Work Text:
Buck isn’t sure what happens.
Well, he does. He does, painfully so with an unmistakable starkness. And so maybe it’s a ‘how’, rather than a ‘what’ exactly.
Buck isn’t sure how it happens. Yeah.
And the cliche of it all, is that it kind of happened in a blur.
Eddie had been behind him, they had been the last ones coming out of the blazoned building, all civilians having had been taken care of. Eddie had been right behind him and then he hadn’t.
There were minutes between one moment and then the next, minutes of fear clouding Buck’s senses - mainly the incomparable clench of his heart, proceeding to climb up his oesophagus and take home in his mouth. Hen had been on one arm, Chim on the other, and with all the strength they could muster, Buck somehow, didn’t claw his way under the debris and into the flames.
Too many minutes, too many minutes had passed, all in a haze, and then with contrasting clarity, clear as the summer sky, Eddie had stumbled from the wreckage, throwing his respirator to the floor with an echoing clatter.
His face had pulled into a half grimace, a half smirk. The most beautiful thing Buck has ever seen. And then it happened. And Buck has been replaying it ever since, with an ever deepening frown.
Both Hen and Chim had simultaneously dropped Buck’s arms, freeing him from their grasps.
He had fallen forward, stumbling straight into Eddie with enough force to knock someone over, but Eddie had caught him, had bared his weight like so many times before, with a steady arm and soothing, repetitive words. And really, Buck hadn’t meant to do it, he hadn’t really known what he was doing at all.
The kiss lasted an agonising two seconds. A simple press of lips, an underlying hum between them before Buck caught himself and promptly staggered backwards with the realisation, a hand flying over his mouth, his eyes fixed on his best friend. His heart dropping straight back down.
So Buck knows what happened, he just doesn’t know how the fuck he let himself do it.
This all ends up with him here, the clawing anxiety from the last call beginning to settle down around the station, and with Buck staring dead ahead at the wall, trying not to fall into conversation with anyone - in case his mouth decides to disconnect from his brain, and for everything to come spilling out. Again. He’s pretty sure once in a shift is enough.
His eyes stay fixed on a barely visible scuff mark of the paint work, and his mind is undeniably running at a hundred miles an hour. It’s an ongoing cycle, of asking himself, what the hell is he going to do now.
But it’s not enough to distract from the slight tingle of Buck’s lips. And it’s as if he is fifteen again, kissing the girl in the grade above and pretending to know what he was doing.
They feel slightly heavy with it somehow, but Buck’s pretty certain that that’s more of a mental addition to whatever the hell he is feeling right now.
Because he’s just kissed his best friend. His strictly platonic, “do NOT go there, Buckley!” best friend.
It reaches somewhere between the five and six minute mark of mindless back and forth, and Buck decides on a conclusion.
He concludes, to himself, that he’s fucked this up. Definitely.
Because maybe this is what he does, when he has something good. He goes and ruins things, because his heart can’t keep up with his head. And that, in reality, his heart has never truly been able to keep up, in this lifelong race that they’ve been pitted against each other.
He sighs, running a calloused hand through his hair, and he tries not to let his fingers fall to his mouth.
All those minutes ago, when the 118 had returned to the firehouse, Buck had watched as Eddie’s back had disappeared out of sight, had turned away to head into the showers.
They hadn’t said a word to each other after the kiss - not in the engine, nor back at the firehouse. The single interaction between them in the aftermath, being Eddie sending him the briefest smile, a line of ash smudged across his jaw.
And now Buck’s eyes flick between the scuffed wall and to the clock above it - tracking the time passing, Eddie taking longer in the showers that he usually does.
Buck takes a breath, deeper than the previous few, forcing himself to hold it for a couple of seconds before letting it out. Regulation. Buck can do that.
He repeats the notion, more than he would like to admit, before his thighs begin to itch and his hands begin to tap against the side of the couch.
And then Buck, once again, lets his heart cloud his judgement.
He stands up abruptly, so much so that Hen looks up from the book she is chapters deep into.
Buck forces a smile and then strides away, leaving his team, and he follows the path Eddie had taken fifteen minutes prior, swinging the door open to the showers.
Buck immediately decides this is not one of his brighter ideas.
Because now Eddie is in front of Buck, wearing nothing but a pair of loose sweatpants low on his hips, using his left hand to towel off his hair. Buck forces out another breath, embarrassed when it releases with a perceptible shake, Eddie raising his eyebrows softly at him.
“Hey Buck.” He says easily, despite the events of the past hour.
It takes everything within him to not trace the slow drop of water crawling down Eddie’s neck into the divot of his collar bone. He feels his eyes linger anyway.
They snap back up, “Eddie.” Buck greets.
Eddie stands just as still as Buck, less than a foot away, golden body gleaming, staring at him with those wide eyes that Buck has been trying so hard not to fall into for so many years now.
“Buck?” Eddie waves the towel-free hand in front of Buck’s eyes. “You okay there, bud?”
“I kissed you, Eddie.” It falls out before he can even attempt to stop himself. And he immediately wants to do something childish like close his eyes shut tight, or even cover them with both his hands.
But as the fully functioning adult that Buck is, he doesn’t, and instead witnesses Eddie’s expression stay the exact same. The same smirk that Buck hasn’t been able to forget for the past seven years. “Hello to you too.”
Buck groans, “Eddie.”
They hold each other gaze for a couple of seconds, something unspoken, and not always understood, before Eddie’s face finally softens, even, and more readable like this. “It’s okay.” It’s almost a whisper between them. “Heat of the moment. No?”
“Yeah - yeah.” Buck replies, a little rushed but thankful, always so thankful for Eddie giving him an easier way out.
He’ll take it every time, he’s not sure what that says about him, about what it says about either of them. “Yes. Exactly.” Buck then tries to add, with a bit more certainty.
“Exactly. Then it’s cool. We’re cool.” Still topless, Eddie takes a quiet step closer, his hand coming to rest where Buck’s neck meets his shoulder. “I promise.” He says like it’s nothing, like he doesn’t know the weight a simple promise holds in Buck’s heart.
He can’t help but bite the soft flesh the inside of his cheek has to offer. He worries though, he still worries about his actions, about the things that he doesn’t say. That perhaps he doesn’t really need to say anymore.
Eddie doesn’t step away from him and it’s futile to ask Buck to stop here, to just leave it as that. His voice powers onward, even though his insides silently scream for him to walk away “Everyone saw though. I’m sorry, I didn’t- In the moment I just wasn’t thinking.”
Eddie lets him say it though, his already tight grip flexing around the muscle of Buck’s shoulder. Not quite massaging it, but Buck can feel the tissue move slightly. He breathes, and he knows that Eddie has been successful in whatever secret plan only he is privy to.
“Buck you don’t need to apologise.” Eddie blinks. “Not for this.” Squeeze. “And who cares if they saw. They know us, they know what’s happening here. I’m sure no one batted an eye.”
Somewhere in the last few words, without Buck really registering anything at all, Eddie must have tossed his towel onto the bench beside them, quietly replacing the fabric with Buck’s skin, and lightly thumbing at his slightly tear-stained cheek bone.
“Okay. If you’re sure.”
His best friend nods at him, a flicker of determination seeping onto his features. “I’m sure. And, you know I’m okay, right. I was always going to come out of that building.”
Finally, sweet surrender. Both Eddie’s arms drop back to his sides, leaving Buck’s cheek and shoulder undeniably colder. But it’s replaced with the warmth of his smile.
“I know. I was just scared for a second, that’s all.” It’s true. He was scared, terrified actually. He was scared and it was the heat of the moment.
But, there is also another truth, one that is sort of, equally as terrifying as the fire that had threatened to trap his best friend.
Eddie slides past him, turning back to snap Buck from his thoughts. “Okay. C’mon, think Bobby’s cooking up a storm out there.”
He follows Eddie out, willing for his cheeks to return to their less blushed state. And also silently willing the rest of the team to ignore the obvious feeling hanging in the atmosphere of the station.
Thankfully, the remaining few hours of his shift run without any major, life changing events. And for a little chasm of time, Buck momentarily forgets the reckless absurdity he has just performed. In front of his whole team.
Momentarily is the key word here though.
Buck slides his key into the door of his apartment, toes off his shoes neatly by the wall, before stumbling quickly up the stairs. He falls into the reprieve of his soft sheets, outside clothes be dammed. Buck closes his eyes with an echoing sigh, ready to forget the events of the day.
Ready to forget that the safe of secrets, the one that Buck doesn’t even let himself have access to, has now been broken wide open.
His eyes are closed for an approximate four seconds. Interrupted by the familiar ring of his phone, he sighs again, a more frustrated one this time.
Buck paws around the mattress before flipping his phone over, answering the call when his sister’s photo smiles up at him. He puts her on speaker, closing his eyes again.
“Good shift?” Her voice reverberates with obvious amusement through the apartment that he’s temporarily renting until he can get something a little more permanent sorted out.
Buck groans, and lets his mouth yawn around his words. “A tiring one.”
“Yeah? Why?” Maddie pushes. Her tone stays the same, and Buck immediately knows she knows. He’s going to kill Chimney one day. That day feels like its creeping closer and closer.
“Take a hint Mads. You’re dodging it impressively.”
At this, Maddie lets out a light laugh, and Buck really can’t help the way his upper lip twitches into something that can almost be classed as a smile. “You’re the one dodging.”
“I don’t dodge.”
“Buck.”
“Maddie.” He protests back, and there’s a moment of silence either end of the line. “Chim told you.” Buck eventually says.
But thankfully she has the decency to sound the slightest bit sheepish. “Yeah. Chim told me.”
“I hate your husband.” Buck murmurs, defeated.
“No you don’t.” She pauses for a second, and Buck almost thinks that she might drop it, might give her exhausted brother a break, at least for a few hours.
As usual, luck is not on Buck’s side. “You okay?” She asks.
He shuffles to sit up in bed, the comforter falling around his waist. “We’re really talking about this?”
“I think you probably want to.”
“Mm.” Buck pauses, it’s pointless to disagree because Buck knows Maddie’s right. And Maddie also knows that Maddie is right. “Yeah, I probably want to.”
Maddie hums in understanding, then she repeats: “You okay?”
Buck owes it to her, and to himself really, to be more truthful. “I mean, I was mainly worried about Eddie, Maddie.” She doesn’t say anything, lets him talk. “So if you’re asking am I okay in that sense? Then yeah I’m fine.”
“But?”
“Well, Chimney already told you the rest.”
“Yeah.” The remaining sun flitters through his blinds, long lines illuminating the crinkles in his sheets. “I wanted to know what happened from your perspective. Love Chim to bits, but I want to know how you feel about it, not him.”
Buck bites back a smile. “Yeah thats fair.”
Maddie makes a noise that Buck takes as a sign to carry on talking. “I kissed him. Brief, but it happened.” He spills, and the words keep coming. “And I want to feel like it was down to adrenaline, heat of the moment you know? But, well, you know me, heart’s always getting in the way of my head.”
He closes his eyes, blackness swimming in front of him. “But I’m not sure it was just that, Mads.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“Conflicted I guess.” She hums.“I thought I had ruined everything really. But then I spoke to him, Eddie I mean, and he brushed it off like it was nothing.”
“And it’s not nothing?”
“No.” Buck says,“It’s not nothing.”
He hears the way Maddie sucks in a steady breath. And for a lingering second, Buck is hit with an immediate sense of relief - because his sister is here. Maddie is here, Maddie is always going to be here, with irrefutable, unconditional love.
And with another moment of silence between the two of them, Buck feels a little less scared.
“You said it wouldn’t be so crazy.” He recalls. And the moment feels so long ago, standing with barefaced denial, when a mistake of a hook-up with Tommy was at the forefront of his problems. Before he’d watched Bobby die and Eddie come home. Before Bobby had shown up again, like he always has, a little broken but so, so alive.
Buck can picture the nod of Maddie’s head. “That was almost six months ago.”
“A lot’s happened since then.”
Maddie laughs. “Buck. I think that’s the understatement of the year.”
Buck laughs back quietly. If anything, the events of the past sixth months, longer even, has attempted to teach him that nothing in his life, or anyone else’s for the matter, is permanent.
That life is too short, it can get taken and then, well, reinstated at any given moment.
Maybe that’s why he kissed Eddie. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t taken matters into his own hands and stopped to realise that he is falling down a slippery slope. One that he actually doesn’t think he wants to get up from.
He loves Eddie.
Buck loves Eddie like it’s some innate part of him, like it’s something that he won’t ever be able to shake off. Even if, in some bizarre other universe, he wanted to.
Buck’s voice is quiet, a whisper into his dark room. “I love him Maddie. I’m in love with him.”
“Oh Evan.” His sister soothes, She pauses a moment, and Buck can hear her soft breaths “It’s what you deserve Buck. It’s what you’ve always deserved. Especially after the year you’ve had.”
Buck’s lips twitch into a smile, and he palms at his eyes “I guess I know that, it’s just - it’s just a lot, it’s confusing. I kissed him, and then, nothing.”
“Buck I’m going to say something you probably haven’t thought about.” Buck nods along, as if Maddie can see. “He was most likely just caught off guard. In the same way it sounds like you were. And, he had just been in a scary situation.”
It is a good point, but, “That doesn’t change the fact that the conversation afterwards went absolutely nowhere.”
“It also does’t change the fact that you probably seemed like you wanted it to all go away.” She pauses, before carrying on. “Buck, Eddie knows you, almost as much as I do. Maybe. Knowing him, he’d have definitely been able to tell that you were stressing out. And that in that moment, it would probably be best to give you a quick exit.”
It makes sense. Buck knows it makes sense, but it doesn’t really help to calm the nervous energy that’s been beginning to rise again throughout the call. But he can admit it: “You’re most likely right.”
Maddie scoffs. “I’m definitely right.”
“Now hit me.”
Another scoff. “Kind of hard to do that over the phone Evan. Although it could knock some sense into you.”
“Ha ha.” Buck deadpans. “I meant advice. It’s time for you to hit me with some big sisterly advice.”
“Ah yes my speciality.” She smiles through the phone. “When are you going over there next?”
Buck yawns for the third time in five minutes. “After my nap. That has been criminally interrupted may I add.”
His sister ignores this, avoiding it with yet another scoff. “You two really can’t go more than three hours without each other can you?”
It’s more like two, but Buck’s not quite sure that that’s information he should be willing to give up, even if it is just to Maddie. “Nope.” He pops the P with a grin. “C’mon Mads. Advice not questions. Please.”
“You already know my advice. Talk to him.” She says. “But you won’t do that, not until the last second anyway. My Buck advice would be, probably just kiss him again. And not out of shock, or adrenaline or whatever stupid excuse the two of you come up with.”
“Heat of the moment.” Buck supplies, and he’s unsurprised when Maddie promptly hangs up the phone. Buck laughs into the empty room.
His phone sends through three messages at the same time, just a second later.
Maddie: Go and get your man.
Maddie: Love you. Never a dull moment Buck.
Eddie: Chris is getting hungry. Finished your nap?
Buck replies to the both of them quickly, leaving out to Eddie the fact that he hasn’t closed his eyes for longer than a minute and a half yet. He locks his apartment door shut, and hops into the driver’s seat.
Buck arrives quickly.
It’s perhaps embarrassing the amount of courage that it takes Buck to lift his hand to knock at the Diaz’s door. And he’s really hoping that none of the neighbours have witnessed the scene - a man who comes here on the daily, usually without knocking and without notice, standing stone still and looking like a big deer in headlights.
Chris screws up his face when he swings open the door. “Why’d you knock?”
He enters with a smile, ruffling at Chris’s hair in a way that Buck knows he secretly enjoys. Chris lets out an exaggerated sigh. “I don’t know? Being polite.”
“Yeah right.” Chris leads him into the kitchen, settling down onto one of the chairs. “Tell dad that.”
Buck’s about to reply, but his train of thought is swiftly interrupted. Eddie sticks his head out from around the corner, with concern drawn into his eyebrows. “Tell me what.”
“Buck’s being weird.” Chris exclaims, a major side eye in his direction.
“Ain’t that the truth.” Eddie quips, and finally enters back into the kitchen.
Buck looks at him, for the first time since back at the firehouse, and it’s as if the revelation has hit yet again, taking him out in waves - tsunami like.
Because his favourite version of Eddie is the one leaning on the counter in front of Buck. With messy, untamed post-shift hair. Loose, soft clothes make him look so warm around the edges.
He’s beautiful, Buck has known that for years, hell everyone who meets him knows that. But like this, soft and rumpled from a not so long ago nap, he’s something else. He’s something tangible and glorious and Buck immediately remembers what it felt like to kiss him, even if it was just for a few agonising seconds, hours ago now.
He’s wearing an apron - something that Buck rarely sees. It’s tied neatly around his waist and Buck wants to do something stupid and a little insane, like sink his fingers into the skin that he knows lays under the fabric of his t-shirt.
Buck claws onto his last dregs of self reservation instead, plants his feet in place and tries not to allow his voice to shake when he speaks. “What’s the occasion, Eds?” He nods at the apron.
“It’s my turn to cook for you guys.”
“I wouldn’t say we take turns.” Buck says, raising his eyebrows at Eddie, who smiles back at him.
Eddie walks to the stove, stirring something unidentifiable in the pan. “Maybe we should.” He holds out a spoon of the liquid, vaguely in the direction of Buck, and he silently motions him over. Buck abides, reaching to grab the spoon. “You were the one who taught me basically everything I know when we were in El Paso.”
“More salt.” Buck chirps, handing it back.
Eddie obliges, sprinkling a pinch of salt in. “Thought I’d share my new skills.”
“I’m not complaining.” Buck holds his hands up, Eddie’s made a bolognese sauce. It’s good, really good.
“I might be.” Chris snickers from where he’s moved to the couch.
“Hey!”
Christopher laughs again, a welcome noise and it’s nice, the three of them, it’s easy like this. So easy that Buck can almost disregard the error he had made.
Eddie swivels from where he was grinning at Chris, turning to face Buck, his face painted with an almost a fondness there. Buck catches it, confused, but he is always grateful to get to look at his best friend, relaxed and warm. Pretty too.
“Hey.” He repeats, quieter this time, just for Buck.
“Hey Eddie.” Buck replies with a blink, and he can’t ignore how his voice sounds so impossibly weak.
He still hasn’t turned around to the food. “It’s Bolognese.” Eddie confirms casually.
“How about now?” Eddie finally turns back to the pan, using the same spoon to get more for Buck to taste test.
Buck steps towards him and closer to the counter, he reaches out again to grab spoon. A hand stops his own though, and Buck feels it everywhere when Eddie’s fingers curl around his wrist with enough of a grip to drag it back down to Buck’s side.
“Here. Let me.” Eddie instructs. And slowly, so as not to spill the sauce, he raises the spoon to Buck’s mouth, nudging his lips open gently with the metal. He gives Buck enough time to try, before pulling it out with a nearly silent clink on his teeth.
There’s a thrum of energy, too palpable, where Eddie’s hand remains steady around Buck’s wrist, hanging unsurely, just below Buck’s hip. “It’s good. Perfect.”
Eddie’s mouth cracks into a smile with the compliment, and Buck thinks he look at him forever and never get bored. “Good.” He drops Buck’s hand, facing back to the dinner. “Now go and sit down Buckley, let me serve up in peace.”
He lets out a yelp when Eddie sees him off with a tea towel to the thigh, blinking away the last thirty seconds.
Dinner goes by in the way that it always does. Chris talks about his day and his weekend plans, and Eddie and Buck listen, enamoured with this kid who somehow makes the most ordinary of things sound so unabashedly endearing. Even though he’s growing up so quickly, right in front of their eyes.
Eddie’s bolognese is pretty delicious, Buck tells him readily and afterward Chris admits it too.
They clear the plates and Chris goes back to his room, doing whatever fourteen year olds do on a school night.
“You don’t have to do that.” Buck startles at Eddie’s voice close to his ear. His hands stay in the sink, the suds crawling up his arms. He scrapes another bowl, ignoring the way his hair stands alert on the back of his neck.
Buck hums. “You cooked. It’s only fair.” Only now does he look, turning his head slightly towards Eddie, who is standing beside him, smiling in acceptance and picking up a tea towel.
“Leave that.” It’s Buck’s turn to say, but Eddie does not oblige. “C’mon you cooked, go sit down.”
“Don’t want to.” He carries on, moving on to dry the next bowl and then onto the cutlery. “I’d rather be next to you.” It’s offhanded, and Buck has to take a slow blink and a shaky breath, just to keep it all in.
“Okay.” He surrenders.
“Okay.” Eddie repeats, a little firmer, and dries up the rest of the dishes, a peaceful kind of quiet settling in the bubble around them.
One that Buck of course, can’t really stand. “Was a really good dinner.” He states again, because he always wants to talk to Eddie, ever since he first caught sight of him at the station, jealous and a little in awe.
“You’ve already said that.” Eddie quips, but he smiles in Buck’s periphery. “Thank you.”
“Why though?” He breathes around the next words. “Is there an occasion I’ve forgotten.”
He laughs this time, and Buck moves onto the third and final bowl. “You’ve asked that already, as well.”
“Yeah and you avoided the question.”
“I did not avoid. I don’t avoid things Buck.”
Buck scoffs at that, and Eddie knocks his elbow into Buck’s side with a huff. “Sure, Eddie.”
They lapse into the same kind of quiet again and Buck is really taking his time on this bowl. Partly because he likes things to be clean but partly because he’s not sure he wants the rest of the night to unfold. There’s a soft pulling inside of his chest and he does not want to address it.
But he knows himself, and if that pulling grows more, he’s going to have no choice.
“But like, you aren’t Mr Spontaneity usually.” He can’t hep himself.
“Buck.” Eddie groans, but Buck knows he’s not actually annoyed. “Who said this wasn’t planned.”
He scoffs again, and Eddie does a side eye so much like his son’s, it almost makes Buck drop this whole thing. Almost. “Me. I know that this wasn’t planned. We literally talked about getting pizza at the start of our shift.”
“Maybe I forgot.”
“You don’t forget.”
Eddie sighs. “I knew that you knowing me so well would backfire one day.” He doesn’t say anything more for a moment and then, “You’re going to scratch the pattern off of that bowl. Think it’s washed up now bud.”
Buck hands the bowl to Eddie, because maybe he is being slightly ridiculous right now. But so is Eddie!
“You’re still avoiding the question Eddie.”
“I don’t avoid.”
“Oh my god.” Buck breathes, drying his hands and turning to face Eddie just as the final bowl is put away. “I kissed you and now you’re cooking me bolognese!”
He immediately cringes as the words slip out of his mouth, as Eddie turns to face him, the traces of playfulness falling away.
“You kissed me and I cooked you bolognese.” Eddie says again, and Buck gets front row seat to how his eyes, ever so slightly, soften around the edges. Probably imperceptible to anyone else, but Buck knows this face, he loves this face.
“Oh.” Because this isn’t really spontaneous, this isn’t spontaneous at all.
He keeps on looking at Eddie, tracing his face for any sign that this is just a big joke, that someone with a camera is going to appear from behind the wall and laugh in his face. Not that Eddie would be so cruel. “But you said it was a heat of the moment kind of thing.”
They stand, a foot apart in front of the sink, looking at each other like the next few words they exchange are the most important in the world. And really, maybe they are.
“No. I mean, kind of. I asked if it was a heat of the moment thing.” Buck blinks, Eddie blinks straight back, carries on. “And you said that it was.”
“I-I didn’t.” Eddie’s soft eyes look at him pointedly. “Fuck. I did.”
“But you made me bolognese. We didn’t get pizza.” He states again, like an idiot. A dumbfounded, stupidly in love, idiot.
“Buck.” Eddie whispers, seemingly becoming less hesitant with each passing second. “I didn’t want it to be heat of the moment. I don’t want anything to be heat of the moment with you.”
He’s supposed to say something, but Buck doesn’t.
“But you looked like someone had just massacred a dog kennel in front of you today. So, I thought we probably didn’t need to have this conversation in the showers.”
Buck laughs, a small laugh, but Eddie grins at it. And they are both smiling now, a conversation finally happening. “Probably not.”
“I’m sorry I said it was the heat of a moment. I didn’t mean to lie to you, or like run away. It - it wasn’t like that, I just-”
But he’s cut off by Eddie’s hand on his arm, his fingers curling around his bicep. “Buck. It’s okay. I wasn’t exactly being the fountain of truth either. I mean, I was trying my hardest to make it seem like I wasn’t losing my mind over it.” He blushes, and Buck fucking loves him.
“You’re blushing.” He says because he can’t help it.
“Fuck you.” Eddie scoffs, but his fingers flutter over Buck’s arm, small soft patterns.
Buck quirks his eyebrow, mustering all of his strength to not open his mouth and tell Eddie that he would like that a lot. Please. “You made me bolognese.”
“Yeah Buck. Yeah, I did.”
Buck grins, because this is the happiest he has felt in a long long time. And Maddie’s right, he thinks that he might just deserve this. “So… Do we like, have to have this conversation right now or?”
Eddie laughs, loudly, smiling at Buck like he has been for so so many years. It doesn’t get old. “Just come here.”
And as always, he listens to Eddie, landing him so close that their noses just about touch. “You know I love you Eddie Diaz.” He breathes, and something in his chest slots into place.
Eddie smiles under his touch, the shifting of his cheeks, warm on Buck skin. “Yeah. I know. And you know that I love you too, Evan Buckley.”
Buck breathes, straight into Eddie’s mouth. “Thank fucking god.” He sighs, and closes the gap, humming into Eddie, prying his lips apart and finally feeling that deliciously warm pressure of his best friends kiss.