell.
Today, there’s a post-lunch lull, and everyone is sat around the loft, bellies full and afternoon drowsiness taking hold. Chim and Hen are playing cards at the dining table, Bobby doing paperwork beside them. Eddie’s sprawled on one side of the couch, scrolling through Twitter half-heartedly, and Buck’s on the other end. He and Lucy are playing a very sedate game of Mario Kart, Lucy falling off the track every time she lifts one hand to yawn. Ravi’s on the smaller couch against the other wall, also on his phone.
The peace is violently shattered by Ravi letting out a sound like a cat being strangled. Everyone looks up at him in alarm, but he’s staring at his phone. When he lifts his head, it’s to look straight at Eddie, eyes wide.
“What’s wrong?” Lucy asks, falling off the track in the game again as she looks at him bemusedly.
“Nothing,” he says quickly. “Nothing at all.”
He looks meaningfully at Eddie, taps on his phone a couple of times and then Eddie’s phone, always with the goddamn volume on high, chimes twice, obnoxiously loud. He opens the messages from Ravi and immediately chokes on his own spit.
Ravi’s still staring at him, eyes so wide the whites of them make him look a little unhinged. Everyone else is looking from him to Eddie curiously.
On Eddie’s phone screen are two photographs. They’re from the Halloween party, taken by the club’s official photographer if the sharp quality and club-name watermark are anything to go by.
The first—God, this is just totally f*cking incriminating. The first picture is taken from an angle where, through the sparse crowd at the edge of the dance floor, you can see Buck, head tossed back, eyes closed, cheeks flushed, dancing to that one incredibly hot song, looking like temptation personified. On the other side of the photo is Eddie, and Jesus, Eddie doesn’t even recognise himself. He’s looking right at Buck and he looks intoxicated, far more than the co*cktails he consumed could justify. His eyes are dark, hooded, dripping with unconcealed desire. There’s nothing suggestive about it—he straight up looks like he wants to maul Buck, ravish him right there in front of God and everyone.
The second picture is no better, no less revealing. It’s of him and Buck at the end of their Grease number, when he leaned in close and dipped Buck low. It’s no less damning than the first, but oh, it makes that ache he’s learnt to breathe around just that much denser. Buck’s got his head tilted back, eyes squeezed shut as he laughs, joy plastered across his face. Their faces are a breath apart, and Eddie’s beaming right back, smile besotted and eyes so adoring as he holds Buck tight.
Looking at this Eddie looking at Buck? It’s unmistakable, clear as day, that this is a man ass-over-tit* in love.
Ravi: eddie these are on the club’s f*cking instagram page
…eddie
“What’s going on?” Buck asks.
“Yeah, what’s Panikkar texting you?” Chim asks, glancing up at Eddie.
“Uh,” Ravi says.
“Dick pic,” Eddie blurts out, turning off his screen and sliding the phone into his pocket.
Ravi squawks in horror, gaping at Eddie.
“What,” Chimney says, Cheshire Cat grin stealing its way across his face.
“It’s two in the afternoon,” Hen says tiredly.
“To Eddie? Eddie?” Lucy asks incredulously. “Eddie?!”
Ravi glares at Eddie in betrayal before sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yes. Fine. Yes, I sent… Eddie a dick pic.”
“Uh, why?” Buck asks, raising his hand in question.
“Yeah, why?” Chim echoes delightedly.
Even Bobby is listening expectantly, morbid curiosity beating out the dread that every possible answer they give him is sure to worsen.
“Um,” Eddie says, looking at Ravi beseechingly.
Ravi sighs. “I, uh. Had a medical question. That required—photographic evidence. For, uh, clarification.”
“And you sent it to Eddie,” Lucy says flatly.
“Uh, yeah. I didn’t think Chim or Hen would want to see that.”
“So you sent it to Eddie?” Chim barks out a laugh.
“Yes!” Ravi grumbles, throwing his hands up. “Forgive me for taking advantage of having medic friends!”
Eddie clears his throat, and everyone’s heads snap over to him. “It’s not a big deal. And, uh, it’s all good. Perfect, um, health.” He gives Ravi a strained smile and a thumbs up.
Ravi scowls at him.
Everyone goes back to doing their own thing, Chim still snickering intermittently till Hen exasperatedly chucks a handful of cards at his head. Lucy abandons her controller for a nap, and when Eddie looks up, Buck’s looking at him, shallow crease in his brow.
Eddie stands up abruptly. “I’m, uh, gonna hit the bunks for a bit,” he says, only for the bell to go off. “Or not.”
The call doesn’t take very long, but the whole ride there and the whole ride back he can feel Buck’s eyes on him.
_____
“I know it’s—internalised hom*ophobia,” Eddie says to Frank. “But every time I think something or feel something even a little explicit—anything physical, actually, and usually about—Buck. I just feel disgusted with myself. Like I’m crossing a line. The way I was looking at him in that photo from Halloween? Jesus, Frank. If he ever saw me looking at him like that—I feel like a f*cking predator. The last thing I ever want to do is make him, or anyone, uncomfortable.”
“Okay,” Frank says. “I’m really glad you’re ready to talk about this, and I think it’s good that you can acknowledge the reason for it—internalised hom*ophobia—even if you’re still struggling with the things it makes you feel about yourself.”
Eddie sinks back into his chair dejectedly.
“Desire is not inherently inappropriate, Eddie. Wanting someone in a physical way—there is nothing wrong with that. Thinking those thoughts and feeling those wants—that’s not hurting anyone. Most people experience that. It’s a perfectly normal part of human existence.”
“I can—get that, I guess,” Eddie sighs. “I don’t even know if it’s a gay thing, or if it’s just that—desire, like this, is such a new thing for me in general. Like, spending so long not knowing the way—the way a crush should feel... And now that I do, it’s overwhelming.”
Frank nods. “Tell me,” he says, “When your heterosexual friends express appreciation, physical or sexual, about people they’re not necessarily in relationships with—does any part of you pass judgement?”
Eddie frowns. Thinks of Chim loudly announcing to the station that Sandra Bullock is the sexiest woman to ever grace the silver screen. “No.”
“Okay. And when your queer friends do the same about people of the same gender? Does that kind of objectification bother you?”
Eddie scratches his nose. Thinks of Hen informing Chim that yes, he’s correct, but he’ll have to fistfight her if he thinks he’s got dibs, and also, can he please rewind Miss Congeniality to the bit where she’s drumming and covered in paint because her arms look hot as f*ck in that scene. “No, of course not, but—Frank, none of my friends are the kind of people who would objectify another person in a degrading way, anyway.”
“And you are?” Frank enquires.
“I—no, but—” Eddie starts. “It’s not the same.”
“Why not?” Frank asks.
“Because it’s Buck! He’s not some abstract man I don’t know but think is attractive!”
“Okay,” Frank says placidly. “And if it was an abstract man you didn’t know—do you think you’d be comfortable in the scope of your attraction then?”
Eddie’s vision is blurring a little and he tips his head back, looking at the ceiling. “f*ck,” he mumbles. “I don’t know. No.”
“I don’t think we have to separate the novelty of desire and the novelty of queerness, here,” Frank says gently. “Whatever the guilt stems from, it’s no reason to punish yourself. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a man who has sexual thoughts about men, even men he knows and is close to. You’re not making advances towards Buck after he’s expressed discomfort, you’re not repeatedly ignoring boundaries—honestly, it sounds to me like you’re actually making a lot of assumptions about Buck’s own level of comfort and where his boundaries lie without ever having had a conversation with him about it.”
Eddie wipes at his eyes frustratedly. “It’s not even—I don’t feel guilty about the feelings, you know? I’m not beating myself up about loving him. I—there’s nothing wrong with falling in love with someone, and he’d never make me feel bad for it, and—even if in some twisted universe he did, I’d still know there’s—there’s nothing wrong with me for loving him.”
Frank waits patiently.
“It’s—it’s the physical stuff. And you’re right, I’m not pushing myself on him or anything, f*ck, I don’t even initiate any kind of physical touch anymore because I’m so in my own head about it. I don’t know why I—why I’m fine with the emotions of it all, but not with anything physical. Even in the privacy of my own f*cking head. f*ck, Frank, it sucks so much to feel like a f*cking creep every time I look at him.”
Frank’s usually impassive expression rearranges into something a little sympathetic. “Eddie, no one should ever feel like the love they hold, their private desires, if they’re not hurting anyone, is something to be ashamed of. Something inappropriate. And unfortunately, that is textbook internalised hom*ophobia. It’s not something you’re alone in—many queer people struggle with truly believing that they’re allowed to have desires like this, much less that they should be something to be celebrated. And they are! In a world where so many bigots try to beat into this community that there is something impure about the way we love—this is always something to celebrate.”
Eddie sniffs loudly, pointedly ignoring the tissue box on the table next to him. If he indulges now, he knows every session is just going to end in waterworks, and as much as he’s trying to be healthier about processing emotion and letting sh*t out, he does hate crying in front of other people. He has a perfectly good jumbo-box of Kleenex in his truck’s glove compartment, and another at home, so he’s coping just fine.
“And therein lies the problem,” Frank goes on. “Somewhere along the way, in our efforts to assimilate and normalise queerness, in our efforts to prove there is nothing impure about the way we love, we lost an important part of who we are. Or, gave it up. To fit in, to prove queerness can be something pure, we ended up so thoroughly sanitising so many facets of desire. And that’s still living life with shame. What is pureness, anyway? And is the only way queerness is accepted and deemed appropriate when there is love or romance? What about people who just want to be intimate physically? Sexually? Do they deserve judgement and shame for daring to engage in hom*osexuality without the palatable pleasantness of commitment and relationships that make queerness comfortable for heterosexual people to digest?”
Eddie blinks, a little overwhelmed. “I—I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“If the only way we can accept our own queerness is to sterilize it—we’re not accepting it at all. And we—you deserve to experience and embrace your queerness without carrying that shame, Eddie. That’s not your burden to carry.”
Eddie lets out a long exhale.
Frank considers him for a second and then adds, “Wanting commitment and a relationship is natural, normal, beautiful, even. I just want you to remember sex—sex between two men—is natural, normal, and beautiful, too. Don’t close yourself off from that part of yourself, Eddie, because you deserve to feel everything. You deserve to allow yourself to feel desire, towards men, and to allow yourself to be desired, by men.”
Eddie reaches for the tissues and muffles a sob. Frank politely waits as he steadies his breathing and scrubs his face dry.
“f*ck,” he says out loud. “Okay. f*ck. I don’t want to—I’m done with the repression, Frank. No more steps backward. Not here. I mean, there probably will be some, but. I’m gonna fight like hell to unlearn this sh*t. Like—all my life, being taught that shame has a place here, before I even knew where here was. f*ck, I don’t wanna—I’m not gonna stand in my own way.”
Frank nods at him. “Okay,” he says simply. “Then we work on this till it sticks.”
The clock strikes the hour, signalling the end of their session. Eddie pauses on his way to the door and says to Frank, “Next time, can we talk about—I need to think about—queerness, in relation to me, I think. I’ve spent all this time only ever acknowledging it where Buck is concerned, where my—attraction to him draws attention to it? To being gay. But I don’t think I’ve let myself think about it just for me. As a man who’s into men.”
Franks looks at him for a moment before saying, “Yes, Eddie. You—I’m really glad you brought that up. Keep thinking about it, and we’ll talk more next time.”
Eddie exits the building with a lightness he doesn’t think he’s ever felt in his whole life. Calm and settled, but at the same time like something behind his breastbone that has been shackled for as long as he can remember has just discovered it has wings. When he tilts his face up into the November sunshine and breathes, he feels it take flight.
_____
The front door to the Diaz house bangs shut and Buck’s voice rings down the hall as he calls, “Sorry!” followed by a grunt and a thud.
Eddie and Chris hastily slam shut the books on their coffee table, Eddie gathering up the loose sheets of paper with phone numbers and addresses noted down in his own spiky handwriting and Chris slipping the glossy brochure into the fold-out California map.
They’re just shoving the last booklet under the table when Buck staggers into the room, holding a massive cardboard box. They turn to face him in sync, matching smiles of innocence on their faces.
Buck eyes them suspiciously, hefting the box up to rest on his hipbone. “What’re you two up to?”
“Nothing!” they say in unison, and then Chris remembers to slam the laptop shut before Buck can catch a glimpse of the holiday cottage rental website it’s open to.
“Convincing,” he says, quirking an eyebrow at them skeptically. “This is so normal of you.”
“What’s in the box?” Chris interrupts, smirking at Eddie when that successfully diverts Buck’s attention.
“A-ha,” he says, placing it gently on the floor by the couch. “This—” He pulls out an object carefully covered in newspaper and begins to unwrap it. “—is my magnum opus. Opuses. There are a few things.”
The first object is a blue mug, glazed with a deep navy colour, flecks of mustard yellow like tiny starbursts all around. He presents it to Chris with a ceremonious little bow.
“Woah, Buck, this is sick,” Chris says, inspecting it with the utmost care. “You made this?”
“Yeah,” Buck grins, “for you.”
“It’s so cool,” Chris tells him.
“Well, it did take me weeks before I made anything that resembled a cup-shape,” he confesses with a laugh. “I had to wait till I could give you guys something you could actually drink out of.”
“Can we have hot cocoa?” Chris asks hopefully, and disappears into the kitchen to heat some milk up without waiting for an answer, lest it be no.
“This one’s for you,” Buck says, thrusting a second mug at Eddie. “Uh, I only glazed it last week, so I picked colours—uh, if you don’t like it, I can absolutely make you another one.”
Eddie smooths his fingers over the silky glaze. The base of the cup starts with a deep purpley-blue, melting into indigo as it moves up. The blue lightens in the middle, and slips into a glossy sea-green, foamy and light when it meets the lip of the mug. It looks like the ocean, deep and dark at the bottom and sunlit waves on top. The handle is solid and firm, slight ridge running down it, but still tapers delicately where it meets the body of the cup. It’s so, so beautiful.
“Buck, it’s gorgeous,” Eddie says, turning it in his hands in awe. “Why wouldn’t I—I love it.”
“Oh,” Buck says. “Um.” He takes a seat beside Eddie on the couch, box forgotten to the side. “It’s dumb, they’re just colours, but I tried to make it kinda look like the queer men pride flag? You know, the blue and green one?” He scratches at his cheekbone, embarrassed.
“Oh,” Eddie breathes. He strokes the pad of his thumb down the mug gently. His heart feels rubbed raw with the way it’s pressed against his sternum, desperate to slip through the space between his ribs and lay itself in Buck’s lap.
“Is that—sorry, is that weird?” Buck laughs, slight note of insecurity to it.
“No, Buck, it’s—it’s perfect. I love it,” Eddie says firmly, hugging it to his chest.
Buck hums happily before co*cking his head at the remaining book on the coffee table. He picks it up. “Fashionably Late: Gay, Bi, and Trans Men Who Came Out Later in Life,” he reads out. “Oh, is this new?”
Eddie came out to Chris last week. He’d used the word queer, figuring it was an umbrella term he was comfortable enough with at the moment, and mostly just wanting to tell Chris. It’d felt good having Buck know, and it was just as liberating to tell his son. Chris had said, “Okay,” and then told him about the gay mallard ducks at the park. “They never snuggle with anyone else. I guess they just like to hang out with each other more than they want to hang out with the girl ducks,” he’d said with a shrug, and Eddie had to stick his head inside the fridge and hysterically count individual grapes to avoid crying in his kitchen about ducks in love.
Anyway, now that the two main people in his life and home know, he’s more comfortable about leaving books like this lying out in plain sight.
“Yeah,” he tells Buck. “It was recommended to me by, uh—by another queer person, so.” He makes a mental note to ask Frank if it’s okay for him to mention that Frank’s gay, too—it probably is, considering that he’s married to another man, that’s about as out as you can get, but Eddie just wants to be sure.
Astonishingly, Buck scowls at this. He glowers at the book before putting it back on the table and tossing himself back against the cushions with a huff.
Eddie looks at him in confusion before tentatively asking, “Is everything okay?”
“Yep,” Buck mutters. “Fine. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because you just looked at that book like it committed a very personal crime against you,” Eddie says, bemused.
Buck shrugs.
“What, have you read it? Did you not like it? Was it bad, or something?” Eddie asks, bewildered.
“I mean, it wouldn’t matter to you anyway, would it?” Buck scoffs.
“Er. What?” Eddie asks, eyebrows raised in shock. “Buck—”
“It’s fine, Eddie. Why would you come to me for these kinds of things when Ravi is obviously doing such a great job of being Gay Yoda,” Buck snaps, crossing his arms.
“Excuse me?” Eddie says, feeling insane. “Gay… Yoda?”
“I mean, it’s fine, I get why you asked him for help with Grindr—he probably knows how to navigate that sh*t better than me, so I get it, even if it would’ve been nice if you’d mentioned it at all,” Buck says, frowning. “But, come on, Eddie, I literally read like eight queer books for LGBT history month just a few weeks ago, and you know book club recommended loads more, so I dunno, forgive me for thinking you’d ever come to me before Ravi if that was something you were looking for.”
“Ravi,” Eddie says, brain slowly piecing together Buck’s deranged rant. “You think Ravi is… my Gay Yoda?”
Buck shrugs again, mulish.
“Buck,” Eddie says carefully, “I haven’t come out to anyone other than you and Chris. And Frank.”
Buck’s entire face morphs, sour expression slipping into surprise.
“Wait, what?” he asks, voice catching nervously.
“I got recommended the book through therapy,” Eddie tells him slowly.
“Oh,” Buck says, voice small.
“Did you—why the hell did you think Ravi was helping me use Grindr?” Eddie asks, aghast. “Like, I don’t know which part is worse: that you think I’m using Grindr as a thirty-five year old who’s just realised he’s into men, or that you think I’d go to Ravi for help with it.”
“I don’t know!” Buck cries, just as aghast. “You were—at the station the other day! You both were being weird on your phones, and talking about dicks, and you’d just come out to me, and then later the two of you were whispering behind the engine!”
“And you thought that meant I was getting his input on using a hook-up app?” Eddie demands. He is well within his rights to be deeply indignant about this, even if the whispering behind the engine had in fact been because Ravi cornered him to tell him to just keep the f*cking Halloween costumes, no amount of dry-cleaning or Eddie’s protests of innocence could make him and Nico accept them back in good faith (or good hygiene, he'd hissed) after seeing those club photos. Still, Buck doesn’t know that, and that he’d assumed the conversation was about Ravi teaching him how to—Eddie is very much allowed to be insulted.
“Well, when you say it like that,” Buck says, looking suitably mortified, in Eddie’s opinion.
Eddie exhales heavily, leaning back against the couch arm.
“Sorry,” Buck adds meekly, looking very contrite.
“It’s—fine,” Eddie sighs. “But—”
Buck looks at him expectantly.
“Did you—why do you have a problem with Ravi being my… Gay Yoda? He’s not,” Eddie reiterates firmly, “but why would it be such a big deal if he was?”
Buck frowns at him. “It’s not, I guess. It’s fine. I just—I thought maybe you’d want to talk about that kind of thing with me.” He sighs. “I guess I want you to talk about that kinda thing with me.”
“Because you read a lot of relevant stuff for book club, or because—because you’re my closest friend?” Eddie asks carefully.
Buck’s frown deepens. “Because I’m bisexual? Both the other things, too, but mostly because of the bisexuality, Eddie.”
“Oh,” Eddie says. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Buck’s brow is so furrowed he looks like one of those wrinkly Chinese dogs. “Wait, Eddie, did you not know that?”
“Um, not for sure, not till right now,” Eddie admits. “You’re—you’ve always seemed very comfortable in your sexuality, you know? And I didn’t know if that was just you being very confident in your heterosexuality or, like, if it was because you were bi. I didn’t wanna assume.”
“Oh,” Buck says, still frowning. “Huh.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says.
They both stare at the coffee table in slack silence.
Then Eddie says, “I didn’t mean to make you feel like I didn’t want to talk to you. I always want to talk to you—you’re the first person I want to talk to about this stuff, the scary stuff, the real stuff. I guess—I’ve only been talking to Frank about it, so far. A lot of it is, um, really new, which makes it kind of embarrassing.”
Buck smiles affectionately at him. “Eddie, have you ever had a conversation with me where I don’t say something embarrassing?”
Eddie laughs, and Buck continues, “But I get that. Just—if and when you ever want to talk, about any of it…”
Eddie nods, shifts across the couch to nudge his shoulder against Buck’s. “Yeah, I know.”
They both grin at each other goofily for a few seconds before Chris calls from the kitchen, asking if, hypothetically, someone had forgotten about the milk in the microwave and it had boiled over and splashed everywhere, hypothetically, how would one clean it. Eddie groans loudly and goes to investigate just how hypothetical this scenario is, leaving Buck laughing on the couch.
While Eddie’s grumpily wiping the microwave clean and Buck’s supervising heating the last of their milk in a saucepan on the stove, Chris heaps cocoa powder into the mugs Buck made them.
“Which mug d’you want, Buck?” he asks, going to open their cabinet.
“Oh!” Buck says, “I made one for me, too. Hold on.” He disappears into the lounge.
He comes back, and Chris diligently stirs each mug of chocolatey milk. He hands Buck his, and when Eddie shuts the microwave with one final grumble, he hands him his mug, too.
“Cheers,” Buck says, clinking his mug against Chris’s.
“Cheers,” Eddie echoes, reaching towards them with his own mug, and then he sees Buck’s properly—a dreamy glaze of blue, pink, and purple. Bright, beautiful, and unmistakably bisexual.
He meets Buck’s eyes, grinning, and Buck grins back: bright, beautiful, definitely bisexual.
When they take their cocoa out to the living room to drink it on the couch, Eddie spies the box Buck arrived with.
“Pretty large box for three coffee mugs,” he remarks.
“Oh,” Buck says, setting down his mug on one of the little yellow coasters Chris crocheted. “I didn’t show you the big guy.”
He wrestles two large pottery pieces out of the box. They’re not glazed; plain, kiln-fired terracotta. One is a stand of sorts, with a simple flared base, a sturdy trunk, and a large, flattened receptacle on the other end. The other is a wide, shallow bowl. He fits them together on the living room floor, and it stands about three feet tall.
“Ta-da!” he says.
“Is that a bird bath?” Chris asks excitedly.
“Yeah,” Buck grins, adjusting it proudly. “The teacher at the pottery place helped a lot with this one, though.”
“Cool,” Chris gushes. “Is it for your balcony?”
“Um, I thought since you guys get more birds in your garden, we could keep it here?” Buck suggests tentatively.
“Can we set it up now?” Chris asks, already slurping down the rest of his cocoa without taking a breath.
“I’ll get some water for it,” Eddie offers, and Buck beams.
After setting it up in the backyard and waiting fifteen impatient minutes for not a single ungrateful bird to show up, they all trudge back inside.
Chris rummages under the coffee table for one of his worksheets from school, resigning himself to finishing homework, and the folded-up California map slips out. Buck picks it up curiously, and Eddie snatches it out of his hands.
“Woah, hey,” Buck says, grinning. “Is this what you guys were up to earlier?”
“Yes, and that’s all you get to know,” Chris informs him primly.
Eddie snorts. “You’re right, bud, but we have to tell him some of it.”
“Tell me what?” Buck demands.
Chris studies him critically for a moment before turning to Eddie with a sigh. “Fine. But it’s on a need-to-know basis only. Don’t tell him any more.”
“Alright, calm down with the Men in Black routine, Agent C,” Eddie mutters, turning to a very amused Buck. He waggles the map at him. “This is incredibly short notice, but I hope you’re not doing anything the week of Thanksgiving, because Chris doesn’t have school, and you and I have vacation days, so we thought we’d cross one more thing off the ol’ list.”
“Oh?” Buck asks, looking delighted. “Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I just need to clear it with Bobby—”
“Already did,” Eddie tells him. “He’s fine with it, but… this really is short notice, so it’s cool if you made other plans?”
“Eddie,” Buck says, rolling his eyes, “In the five years you’ve known me, have I ever had Thanksgiving plans that didn’t involve you, or Maddie, or Bobby?”
“Fine,” Eddie grins. “Good, because we’ve really planned this out.”
“Yeah?” Buck says eagerly. “What’re we doing?”
“Need-to-know!” Chris reiterates loudly.
“Yep, sorry, all we can tell you is that it’s a road trip, but we’re not leaving California. I’ll send you a packing list,” Eddie tells Buck, who manages two seconds of pretend-pouting before his grin splits through. “Chris’s last day of school is the 20th, but we’re on the shift schedule till the 23rd, so I thought we’d leave on the 24th?”
“Okay,” Buck agrees readily.
“Good,” Eddie says, tucking the map away carefully.
He attempts to rope Buck into making dinner, but Buck’s literally vibrating with the surprise of this trip and the secrecy of it all. When he knocks over the bottle of olive oil for the second time, Eddie shoos him out of the kitchen in exasperation.
“Go annoy the other Diaz,” he tells Buck, fondness overriding even faux-irritation. “You’re all elbows today, Buckley.”
When the casserole is in the oven and the dishwasher is mostly stacked, Eddie steps out into the living room, wiping wet hands on his jeans. Chris is watching TV on the couch, sprawled out with a cushion under his head and his feet hanging off the far arm.
“Where’s Buck, mijo?” Eddie asks, absently brushing a few errant curls off Chris’s forehead.
Chris scrunches his nose disagreeably at the gesture but doesn’t wriggle away. “Said he couldn’t sit still. Think he’s out in the garden.”
Eddie hums in acknowledgement, allowing himself one last stroke through his hair before moving towards the backdoor.
In the garden, Buck is sat in the grass beside the bird bath, knees pulled to his chest. There’s a little brown sparrow splashing in the pool of water.
“Hey, you have your first guest,” Eddie says, leaning against the doorway.
Buck turns back to him with a pleased grin. “Oh, this is the same guy from the other day. He’s been around for a couple weeks. He’s got this little white speck on his face—see?”
Eddie laughs. “Oh, it all makes sense now. You just happened to handmake a bird bath from scratch and just happened to set it up here. Buckley, you sly dog, I see right through you. All these ulterior motives to win the heart of a single bird…” He shakes his head.
Buck’s cheeks are pink but he’s laughing too. “You can’t prove anything,” he says.
“I don’t need to,” Eddie assures him. “I have a real-life Disney princess in my backyard. Highly successful operation.”
Buck snorts and stands up, brushing off the seat of his pants. “Dinnertime?”
“Almost,” Eddie says, stepping aside so he can come in. “Oh, hey, hold on a second, though.”
He fishes out the list from his wallet and grabs a red pen from the dining table. “You should tick off pottery—I think sculpting a whole bird bath has earned you that.”
“Oh, yeah,” Buck says, holding it against the table surface to tick it off. He lifts the paper up and stares at it, lips tugging down slightly at the edges.
“Hey, you’re making your way through it. Must feel pretty good, knowing you’re doing everything,” Eddie says.
Buck clears his throat, gives the list one last long look before folding it carefully and handing it back to Eddie. “Yeah. Yeah, it does. Almost everything, anyway.” He smiles, but it’s subdued, and his voice is tinged with a sadness that wasn’t there just a moment ago.
Before Eddie has a chance to say anything, to figure out what happened in that split-second, he’s loping over to the couch and lifting Chris’s legs so he can sit, depositing them across his lap once he does.
Eddie looks at them, twin heads of tousled blond hair turned to the television screen. Buck’s shoulders are ever-so-slightly hunched in on themselves, and if Eddie hadn’t just witnessed the sudden change in his demeanour, he’d chalk up the drooping posture to a long day. But he did witness it, did see the way his eyes shifted into something melancholic when he studied the list he wrote months ago now.
Eddie turns away from them and unfolds the paper quietly, taking care not to rustle it. He looks at it—same as before, a few more ticks and a few more entries added to the bottom. He looks—at missing number 5, scribbled out and rewritten and scribbled out again. The dark scratches of it stark against the pale stationery.
And Eddie knows Buck’s trusted him with something here, but he also never wants to see Buck unhappy if he can help it. If there’s something on this list Buck wants and thinks he can’t have—if Eddie can make sure he gets it? He likes to think he knows when to push and when to be patient when it comes to Buck, but with this—he can’t do anything if he doesn’t know what it is.
He squints closer, trying to make out the words that have been crossed out. No luck, so he steps into the kitchen and holds the paper up against the bright yellow glow of the lightbulb. And then has to sit heavily down in one of the kitchen chairs.
Get married, the first part reads. It’s scratched out with such vehemence Eddie’s not sure he can swallow around the span of the ache in his throat. Beside that: Start a family, Buck’s tried as his second attempt at number 5, only to bury that under ink, too. Eddie runs his index finger along where this deep, hungry want of Buck’s has been scored through in pen, so hard the paper is raised along this line, swollen with ink. He thinks of Buck sitting right where Eddie’s sat right now, under the warm glow of the kitchen lights, envisioning all the things he dreams of having and doing, and deciding that this one isn’t something within his reach. Deciding this isn’t something he’s allowed to even hope for.
Eddie thinks back to the drive home after that first therapy session with Frank when they’d begun delving into Eddie’s queerness. How he’d been so sure about those three things he thought were fact. Granted, the first two remain true: Eddie’s gay and Eddie’s in love with Buck.
The third is less set in stone than the Eddie of two months ago, freshly out of the closet in his own head, was so certain of. That Eddie isn’t allowed to have Buck—maybe, but maybe it’s not fair of him to decide that all on his own. The fear of expressing his want in any way is no longer exacerbated by the worry that he might make Buck uncomfortable, no longer so heavily drenched in shame he can’t bear to entertain the thought.
More than that, though, he realises, so caught up in himself before, that assuming Buck would step away—would leave him and Chris in any capacity, in any scenario other than one where Eddie explicitly asks him to, is bananas. Maybe the Buck of two years ago would’ve. But this Buck, burrowed so inextricably into every corner of Eddie’s home? This Buck knows what he means to them, knows he has them and never needs to doubt it. This Buck knows he never needs to ask to be here, never needs to second-guess his place in both their lives, as a unit and as separates. It would be a disservice to the unwavering commitment the three of them have built this with to think he still doubts that. They’ve been showing up for each other for half a decade. Eddie’s just not sure that this Buck realises—that that’s family, already.
Eddie looks at the clutter of their lives on the fridge door, at the glossy photograph of the three of them at The Butter Barn. It’s hung wonkily with a seashell-shaped magnet, a little to the left of the snapshot of Shannon and Christopher at the beach, crisp print edge brushing gently against more worn one.
He thinks about Buck parenting Chris without ever making him feel like he’s lost a friend—sharing new books and learning new crafts and baking and loving and including and caring, over and over and over. He thinks back to Buck leaning into him at the Halloween party, and not leaning away. He thinks, with a flicker of hope, back to not three hours ago, Buck telling him he’s bisexual, confused like he thought Eddie already knew. He thinks, with an extinguishing gust, back to last month, Buck comparing himself to Shannon with painful emphasis on the platonic. He thinks, resolutely, of Buck sat right here, chest heaving as he fiercely says I always want you in the boat with me.
Eddie folds the list up and tips his chair back far enough that he can see the couch through the kitchen doorway. Buck may not have been his and Christopher’s from the start, but—what they’ve built definitely belongs to the three of them, now. Starting is overrated. It’s everything in the middle, it’s the seeing it through that makes a family. And Buck sure as hell has done that, does it every day. Made a family, here, with them.
As for the first bit—Eddie’s there. He doesn’t think Buck is, mostly because he doesn’t think Buck knows. But maybe Eddie owes it to the both of them to take that risk and try.
He will, he decides, tucking the list away and slipping on oven mitts as the timer dings. He will, just after this road trip, because it’s still a risk and if it doesn’t go the way Eddie hopes, he still wants to give Buck this thing and not have it be tainted by the guilt and discomfort of unreciprocated feelings. He knows they’ll get through that, if it comes to it, but first, let them have this.
_____
“Underwear, first aid kit, toiletries,” Eddie mumbles as he wrestles them into his large duffel. “Socks—Chris, do you have enough socks?”
“Dad, I’ve been packed since Friday,” Chris sighs from the bathroom. “I have plenty of socks.”
“Okay, but are they thick ones? It’s gonna be a lot colder up north, bud,” Eddie says, hunting through his closet for a warmer sweater.
“They’re regular socks, Dad,” Chris says. “I think we’ll be fine.”
“Did I tell Buck to pack warm? I can’t remember,” Eddie says, harried. “He gets cold even in LA, the last thing we need is—”
“You did tell me to pack warm,” Buck says, sticking his head into Eddie’s room. “Hi, Eddie. Hi, Chris. Eddie, are you not packed yet?”
“It’s like Freaky Friday,” Chris tells Buck in the hall. “He woke me up at four thirty and told me, like, fifteen things we needed to do before you got here, and he’s just been wandering around like this all morning instead. I had to doublecheck the reservation because he forgot how to get into his personal email.”
Eddie emerges from his closet, look of indignation belied by the way his eye is twitching.
“See what I mean?” Chris says to Buck. “I hope you’re driving.”
“Oh, for sure,” Buck says, exchanging an alarmed look with him as Eddie steps back while tugging a sweater off the top shelf and ends up buried in a small avalanche of knitwear.
Eddie grabs a couple off the floor and attempts to stuff them into his bag. When he turns back around, Buck’s already put the rest back in the closet, much neater than the way Eddie certainly would’ve scrunched and jammed them in the back, given the mood he’s in.
“Do you have something waterproof?” Eddie asks him, running a hand through his hair. It sticks up haphazardly, probably making him look even more frenzied than he’s surely coming across.
“I do,” Buck confirms. “You gave me a very thorough list. Did you not follow it?”
“List,” Eddie says distractedly, looking around for his phone to use what he sent Buck as a template. However, that must just make him sound more unhinged, because Buck’s grabbing him by the shoulders and steering him to sit down on the bed.
“Yes, list,” he says. “What have you packed so far?”
Eddie blinks up at him.
He sighs and pulls out his own phone. “I’ll read it out, you say yes or no.”
“Not check?” Eddie quips on autopilot, and Buck glares at him.
Say what they might about Clipboard Buck, but give the guy a checklist and he gets sh*t done. Twenty minutes later, they’ve loaded up the truck—the cargo bed gives them more luggage room than the Jeep can manage—and buckled themselves in.
The early morning sun falls in shafts across Buck, cleaving his face with a streak of gold. Eddie, already feeling a little brain-addled, can’t unstick his gaze from him as he puts an arm around the passenger seat to twist his body and back the truck out onto the quiet street, careful and efficient. The light catches the blond hair on his arms, highlights the shift of muscle under skin as he adjusts the angle of his hand pressed to the back of Eddie’s headrest. The cut line of his jaw casts a shadow down his neck as he cranes back. He pulls onto the street with ease and lets the engine idle, putting one hand back on the gearshift.
The tug in Eddie’s gut is expected now, happens syrupy-slow, a warm curl. He remembers trying to explain it away the day Buck built them a new window. Now, he thinks he’s happy to graciously retract any and all previous mental statements about it not necessarily being an appreciation for stereotypical masculinity. He very much appreciates just how masculine Buck is, body dusted with golden hair, clean, soapy smell underlaid faintly with his woodsy cologne, voice a warm rumble when he softly asks, “Ready?”
Chris yawns a yes and Eddie manages a slow nod, caught in the way Buck’s forearm flexes as he puts the truck in gear and drives them forward. Chris plugs in the playlist they carefully curated on Buck’s phone, and by the time they’re pulling onto the I-5 highway headed north, Eddie still hasn’t looked away.
“You okay?” Buck checks, serious.
Eddie woke up this morning worried this trip he’s planned would fall short of what Buck hoped for when he started the list. Logically, objectively, everything within his control was in place and on track. In matters of the heart, he’d been wondering if this was the last chance he’d get to show Buck what they have, before telling him in deliberate words. Then Buck arrived and showed Eddie. Them being a family doesn’t need to be proven by grand gestures—Eddie’ll make ’em anyway, because he wants to, but that’s just icing. The proof is in the way Buck showed up, sleep-rumpled at six am, and everything settled. The churning inside Eddie, the tension seeping out into the walls—Buck stepped through the door and the house itself exhaled.
Eddie doesn’t need proof from this trip, evidence to convince Buck of their family. They prove that every single day. This? This is just to love him.
He smiles, sinking back against the sun-warmed window. “Yeah. I am.”
Eddie looks out the window, river below them glittering in the orange dusk light as the sun sets. They’re just crossing the bridge into Klamath, maybe fifteen minutes from their rental cabin at the river-side campsite closer to the coast. Buck and Chris are both dead to the world, Chris breathing deep and peaceful in the back while Buck open-mouth snuffles in his sleep in the passenger seat.
Eddie’d taken over driving after their first secret detour. They’d paused half an hour before Sacramento for a quick highway diner lunch, and then made a more purposeful stop up in Chico, where Chris excitedly dragged Buck into the National Yo-Yo Museum, home of the World’s Largest Yo-Yo.
“Oh man, I used to be so good at yo-yoing when I was your age,” Buck had told him, peering nostalgically at the display cases housing hundreds of colourful toys.
“I know,” Chris had replied smugly. “Maddie told us.”
“She did?” Buck asked then, puzzled, and Chris’s resolve to keep the details of this trip cloak-and-daggered had instantly crumbled.
“We’re only doing one thing on your official list,” he explained, “but Dad and I made our own list of, like, weird things to see on the drive. We showed Maddie so she could help us pick the ones you’d like most. We’re gonna do the rest of them on the way back home, but Dad said we could make one stop on the drive up.”
Buck had looked from Chris to Eddie, eyes wide, and Eddie’d grinned and said, “Don’t get too excited, I promised I’d have you back for Thanksgiving dinner, so we’re cramming as many things as we can into, like, a two-day drive home.”
“Dad and I stopped at an orange juice stand that was shaped like a giant orange when we drove from Texas to LA,” Chris added, tugging on Buck’s sleeve to steer him over to the massive yo-yo at the center of the room. “This isn’t as big, but the website said it’s fully functional, which is pretty cool.”
Buck’s dumbstruck expression had only grown when Chris positioned him next to the yo-yo and stood in place on the other side, instructing him to smile while Eddie whipped out the kitschy disposable camera he’d bought for this exact purpose. Eddie’d clicked the picture anyway, huffing a laugh in anticipation of the way Buck’s adorably surprised features would be immortalised on film, Chris grinning toothily up at him instead of the camera.
“I can’t believe you guys planned all of this,” he murmured to Eddie a little later, Chris busy poking around for a suitable souvenir. “Like, I knew you were—I knew you’d organised something, but this? Eddie…”
Eddie’d shrugged. “Road trip, right? And it was mostly Chris, I’m just the map-and-schedule guy. Besides, next time you can do the planning. Even if that means we’ll probably be visiting some, uh, more offbeat attractions.”
“Next time?” Buck repeated softly.
Looking around for Chris, Eddie’d nodded. “The list doesn’t end, right?”
“Right,” Buck breathed back.
Now, Eddie murmurs a hey, nudging Buck gently. He blinks his eyes open, sleep-slow and disoriented, but immediately smiles when he sees Eddie. He stretches his arms out languidly, joint cracking in his shoulder.
“Hey,” he mumbles back, voice raspy.
“We’re nearly there,” Eddie tells him, and his eyes brighten as he reaches an arm back to gently pat Chris awake.
The river snakes to their left and disappears, and then they’re driving through a stretch of highway banked by lush, thick forest. A wooden sign welcoming them to Yurok country goes past, and Eddie takes a hard left off the main road and towards the coast.
“Is this part of the Redwood National Park?” Buck asks, gazing appreciatively at the dense foliage, evergreen and alive even at the cusp of winter.
“Yeah,” Chris replies from the back, exchanging a conspiratorial grin with Eddie in the rearview mirror. Buck catches Eddie’s surreptitious smile and knits his eyebrows at them, bemused, when they refuse to elaborate.
The scenic road takes them to a row of cabins lining the riverbank. They make their way from the parking lot to the closest building, adorned with a helpful sign proclaiming Reception. An older woman with grey hair scraped into a neat bun greets them with a smile.
“Hi there, are you looking for a cabin tonight?” she asks, pulling out a ledger.
“Hi, yes, we should already have a reservation, under Diaz?” Eddie tells her. Behind him, Buck takes Chris’s bag from him so he can go over and inspect a decorative life-sized bear carved intricately out of a single chunk of wood.
“Oh, of course, we’ve been waiting for you—you’re here from Los Angeles, right?” she asks, finding their names in the book and scribbling something by it. “My husband Archie wanted to be here to meet you—he’s the one who’ll take you out tomorrow, but he couldn’t wait tonight. Our granddaughter has a soccer game this evening and he can’t bear to miss a single one.”
“Oh, that’s no problem,” Eddie reassures her with a smile. “We’re a little later than anticipated, too—we made a couple stops along the drive up. I hope we haven’t kept you waiting too long. Uh, this is Buck, and Christopher.” Buck gives her a wave as best he can with both hands full, and Chris smiles from across the room.
“Not at all,” she reassures him right back. “I’m Nora. You guys must be pretty tired after that drive, though. Shall I show you to your cabin?”
He agrees gratefully, and she takes them down a winding path parallel to the river, stopping at the fourth log cabin. The sun’s fully set, and her face is illuminated by the bright lamps lining the track.
“Let us know if you need anything, okay? There’s a card on the table with the Wi-Fi details and office number, as well as mine and Archie’s personal numbers. Water takes a couple minutes to heat up. You’re more than welcome to eat out on the porch, but just remember to take all your food back in—we get all kinds of visitors here, and cute and furry as they are, I can’t say they’re all that polite.” She leaves them with instructions to meet Archie in the reception the next morning for their day out.
Inside the cabin is the coziest place Eddie thinks he’s ever stepped foot in. Lit in a warm yellow glow, the rustic wooden infrastructure and amalgamation of mismatched furniture heaped with colourful woven blankets gives the room a soft, lived-in feel. There’s a large sofa that acts as a pull-out bed, and a little bedroom off to the side. The kitchenette is small and sparsely stocked, but they’re only here for two nights and plan to spend most of their time out anyway.
Eddie drops his duffel and sinks into the middle of the sofa with a pleased sigh. “Okay, who’s sleeping where?” he asks, only to blink in surprise as Buck and Chris follow suit in flopping down on either side of him. Exactly like on their own worn blue couch, 700 miles away but permanently present in the habitual way Chris slumps against him on his left and Buck lifts his arm and rests it along the back to avoid elbowing Eddie in the ribs.
Eddie breathes out an amused, adoring laugh. Chris’s stomach rumbles audibly next to him and Buck goes, “Oh yeah, I could eat.”
The three sit in companionable, if exhausted, silence, mowing through the sandwiches they’d picked up in Chico. They take turns showering, Chris’s comical yelp echoing through the cabin when he forgets to let the water heat up for a minute. Eddie’s last to finish up in the bathroom and emerges towelling off his hair.
“Where d’you wanna sleep?” he asks Chris.
Chris, who’s already curled back up next to Buck on the couch, now pulled-out and made up with bedding, and does not look like he has any intention of moving, looks at him sleepily. Eddie can’t tell if the warmth in his chest is from the searing hot shower or the way Chris tucks his face more firmly against Buck’s shoulder and mumbles a goodnight in unambiguous response.
He laughs softly at the unapologetic clinginess of his kid, a move much more uncharacteristic these days, and watches as Buck carefully takes Chris’s glasses off and sets them on the side table. He flashes Eddie a grin, so full of clear-cut love and wonder Eddie knows for sure where the warmth originates.
For the first time in a very long time, even if the sheets next to him are unoccupied, Eddie doesn’t feel like he’s going to bed alone.
There’s a chill in the morning air, and Eddie very generously does not say a word when he lends Christopher an extra pair of fuzzy socks. They’re all wrapped in lumpy, holey—albeit soft—handknitted scarves that Buck had presented them with before they stepped out the cabin door. They’re objectively hideous in craftsmanship, but the cheery colours and obvious love with which they’ve been made gives them an invaluable charm, and Eddie winds his a little more snug around his neck. Green-and-blue stripes for Chris, mixed shades of red for Eddie, navy-blue-and-cream for Buck. Eddie actually had to shove his hands into his pockets when Buck playfully mummified Chris’s head with it before tugging it down into place, surge of affection so strong he’d have tried to yank him closer by the fringed end of his own scarf and kiss his nose or something equally stupid otherwise.
They’re both bouncing on the balls of their feet by the reception desk, Chris in knowing anticipation and Buck from the contagiousness of it all. Nora had greeted them with pastries, left over from her own house, and Eddie reaches over now to brush stray croissant crumbs off both their scarves as a tall, handsome older man comes over to them.
“Hey there, I’m Archie. You must be—Christopher, Buck, and Eddie?” he guesses, pointing at each of them correctly.
Chris nods excitedly and Archie claps his hands together with a grin. “Perfect. You boys all got something waterproof, and a change of clothes too?”
They do, and then he herds them down to the river edge, to a short dock in the opposite direction of the cabins. A little charter boat waits in the water, Caroline painted across the side in swishy blue letters. He helps them all on, passing Chris’s crutches to Eddie so he can clamber over the step more easily.
“Caroline’s my granddaughter’s name,” he tells them, voice deep with pride. “She’s about your age, Christopher. Loves to come out on these rides, but she’s all tuckered out from her soccer game last night.”
He leads them to the front, gets them decked out in lifejackets and settled where they can see out onto the river, busying himself with casting off the boat. “We’ve been running these tours out of the reservation for near a hundred years now. We don’t always get as much business as some of the bigger companies closer to the beach towns, but we’ve never had anyone disappointed. There’s always something to see.” He steers them downriver. “And we’ve been here long enough that these guys have been our neighbours for… too many generations to count. They know us, and we know them.”
All of them lean against the metal railing along the bow, watching as the Klamath river spills open into the endless, glittering Pacific. Archie chuckles at their identical expressions of awe and says, “So who’s ready to see some whales?”
Eddie’s squeezing out a blob of sunscreen directly onto Christopher’s nose when Archie leaves the helm to squint at the waves sparkling to their left. Chris isn’t even complaining, talking a mile a minute to Buck about the sea lion colony they passed along the shore before heading further out to sea.
“Yep,” Archie confirms quietly, returning to the helm and banking the boat gently portside.
“Did you see something?” Chris asks, and Archie points at the dark, glossy shapes rolling in and out of the water’s surface, nearly indistinguishable from the waves at this distance if you weren’t looking for it.
“You’re in luck,” he says. “Looks like there’s just one—which means she’s alone, not travelling with a pod, which means she probably has a baby with her.”
“Oh my God,” Buck says.
“Can you tell what kind of whale she is?” Eddie asks.
“Probably a gray,” Archie tells them. “Their migration is from now till summer, and it doesn’t look big enough to be a blue, even if their season isn’t quite over.”
A spray of mist breaches the surface and he grins. “Thar she blows,” he quips, turning off the motor and letting the boat sway closer naturally.
Less than twenty feet away, the tip of a fin pokes out the water, patchy-white and covered in bumps.
“Oh,” Archie says with a surprised grin, “she’s a humpback.”
“Oh my God,” Chris and Buck say together, breathless.
She rolls over, bumpy skin on display. The waves around her rock the boat gently as she rotates, slow and fluid. And then the boat keels towards her with a stomach-dropping lurch.
Eddie grabs the back of Chris’s lifejacket, fingers brushing Buck’s where he’s immediately done the same, but Archie’s just laughing, a bright, booming sound.
“And that’s baby,” he says, eyes twinkling as the three of them whirl around. Sure enough, on the starboard side is a much smaller, equally dappled version of the whale they’ve been watching. He nudges the boat playfully again before giving it a wide berth to join his mother.
They watch, spellbound as the two of them roll between the waves, looping and dipping and dancing around each other. The water glitters and winks brightly, but Eddie can’t bring himself to reach for his sunglasses and dim any of this for even a second.
“Have you ever heard them sing?” Chris asks Archie, eyes still glued to the whales.
He shakes his head. “The singers are usually the males,” he explains. “They tend to do it in big groups, not when they’re migrating like this.”
“For mating, right? And to communicate over long distances?” Chris asks, and Archie nods, looking pleasantly surprised.
“That’s right,” he says. “Different groups of whales teach each other different songs, too, and they spread them around the world. We don’t know for sure why, but why do we sing? To communicate and, sure, to impress the ladies if you got a nice voice, but sometimes it’s just to share something. A passing of culture. Why wouldn’t it be the same for them?”
“We read that it might be connected to loneliness,” Buck says softly. “That they sing more when there are fewer of them.”
Archie looks at the whales gliding through the water, calm and carefree. “Maybe so,” he says, just as soft. “But there’s something beautiful about that, too, isn’t there? That they come when the others call. That they know how to ease each other’s pain, just by being close.”
Buck’s face is a car crash of emotion, all piled on top of each other, and Eddie can’t discern the most pressing of them.
The mother humpback swims a little away and vanishes below the surface.
“She might be bored of us,” Archie warns, and they lean forward to get a good last look at the baby, who’s seemingly unbothered by his mom’s disappearance, spinning lazily on his own.
And then Eddie’s gasping, whole body flush with adrenaline as she breaches the surface, rushing skywards in a twist before descending in a crash of seawater and agitated foam.
“Holy sh*t,” Chris says, and Eddie and Buck just nod in speechless agreement, not bothering to chastise him because he’s f*cking right.
Archie chuckles. “They usually only breach if they’re in pods, or trying to get another whale’s attention,” he says. “But I think she’s just showing off.”
The baby smacks his fin against the surface hard, spraying all of them as he does. They watch, blinking saltwater out of their eyes as he flips around and swims to meet his mother. She rolls over, sticking out her nose, water streaming down her face. He sinks beneath the surface, and then all they can see is the edge of her fin, raised jauntily like she’s peacing out.
The fin disappears, and then a smooth black tail fluke slices up through the water, gleaming in the sunlight. It hovers for a second, water sluicing down, before slipping back under with an almost otherworldly grace.
The three of them collectively exhale, enchantment lingering. Chris dissolves into giddy giggles, and when Eddie looks at Buck, his eyes are wide with the same disbelief and delight coursing through Eddie’s own body.
As Archie supervises Chris steering them back through a safe stretch of empty ocean, Eddie bumps his shoulder against Buck’s, pulling his attention from where he’d been leaning over the railing, watching the horizon behind them.
He looks at Eddie, cheeks sunkissed and nose definitely burnt, curls fluttering in the sea breeze, looking like everything God intended when they created life.
“Hey,” Eddie says quietly. “Was that— Did you—” He cuts himself off, stares out at the shimmering water. “Are you okay?” he settles on.
He’s surprised when he feels rather than sees Buck bend sideways to rest his cheek against Eddie’s shoulder, widening his stance to avoid craning his neck awkwardly.
“Eds,” he sighs happily. “I—I thought I’d feel a shift when it happened, you know? Like, back when we made the list, in your kitchen, and I said—”
“About seeing them exist this—big? And… alive?” Eddie asks, and gets a mouthful of Buck’s hair when he tilts his head to peer at Eddie’s face, surprised.
“Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah. But— That was amazing, Eddie, I can’t believe we got to see that, like, what a dream. But—”
Eddie waits, unsure which way this is going.
Buck picks his head up and looks Eddie right in the eyes. “I do feel it—big, inside me. But the rest, the way I thought it would show me about—about being alive, in all the ways being alive matters, you know? I already feel that, Eddie. Maybe not so big, and maybe not all the time, but it’s not a new feeling. Maybe to the person I was four months ago, right after the strike. But the person I am now? He’s been feeling it, bits of it, for a while now.” He grins at Eddie, uncomplicated, and Eddie wants to tug him close, press a kiss to his temple, hard, right over his birthmark, and then maybe burst into tears.
Instead, he lets out the tidal wave of happiness begging to burst forth in his answering grin, the way he bumps his shoulder against Buck’s again and lets it stay there. Buck presses back against him, solid and sunlit.
That evening, they’re spread across the cabin, Chris and Buck pajama-clad on the pull-out while Eddie’s curled up on the very comfy armchair in the corner. They’re discussing the plan for the following day, Chris still being cagey about the first of the outings but placating Buck’s curiosity by dropping hints about some of the roadside attractions on the first stretch of the drive home.
Eddie’s phone chimes, loudly, several times in a row, and when he reads the messages from Karen, in all-caps, he involuntarily squeaks before clapping a hand over his mouth. Buck looks at him in concern, but he’s quick to reassure them that everything’s fine.
“Just—I need to talk to Chris. Privately. About, um, maybe a major itinerary change. Potentially.”
Chris looks alarmed and scrambles to his feet, and they lock themselves into the little bedroom to confer in hushed tones.
“We’d have to completely reschedule the road trip stuff,” Eddie tells him. “We could do that over spring break instead, but I know you spent a lot of time putting it together—we both did. It’s okay if you don’t want to change the plan. I just wanted to let you know so we could decide together.”
Chris frowns, looking at Karen’s texts again. He pouts a little and then hands Eddie his phone back with a sigh. “No, this is too cool to miss. We gotta do this if we can. Ugh.”
“Are you sure, mijo?” Eddie checks. “It’s literally up to us. No wrong answers, just whatever we wanna do.”
Chris smiles at him, only a little rueful. “Yeah, I’m sure. It sucks to reschedule the road trip stops, but we can do that anytime we have a car and a vacation, right? This is worth it.”
“Okay,” Eddie says, smacking a kiss to his head and herding him back out the bedroom to Buck, who looks like a confused puppy who’s been left alone for the first time. Eddie can practically see his tail wag when they re-enter.
“Change of plans,” he announces. “We’re doing the thing we have planned for tomorrow morning, and then we’re driving east!”
“Um, okay,” Buck agrees readily. “I’m just operating under the assumption that you’re now taking me to an undisclosed, third-party location where I’ll be murdered, but you know what, all things considered, not the worst way to go. Spoiled rotten and with my favourite people, even if they have decided to offer my body up as human sacrifice.” He pretends to wipe away a tear, giggling and falling back into the bed with an oof when Chris hits him square in the face with a pillow.
“I mean, I knew your dad was dabbling in hiking as a hobby, but I didn’t think you’d fallen victim too,” Buck tells Chris, pausing to flap the hem of his sweater, trying to get some of the crisp, cool air to dry the sweat.
Chris grins at him from a few feet ahead on the track. This isn’t a particularly gruelling trail, and he’s been bounding ahead eagerly. The park guide had instructed them to keep going till they hit a fork, and from there it would a twenty minute trek down the left branch. You’ll know it when you see it, she said, but they’ve been walking for a while, and Eddie is beginning to think it was more cryptic than helpful.
“It’s worth it,” Chris promises, continuing forwards.
They’re smack-dab in the middle of the Redwood National Park, colossal trees scraping the sky in every direction. They’d opted out of the drive-thru route, which had confused Buck when they arrived, given the sheer size of the park, but the place Chris wanted to take them is better accessed on foot, and he’d insisted so fiercely when they were planning this trip that Eddie’d relented. The trail isn’t inaccessible in case of an emergency, anyway, and now, walking beneath the enormous evergreens, he thinks maybe the impact of it all is magnified by the humbling effect of experiencing it with both feet on the ground.
The path before them curves, and Chris exclaims with excitement as he scampers around it. “We’re here!”
Eddie’s a step behind Buck, so he gets a perfect view of the way his eyes widen when he rounds the bend too. He follows, and then they’re standing a football field’s length away from a clutch of towering redwoods. Chris hurries forward to the one nearest to them, thick and sturdy with scores of blackened wood running all the way up the length of its trunk. The darkened streaks are so black they’re almost blue, deep gouges gleaming in the late morning sun. When they get closer, Eddie sees the inside of the base is partially hollowed out, wide and tall enough that Buck could probably stand inside it without his head brushing the roof of the cavity, and then some.
Chris drops his crutches with a clatter, gently resting a palm flat on the surface of the tree trunk. His hand looks tiny against the expansive girth, placed on the red-brown bark next to one of the black streaks. He twists around to face Eddie and Buck with a small smile.
“D’you know what happened to this one?” he asks.
Buck looks at Eddie, but he just raises his eyebrows expectantly in response, shifting his weight to one leg and settling in.
“Uh, a forest fire? They’re supposed to get pretty bad up here, right?” Buck ventures.
“Nope,” Chris says, “Well—maybe, you’re right, this place does have loads of fires, but this tree specifically? This wasn’t a fire.” He lifts his palm and gently pats the blackened bark by his face. “This tree was struck by lightning.”
Eddie doesn’t think he’s supposed to hear Buck’s sharp inhale. It’s followed by a shaky, measured exhale, and then, with visible effort, he tries for a smile back at Chris, says, “Oh?”
“Yeah,” Chris says. “It happens more often than you’d think. I guess with the trees being so tall, they make bigger targets. But that doesn’t mean tons of redwoods die in storms every year. They can survive, and live, and thrive, after being hit by lightning.”
“Yeah?” Buck says, voice a little rough as he drops his backpack to the dusty forest floor.
Chris nods. “They just need a little help healing.”
Buck smiles at him, close-mouthed and small. Quietly, he asks, “And how do they do that?”
Chris stands up a little straighter and shifts to lean back against the wood. Eddie watches, fondness welling up as he unintentionally swaps the earnest graveness with which he’s been talking to Buck for his Science Project voice.
“Well,” he says, “first of all, you gotta understand that fire is a natural part of a redwood tree’s life. It’s actually healthy for them—not too much at once, but in little bits. They call it controlled burning—it’s when the people who look after the forest use fire on purpose. And the trees—the trees have adapted over millions of years. This species is so old, they were around during the Jurassic. They’re dinosaur-old, Buck! But yeah, they’ve adapted to thrive in fire like that, so they’re actually actively making the forest better. They make the habitat better for other plants and animals living here, they open up space and bring light in, they even make the soil better—they make the whole forest more resilient.”
He glances quickly at Eddie to check he’s got this new addition to his vocabulary right, continuing confidently when Eddie nods encouragingly back.
“Their bark is, like, two feet thick—” he smacks his small palm against the tree trunk for emphasis, “—so they’ve learned to protect themselves from flames. Kinda like a firefighter, huh?” He gives Buck an exaggerated wink, grinning.
“Yeah,” Buck says slowly, tilting his head. “That’s pretty cool.”
“Oh, I haven’t even got to the best bits yet,” Chris says, and Eddie huffs a laugh at his enthusiasm.
“A lot of the fires are caused by lightning, actually, but having thick bark isn’t what helps redwoods survive the strikes. The most special thing about redwoods, the thing that’s kept them going for millions of years, is this.” He waves a skinny arm out at the trees around them. “See how they’re growing in a cluster?”
Eddie watches Buck as he spins slowly, taking in the layout of the gigantic trees around them. He’s already heard Chris’s research info-dump, so he knows where this is going, and as awe-inspiring as the trees around him are, he just can’t look away from Buck, wanting to catalogue his every reaction.
“They’re called fairy rings,” Chris says. “They usually sprout from the roots of a parent tree.” He points to a weathered, hulking tree to their right. “I think that’s the one in this ring.” He looks back at Buck with a smile. “They’re also called family circles.”
Buck looks from the parent tree back to Chris, curious.
“You know how I said they need a little help healing?” Chris asks. “Well, when they grow in a circle like this, around the parent tree, the parent looks after them. They’re all connected through their root systems—they’re all intertwined with each other. The parent feeds them nutrients through the roots, and the way the roots are all tangled together gives them stability, so if there’s a bad storm or something, they literally hold each other steady. Even when the other trees in the circle are grown up, they support and nourish each other. They take care of the young and the old and the sick through their roots. But my favourite part—” He takes a breath, “—is that they don’t have to be related to the parent tree to be a part of the circle. Like, they don’t have to genetically identical or even similar for the family circle to care for and hold each other, you know? There can be seedlings in the ring that didn’t sprout from the parent, and they’ll all look after each other anyway.”
Buck takes in a loud, ragged breath. Eddie almost steps towards him, but Chris isn’t done with this emotional battery through deeply loving tree metaphors.
“It’s good that they’re different, too, because that means sometimes when some trees are sick, another one has genes that make it immune. And then the healthy tree nurses the sick ones back to health. That’s so cool, right?”
He steps away, scrambles across the leaf-dusted ground to the tree just behind the blackened one. Eddie and Buck follow behind him.
“And that’s just through the roots. But even above ground, they grow so close together in their families that they can shield and—and support each other, in storms,” Chris says, breathless as he picks his way through foliage. “Like—look at this one.”
He clambers to the trunk of the second tree and gently traces a hand along a similar dark burned patch near the base. He points up the length of the tree, bark reddened, lush, unscarred everywhere else. “The other tree—the first one? It got hit by the worst of the lightning, but it protected this one. Just like you, Buck. I know Dad got hit, too, after it struck you. And I wish no one had gotten hurt, but—all the bad things are less awful when you know you have your family circle looking out for you, righ—oof.”
He's cut off from the end of his speech by Buck lunging forward and wrapping him in a hug so tight and full of feeling he’s lifted clear off the ground.
“It’s a—it’s a network—” he says, muffled into Buck’s shoulder. “Dad, what was that thing that one scientist said at the end of that video?”
“It’s a network of unconditional love,” Eddie offers. Buck turns slightly to him, just enough to meet his eyes, still clutching a very tolerant Chris to him. “Redwoods don’t survive alone. But they never are and never will be.”
Buck’s eyes are bright, shiny with tears, and he looks at Eddie for a second, two, three, before squeezing them shut and burying his face in Chris’s shoulder. Chris huffs but wraps his arms around Buck’s neck a little tighter.
“I love you, kid,” he croaks, just loud enough for Eddie to hear. “Love you bigger than all these trees and gonna love you way longer than they’ve been around.”
“A hundred million years?” Chris teases, and Buck laughs, a little wetly.
“Absolutely,” he promises. “Till the next time there are dinosaurs on the planet, and then a hundred million more.”
Chris laughs too. “Okay, you can put me down now, Buck. We can still be a family circle without you squeezing me to death.”
Buck’s tears do spill over at this, but he sets Chris back down gently and wipes his own cheeks with a laugh. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologises, and then hiccups through more tears when Chris darts back in for a second hug.
“I love you, too,” he says, muffled into Buck’s sweater-covered stomach. “Obviously.”
And, well, Eddie can’t look away from his boys, but the sight of them holding each other is making his heart attempt to clamber out through his throat. Eddie also doesn’t think Chris will be as patient if he starts crying in this particular situation, so he smushes it back down and busies himself with rooting around his bag till they separate.
“We gotta take a picture,” he says, voice embarrassingly gruff. He brandishes the camera at them.
“In the hollow!” Chris says immediately, and they make their way back to the first tree.
Chris allows himself to be hoisted up onto Buck’s shoulders—“Only because it’s a sick photo,” he insists—and Eddie clicks the picture of them, standing in the hollowed out redwood, Chris raising his arms and still not reaching the cavern roof.
Eddie goes to put the camera away when Chris says, “Dad, one with all of us, too,” quickly followed by a put-upon sigh when he remembers to be an aloof almost-teenager. They angle the disposable camera so it’s a selfie of the three of them, faces squished together and taken from below so they get a good stretch of redwood rising up above them in the shot.
After, Chris leads them back down the trail, full of energy at the prospect of a greasy fast-food lunch. Eddie and Buck follow behind, walking in step.
“Eddie,” Buck starts softly. The sunlight through the trees dapples the planes of his face. Eddie wants to reach out and touch where the light kisses his cupid’s bow. “Was that—he really feels like that?”
“That was all him,” Eddie affirms. “Every last word. It came up after the last time we visited Shannon’s grave—talking about family, and what that looks like for us. How what it is and what we want it to be are the same thing, really. And, I mean—it’s true, for both of us, for all of us, but that whole tearjerker of a spiel was 100% organic USDA certified Christopher Diaz.”
Buck laughs at that and looks ahead at Chris with so much reverence Eddie might be convinced of believing in some kind of religion again, if it looked like this. “I always—I love him so much, and getting to be a part of his life is just—I didn’t know I’d get to have that, and have him… Have him love me back, as more than just—his dad’s friend. Like, obviously it’s not a new revelation, knowing what we mean to each other—you wouldn’t have made me his, uh, guardian, otherwise, I know that, but… f*ck, Eddie, I’m the luckiest guy alive to be loved by that kid.”
Eddie shrugs, shoulder brushing Buck’s as they walk. “You belonged to each other a long time before I had it written down.”
He hears Buck’s breath hitch, and when he turns to him, he’s looking at Eddie with the same kind of unadulterated devotion. It makes Eddie stumble mid-stride, unprepared to be on the receiving end of it. Buck reaches out a hand to steady him, and Eddie has to remind himself that a midday hike with their kid in the middle of f*cking nowhere is not the ideal situation in which to kiss this man on the mouth for the very first time, seeing as there is no swift escape for either of them should it not be enthusiastically reciprocated.
Before either of them can fumble for a response to lighten the atmosphere, Chris is marching back to them, already mid-monologue about how he forgot to mention the importance of leaf litter flammability in redwood tree evolution, and that it is absolutely crucial to their adaptations for survival, even if he can’t think of a good metaphor in which to apply it to their own lives right now beyond maybe not letting Buck grow his hair out too long again because no one wants to see that, really.
Buck snorts and quickly covers it up with an indignant objection as Eddie doubles over, wheezing with laughter. He’s still snickering as they make their way back to the car, Buck asking, “What’s leaf litter flammability?” and Chris immediately launching into an impassioned explanation.
“Man,” Buck says, settling into the driver’s seat a little while later, “I think I’ve learned more about North American ecosystems in one morning than I did all through high school. Chris, you could totally be the next, uh, plant version of David Attenborough.”
“I think the real takeaway here,” Chris says seriously, buckling himself into the backseat, “is that a little playing with fire is good sometimes.”
He cackles loudly when Eddie and Buck both whirl around in their seats, admonishments loud and horrified and immediate as they talk over each other in their haste to berate him. “I’m kidding! Unless you’re a redwood tree. Not if you’re a human person. God, you guys are so easy to rile up.”
He mollifies them, even if they both know it’s more to get them en route to the deep-fried lunch he’s been promised than to put an end to Buck’s reproachful looks. Eddie looks at Buck with fond exasperation, and when he finds the same sentiment mirrored in Buck’s expression, realises he can’t remember the last time he sought out parental camaraderie and didn’t get it. And they’re finally, finally here, all on the same page about the shape of this family that they’ve been building and loving for so long. He’s not touching either of them, but Eddie feels the roots anyway, woven together inextricably, interlaced with an unflinching permanence.
The sun’s long since set by the time they get to Siskiyou County. Eddie took over driving after their late lunch, and now he flicks the headlights up to high-beam as the road they’re on winds through dark woodland.
“Okay, where exactly are we headed?” Buck asks when the GPS bitchily informs Eddie he’s missed the turn-off for the sixth time in as many minutes—what f*cking turn-off Eddie doesn’t know, this has been one long, endless road for the last half an hour.
“Um,” Eddie says, glancing at the map on his phone frustratedly. “There isn’t an—exact location.”
“Uh. Okay,” Buck says slowly, eyebrows knitting together. “Where approximately are we headed, then?”
“Out of this goddamn forest,” Eddie mutters, trying to get the map app to recalibrate their location to no avail. “I have like—one bar of signal, ugh.”
Buck digs out his own phone to squint at the map. “I mean, which side of the forest do you wanna come out of, though?”
“South,” Eddie mumbles, “I think.”
Buck zooms in on the patch of green on his screen. “As far as I can tell, this is the only road in or out of this stretch of woods? So, unless we wanna turn around…”
“Only way is through,” Eddie sighs.
Buck gives his shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “Hey, at least it looks like we’re headed south. And we have snacks.”
There’s a rustle from behind them and Eddie glances in the rearview mirror to see Chris guiltily shoving a handful of chips back into the bag.
“Hm. Had snacks,” Buck amends, turning to grin at Chris. “Eddie, if we get stranded out here in the wilderness, I think it’s only fair our first venture into cannibalism victimises one Christopher Diaz.”
Chris replies with a fairly unbothered hey, mostly to go through the motions of indignation, and Eddie says, “His scrawny body isn’t gonna feed us for one day, Buck. You, on the other hand…” He trails off with a meaningful sidelong once-over of Buck’s body.
Buck gasps in mock-outrage. “I knew you guys were bringing me out here to murder me in the woods. And after I shared my dessert with you, Eddie. Who’re you gonna mooch off when I’m gone, huh?”
“That’s true, Dad,” Chris agrees. “He always orders the best desserts.”
“Fine,” Eddie says, “We’ll eat one arm. The size of ’em will see us through winter, anyway.”
Buck makes a sound that’s half-scoff, half-laugh, like he’s not sure whether to be affronted by the impending cannibalism or pleased by the compliment to his physique. He turns to face Chris again, reaching out to nab a couple chips and peering at his Switch screen to comment on his Animal Crossing villager nemeses.
Eddie sees a gap in the treeline, a glimpse of sky where the forest thins out around them as the road crests high and dips. The mountain he’s been roughly navigating towards looms up in the distance, and above it— Eddie has to take his foot off the accelerator, slow the car down as he takes it in, eyes wide.
Chris looks up curiously as the speed at which they’d been driving slackens, and promptly drops his Switch. Buck picks it up, voice concerned when he asks, “Chris?”
Chris just pats his shoulder insistently, jerking his chin towards the front of the car. Buck finally turns, and it’s like his puppet strings have been cut when he slumps back into the passenger seat heavily, eyes on the sky before them.
Eddie can barely focus on the road ahead of them. The night sky above the mountain is alive, dancing in muted blues and greens. They’re ethereal strokes of watercolour shifting gently against a backdrop of a trillion winking stars.
They drive slowly in silence for maybe ten minutes, other cars politely overtaking them, before Eddie pulls over at an empty rest-stop. He rests his chin on the steering wheel and they all just—look, for a while. He feels like the truck has been cloaked with an air of enchantment—he can hear cars going past on the main road every few minutes, but it feels like they’re suspended out of time and space.
The veil shifts when Chris covers a yawn a little while later. Eddie checks his phone—full bars, thank f*ck, and does a doubletake at the time. “sh*t,” he says. “We should, uh, drive to the motel closer to the mountain. We can check-in and then maybe get dinner and sit outside, under all this.” He waves a hand at the sky in front of them.
As he’s turning the truck back onto the road, he says, “Buck, can you pull up my chat with Karen? The motel address should be right there.”
“Karen?” Buck asks, puzzled even as he does as requested. “Why’d Karen recommend a random motel way out here?”
“Oh, she’s the one who told us about all of this,” Eddie tells him, nodding to the older text messages. In his peripheral vision, he sees Buck scroll up and read what Karen sent him the day they went whale watching.
Karen: EDDIE
EDDIE
THAT THING YOU ASKED ME TO KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR IS HAPPENING
AURORA BOREALIS RIGHT HERE IN CALIFORNIA BABY
GEOMAGNETIC STORM ALERT ISSUED
SOLAR FLARE ACTIVITY PEAKING TOMORROW NIGHT!!!!!
THIS IS NOT A DRILL DIAZ
YOUR BEST BET IS AROUND MOUNT SHASTA SISKIYOU COUNTY
LIMITED TIME EVENT SO MOVE IT OR LOSE IT
I’LL SEND MORE INFO ASAP
“You asked Karen to keep an eye out for—Northern lights? Near us?” Buck asks.
“Yeah, I figured out of everyone we know, our close personal friend the rocket scientist would probably have the inside scoop on this one,” Eddie smiles at him. “She’s been on the lookout since September.”
“Oh,” Buck says softly.
“I mean, she did demand payment in the form of, and I quote, ‘a thousand photos of Buck and Chris under the pretty lights,’” Eddie grins. “A hard bargain, but I think we can make that work.”
Buck is quiet the rest of the drive to the motel, but when Eddie catches his eyes as they head into the lobby, they’re bright, his smile true.
“I’m so sorry, sir, we’re all booked up,” the receptionist tells him, apologetic. “It’s the lights—everyone in a hundred mile radius drove in after they mentioned it on the news.”
“Um, okay, thank you,” Eddie says, “Are there any other places to stay in the area?”
“Yes, but I think they’re all full too,” she says, looking as worried as Eddie is now feeling as she takes in Chris leaning tiredly against the lobby furniture. “The last guests who arrived said they’d tried the other three nearest motels, and there weren’t any rooms available.”
“S’okay, Eddie,” Buck murmurs to him. “I can take over driving, we can get back on the highway and find somewhere further away.”
Eddie sighs. “It’s the middle of the night, and we were gonna stick around for the lights, though.”
“That’s okay,” Buck says, “we can stay till Chris gets sleepy, or bored, and then I don’t mind driving late.”
“No, Buck, that’s—” Eddie’s cut off by the receptionist politely clearing her throat to get their attention.
“Sorry,” she says, “This is probably a weird idea, seeing as it’s nearly December, but we have a campsite just down the road? There are camper vans for hire, not tents, so there’s, like, heating and plumbing, and you can rent all the other stuff like sleeping bags right here. There’s a fire pit, too, if y’all wanted to watch the lights a while longer. If you’re interested, I can grab you some extra blankets, too, so long as you drop them back here tomorrow?”
Eddie looks at Buck, who raises an eyebrow back in question. Then Chris pipes up from behind them, “You did make us pack enough warm clothes to visit the Arctic, Dad.”
Buck snorts, and a quick silent conversation with him later, Eddie’s nodding at the receptionist and being handed a pile of bedding and assorted camping equipment.
The camper van isn’t as bad as Eddie was envisioning. The paint on the outside is faded, but not peeling, and inside, it’s clean and tidy, if a little spartan. They switch on the heat and heap the sleeping bags and blankets on the fold-out bed—barely a double, Eddie notes, wondering how all three of them are going to manage to squeeze onto it.
He hops down the van stairs and makes his way across the campsite clearing to where Christopher and Buck are crouched by the fire pit, trying to get it going. The receptionist told them that dry timber was stored in a shed by the outhouse, and Eddie had to flee to the caravan when Buck emerged, stack of logs hefted up onto his shoulder, jacket discarded to avoid sap stains and arm muscles bulging downright p*rnographically under the weight.
Chris lets out a tired but enthusiastic whoop when the flames catch, sitting down on one of the surrounding logs acting as fireside seating. He’s wearing one of Eddie’s sweatshirts, rolled-up sleeves tumbling down his wrists and hindering his hands where he’s trying to open a packet of sausages. It makes him look even younger than his twelve years, a kid playing dress-up, and Eddie can’t resist pressing a quick kiss to his temple as he takes a seat beside him.
He holds out the roasting sticks he’d uncovered in a drawer in the van one by one so Chris can spear sausages onto them. Buck ambles back over from washing his hands and stands on the other side of Chris with his hands on his hips. From this angle, his shoulders blot out the lights in the sky behind him, casting a faint glow around the outline of his body.
“Budge up, Dad,” Chris says, breaking him out of his trance, and they shuffle down the log so all three of them can sit facing the light show.
They roast their sausages and watch the sky in a comfortable, appreciative quiet, murmuring occasionally to point out particularly magical combinations of colour, or to request another frankfurter. They seem to be the only ones at the campsite—it is the end of November, chill sharp in the air, but Eddie finds he’s glad for it. It feels like the three of them are the only people left in the world, something so calmly unearthly about the aurora that it feels like surely life as they know it will have changed come light of day. His mouth tugs up into a small smile, remembering the apocalypse bit Chris and Buck have going, even if he's not sure they themselves know where the bit ends and genuine—slightly concerning—survivalism begins, and he thinks that if the end of the world looks anything like this, they’ll have to stop him from pushing the big red button himself.
The marshmallows are a sticky mess of an affair, sliding off skewers and slipping down fingers. By the time Chris’s eyes have dropped shut and not reopened for over ten minutes, their skin is tacky with melted sugar. Eddie gently jostles him awake and accompanies him to the caravan, where he immediately slumps forward onto the fold-out bed. He wraps an unzipped sleeping bag around him as best he can, tucking the ends under his chest. He’s inordinately grateful that his son chose to face-plant in the center of the bed, ensuring Eddie won’t have to spend all night lying flush against Buck and trying desperately to keep his sleepy, disobedient limbs to himself.
When he goes back out, he finds Buck has shifted to the other side of the fire, positioned so the camper van is now in their direct line of sight. His heart does a complicated little flip at how instinctive it is for Buck to just—make certain that Chris is safe and protected, even with this simple act that Eddie would also have done without conscious thought. It’s less the action of vigilant caretaking—he knows there’s no one Chris is safer with—and more the giddying reminder that he has a partner in it.
Buck smiles at him when he takes a seat, just far enough away that their shoulders don’t brush. Eddie immediately negates his own decision to leave space for plausible deniability—literally, physically—by reaching out unbidden to run his thumb along the edge of Buck’s mouth, gently wiping away a smear of marshmallow fluff. Buck’s eyes widen in surprise, and Eddie freezes, hand hovering an inch from Buck’s face, before committing to nonchalance and drawing it back to wipe on his jeans. Buck’s eyes, his smile, his whole face softens.
All the world is quiet, too cold or too late for wildlife, just the wind crisp through the trees. The warm glow from the bonfire flickers across Buck’s face, dappling him in shadow and light as the flames dance. And Eddie—God, the nerves and the uncertainty and the fragility of his heart all seem so silly in the face of this: Eddie’s never felt anything but safe with Buck, and he thinks, maybe, like with everything else Eddie’s given him, if he handed Buck his heart, he’d keep that safe, too. He smiles back, knowing his face is just as soft, but before he can say anything, Buck starts talking.
“I can’t believe you brought me out here to see this. All—all of this. Eddie, when I made that list I was—so f*cking lost. It felt like some kind of last-ditch measure to—grasp something, anything, to make it feel like—I don’t know. Like I wasn’t just going through the motions of life. Just being a—a passive participant. Not actually living it. And that was all me, not—I know I’m loved—” he swallows thickly. “It was more—I woke up from that coma for me. To come home to all of you. But after—I didn’t know how to keep going for me. In a way where I wasn’t just doing it because it was something I had to. And, and the list—it’s just a piece of paper, but it gave me a place to start, you know? And me not dying, it is a gift. I think I just put so much pressure on that, and on thinking I was wasting it, I got so in my head. It’s been incredible, doing all these things I’ve always wanted to, feeling like I’m living in a way that’s for me. And the real gift—God, this is so f*cking cheesy, I’m about to sound like a bad Hallmark movie—the real gift is getting to do that with the people I love. Time with the people I love. And—f*ck, Eddie, you gave me that. Like, sure, these big things—I can’t f*cking believe this trip, Eddie, no one’s ever— But especially the little ones. The things that don’t put pressure on making sure you’re not wasting the gift of life or whatever. The—the reading, and the dumb crafts, and—the sharing them with you, with you all. I get to do that, and I’m not alone. And I know you’re gonna say you didn’t do anything other than tell me to write the damn list, but—even ignoring literally all these huge f*cking experiences you made happen, you showed me exactly what I needed. How to—move forward, for me, but not alone. You don’t know how much—you saw me, the absolute mess of me, and knew.”
He's a little breathless when he comes to an end.
Eddie doesn’t break eye contact when he says, “You’re not hard to see.”
Buck swallows audibly and answers, “Not to you.”
f*ck it, Eddie thinks. They’ve already established the family of them all. Eddie can be brave and broach the other part.
“Buck,” he starts. “I have to tell you something.”
Buck looks at him, open, vulnerable, unguarded.
“Before we left, I—read the list,” Eddie says, and Buck co*cks his head, puzzled. “I read all of the list. Even number five. The one you scratched out.”
Buck’s face shutters.
“I know you didn’t intend for me to read that, and—I’m sorry, for not asking. But—if there was a chance it was something I could help make happen, I couldn’t not, Buck. And—you know that you have the second part, right? You have a family, all of your own? Because you’re not some add-on here, Buck, it’s the three of us. You’re ours and we’re yours and that’s just one of those facts of life that can’t be refuted. A—truth of the f*cking universe.”
“Thought you didn’t believe in the universe telling you things,” Buck says, voice flat.
“Yeah, well, that was before the universe gave me you,” Eddie says, privately proud of how his voice doesn’t shake. “Pretty hard to ignore six foot something of absolute rightness right beside me every day of the week.”
Buck turns away, refusing to meet Eddie’s determined gaze.
“Come on, Buck, you know this, right?” Eddie presses. “I’m not trying to f*cking humour you or make you feel better—it was me and Chris for a long time, yeah, but for even longer now it’s been—it’s you and me and Chris, Buck. It doesn’t work without you. You f*cking belong to us.”
Buck takes in a harsh breath through his nose, and Eddie is too deep into laying all his cards on the table to care about the painfully desperate and much more exposing nuance of saying to us instead of with us.
“Yeah,” he says finally, eyes on the flames licking their way up the logs before them. “I—know. I know that now.”
“And—the other thing, the first thing you wrote,” Eddie says hesitantly. “Buck—”
“It’s fine, Eddie,” Buck interrupts, turning to face him again suddenly. His face isn’t as closed off, but it’s like someone’s drawn the curtains on the light inside. “Sorry, I don’t mean to—downplay this, you know I know you and Chris are my family. It’s just—I’m just embarrassed, I guess.”
“Buck, there’s nothing embarrassing—”
“No, it is embarrassing, Eddie,” Buck says with a sharp little laugh. Eddie hates it. “It’s embarrassing that I wrote get married and knew it was so unrealistic for me that I scratched it out immediately. It’s embarrassing that you know that. And it’s just sad that I didn’t write something like fall in love, because that’s not the part that’s unattainable, is it? Because the dream-part, the reason I had to scratch it out, is being loved back. Being loved enough that forever’s on the table.”
Eddie’s throat feels achingly tight, thick with sadness that isn’t his own. This conversation has slightly derailed from the best-case scenario he’s allowed to play out in his head a couple dozen times, but he can fix it. He’s here offering the very thing Buck’s hoping for, begging he’ll take it, actually. And even if it’s not him Buck wants it with, at least Buck’ll know that it’s not an impossible dream. That if Eddie loves him like this, so can be true of any number of people lucky enough to get to know Buck.
“Buck, it’s not embarrassing. What I’m trying to say—f*ck.” Eddie pauses, trying to untangle the knot his heart has made of his thoughts, to say this as clearly as possible. “Do you remember when I came out to you? And you compared yourself to Shannon?”
Buck’s eyebrows pull together, but he inclines his chin affirmatively.
“You said—you said that you both played a similar role in who you were to me. And I thought about it for days after. You’re—you weren’t wrong, I loved her and you know I love you, but what you don’t know is—it’s different this time,” Eddie says. “It’s different this time, because—”
“Eddie, stop, that’s not fair,” Buck says, voice hoarse.
Eddie’s mouth snaps shut and he stares at Buck, heart faltering in his chest.
“It’s not—I don’t want that,” Buck says, and Eddie thinks it’s funny how people always describe it as your heart breaking, because this feels like it’s drowning. Like his heart is wholly submerged, crushed under the pressure of a thousand cubic feet of water, every breath a raw burn as his lungs fill, choking till the pain smudges black around the edges of his consciousness.
“Why would you—f*ck, Eddie,” Buck continues, eyes glinting with tears. Eddie’s are improbably dry, and he blinks around the dark haziness at periphery of his vision. “That you think I’d—you can’t settle for that again. You deserve— You can’t settle for me.”
The hurt is devastating, but it’s also contained. Quiet. Drowning usually is. Eddie’s prepared for this anyway, the worst-case scenario he’s run through a hundred more times than the happy ones. He’ll do what he can to minimise Buck’s own distress at not being able to reciprocate, and then 24 hours from now, back in the seclusion of his own bedroom, he’ll feel what he has to as loud as he needs.
“I’m sorry,” he says. Not about his feelings, he’s put in too much work to go back to thinking there’s something wrong with his love. But he can apologise for the less-than-ideal circ*mstances under which he’s laid his heart at Buck’s feet. They’ve got a 12-hour drive home together tomorrow, Jesus. Worse, they’re sleeping two feet and a child apart tonight. “I shouldn’t have said it like this.”
“It’s—” Buck exhales shakily. “Can we just forget it? I don’t wanna talk about it.”
Eddie’s skin feels too small for where it’s stretched over his face, pulling thin and tight. But Buck’s looking imploringly at him, so he nods. Buck sighs and stands up, dusting the seat of his pants.
“I’m gonna get some sleep,” he tells Eddie, looking away.
“Okay,” Eddie mumbles. “I’ll join in a bit.”
Buck nods, a sharp jerk, still facing away, and heads to the camper van.
Eddie doesn’t know how much longer he sits under the sweeping spread of cosmos. He looks at the haze of colour, the glittering stars, and doesn’t really see any of it. Everything is still: the night, his body, his mind. Door closed firmly on the aftermath of this rejection, the still-warm casualty of what he let himself hope the rest of his life would look like. It has to stay shut, or the inescapable loneliness on the other side will seep through every crack, every split-open fissure, till it’s bleeding out of him.
The blackness blurring the edges of everything creeps in a little more insistently, but it’s only when he full-body shivers that he blinks back into his body. The fire’s out and the air is bitingly cold. He pours water on the embers and kicks soil over everything for good measure, working on exhausted autopilot.
The caravan door creaks when he steps in, and he locks it quietly behind him. The fold-out bed spans the entire width of the van, and the moonbeams flooding through the skylight wash pale over Chris and Buck’s still bodies. Chris is breathing deep and even, but Buck is lying stiffly on his side, facing the wall. Eddie can read his body language more fluently than the English f*cking alphabet, and the tense line of his back and rigid hold of his shoulders mean he’s far from asleep. He doesn’t move as Eddie shuffles to lie down on the other side of Chris, doesn’t make a sound when he rustles the blankets, crawling beneath.
Eddie lies flat on his back, staring at the starry sky out the window on the roof, and resigns himself to an excruciating, sleepless night. But the bordering darkness swims across his vision, and between one aching drag of a heartbeat and the next, he’s out.
He wakes with fatigue thick in his skull. The wan morning light filters over the horizon much after they’ve dropped off their rented camping equipment at the motel, now forty minutes down the I-5 due south. It’s early enough that he and Buck get away with only talking directly to each other monosyllabically or in short half-sentences, small hour calling for a quiet that masks their reserved tones.
By the time Chris wakes up enough to possibly notice the stiltedness of their interactions, Eddie doesn’t know how he’s supposed to keep this up. It’s only been a few hours and the careful distance between them is making his stomach roil. They’re both being so cautious with each other, and—they’re never cautious. Even when they argue, even when they’re hurting. Careful, measured, sure, but never like this. Never deliberately creating space between them, gaping crater of it making Eddie wish for the security of a harness to anchor him. The bitter irony of the only person he wants to buckle him in being the same person stretching the rift just leaves him tired.
And it’s maybe worse than being flat-out ignored, because every time Buck glances over, lull in their individual conversations with Chris, the film of forced cheer falls away, and the sadness in his eyes makes Eddie’s teeth physically ache. There’s also hurt, which Eddie can’t quite discern the root of, unless the very idea of Eddie’s feelings being romantic is so wildly at odds with what Buck wants from their relationship it’s become something reprehensible, like Eddie’s betrayed him in some way, which— Eddie knows Buck would never think that, but why else would he be hurting? Sympathetic, maybe, self-flagellating at not being able to return Eddie’s feelings and worrying he’s caused Eddie heartache, definitely, but hurt? Hurt like Eddie’s done something to cause him pain? If Eddie had an ounce of mental energy left to figure it out, he would, but as it happens, he can barely maintain the veneer of upbeat normalcy whenever Chris ropes him into conversation.
The drive home is endless, and while Eddie’s exhaustion renders him grateful that Buck insists on driving all of the way, he finds he’s incapable of sleep, or even zoning out. This leaves him painfully aware of every sound, every movement, every expression Buck makes in the 12 hours they’re sat a foot away from each other, no escape. Too tired to think, all he can do is sit through it.
After the many pitstops they make—snack acquisition and diner meals and emergency pee breaks—by the time Buck pulls the truck into the Diaz driveway, it’s past dinnertime. Chris, sensitive to the moods of others and regrettably even more so when it comes to his own parents, seems to have picked up on the strained way in which Buck and Eddie are tiptoeing around each other. Quieter than usual on the last stretch of the journey home, he gives them both a searching look when they’ve lugged all their bags into the living room.
Eddie gives him the most reassuring smile he can muster, and Buck offers an “All good, Superman?”
Eddie doesn’t know if that convinces Chris, or if it’s just that the old nickname distracts him into the tolerant eye-roll they receive.
“Is it okay if I skip dinner?” he asks.
Relieved it’s not a question he doesn’t want to answer, Eddie nods and checks, “You’re not hungry? That pie was hours ago.”
“Yeah, but I had those oranges Buck bought in the car,” Chris reminds him. “I kinda just wanna sleep for a hundred years.”
“Okay,” Eddie agrees.
Chris begins to head to his bedroom, doubles back for his bag, then doubles back a second time to wrap his arms around Buck’s midriff. “Hope you had a good time, Buck. We’ll do the rest of the road trip another time, promise.”
Eddie watches as Buck’s jaw relaxes, face going soft as he squeezes Chris back.
“I had the best time, bud. Thank you for putting all that together for us, it was—perfect.”
“Goodnight,” Chris says, sleepily unwinding himself. “Are you staying the night? We’re s’posed to bring the mac-n-cheese to Thanksgiving dinner at Maddie’s tomorrow, and you know how Dad always burns the breadcrumbs.”
“Oh,” Buck says, eyes flitting up to meet Eddie’s for the briefest of moments. “I’m—I don’t think so, bud. I should probably go back to my place. Water the plants, you know. I’ll see you tomorrow, though, yeah?”
Chris hums affirmatively, mumbling g’night, Dad to Eddie and shuffling off to bed. And then Eddie’s alone with Buck for the first time since his disastrous confession the previous night.
“Right, um,” Buck says, clearing his throat. “You probably want to crash. I should also—” he jerks a thumb towards the door, “yeah.”
Eddie nods, a quick, tiny thing, and then Buck’s moving past him to the front door. Except as he’s passing Eddie he hesitates, then drops his bag and envelops Eddie in a hug.
“Thank you, too,” he says into Eddie’s hair. Eddie, rooted in surprise, carefully lifts his own arms to wrap loosely around Buck. “You—no one’s ever done anything like this for me, Eddie. And that’s not a comment on me, I think most people—most people don’t just do things like this. But you—you Diaz boys are something else.”
He steps back, rubbing his chin self-consciously. He looks just over Eddie’s shoulder when he says, “I’m sorry for—overreacting last night. I know you were just trying to—it doesn’t matter.” He exhales heavily. “It’s late. I’ll see you tomorrow?” He gives Eddie a smile that’s only the slightest bit wobbly, deliberate in its effort to make peace.
Eddie swallows, thinking about the unhappy, self-deprecating way Buck turned him down the night before. How, in the end, Eddie hadn’t even had the solace of knowing Buck at least believed how lovable he is. “Yeah,” he says roughly. “See you then.”
Buck gives him one last look before shouldering his bag again.
“Buck,” Eddie finds himself saying. Buck pauses at the threshold of the room, turning back. “For what it’s worth—nothing about being with you is something anyone settles for. You’re the—you’re the happily ever after, Buck.”
Buck’s breath hitches.
“I don’t know that I ever had a choice when it came to you,” Eddie confesses. “But I know that doesn’t matter because I’d choose you, I choose you, I’d choose loving you for the rest of my life. And—it’s okay that you don’t feel the same, I won’t make things weird, I just—need you to know, because God, Buck, loving you is so, so easy. And—more than that, for me, loving you mostly just is. It’s—it’s the simplest part of existence. I wake up and I love you, I brush my teeth and I love you, I get your stupidly expensive coconut shampoo in my eyes and I love you. You’re in the meat of my f*cking bones, Buck.”
Buck is staring at him like he’s been hit with a two-by-four. Eyes wide and blue, caught completely off-guard.
“Eddie, what,” he rasps, looking stunned. “What—what are you saying?”
“What I told you yesterday,” Eddie says. “It didn’t seem like you believed just how much—”
“Eddie,” Buck says, voice cracking. “You did not tell me this yesterday. I think I’d remember something like this.”
Eddie frowns. “No, I did tell you. And you got upset, which—I get it, it was bad timing on my part. You said you didn’t want that, and that’s fine. I’m only bringing it up again because I need you to know just how much I meant it. That’s it.”
“Oh my f*cking God,” Buck whispers hoarsely. “Jesus f*cking Christ, Eddie, I thought—you said I was right in comparing myself to Shannon, in the context of marriage—”
“No, I didn’t,” Eddie interrupts. “I said it’s different this time, with you. Because it is, because I’m in love with you.”
Buck lets out a strangled sound. “I thought—I got upset and said all that stuff about how you shouldn’t settle because I thought you were offering to marry me platonically, like—like with Shannon.”
“What?” Eddie asks, incredulous. “What the f*ck—Buck.”
“I thought it was a pity thing,” Buck says hysterically. “I thought you felt so bad about—about me being alone and wanting to be with someone in that way that you offered to—oh my God.”
Eddie snorts in disbelief. “Definitely not my motive.”
Buck huffs a slightly crazed laugh, and Eddie adds, “I hope I’ve made that clear.”
They’re still standing in the living room, ten feet apart. Buck’s eyes look as wild as Eddie feels right now, heart thumping hard in his chest. If Buck didn’t know how Eddie feels until right now, maybe—
“You’re in love with me?” Buck asks quietly. Amidst the fervour, there’s something unmistakably nervous in his expression.
“I am,” Eddie confirms. “You don’t have to—say anything, though. I get that it’s a lot. We can talk about it later, or not at all, if that’s what you want.”
Buck nods, a movement of jumpy, jittery energy. “Okay. I’m—I need to—” He breaks off, shifting his weight from foot to foot restlessly. “I think I need some time to—think. I have to—” He steps back. “I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow, though?”
Eddie’s not sure he can handle the exact same heartbreak twice in 24 hours. His jaw clenches on its own and he tries to smile around it. “Yeah, of course.”
Buck nods again, a flurry of uncertainty and apprehension across his face before he finally walks down the hall. He opens the front door and pauses, halfway out.
“I’m coming back, Eddie,” he promises. “I just need some time, but—I’m coming back.”
Eddie manages a weak smile, and then he’s gone, door shutting with a quiet click.
He releases a long, shuddering breath and wraps his arms tight around himself, hugging his chest. It’s suddenly so, so quiet. It only magnifies the buzzing static between his ears, a grating hum of rapidly moving thoughts. He shivers, a perplexing tremor through his body seeing as LA is a comfortable 65 degrees tonight and he’s still tucked into the fleecy hoodie he put on this morning. He thinks, a little brokenheartedly, it’s more to do with the departure of his own personal sun, the one Eddie’s body has grown used to basking beside.
He takes a few steps down the hall to Chris’s bedroom, hoping for a distraction from his own sorrow. The crack under the door is dark, though, lights off inside, and he doesn’t want to risk waking him if he’s on the cusp of sleep. He turns slowly back to the living room, taking care not to step on the squeaky wood panel.
He drops his arms, losing the almost-reassuring pressure of his own embrace, and sinks onto the arm of the couch. Perched there, his hands grip the velvet fabric and he shuts his eyes tight, tight enough that flecks of colour swim in the darkness. Maybe if he gets into bed, the sleep that’s been eluding him all day will finally take pity on him, give him a few hours respite from the ache emanating from behind his breastbone.
The scrabble of a key in the lock instantly followed by the front door explosively swinging open startles him enough that he slips backwards from his perch. He flails a little in his scramble to right himself and looks up to see Buck hastily catching the door before it can smack into the wall and wake Chris up.
He shuts the door gently and crosses the hall in three quick strides to stand before Eddie. His body is still visibly thrumming with the nervous energy he left with only a short while ago—Eddie looks at the wall clock, feeling a little delirious, because it can’t have been more than ten minutes.
Buck still looks keyed up, hands fidgeting as he looks at Eddie with wide eyes. The apprehension from before is gone, though, replaced with what looks like—no, Eddie just can’t afford to get ahead of himself, not tonight.
“Buck?” he asks instead. “Are you okay?”
Buck bites his lip, like he didn’t quite get to deciding his next step before bursting in here.
“You can stay tonight, you know,” Eddie tells him, in case he needs an out. “If you’re not up to driving, or—for any reason, really. I was gonna—” he gestures in the direction of his bedroom, “—anyway, so I can give you some spa—”
“I made it all the way to the Jeep,” Buck cuts in, eyes shining. “I made it ten steps out your door, running through our entire friendship in my head, thinking how could you possibly love me like that, because what we have is so different from— And then I just thought: Oh. That’s what this feeling is. Safe. Secure. Certain. And I didn’t realise because I didn’t know that love could feel like this—is supposed to feel like this. It’s never felt like this before. There’s no—I don’t feel anxious with you. I never have.”
His uncomplicated smile lights up his whole face, the entire room, Eddie’s very own sun.
“I didn’t know because—” Buck laughs, a bright, bubbling sound Eddie wants to hear for the rest of his life, “—remember when you were telling me about—compulsory heterosexuality? And I said I’d never experienced that?”
He’s looking at Eddie with barely contained mirth, contagious enough that Eddie’s helpless to smile back as he nods.
“Well, turns out I’ve spent the last—I don’t even know how long, years, Eds, deep in the trenches of compulsory best-frienduality.” He pauses, looking pleased as punch with himself.
Eddie raises his eyebrows, baffled but grinning, and Buck takes a final step forward into the v of his legs.
“That’s when your best friend is kind of the love of your life, but you’ve only ever been in romantic relationships where you’re constantly second-guessing the way you’re being loved, and the way you’re allowed to love. So when he—your best friend—loves you in ways that only ever feel right, and never—never lets you feel like the way you give love back is—too much, the only way you’ve known love like that is—with him. And he’s your best friend. So you think that’s just what best-friendship feels like. That’s the box you put him in, in your head. You never—you never stop and think, hey, maybe all the—huge, all-encompassing ways you love him isn’t just limited to—guys being best bros.”
He laughs, any embarrassment eclipsed by the giddy elation in his voice when he continues. “And then one day, he tells you he loves you in a different way. And you think your whole world is gonna fall off its axis, but—it settles. Because he still is and will always be the best friend you’ve ever had. You’re just also stupid in love with him.”
Eddie’s brain churns out a memory, that early conversation with Frank about attraction, saying I didn’t know that’s what this feeling meant, and thinks of course they were always going to end up here, two halves of the same idiot.
Then he mentally smacks the lagging software of his mind, bringing it back to now, to Buck—Buck loves him back. Buck’s in love with him, too. The swoop in his gut—the butterflies whirl inside him, bright and fluttery and joyful.
Buck cups Eddie’s cheeks between his broad, warm palms, cradling his face so tenderly something inside Eddie burns. At this proximity, in this position, Eddie has to tilt his head back to look up at him. He brings one of his own hands up to cover Buck’s, slotting their fingers together. Buck’s gaze drops to Eddie’s mouth and he slowly leans down, leans in.
“Wait,” Eddie blurts out, not moving away but tightening his grip on Buck’s fingers. Buck halts immediately, eyes flicking back up to Eddie’s. His right thumb moves soothingly across Eddie’s jaw, and he waits.
And Eddie can’t believe he’s doing this, what the f*ck, not now, when he’s being given everything he’s been dreaming of for months, when Buck’s right here and he’s finally allowed to touch, but he says, “Maybe we should wait.”
Buck’s brow furrows gently, and before he can even try to step back, Eddie clutches the hand that’s still holding his face, keeping him firmly in place.
“Just—” Eddie slides their twined hands off his cheek, and then shuffles awkwardly off the arm of the couch and onto the actual seat, nestling back into the corner cushion. He tugs at Buck’s hand till he moves around and takes a seat beside Eddie, knees brushing as they angle themselves to face each other. “Maybe—The whole being in love with you took me by surprise, too.” Buck beams at Eddie’s easy declaration and Eddie has to squeeze his hand to let out some of the affection brimming to the top of him.
“But—I’ve had months to sit with it, you know? Months to know for certain that—you’re all I want. You—this has been a lot of new realisations for you, all at once. We’ve barely slept, you’ve been driving all day. So maybe we should wait. So you can think about it, and know if this is really something you want.”
Buck’s eyebrows have pulled together, protest on his lips, and Eddie rushes to say, “Because I’ve survived a lot of things, Buck, but I don’t think I could survive you changing your mind tomorrow. Not once I get to know how having you feels.”
Buck’s face softens, brow smoothing out. He looks away for a second, worrying his lower lip between his teeth, before turning back to Eddie and nodding. “I’m—I want this, Eddie, so badly. But I get that. We can wait, however long we need till we’re both—comfortable.”
He brings their linked hands to his mouth and brushes a sweet kiss against Eddie’s knuckles. Eddie feels every inch of his skin erupt in goosebumps and tries valiantly not to shiver.
“Can I—is it okay if I stay tonight, though?” Buck asks, lips grazing the back of Eddie’s hand as he speaks.
Eddie grins. “You know the answer to that question is always one of three options: always, forever, you never have to ask.” He holds up a finger with each count.
Buck flashes him a blinding smile, equal parts shy and ecstatic. He leans back against the couch cushions, settling in and pulling their hands into his lap. Playing with Eddie’s fingers idly, he looks down at them when he asks, “You said it was a surprise to you, too? How—how long have you felt like this? Or—how long have you known?”
Eddie groans, tipping his head back.
“What?” Buck asks, anticipatory grin showing off his dimples.
Eddie laughs, embarrassed. “When I came out to you—do you remember when I said I figured it out by accident? The gay thing?”
Buck snorts at his blunt phrasing and nods.
“I think it’s closest I’ve ever come to seeing Frank laugh,” Eddie shakes his head. “I don’t think he’s ever seen anyone so blindsided by their own sexuality before.”
Buck grins at him, absentmindedly tracing the lines on Eddie’s palm while he listens, and Eddie just watches the movement of his fingers for a long moment.
“It wasn’t the feelings that threw me, it wasn’t like I looked at you one day and something changed. I think—when I met you, I knew you were going to become someone—someone really important to me. And you did, obviously. You just fit. Fit a space I didn’t even know was—was waiting for you. So loving you in any capacity wasn’t ever a surprise, I knew it was coming, and even when I realised it was in a partner kind of way and not a—partner kind of way—” He smiles, “—nothing changed. But I only realised it was in a partner kind of way—”
“Okay, I’m gonna need you to be more clear than just emphasising the way you say one kind of partner,” Buck tells him, amused.
“Sorry, when I realised it was in an I-want-to-kiss-you-on-the-mouth partner kind of way—” Eddie amends, and Buck ducks his head to hide his smile, “—it was after months, years, probably, of not realising the stupid backflips my stomach does every time you so much as walk into a room was me wanting you in a way I’d never allowed myself to want someone before. I had to relearn, or maybe just learn, what attraction feels like, at thirty-five, all because I couldn’t stop thinking about—wanting to touch you.”
Buck’s fingers stumble on Eddie’s hand.
“And—the gay thing, revelation, wasn’t so terrifying when it hit, because—because it was you. The only scary part of loving you has always been losing you, but the reality of it, loving you in practice? Nothing’s easier than that. Even with all the what ifs of things that might happen.”
Buck’s bashful smile has fallen away, and he’s looking at Eddie with something like wonder. “Why didn’t—how come you didn’t tell me? Then, I mean. How you felt.”
Eddie looks back at their hands. This often feels harder to talk about than the trauma of war and getting shot. Shame has a way of sticking firmer in your throat than fear, sometimes, but f*ck, he’s worked so hard to make himself face it head on these last few months. Shame about feeling shame is an endless loop he wants out of.
“The—the emotions were one thing. The physical stuff, though… I’ve spent a lot of time these last couple months unlearning a lot of things I didn’t even realise I’d internalised. A lot of—shame, and—I’m not even sure where it came from, like—the Catholicism, sure, but no one in my family is hom*ophobic, openly at least, so it was kind of shocking to me, actually, the stuff I was thinking about myself. How I was policing the way—the way I thought I was allowed to be gay. I needed to—accept all of this part of me. And… it was so safe, thinking about it if you were involved, you know? Because then it’s just love. I needed to make sure I believed it was safe, and good, even when it’s just me. Even just as a part of me, the part that’s attracted to men in a physical way.”
Buck’s fingers have resumed caressing his hand, and Eddie adds, “Plus, at this point I did still sort of think you were straight. Um. So—to wrap up this long-winded answer to your question, I’ve known since September, but—” he meets Buck’s eyes, looking back at him so intently, and bats his lashes obnoxiously, “—I’ve been falling since you tried to pick a fight with me on day one.”
Buck turns bright red and splutters, half-pleased, half-exasperated, fully flustered.
“Seriously, though,” Eddie says through a laugh, nudging their knees together, “even if I can’t pinpoint when it started, I was always on this trajectory. Always on this path to you.”
The pink in Buck’s cheeks evens out into a rosy tint. “That sounds really f*cking hard,” he says, tangling their fingers together in a proper clasp. “Carrying that—I’m glad you had Frank to help you get through that. That’s a heaviness no one should ever have to—I hope it’s not something that follows you as much, now.”
Eddie hums, and Buck continues, “I never struggled with the physical area of attraction? That part of sexuality, I guess with just… different circ*mstances and, uh, hands-off upbringing, maybe I got to avoid those internalisations—I guess only Maddie would’ve even noticed, and I always knew it wouldn’t matter to her, so I never worried about disapproval, or losing my parents, because I never had— It wasn’t something I ever struggled with? Just—a solid history of never getting the romance quite right, I guess.”
Before Eddie can provide him with the mental list he has on hand of things Buck does that make him swoon regularly, starting with how every home-cooked dinner-and-movie night they’ve had together has swept him off his feet more than any date he’s ever been on and ending with the unbelievably attractive way he does their laundry—Eddie’s never been this horned up in his heart at the sight and smell of soft, clean pillowcases before, Jesus—he blows out a breath.
“Sorry, what I wanted to say—I haven’t experienced it myself, but I think I understand? One of the essays in that book, the Fashionably Late one about coming out when you’re older? He talked about how personal acceptance was the hardest part—he’d never felt the things he was feeling about himself towards any other queer people, but with himself, it was so much harder, like the rules of empathy didn’t apply to him for whatever reason— And, like, obviously it’s so much harder and more nuanced when it’s sexuality, but I can kind of understand it in the sense of—struggling to give yourself the same compassion and patience you’d show another person, in the same context? I’m not saying it’s a self-love issue, that’s—grossly generalising it, but it’s a similar basis, right? And add having the rug pulled out from under three decades of what you thought this part of your life looked like—I can’t even imagine how overwhelming that is, Eds.”
Eddie—Eddie doesn’t know how to respond to the simple, kind empathy Buck is listening with and giving back to him so gently, not because he doesn’t know what to say, but because—
“You—you read that book?” he asks, crease between his eyebrows.
“Oh,” Buck says, cheeks turning rosy again. “I—hope that’s okay? I just—in case you wanted to talk at some point, about any of it, I just wanted to—understand as much as I could, since I haven’t experienced it myself? I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable talking to me about it. Or, like—I dunno, alienated from the people in your life, because I didn’t get it or something.”
“Okay,” Eddie says, heart hammering, full-blown cross-continental migration taking place in his stomach with the way the butterflies are flapping their stupid, lovesick wings. “I need you to kiss me now.”
“Wh—Eddie,” Buck’s eyes widen in surprise. “We don’t have to—I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have to—we can take this as slow as you need.”
“Sorry, let me rephrase that,” Eddie says, using his grip on Buck’s hand to tug him an inch closer. “I need to kiss you right now, please.”
Buck’s eyes are bright and the corner of his mouth is slightly quirked up, but he doesn’t lean in. In fact, his whole body is being held deliberately still, quivering like a dog that’s not yet sure he’s been given full permission to take whatever delectable offering that’s been laid before him. Patient, good, so unfailingly considerate, and Eddie needs to put his hands on every inch of his body about it.
“Buck, that is the single most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me—done for me, ‘history of never getting the romance right’ my ass, everything you do is an act of love, and I know you’re here, I was just—scared, for a second, so if you’re not going anywhere maybe you can multitask and not go anywhere while also laying one on me, yeah?”
Buck snorts, grinning fully, and this time when Eddie tugs, he goes. He leans into Eddie’s space, knees jostling against each other. Eddie wets his lips instinctively and Buck’s eyes track the movement. There’s only a few inches of space between them and Eddie’s eyes flutter shut. He feels the steady warmth of Buck’s breath against his face, and then oh-so-gently, Buck’s lips are brushing his own. It’s a careful graze of mouth-against-mouth, soft and dry and sticking when Buck pulls back.
An impatient, desperate whine of complaint Eddie didn’t even realise he was capable of making sneaks out, but he doesn’t even have a chance to chase Buck’s mouth before Buck’s surging forward, plush pink lips parted to fit Eddie’s lower lip between them.
He hurriedly disentangles his hand from Eddie’s and brings it up to his face, using it to tilt Eddie’s jaw, angling him more comfortably as he kisses him harder. The confident grip on his chin has Eddie stifling a groan of arousal just as much as the well-practiced way Buck’s lips move against his, wet slide better than anything Eddie could’ve fantasized about.
One of Eddie’s canines grazes Buck’s lower lip, sharp point of it catching against the skin, and when Eddie opens his mouth a little wider to pull off gently, Buck licks into him. Eddie inhales in surprise, and then gives in to the moan when Buck’s tongue drags against his own, warm and slick. Buck grins at the sound, sudden smile making their teeth clack. Eddie huffs, and in between one second and the next, he wraps his arms firmly around Buck’s waist and bodily hauls him into his lap.
Buck makes a breathy little sound of surprise against Eddie’s mouth and pulls back an inch. His pupils are blown to hell when he looks down at where he’s now straddling Eddie and says, “Did you just—” He looks back up at Eddie, breathing hard. “No one’s ever—” His gaze drops back to Eddie’s lips and all the easy self-assuredness, the command with which he’d been kissing Eddie, slips out of his body. He visibly melts, absolutely dopey expression plastered across his face as he wriggles closer to Eddie, pliant and soft.
Eddie growls and kisses him again, feverish with want. Buck’s sweatshirt’s been rucked up in the back where Eddie grabbed him, and when Eddie tightens his grip, his hands clutch at bare skin, blazing warm under his touch. And it’s been a while since Eddie kissed anybody, even longer since he kissed anyone like this, but Buck is so responsive to his touch that this already feels easy, familiar.
He deliberately catches his canine on Buck’s plush lower lip again, and this time bites down experimentally. Buck whimpers, hand tightening on the back of Eddie’s neck as he tries to press even closer, nose jammed into Eddie’s cheek as he licks desperately into his mouth.
Eddie’s cheeks are burning in the best way, drag of Buck’s second-day stubble against his skin a wholly unfamiliar sensation, but one he wants to recreate every day for the rest of his life. He thinks, a little deliriously, he owes stereotypical masculinity a handwritten letter of apology for just how badly he misjudged his appreciation of it. Then Buck tilts his head and gets his tongue impossibly deeper down Eddie’s throat, and Eddie stops thinking of anything else at all.
His mouth feels swollen from kissing, almost bruised with how insistently Buck is pressing against his lips, damp and hot, glide made easy with spit. It’s the best kind of tender, and he gives as good as he gets, nipping at Buck’s mouth and eliciting quick gasps when he bites down.
When Buck first licked into Eddie’s mouth, he tasted a hint of the oranges they’d shared in the car. Now, his mouth doesn’t really taste of anything but Buck, warm wetness and spit that is equal parts Eddie’s at this point. Eddie could drown in it, he thinks, drown in the way he tastes and feels and smells. That, too—they’d briefly braved the camper van shower this morning, but it’s been a full day of travelling, and while Buck doesn’t smell bad, he’s definitely not flowery fresh. Eddie f*cking loves it, loves the slightly musky smell, loves the faint mix of laundry detergent and sweat and warm skin. He wants to drink Buck in, feels goddamn insatiable with it, and uses his grip on his back to pull him even closer, inhaling headily as he kisses him.
It’s only when he does this that Eddie realises this whole time they’ve been kissing each other stupid, clutching each other close, Buck’s been carefully holding his hips out of the way, pressing forward with only the top half of his body where he’s perched on Eddie’s lap. He realises this, suddenly and with a jolt, when he pulls Buck in at the waist and the hard line of his co*ck nudges firmly against the bulge in Eddie’s own jeans.
He pulls back from Buck’s mouth with a sharp inhale, and Buck helplessly whimpers at the contact before immediately shuffling backwards.
“Sorry,” he says, voice shot as he looks at Eddie, out of breath. “I didn’t mean to—we can slow down?”
His face is flushed, lips kiss-bitten and pink. The corners of his mouth are shiny with spit and his eyes are dark, but he’s looking at Eddie with such care, ready to follow Eddie’s lead.
“I’m okay,” Eddie says, voice rough. “Are you okay?”
Buck nods frantically. “Very. Very okay.”
Eddie nods back, hands trailing under the back of Buck’s sweatshirt. Then he heaves Buck forward, pulling him flush against his chest. Buck’s lashes flutter and his eyes glaze over a little—presumably at the easy manhandling, Eddie notes giddily. He rubs his palm across the small of Buck’s back, and Buck goes boneless against him with a small, pleased sigh.
Eddie shifts a little to bury his nose in the space behind Buck’s ear, just where his curls start. The movement rubs the clothed length of his co*ck between Buck’s legs, dragging along his ass and against underside of his co*ck.
“Oh, God,” Buck moans, crowding even closer and rubbing himself against Eddie once more. He makes a soft, snuffly sound and then he’s kissing Eddie again, desperate and sloppy. Any finesse they’d started the night with is long gone, lips missing each other’s mouths and leaving wet kisses on chins, on noses, messy and panting.
For a while, the only sounds are the slick noises their mouths make and the quiet rustle of clothing as they cling to each other. Eddie takes Buck’s lip between his teeth, biting gently at his cupid’s bow and tugging at the same time that his hands slide out from under Buck’s sweatshirt and down the swell of his ass, squeezing him closer over his jeans.
Eddie pulls back, string of spit connecting them for a fleeting second, and Buck full-body shudders. His eyes shut in bliss, head falling back as he squirms closer. Eddie’s painfully hard, and the friction is delicious even through two layers of denim. He mouths at Buck’s bared neck, grinding his hips up to chase the feeling.
Any restraint Buck may have been clinging to vanishes. He groans, a deep, broken sound, and presses himself to Eddie. Tucking his face into Eddie’s neck, he leaves a couple of wet kisses against his skin as he grinds down.
Then he’s just panting damply against his throat, rocking in Eddie’s lap like he can’t help himself. Eddie holds him close, breathing harshly, eyes nearly rolling back in his head at how good Buck’s co*ck feels rubbing against his.
He’s suddenly very acutely aware that even though he’s an adult man well into his thirties, he hasn’t had sex in well over a year, and he’s also never had sex with a man—which, considering the gayness, is pretty gamechanging during this particular activity—and he is actually very much on the precipice of coming in his pants like a teenager over a little dry humping.
“Buck,” he says hoarsely, gripping his hips but not stopping him.
Buck stills his movements, but with very obvious effort, wobbling slightly when he lifts his face from the crook of Eddie’s neck.
“Yeah?” he says unsteadily. “You okay?”
“So okay,” Eddie reassures him. “Too okay, though. I don’t really want to come in my pants in the living room when Chris is sleeping down the hall.”
Buck blinks at him, then bursts into laughter. He muffles it behind his hand, shoulders shaking with it as he looks at Eddie, eyes bright. Eddie smiles up at him, well over the line of adoring and straight into besotted.
“No, the nightmare scenario possibilities of that would be pretty traumatic for everyone involved,” he agrees, snickering. He leans in and presses a soft, sweet kiss to Eddie’s mouth. “What d’you wanna do?” he asks against his lips.
“Hmm,” Eddie says, kissing him softly again. “Not that just doing this isn’t pretty great, but do you wanna get in bed and, I dunno, resume the over-the-clothes heavy petting like a couple of horny teenagers? Because I don’t know about you, but if I come I’m gonna pass out, like, ten seconds later, because I’m thirty-five and sleep deprived, and I’d really like to do that somewhere that won’t f*ck up my back in my sleep, and I’d also really like to keep holding you like this.”
“Cool,” Buck grins, nudging his nose against Eddie’s. “That’s a pretty solid plan. Let’s do it.”
“Cool,” Eddie grins back. “You’re gonna have to get up, though. As much as I’d love to carry you to bed, I don’t think I’ve got it in me tonight.”
Buck looks a little dazed at the idea. “Cool, no, sure,” he says, scrambling off Eddie’s lap.
Eddie’s knees creak when he stands and he winces at the sound, then glares at Buck when he laughs. He grabs Buck’s hand and drags them towards his room with a pretend huff of annoyance, only to have it kissed off his face when Buck presses him against his bedroom doorway.
They do not manage to make it through getting changed into pajamas and brushing their teeth while keeping their hands off each other. They’re as quiet as possible about it, Eddie’s fingers brushing Buck’s bare stomach when he wraps an arm around him from behind while he drips toothpaste down his chin, Buck crowding Eddie against the bathroom sink and licking minty fresh into his mouth. Despite the touching, it’s not explicitly sexual, but it doesn’t seem to matter to their dicks. By the time they’re climbing into bed, Eddie’s boner hasn’t really flagged as much as he’d expected it to.
They settle under the covers anyway, getting comfortable instead of diving back into groping each other. Eddie turns on his side to face Buck, and Buck mirrors him.
“Hi,” he whispers, with a soft smile.
“Hi,” Eddie murmurs back. He cups Buck’s cheek, thumb stroking along the bone, and kisses him chastely, just a press of lips.
Buck opens his mouth under Eddie’s anyway, and who is Eddie to deny him a good Frenching if that’s what he wants? He slips his tongue in, warm and wet, and Buck sighs happily, like this is all he could ever want for.
They make out lazily, getting slower and sleepier and sloppier as time slips by. Then Buck asks, “Can I—” and gently shifts forward to slot his thigh between Eddie’s legs. Eddie’s breath hitches, co*ck jerking at the sudden contact after so much time. He grinds forward automatically, and Buck groans, rutting up against his hip.
They build an unsteady rhythm, panting against each other in between open-mouthed kisses, grinding as best they can at this angle. Buck shifts, thigh nudging up higher against Eddie’s aching, throbbing co*ck, and Eddie sees stars. He moans, the slu*ttiest sound he has ever made in his life, and without thinking reaches down, getting a hand around Buck’s thigh to wedge it firmer against his co*ck, rocking against it in short, tight thrusts.
The back of his hand bumps against Buck’s co*ck, heat radiating through his thin boxers, and when Eddie jerks in surprise, his fingers brush over the head, leaking a sticky, damp spot through the fabric. Buck bites his lip hard to hold in whatever sound he was going to make, looking at Eddie through half-lidded eyes before leaning forward to connect their lips again.
And Eddie really wants to know what sound he was going to make. He wants to know all the sounds Buck makes, actually. He slows the roll of his own hips and twists his wrist, cupping the length of Buck’s co*ck through his underwear.
Buck gasps into his mouth, breathy and high, and Eddie rubs his palm over him, getting the fabric wetter as he smears it back and forth.
“Can I—can I touch you?” he asks, fingers moving to the waistband of Buck’s boxers.
Buck honestly looks like he might pass out. “Yes, yeah, anything,” he babbles.
Eddie slips his hand in, scratching his nails lightly through the trail of hair snaking down below Buck’s navel. Buck shivers, then jolts forward when Eddie wraps his fingers around his co*ck. And Jesus, he might pass out. Buck is so hard, hot in his grip, skin velvety soft. He’s leaking steadily from the head; Eddie doesn’t even need to spit in his hand, the glide wet and smooth from the first hesitant pump of his hand.
“Jesus, Buck, you’re f*cking dripping,” Eddie blurts out in wonder.
Buck moans, wanton and desperate. He spreads his legs wider and hides his face in Eddie’s neck, thrusting into Eddie’s fist in short jerks.
“Hold on, let me—let me get these down,” Eddie says, wrestling his other hand between them to yank on Buck’s boxers.
Buck pauses, seeming very on board with this idea, and kicks them off the rest of the way.
“You, too,” he mumbles, tugging on Eddie’s sweatshorts. Eddie wriggles out of them with zero grace, too turned on to care. When he looks back at Buck, breathless, Buck’s eyes are trained on Eddie’s co*ck, curved against his stomach, flushed deep pink and sticky at the tip.
“Someday,” Buck says hoarsely, “probably tomorrow, actually, I’m going to spend at least three hours with your dick in my mouth.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Eddie says, only mostly strangled, and kisses him.
Buck’s hand nudges Eddie’s away from his co*ck, and Eddie pulls back, looking at him in question.
“I thought,” Buck says, fingers collecting the considerable amount of precome he’s been leaking all evening, “we could do this.” He wraps his massive hand around both their co*cks, wetness on his fingers lubricating the slide.
Eddie doesn’t know what’s most overwhelming: the feeling of Buck’s precome smeared against his own co*ck, the feeling of Buck’s warm co*ck rubbing against his own, or the sight—the sight of their slick, flushed co*cks pressed together as Buck’s fist works over them quickly.
The sight is pretty compelling, and Eddie watches, entranced as Buck’s co*ck blurts out even more wetness. It trickles down the head, drips onto Eddie’s co*ck, and gets rubbed into their skin as Buck strokes them.
“God,” he mutters, “you’re so f*cking wet. Would you even need to use lube when you f*ck me?”
Buck makes a choked noise, turning his face into the pillow and half-smothering it as he comes all over Eddie.
He shudders, added slickness of his come making the sounds filthy as he keeps moving his fist. And Eddie’s so close, teetering on the edge from the feeling of Buck’s come drooling hot and sticky over him, so when Buck leans in, clumsily kisses the corner of his mouth and murmurs, “I can’t wait to find out,” he clutches the front of Buck’s t-shirt and finishes all over his fist with a broken moan.
Buck strokes them both till Eddie stops twitching, wincing slightly at the overstimulation of his own co*ck by that point. Eddie sighs, blissed out, and moves to roll heavily on top of Buck, to hold as much of him as possible, but his chest meets the mattress with a thump when he does. He frowns up at Buck, who’s sitting and getting up—why the f*ck is he doing that, when the only event left on the agenda this evening is falling asleep in Eddie’s arms, this is a rude adjustment to Eddie’s perfect plans—
“Buck,” he grumbles, “come back.”
There’s a patter of footsteps and then he’s being gently rolled onto his back. “Oh,” he blushes, when the warm washcloth wipes the tacky mess of come off him. Then Buck’s big, warm body is sliding back under the covers beside him, and Eddie’s being enveloped in his large, strong arms.
“Oh,” he says again, when Buck tangles their legs together and nuzzles into the crook of Eddie’s neck. He brings up one hand to hold Buck’s where his arm is draped heavy across Eddie’s chest.
“I really like being in love with you,” Buck mumbles into his shoulder.
Eddie inexplicably wants to cry. He feels—he feels like the lights from last night, the whole goddamn aurora, is inside him, glowing in his chest so bright you can see it from the outside, through all the bone and muscle and sinew. He didn’t know his body could house something so big, but then again, his body’s been loving Buck for a long time now, and that’s just about the biggest thing he’s known.
He turns his head, pressing a kiss to the top of Buck’s curls. “That’s convenient,” he whispers. “Because I really like being in love with you, too.”
_____
“This is—so f*cking fiddly,” Eddie complains, dropping yet another stitch as his hands fumble with the needles.
“You started learning this fifteen minutes ago, Eddie,” Bucks says patiently, untangling the yarn where it’s caught in a knot. “You’re doing great, you’ll be doing it with your eyes closed in no time.”
Eddie grumbles and lets Buck adjust his technique. He wanted to give Frank something for Christmas, even if he’s not sure about therapist-client etiquette in that regard, and Buck’s teaching him to knit so he can make him a nice woolly hat. Maybe with a little fuzzy bobble on top.
On TV, Catherine O’Hara says something ridiculous in her even more ridiculous accent—they’re watching Schitt’s Creek, on Ravi’s recommendation. Eddie came out to the team soon after Thanksgiving, not wanting to keep Buck a secret if he had a choice about it. Everyone was lovely, as expected, and in a matter of minutes he found himself added to a tiny groupchat named one gayteen,courtesy of Hen, Ravi, Lucy, and Buck. He’d made a joke about coming out at his age, and Ravi mentioned a character on this show who also figures out this part of himself in his thirties, and that Eddie might enjoy it. Buck had hissed a single accusatory Gay Yoda into Eddie’s ear, dancing away with a yelp when Eddie pinched him in annoyance, but that didn’t stop him from insisting on watching every single episode with Eddie.
It’s nice, in that nothing has changed—he still has his television rituals with Buck, both loyally not watching ahead without the other, and also in that everything has changed, because now, instead of gazing fondly across the couch when Buck cackles at the screen, his laughter is muffled into Eddie’s shoulder, or neck, or chest, reverberating through every loved-up cell in his body.
“There you go,” Buck says encouragingly when Eddie knits through a whole row without f*cking up. “You’re a natural. It must be the senior citizen in you.”
He grins and drops a kiss onto Eddie’s cheek when Eddie scowls back in response.
“Ugh,” Chris says mildly as he wanders by, mostly to uphold the image of disgusted teenagers everywhere.
“Oh hey,” Buck says, leaning forward on the couch, “did you get around to making a Christmas list this year? Or—are you too old for that? You can probably still get it in just under the wire, we got a couple weeks.”
“No one is too old for Christmas presents, Buck,” Chris informs him disdainfully. “But I can just tell you, though.”
Eddie pauses his knitting and looks up, catching Chris’s eye. Chris frowns at him, confused, and then his eyebrows jump, mouth dropping into a ‘o’ of recognition.
“Actually, Dad’s got that sorted. Uh—you should still go with him to the store, because he’s bad at shopping, but he can tell you. There’s one thing on the list you could help with, though? It’s kind of for all of us, but Dad said we can only have it if you say yes.”
“Uh, okay,” Buck says, shooting Eddie a confused look. Eddie shrugs and tries to undo the last stitch he made, knitting when he should’ve purled. “What is it?”
Chris scurries to the dining table, hurrying back with Eddie’s wallet. He sits on the coffee table in front of them and digs out the folded yellow paper, soft to the touch from how many times it’s been handled. He passes it to Buck.
Buck unfolds it, looking between the two of them with a frown. “This is—my list, isn’t it? You want to do something from it?”
“Nah, this is mine and Dad’s list,” Chris tells him.
Buck glances at the paper, obviously perplexed when his own neat handwriting stares back at him. “Uh, no—”
“Well, it’s mine and Dad’s, but we didn’t want to start a new one on a new piece of paper because it’s maybe still yours, as well,” Chris amends, grinning wide. He nods at it eagerly, and Eddie abandons his knitting in his lap to watch.
Buck looks down again, scanning the list more carefully, crease of concentration between his eyebrows. Eddie knows when he gets to the bottom, because he inhales sharply, nostrils flaring with it.
“If you want,” Eddie tells him gently. “We do, and we thought you might, too.”
Buck delicately places the paper on his lap, smoothing it flat, staring at it with big, blue eyes. Eddie, sat close beside him, can read the last, most recent entry, first half written in Eddie’s scrawl, paratheses addendum in Chris’s blocky print.
MOVE IN WITH CHRIS AND EDDIE (OFFICIALLY, ANYWAY)
“You’ve been here nearly every day for the last two weeks,” Chris says.
“And the one day you weren’t sucked,” Eddie adds.
“Sucked so bad,” Chris agrees, “Dad just sat on the couch and ate ice cream and made me watch Dirty Dancing with him all evening.”
“You don’t have to decide now, and—it doesn’t have to be right away, or even soon,” Eddie tells him softly. “Just—we want it and we’re ready, so whenever you are too, you know you can—”
“Give me a pen,” Buck interrupts. He looks up, at Chris, at Eddie, eyes wet but grin so plainly happy there’s not a doubt what his next words are going to be. “Give me a pen, so I can tick this sucker off, and then go empty my stupid loft.”
Chris laughs, bright and delighted, leaping up to get something to write with. He comes back with an orange glitter gel pen and gives it to Buck. Buck quickly uncaps it with his teeth, spitting the cap somewhere across the room with a dramatic flourish.
Buck’s hand is steady as Eddie watches him draw a firm, sharp tick against their addition to the list. He’s still looking at the paper when he says, “Think that’s been the most satisfying one yet.” He folds the paper with a kind of finality, whole body loose with an ease that looks so good on him.
Eddie leans heavily against him, nudging his knee, and asks, “What’s next?”
Buck looks at him, radiant, and lifts one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I dunno yet,” he says, and then smiles at Eddie, soft and soppy. “But the list doesn’t end, right?”
And what else is there for Eddie to do but flail out a hand to cover their son’s eyes so he can plant a kiss square on Buck’s devastatingly pink lips, deliberate and smacking and dizzy with love? Chris groans exasperatedly, and Buck laughs into his mouth, and Eddie’s own list stretches endless and full of possibilities, because life may or may not be long, but here, holding the roots of each other tight, loving his boys is forever.
