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Buck has this smile - this shy, head ducked, pink-cheeked, eyes crinkled, dimples out, quadruple whammy of a thing - and Eddie is beginning to lose his mind over it.
It's not an entirely new thing, of course. Eddie's been a bit of a disaster where Buck is concerned since long before he figured out what it means. It never comes as a surprise when Buck picks up one of the power tools at work wearing the short-sleeve and Eddie's mouth goes dry, or when he gets home from therapy, and finds him and Christopher cooking dinner, and wants nothing more than to wrap around Buck from behind and kiss him hello. It's not a surprise when Buck ducks his head and smiles that way and Eddie blushes, goes hot from his chest all the way up to the tips of his ears, because he's had time to figure out that Buck only smiles that way for him.
He stutters, and forgets himself looking at Buck for so long he trips over his own feet, and drops things embarrassingly often for someone who holds other people's lives in their hands. Buck makes him an idiot, and he knows this, but he's not sure he's ever done something quite so—well. Idiotic.
Did something stupid, he texts Hen as soon as the deed is done and five seconds have passed, enough for him to realize what just happened. Buck-related, he adds when she doesn't text back.
It's a day that ends in y 😒, she replies, but Eddie's phone starts ringing less than a minute later, because Hen is a saint.
“Okay,” she says as soon as Eddie picks up. “It's our day off. I have exactly two minutes for the latest Gay Disaster Diaz crisis.”
A retort half-forms and dies right on Eddie's tongue, because he doesn't have a leg to stand on.
“Eddie?” Hen asks when he stays silent, her voice softening. “Are you—did you kiss him or something? You're breathing all loud.”
Eddie exits the living room, ignores the way his heart shivers when he hears Buck and Christopher laughing in the kitchen, and walks out onto his front porch.
“I did not kiss Buck,” he says, and then has to inhale slowly, through his teeth, to make sure air comes in. “And I'm not breathing loud.”
“You sound like a steam train,” Hen replies, and the background noise on her end dies down as she, presumably, moves to another part of the house. Eddie already got her one gift basket in the throes of his gay crisis, but she's probably due another one. “What's up?”
Eddie closes his eyes. Focuses. Even breath out, one breath in, and then, like ripping off a bandaid:
“I submitted a Tiny Love Story about Buck's smile.”
Hen's end of the line is silent. Deathly so, and Eddie—Eddie has this newly-found compulsion to fill uncomfortable silences, because Frank uses it as a trick to get him to talk, and it's really only just sinking in that he sent a story about the best friend he's in unrequited love with to the New York fucking Times, and he's actually—
“I didn't mean to?” he says, when Hen continues to say nothing. “I was just—I woke up first so I was in the kitchen and then Buck came in and wanted to help and I told him to sit down because I'm making him breakfast and he smiled at me and—you know the smile I mean, right?”
Hen sighs. “The really embarrassing schoolboy crush one that's just for you? Yeah.”
Eddie's breath stutters a little over schoolboy crush, and then kind of refuses to restart.
He's not having a panic attack about it, though. He's not panicking on his own front porch still wearing pyjama pants, because he's better now, rash decisions notwithstanding.
“Yeah,” he says, watching as one of his neighbors pulls out of her driveway and almost takes the mailbox with her. “And it always—I always get all red and stupid when he smiles that way—”
“I'm aware,” Hen cuts in.
“And I just had all these feelings. I had to tell someone, and I can't tell Buck or Chris, and I want you to actually stay my friend, so.”
“So you told the biggest newspaper in the country.”
Eddie sighs. “Second biggest,” he says, one of the many things Buck has taught him over the years. “But that's—yeah. That's definitely a thing I did.”
“Eddie,” Hen says on the other end of the line, and he'd expected her to be laughing at him; the softness in her voice takes him by surprise. So much so that the familiar shapes of the street blur in front of him for just a second, and he has to blink furiously to get the tears to recede. “You could always just tell him.”
And it always comes back to that. They always return to the fact that Eddie, for as much as everyone's been calling him brave in the last few months, is kind of a coward. Because Buck is in the kitchen right now, listening to music and cleaning up with a kid who is both of theirs if he's anybody's, and Eddie could reach out and pull him close and tell him that he wants every morning for the rest of his life to feel this way.
He could, but he's so goddamn afraid.
“You know how I feel about that,” he tells Hen, because they've had countless conversations about this very thing. “Even if he wanted me back, I'd always be worried that I'll—I wouldn't be good for him.”
Because it hasn't been long enough. He doesn't trust this life, this Eddie who gets out of bed almost well-rested and hums along to the radio as he's getting ready; doesn't trust the way happiness feels these days, a gentle thrum that's always there and spikes when something makes him feel good, instead of a fleeting spark of a thing that burns bright for a moment then gets swallowed up.
The darkness always feels like it's lurking just over his shoulder; and Buck has seen the worst of it, but he doesn't deserve for that to be his life, being with Eddie, always a step away from falling off the wrong side of the tightrope.
“You're pretty good for him from where I'm standing,” Hen tells him, patient even though she's repeating herself for the hundredth-odd time. “And he's so good for you, Eddie. You'd be better together, not worse.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Eddie says, just as there's a loud squeak and a bang from inside, followed by Christopher laughing uproariously. “But instead I did this.”
There's silence again, way longer than the two minutes Hen promised him, both of them breathing, a little out of rhythm with each other. Eddie's heart feels heavy, sluggish, the inside of his chest clanging like a church bell with every beat.
“You know Buck reads those,” Hen says, finally.
Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose, where a headache is making a home. “He reads them out loud at the firehouse,” he says, miserable, “of course I fucking know.”
“Just making sure,” Hen replies, and there, finally, is the hint of laughter Eddie had been expecting.
“Oh my God,” he says, looking up at the indifferent blue sky. “I'm an idiot.”
“You're definitely something,” Hen replies. Eddie watches a bird dart across the blue expanse overhead, and feels briefly jealous of it for not experiencing self-awareness. “But hey, listen - they have to get thousands of submissions every week. What are the odds of them picking yours to publish?”
The odds, as Eddie learns from the email that lands in his inbox two weeks later, are pretty fucking high.
*
Buck's reading of the Tiny Love Stories is a firehouse ritual, at this point.
He got into them after he broke up with Taylor, in an apparent quest to discover the meaning of love, and subscribed after he found one about John Quincy Adams that made him cry so hard his eyes were still red coming into work the next morning. Every Sunday, or whatever their first workday after the new column has come out is, he settles on the couch and stretches his legs out long and reads, with no apparent care for whether anyone is listening.
Eddie is always, always listening - except, of course, for The Sunday.
The Sunday, on which his breakfast-induced ramble about Buck's smile is set to appear in the country's second biggest newspaper. The Sunday, definitely the last day of Eddie's life as he knows it, and he has no actual idea of how exactly it's going to change. He hasn't let himself consider the possibilities, because they're all terrifying: that Buck feels the same, that he doesn't. That Eddie loses him, in one way or another.
He spends the night before hoping that he'll spontaneously develop some kind of severe flu, and wakes up feeling absolutely fucking fantastic.
And the thing about it is, he probably could have prevented this. He could have emailed to ask about taking his submission back, or asked the editor who got in touch to polish his story to change a few of the more embarrassing details. And maybe he'd still be staring down the barrel of the Tiny Love Story gun, but at least he could have said that he, in good conscience, did what he could to fix his mistake.
Unless, of course, he never wanted to fix it in the first place.
He's still grappling with that as a concept when he gets to work, and he's distracted at best when he trips his way into the locker room. He doesn't notice Hen there waiting for him, sitting on the bench with her arms crossed, until she clears her throat.
“Jesus fucking—Hen,” Eddie says, clutching his uniform shirt to his still-clothed chest. His nerves are frazzled as it is, and her scaring him kicks his heart up by a few more beats until it's thudding in his ears. “What are you doing here?”
“I read it,” she says. Eddie contemplates just walking out and asking for a transfer. “And I can't believe you.”
“You really don't have to make fun of me,” Eddie says, digging through his and Buck's shared locker to figure out where his body spray is, “the universe is taking care of that today.”
Hen, going by the noise, stands up. “You don't believe in the universe,” she says, leaning against the adjoining locker. “You did this to yourself.”
Eddie stops, and raises his head. He doesn't really know what to say to that, so he just blinks at Hen, helpless and and a little lost and so completely terrified. He hasn't let himself think about the possibilities, but now it's a quarter to eight, Buck will be walking in any minute, and Eddie will just have to sit there and watch as he opens the newspaper on his phone, as his smile freezes when he realizes what he's reading. It feels inevitable that Eddie's going to break somebody's heart, and he's not entirely sure whose it is.
As if summoned by his thoughts, Buck calls out a loud greeting somewhere by the entrance. Eddie doesn't even have to think about looking over his shoulder, waiting for the moment Buck comes into view, because he wants to see him.
“If you could see your face right now,” Hen says.
“My face looks normal,” Eddie replies, aware going by the ache in his jaw that he's probably smiling. “Please leave.”
Hen straightens up, but instead of walking out, she reaches out and puts her hands on either side of Eddie's face, pulling him away from the sight of Buck and Ravi performing their weird elaborate handshake.
“Hey,” she says, staring into his eyes with a little concentrated wrinkle between her eyebrows. “You're in love with him.”
Eddie nods.
“And I know you don't believe me, but that boy is so in love with you you could see it from space. Stop fighting how happy you want to be together, okay?”
There's—something Eddie should say to that, his usual thing about baggage, about exactly how scary it is to look at Buck smiling so brightly and know that if he can cause that kind of joy, he can cause that kind of pain too, but none of it actually makes it out of his mouth.
What he says instead is: “Hen.”
“Eddie,” she smiles at him. “You're a disaster.”
And then she leaves.
She just brushes past Buck in the doorway; he gives her his usual smile, but then he turns and sees Eddie, and his entire face, his entire body, changes. He brightens, exhales like he's at ease, ducks his chin just so, and Eddie feels it then: the urge to pull Buck close and kiss the smile off his ilps.
And for the first time in his life, it doesn't have an aftertaste. There is no maybe, but. There's only Buck, grinning in the soft light of the morning, with his hair still a little messy. There's the future Eddie imagines every time he looks at him, not untouched by the darkness, but bright enough to drown it out.
Maybe, he thinks. Maybe.
“Hey,” Buck says, and doesn't even drop his bag before he pulls Eddie in for a hug. They'd spent the night apart, which should be normal for two best friends, but the way his hand splays over Eddie's shoulderblade suggests that Buck's feeling a little worse for wear, too. “You okay?”
Eddie squeezes the back of Buck's neck before he pulls away, and resolutely doesn't miss the feeling of being held.
He steps aside so Buck can get his things out of the locker, and it's on the tip of his tongue, an easy I'm fine, but it dissolves as he watches the long line of Buck's back, the spot where the back of his neck is bright red from being in the sun on their trip to the zoo yesterday. He's not fine; fine is what he said when a panic attack landed him the ER, and when Buck cornered him in the kitchen, full of concern so palpable Eddie could barely breathe around it.
“Yeah,” is what he says, in the end, “I'm okay.”
But his fingers slip on the buttons of his shirt, over and over, and when he leaves them alone for a while to put on his boots, he can't get a good grip on the zipper. For a minute, he sits and stares and wills his hands to stop shaking, but the stilness makes room for the realization that he's feeling a little nauseous, actually, and when he looks up it's to see Buck right after he's pulled his shirt off, the hair on the back of his head ruffled, the full breadth of his chest on show.
Eddie's mouth goes bone-dry in a blink. He curls his hands into fists on his thighs, and manages to look away, only for his gaze to fall to the open door of their locker, where a picture of the two of them with Christopher has been tacked up for so long it's starting to curl around the edges.
“Actually,” he says before he knows he's saying it, “I need to tell you something.”
In his periphery, Buck stills. He carefully does up his last button, runs a hand down his front, and when Eddie turns to face him, his eyes are wide, earnest, ready to listen. Nervous, too, but he's trying to hide it, as if Eddie doesn't know him down to the bones.
And it's not what he means to say, but it might be the reminder of how well they know each other that makes him do it: Buck fidgeting in a way anyone else would attribute to restlessness, their shared locker open behind him, everything in it tangled because they reached a point, a few years ago, where it made no sense to keep it separate. It might be that, or Hen's voice ringing on a loop in his head calling him a disaster, but either way Eddie takes a breath and says:
“I missed you last night.”
It's true. Even if he's sleeping on the couch, the house always feels different with Buck there. Eddie feels different with Buck there.
Buck blinks, taken aback, but it only takes a second for the corners of his eyes to start crinkling - and then he's ducking his head, grinning at the ground with that familiar dimple in his cheek. Eddie feels that smile down to the tips of his toes, a kind of warmth only Buck makes him feel.
“I missed you too,” Buck says quietly, looking up, his eyes full of a thousand other words he's not saying, and—
And Eddie gets it, then.
Only he makes Buck smile that way. Only Buck makes him blush and stutter and stumble like he's fifteen again.
And if he knows he'd be there by Buck's side through anything and everything, no questions asked, that every hell would be worth it as long as Buck stayed with him, then maybe Buck—
“You need to read today's Tiny Love Stories,” Eddie says, and it feels like uncorking a bottle, a kind of jittery energy exploding under his skin.
Buck tilts his head. “I was going to?” he says, reaching down to fasten his belt. Eddie resolutely keeps his eyes above the waist. “I'm going to help Bobby with breakfast, but afterwards—”
“Now,” Eddie says, pulling his shirt in around himself, suddenly feeling naked. “You need to read them now.”
His is first. He knows this because he's had time to read it at least twenty times, while brushing his teeth and stopping in the middle of getting dressed and in the car before he started it to go to work.
They titled it The Right Time.
“Okay,” Buck says slowly, forwning as he digs his phone out of his discarded pile of clothes. “Sure.”
Eddie stands up and turns his back, facing the only wall in the room that isn't at least partially made of glass. His fingers are still shaking, but he grabs each button for long enough to still them, then forces it through the buttonhole as quickly as he can. It's a good system, and it helps distract him from the nerves, the high-strung feeling buzzing just below his skin, like he'd spark if someone touched him.
It helps him pretend that Buck isn't just behind him opening the column, and—
He gasps. It's quiet, quiet enough to get lost in the usual noise of the firehouse, but Eddie hears it clear like the ring of a bell.
“Eddie,” Buck says, his voice weak. Eddie tucks the front of his shirt into his pants and almost tears it with how hard he tugs.
He needs to turn around. He's almost sure he wants to turn around, but his body is so heavy with the fear still hanging around his neck like a stone, because what if, what if—
“Eddie,” Buck says, right behind him, and wraps a warm hand around Eddie's elbow. “Is this—”
“I didn't know they'd pick it,” Eddie says, and he knows exactly what Buck is seeing: the inside of Eddie's heart, the soft, vulnerable parts of it, edited for clarity; and underneath, a picture Eddie took of his honest-to-God blush that morning, just his cheek and his jaw and the very corner of his eye, the suggestion of his smile on the bottom of the photo. Equal parts giddy and terrified, the way only Buck makes him. “I didn't know, and I thought—”
“Eddie,” Buck says again, more urgent, with tears in his voice.
Eddie turns around.
“I thought I made a mistake,” he says, avoiding Buck's gaze, looking at where his name tag catches the light, the BUCKLEY shifting with the rapid rise and fall of Buck's chest. “Because I—I thought I didn't want anyone to know.”
“This is about me,” Buck says, and Eddie has a perfect view of his hand down by his side, curled around his phone so tight it's shaking. He tries to look Buck in the eye, he should be looking him in the eye, but he gets stuck somewhere halfway there, watching Buck's throat work as he swallows. “You wrote a Tiny Love Story about me.”
Eddie reaches out for his hand, wraps his fingers around Buck's wrist.
“I thought I didn't want anyone to know,” he repeats, feeling Buck's heart beat under his fingertips. “I wasn't ever going to do anything about it, I wasn't going to tell you how I feel, because I'm still a mess and I don't want to drag you down and I'm so fucking afraid that I will, but then—then I read it this morning.”
Buck bends his wrist in, curls his fingers up until they just brush Eddie's - and Eddie finally, finally, raises his head. Finally meets Buck's eyes, and finds them bright with tears.
“And it didn't scare me,” he says. He reaches up to wipe at Buck's damp cheek, and Buck leans into his touch, smiles a little, his mouth open around words that must be as difficult for him to speak as they are for Eddie. “I read it back, and I didn't let myself think about how you'd react when you read it, but I think—I don't know, I think part of me was just so tired of keeping this to myself, because it's the best part of me, Buck, I swear, the way you make me feel—”
“You're scared you'll mess it up,” Buck interrupts, bringing his free hand up to Eddie's shoulder, long fingers curling around the back of his neck. “Right? That we'll lose what we have?”
Eddie shakes his head. “I'm scared I'll ruin you,” he says. “I have all this—this darkness in my head. I don't want it to get to you.”
“My head's already plenty dark,” Buck replies, and he pulls Eddie closer, or maybe Eddie's body just stumbles forward of its own volition. “But I'll tell you someting.”
“What?” Eddie asks. He has to lift his chin for how close they are, and he goes a little breathless with it.
“You make it better,” Buck says, and he smiles for real then, tears and all. “You make it better, Eddie, and according to this Eddie Diaz who wrote in to the New York Times—”
“Dick,” Eddie murmurs, and shivers when Buck grins so wide his teeth poke into his bottom lip.
“According to him,” Buck says, “I make it better, too. So maybe we can just—”
“Make it better for each other?” Eddie asks, and Buck shakes his head, then exhales a quiet laugh that breaks against Eddie's lips.
“Be scared together,” he says. “You have to know I want everything with you.”
Eddie tries and tries and tries to swallow, but the lump of emotion in his throat is solid, immovable. “Even the bad parts?”
“Especially the bad parts,“ Buck smiles. “Got your back, remember?”
And Eddie wants to say it all, then, every doubt, every second thought that's had time to accumulate in his head over the past few months, building a brand new wall where he'd knocked the old ones down, but he finds nothing when he reaches for it. He finds nothing other than the way he feels about Buck squeezing his hip, his other hand tilting Eddie's head up: happy, overwhelmed, safe.
“Buck,” he says, a little helpless, tugging on where Buck's shirt isn't quite tucked in. Buck steps closer still.
“Eddie,” he says, and he leans in, the side of his face brushing Eddie's as he presses a kiss to his temple. “It's okay.”
“I want to be happy with you,” says Eddie, tucking his face into Buck's neck, feeling him breathe. “I already am, and I just want—I want to keep you, and I want to love you, and I want to believe it.”
Buck pulls away. Eddie's breath hitches when he presses their foreheads together, so close they both have to close their eyes.
“You already have me,” he says. “And I think you already—”
“I love you,” Eddie says, urgent, his hands on Buck's chest, where his heart is beating as wildly as Eddie's own. “I love you, I love you, I—”
But he doesn't get to finish, because Buck closes the very last sliver of distance between them and kisses him. It's a soft thing, barely there, just enough to steal the rest of Eddie's words out of his mouth, to erase the doubt, easy as breathing. He pulls Buck closer, runs a hand up the solid line of his back, and it's suddenly so easy, so painfully simple.
There's nothing to be afraid of here, in the breath of air between them when they separate for just long enough to look at each other with wide eyes and come back together. Buck holds him, steady and safe as he always is, ready for anything Eddie wants to give him.
Eddie pulls him closer by the collar, licks over his bottom lip, and a sound leaves his mouth that he's never heard himself make before. It makes him flush, even quiet as it is, and he pulls and pulls until they're chest to chest - except then their buttons scrape against each other, and Eddie remembers that they're at work, that the walls are glass, that Hen is probably around the corner telling people not to come in here.
Buck, thankfully, seems to realize at the same time, and he takes a step back. For a moment, he's just far enough for Eddie to see his face, the pretty flush in the apples of his cheeks, and then he's pressing their foreheads together again.
“That's two out of three,” he says. Eddie can't see him, but he can feel him smile, feel it in the way his own body responds. “Maybe it'll be easier to work on believing this if we're doing it together.”
“Are you sure?” Eddie asks, even though he's still holding on to Buck's hip, pressing his fingertips into the skin there with an urgency that refuses to fade.
“You wrote a Tiny Love Story about me,” Buck repeats himself, smiling as he reaches out to tidy Eddie's hair back into place. “That's movie-level romance, Eddie.”
“Oh my God,” Eddie says, tipping forward to rest his forehead in the hollow between Buck's collarbones. He's not sure which one of them starts laughing first, but Buck's chest shakes with it, and that quiet happiness resting under Eddie's skin sings when Buck wraps his arms around Eddie's waist and sways them side to side, just a little bit. “I really am an idiot.”
“Pretty sure you're the love of my life, actually,” Buck says into his hair, and he'd almost get away with pretending it's casual, but Eddie can pick out the little tremble of uncertainty in his voice.
So he straightens up, pulls away, looks at where Buck's eyes are wandering around the room. He feels certain, steadier than he ever remembers being, when he tangles their fingers together.
“Now who's pulling out movie-level romance,” he says, and doesn't try to control how soft his voice sounds, doesn't try to school his face into anything resembling casual. He lets Buck see him, complete with the flush he can feel crawling up his neck. “I love you.”
Buck bites his lip around a grin. “I love you,” he replies, and Eddie's not entirely sure what to do with the feeling in his chest that threatens to lift him off his feet except lean forward and—
Flinch back when Hen knocks on the glass.
Buck laughs, stifling the sound in Eddie's neck, and Eddie looks at where Hen is standing just outside the locker room, tapping her watch. She's trying to frown, but every time she manages to draw her eyebrows together, she ends up breaking into a smile.
Eddie waves at her, half his face hidden behind Buck's shoulder. She rolls her eyes, points up the stairs, and is gone.
“We have to go,” he tells Buck, who's trying to pretend he's making sure that Eddie's uniform is tucked in, but is really just feeling him up. “Pretty sure Hen just saved our necks.”
Buck makes a dissatisfied noise. “Not fair,” he says. “I can't believe I'm supposed to go to work right now. There has to be some kind of mechanism for this. Like—sick days, except for when you're lovesick.”
“Buck.”
“I'm just saying,” he says with a smile, taking a step back, running a hand over where Eddie creased his uniform. “Maybe Bobby would let us go home if we explain.”
“I doubt that,” Eddie grins, pulling him for one last kiss before they have to go act like nothing happened. “But if you want, I'll alert the press.”
*
The Right Time
I know I've loved people before. But he has this smile that's just for me, and every time I see it, I start wondering all over again if I understood what love is before now. It gives me butterflies. I should be too old for them, and I should probably be embarrassed about the way I fall all over myself, except I know for a fact what it feels like to be wrong. It's not this. He smiles at me, I blush like the stupid kid with a crush I never really got to be, and everything is right. — Eddie Diaz