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Evan is eight years old when he learns that he won’t ever get to have a baby. He’s in third grade, and his teacher’s belly is big with her own baby, just waiting to be born, and Evan can feel them kicking underneath his palm.
He fell again on the playground, jumping from the swings this time, and his knees are still sticky with blood where he scraped them, gravel stuck in his skin. Mrs. Hamblin walked him to the nurse’s office, and she’s waiting with him while the nurse grabs bandaids and antiseptic. Evan is familiar with the routine, by now. He’s trying to be brave – he knows that boys aren’t supposed to cry, he does, but his knees hurt and he knows that Maddie will give him big sad eyes to see him come home with ripped jeans again – and Mrs. Hamblin must’ve seen, because she reaches out and takes Evan’s small, gravel-scraped hand and places it on her belly and says, “Feel him? The baby’s kicking!”
It's like everything in Evan stops with the little movements under Mrs. Hamblin’s dress. His breath catches and he can’t even think about crying when there’s a little tiny person moving in there, just waiting to be born into the world. He looks up at Mrs. Hamblin, and she’s smiling.
“That’s a baby,” he whispers in awe, and the baby kicks again.
“It is,” Mrs. Hamblin agrees. “He’s going to be born soon. We’re thinking of naming him Henry.”
Evan considers this and then nods. “That’s a good name.” He smiles shyly up at Mrs. Hamblin. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome, honey.”
Evan takes his hands back, suddenly conscious of the fact that he got dirt and specks of blood on Mrs. Hamblin’s dress. He clasps them together, pressing the gravel a little deeper into his palms in his embarrassment, and kicks his legs in the air a little while he thinks. Gently, he touches his own belly, superman t-shirt dusty and stained, and says, “I hope I can feel the baby kick like that in my belly when I grow up.”
For some reason, this makes Mrs. Hamblin laugh. It’s not a mean laugh, it’s light and sweet, like Evan just told a joke. But he didn’t, and he frowns up at her in confusion. “Evan, sweetie, only girls can get pregnant. Boys don’t have the right body parts.”
That can’t be right, can it? “But – really?” He presses his hands harder to his belly.
“Really really,” Mrs. Hamblin replies, her smile a little softer now. “But that’s okay, because someday you’re going to meet a girl and fall in love and get married, and you’ll be able to put your hand on her belly and feel the baby moving.” Evan can feel his heart breaking into a million little pieces, and all the tears he swallowed are threatening to come back again. Mrs. Hamblin runs her hand through his hair and reassures him, “You’re going to be a great dad someday, Evan, I just know it.”
The nurse comes back then, and she warns him about the sting before she puts the antiseptic on his hands and knees – a sting Evan knows to expect by now – and he lets her think that the tears that fall are from that. But the truth is he hardly feels it. His belly is empty and hollow and it hurts, because it won’t ever hold a baby.
“I am now officially the only Christopher in my class,” Christopher announces smugly over dinner one Thursday night.
Eddie meets Buck’s eye from across the table, eyebrows raised as if to say, well that’s ominous as hell, and Buck shrugs his agreement.
“Care to explain that a bit more, bud?” Eddie prompts when it becomes clear that Christopher thinks this is a complete story in itself.
Chris wrinkles his nose in confusion as he looks up. “I mean,” he says, a little impatient, which Buck thinks is kinda unfair. “That the other Christopher –” the other laden with just a bit less disdain than usual, “—told us that she’s a girl actually, and so her name is Mallory now.”
Buck blinks a couple of times, trying to process this, before looking at Eddie. He looks a little taken aback, confused, maybe, but he nods as he stuffs his face with another mouthful of spaghetti. He does that, Buck knows, when he wants to buy time in conversations with Chris. Buck tries not to find it endearing – Eddie always takes too big of a bite and struggles in a way that looks so very stupid – but fails. No help from that corner, then.
Buck clears his throat and smiles at Chris. “Mallory is a good name,” is where he decides to start, because that seems safe enough. “Maybe you should’ve led with that, though, because I’m pretty sure your dad thought that ‘I’m officially the only Christopher’ meant that you had somehow, I don’t know. Got the other one exiled, or cast into the shadow realm or something.”
Chris giggles, rocking back and forth. “The shadow realm isn’t real, Bucky,” he informs Buck, rolling his eyes. “Besides I like Mallory. I just didn’t like that she tried to steal my name.”
“Yeah, that’s fair,” Buck agrees solemnly.
Eddie finally swallows his oversized mouthful of food. “Is everyone in your class okay with Christopher being Mallory now?”
Chris shrugs and tries to twirl his spaghetti onto his fork. “Mostly? Ms. Williams helped her explain about how sometimes people are born one way but feel another, and that gender is more about what’s in your mind than what your body looks like. A couple of kids had questions, but I don’t know.” Another shrug. “Seems pretty straightforward to me.”
Something about the ease with which Chris is taking a transgender classmate is messing with Buck’s insides and he doesn’t know why. “Yeah buddy,” he says, swallowing thickly around whatever the hell his heart is doing, “I think you’re probably right.”
Chris nods. “Also, I got an A on my social studies quiz, and …” Chris keeps chattering, but for once, Buck isn’t really listening.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. It echoes through Buck’s mind, no matter how he tries to shove it down for the duration of dinner conversation. He thinks he manages pretty well, all things considered – but he doesn’t even know that those things are. Unfortunately, Eddie knows him too well, and clearly spots Buck’s distraction, if the little frown between his eyebrows is any indication. He doesn’t say anything, though, until dinner is done and Chris is gone to play video games in his room and Buck has started washing up.
Buck is filling the sink with hot water when Eddie comes to stand next to him, leaning on the counter and crossing his arms. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and Buck takes that as permission to ignore him for the moment, keeping his eyes on the soapy water as it rises. It’s only when he turns the water off and reaches for his dish gloves that Eddie finally speaks.
“You okay?” It’s framed as a question, but his tone makes it clear that it isn’t, not really.
Buck shrugs, not looking up. Seems pretty straightforward to me. He looks at his gloves instead, pink and floral and Buck’s favorite. Chris had rolled his eyes and called them grandma gloves when Buck first got them, and Eddie had responded, come on kid, Abuela has better taste than that, and Chris had cracked up.
Eddie gives Buck a minute to say something, and, when he doesn’t, tries again. “It’s just, you’ve been pretty quiet since Chris told us about other Christopher – Mallory. What’s going on in that head of yours, huh?”
I wish I knew, Buck thinks despairingly. His chest feels a little like it’s been hollowed out, like he’s walking around without some vital organ and he never noticed until it was pointed out to him.
“Just thinking about how different things are now, than from when we grew up, you know?” he settles on, scrubbing at a particularly stubborn bit of crusted-on marinara. “Like, the fact that he can have a transgender kid as a classmate, and she can tell them that and change her name and everyone just sort of treats it as normal. That’s – that’s way different than how it would have been when I was his age. I mean, for Chris the most important part of that story is that he gets to be the only Christopher in his class now.”
“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, and Buck doesn’t even have to look over to know the exact kind of soft, Chris-specific smile he’s wearing. “He’s a good kid.”
“The best,” Buck agrees, because duh. Christopher is, in fact, the best kid in the world. “I guess I’m just glad that kids these days have the words and the – the options, I guess, to describe who they want to be. God knows I didn’t have any way to talk about being bi that wasn’t, I don’t know, derogatory, until high school.”
Eddie hums agreement with this, but Buck can feel his eyes on him still, waiting for Buck to say what’s really going through his head. It would probably help if Buck himself knew.
“I mean, I think that if someone had told me when I was ten that I could be a girl if I wanted? I’d have taken them up on it in a heartbeat.” He doesn’t know he’s going to say it until it’s already done, until it’s out there in the world, making his heart race and the back of his neck prickle with sweat. Why did he say that. What the fuck did he mean by that? Christ alive, he sounds so stupid right now.
Buck rolls his shoulders, trying to shrug off his own words, and gives a little, self-deprecating laugh. He still doesn’t look at Eddie. He can’t.
“Mallory’s pretty lucky, I guess,” Eddie says softly. He hesitates a moment, and Buck prays that he’ll drop it, because he doesn’t know what stupid shit will come out of his mouth next. Someone, somewhere, must hear his prayers, because what Eddie says next is just, “Want help drying the dishes?”
Buck gives a – mostly internal – sigh of relief and tells Eddie that yeah, he does.
Buck cannot stop thinking about it.
For the next week, that little dinner conversation follows him around, haunting his thoughts whenever he sits still for too long. His latest research spiral is now on societal gender norms through history and the many, many ways in which people have been transgressing them and expanding them since basically the dawn of time. He reads about studies of gender and sexuality in early twentieth century Germany; about medieval Catholic monks existing as essentially a third gender; about different gender traditions in Indigenous American cultures. He reads and he reads and he reads and –
And he doesn’t share any of it.
For once in his life, Buck keeps his latest list of fun facts to himself, and he can’t say why.
He’s unsettled, and keeps falling into that weird, hollowed-out feeling again. He feels wrong in his skin, itching like his body doesn’t fit right. It’s an old, familiar feeling, unfortunately, though it hasn’t been this bad in a long, long time. Buck 1.0 always handled it by going out and flirting and fucking until the insistent buzzing wrongness faded to a manageable level. He can’t do that anymore, doesn’t even particularly want to do that, so he tries to get it out by spending more time in the gym, by going running in the morning before he goes in to work, by turning the shower up too hot and letting it scald his skin for a few minutes before he turns it down to actually get clean.
The thing is – okay, the thing is, Buck knows transgender people, okay? Like, he has met his fair share of trans people and genderqueer people and a truly impressive number of drag queens – and he’s also slept with a lot of them, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, it’s never – he’s never gotten stuck thinking about it like this. Before, it was always just another cool thing about humanity, right? All the ways in which people found to be true and authentic and break out of the boxes the world wanted to trap everyone inside. He’s had a dozen conversations with trans people about their journeys, about their joys and trials, and he’s always admired them, always thought it beautiful how they built joy from confusion and sorrow.
It’s never hurt like this before.
Ten days after the dinner conversation with Christopher, Buck brings it all up in his session with Dr. Copeland. He stumbles over it all, trying to explain a feeling he doesn’t, can’t understand. He finds himself remembering something from third grade, a sadness long put away and forgotten.
“It’s like, when I was in third grade and my teacher told me that boys couldn’t get pregnant and I was – I was so sad, you know? It felt like there had been something, a – a possibility? In my body, and then it was gone, and there was nothing left to fill that space.” And this is why he hasn’t thought about that conversation in almost twenty years: even now, it’s bringing tears to his eyes and clogging up his throat with sadness. “And I just think, you know, if – if someone had told me then that, I don’t know, that being a girl was an option, I’d have jumped on that. Like, even if it didn’t mean that I could get pregnant, I still would have taken that choice immediately.
“I think,” he finishes, something like understanding settling, finally, in his gut. “I think I’m just a little sad for eight-year-old me. I think I wish he had the options Mallory does.”
Dr. Copeland lets them both sit with that for a moment, watching patiently and kindly while Buck sniffs and scrubs the tears from his face. It feels like a relief, almost, to have finally put words to what’s been bothering him so badly; even if the words don’t relieve the hollow ache in his chest at all.
“It’s okay to grieve for your child self,” Dr. Copeland says at last. It’s a familiar refrain for their sessions; Buck’s child self had kind of a shit time of it. “And it’s okay to grieve for those parts of your adult self, too.”
Buck looks up at that, brows pinched in confusion.
Dr. Copeland sighs and puts her pen and notepad aside for the moment. “I’m going to say something, and I just want you to sit with it for a minute or two before you react, okay?” Buck nods, suddenly too anxious to speak. “What would it mean for you to think that you, now, as you are – that you still have the options that Mallory does? If you were given the option to be a woman, would you still want that?”
It’s like…it’s like Buck is on fire, and also simultaneously like all the blood in his veins has turned to ice. Buck doesn’t notice he’s stopped breathing until the even the panic itself starts to go fuzzy with lack of oxygen; and then, as if from a good distance, he can hear Dr. Copeland telling him to breathe, Evan. He recognizes the grounding exercises she’s leading him through, follows along until he’s mostly back inside his body instead of, he doesn’t know, slightly to the left of it.
As all of his senses come back online, he realizes that he’s speaking, has maybe been speaking this whole time. Through snot and tears and sheer, unmitigated panic, he’s chanting, I can’t I can’t I can’t interspersed with hitching sobs and half-formed apologies. He manages to cut it off as soon as he realizes he’s doing it, focusing instead on his breathing until it’s even and he can think again.
Of course, once he can think straight, he kind of wishes he couldn’t, because what the actual fuck was that about. He knows this is therapy, safe space ya de ya de ya da, but that was fucking humiliating, christ. He doesn’t know if he’s ever lost his shit quite that bad in front of Dr. Copeland, even with all the crap he’s been through.
When his breathing has evened out and he’s blown his nose a dozen or so times, Dr. Copeland clears her throat softly. He doesn’t look up at her, can’t meet her eye in the aftermath, but he nods to let her know he’s listening.
“I’d like to talk about what happened just now,” she says gently. “But only if it won’t cause further harm. We can dig deeper another time, but I don’t want to send you home without addressing it at all. What do you think?”
“I don’t know what happened just now,” Buck retorts, voice rough and yeah, a little snippy. Again, embarrassed as hell.
“Okay,” she says agreeably, and settles in to wait him out. God, he hates therapy sometimes.
It takes a while, because he can’t look at the thought head on without feeling his breath hitch in his chest again, but he manages to trace himself back to the question that set off his little fit in the first place.
What would it mean for you to think that you, now, as you are – that you still have the options that Mallory does? If you were given the option to be a woman, would you still want that?
“I mean, doesn’t everyone wish they were different at some point or another?” he tries, a little desperate. “Like, haven’t you ever wished you were born a boy?”
“No, Buck,” Dr. Copeland says, voice soft and careful. “I have not. And, yes, I think we all want to change things about ourselves from time to time, but for most people it isn’t their gender.”
If you were given the option…
“The thing is – the thing is, I don’t. I don’t have the option. I’m a guy, that’s all there is to it.”
“Why don’t you have options?”
“I just don’t.” She’s silent, waiting again. “If – if there was an option, then – but there can’t be.”
“Why not?” she presses, patient but fucking relentless.
“Because that would mean I’d have to choose,” he admits, like it’s being torn out of him. “If there’s an option that would – it would be real.”
“What would you choose? What would be real?”
And that pisses Buck off a bit, because Dr. Copeland knows what he’s talking about, and she’s just trying to make Buck say it, and it’s – it’s not fair. It’s not fair that he has to look at this head on and speak it into existence, it’s not fair that this feels like a turning point that’s choking him, it’s not fair that it’s all so difficult and complicated and –
And in his head, he can hear Christopher saying, seems pretty straightforward to me.
And, oh. Maybe it could be.
Buck lets himself sit back and think about how he would answer if Chris was asking him what he would choose. Somehow, that makes it easier, because Chris wouldn’t judge him for any particular answer – just for avoiding the question, because you’re not supposed to stifle curiosity, Buck. Chris would accept whatever honesty Buck could offer, and then probably pat his cheek and tell him, you’re gonna be okay, kid.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Buck takes a deep breath finally looks at Dr. Copeland and says, “If there was a choice – if there is a choice, I’d want to be a woman. And facing that – that scares the hell out of me.”
Dr. Copeland smiles. “And here you are, facing it. I’m proud of you, Buck.”
So that whole conversation with Dr. Copeland? Yeah, that opens up a whole entire goddamn Pandora’s box of gender crap. A box that has been kept locked tight and shoved away in the back of Buck’s mind for – well, forever, probably. He’s not exactly ready to try to dig into the origins of all this, because even just acknowledging the box’s existence has thrown him for a loop.
For example: he never noticed before how often he gets gendered, for lack of a better word, casually, constantly, by everyone. It’s Chim’s exasperated dude when Buck is rambling again; Athena’s affectionate boy, you’re crazy when Buck does something a little to the left of normal behavior; Bobby sighing please be more careful, son when Buck burns his hand while cooking in the house kitchen. It’s Eddie’s thanks, man when Buck is helping with dishes; Maddie’s exaggerated grumbling about meddling little brothers when Buck asks twenty questions about Jee Yun’s dietary needs.
It's just normal, everyday shit that people say, and it used to just be background noise. But now Buck can’t stop noticing it. And even worse – he can’t stop himself from reacting to it.
Eddie’s the first one to notice. Of course he is; he knows Buck better than anyone, better than Buck knows himself some days. They’re at home – Eddie’s home, god – and in the kitchen again, Buck folding laundry at the table while Eddie preps Christopher’s lunch for tomorrow and catches Buck up on the latest PTA gossip. Buck finishes folding a stack of dish towels and passes them to Eddie to be put away, and Eddie responds with a thoughtless, thanks, man and Buck – well, Buck straight-up flinches.
Eddie stops in the middle of his sentence and turns to fully face Buck, face etched with concern. Buck can’t deal with Eddie’s face when it does that, so he turns back to the pile of socks he needs to match and pretends that he can’t feel the worry that’s practically radiating from his best friend. Unlike a couple of weeks ago, no god or universe or higher power of any kind hears Buck’s silent pleading for Eddie to just not push it.
“Buck? What is it?”
Feigning ignorance is probably the best way to go with this, right?
“What’s what?”
“Buck.”
Okay, wrong, then. Buck sighs. “It’s nothing, Eds. Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s not nothing, Buck,” Eddie insists. Buck hears him set something down, and then Eddie is there, suddenly, sitting in the chair next to Buck’s at the table, ducking his head to catch Buck’s eye. “You’ve been jumping at shadows for like a week now, and before that you were quiet and squirrely as hell. I tried waiting you out, but I’m getting worried here.”
“Well, don’t,” Buck says, like it’s that simple. Even as he says it, he knows Eddie’s not gonna like that response. And sure enough –
“Too late,” Eddie snaps. “You’re my best friend, dude, I’m going to worry – okay, what is it?”
Because yeah, Buck winced again. “It’s really not a big deal,” he tries, basically an inch away from begging at this point. Because if Eddie pushes it, Buck will tell him, and he has no idea if he’s ready to even think about all this shit around someone who isn’t Dr. Copeland.
“It’s hurting you,” Eddie insists, upset and next door to pleading himself. “Talk to me, Buck, please.”
Christ, like Buck can deny Eddie anything when he asks like this. “It’s just,” he swallows, trying to find words that will explain without giving away too much, or launching him directly into another panic attack. “It’s just I’ve been – I had a really rough therapy session last week.” Understatement, but whatever. “And since then I’ve just been, I don’t know, noticing more? Little things, just everyday stuff. And it’s like, I hear stuff like dude or man and it – it makes me think about what I was hashing out with Dr. Copeland, and it just. Sucks, I guess.”
Even that is more than Buck wanted to say, but it’s out there now. He looks down at his lap, where he’s apparently been mangling a couple of socks that aren’t even a pair but now seem to be…knotted together, somehow. Incredible. Buck sets to undoing whatever the hell it is he’s done to these socks while Eddie takes in Buck’s rambling.
It’s nearly a full minute before Eddie speaks, and the silence combined with the weight of Eddie’s gaze are starting to feel a little bit suffocating. And when Eddie does speak, his voice is soft and uncharacteristically hesitant – something he never really is with Buck.
“Okay, I may be way off base here,” he starts, and Buck can start to feel his insides icing over in preparation for whatever’s coming. “And feel free to tell me to shut the hell up or to just fuck off altogether, okay?” Eddie waits for Buck to nod before he continues. “Does this have anything to do with our conversation a couple weeks ago? About Chris’s classmate?”
“Eds…” Buck trails off with just that, because he doesn’t know what comes next. Does he want Eddie to keep going? To stop? To tell Buck to get out of his house because Eddie doesn’t need whatever the hell is wrong with Buck rubbing off on Chris?
“It’s just…I’ve been thinking about what you said, about being a kid and wishing you could’ve had the options kids do now, and about what that might mean for you now, today, and. And now you’re saying that it’s all the – the guy words that you’ve been flinching at for a week, like it hurts to be called that, to be seen like that.”
And christ, Eddie is just hitting the nail on the head here, and Buck really, really needs him to stop before he starts crying again, but his throat is already so choked with fear and tears that he can’t speak, can’t beg Eddie to stop talking before he rips away that last little protective curtain of denial that Buck is clinging to like his life depends on it.
“And I don’t know the answers, Buck,” Eddie says helplessly. “I don’t think I understand enough, or have all the pieces, but – but something is hurting you and I just. I hate seeing you hurting. I hate it.
“So, whatever it is that’s eating you up inside –”
“I think I’m trans,” Buck interrupts. Again, he doesn’t know he’s going to say it until it’s already said. And oh fuck.
Eddie just blinks at him, and Buck can feel all the blood draining from his face as they sit and stare at each other in stunned silence in the yellow light of the kitchen table at night.
“Eddie, please say something,” Buck pleads after a solid thirty seconds of utter silence, because he doesn’t – he doesn’t know what comes next. “Because if you don’t I might throw up.”
That shakes Eddie out of his daze. “Shit, yeah. Uh –”
“Definitely gonna puke,” Buck mumbles, as it’s increasingly clear that Eddie has even less of an idea where to go from here than Buck does.
“No! No – I mean, if you need to, yeah, just please not on the – nevermind! I mean, what I’m trying to say – thanks?”
Buck blinks at him. “You’re…welcome?” What.
“For – for trusting me with this? Fuck, I’m – you know I’m bad with words at the best of times!” Eddie says, semi-hysterically.
Buck gives an unhinged little giggle, because honestly? Of course this is how this is going. “You’re telling me,” he snorts. “Literally the first time I’ve ever said that out loud, and you’re thanking me.” He giggles again, but Eddie – Eddie stills, sobering.
“The first – ?” He swallows, takes a deep breath. “I thought you said you were talking to Dr. Copeland about it?”
Buck shrugs, embarrassed. “I mean, yeah. But I hadn’t actually gotten around to, you know, naming it. I was too busy freaking the fuck out for most of the session, so.”
“And now?” Eddie asks, his voice returning to that hesitant, gentle prodding from before. “Still freaking the fuck out?”
“Definitely,” Buck answers immediately, because he is. “But like, at least I’m not actively hyperventilating this time?”
Eddie gives him a crooked smile, because, yeah, he’s been there, too. “We take our wins where we can, huh?”
“I’ll toast to that,” Buck agrees, and something in him settles. No matter how awful this is, or how much he was planning on literally never doing this, this conversation is still – god, it’s still so in line with them. Somehow, it seems, he’s not going to lose Eddie out of all this, which – honestly, it was something Buck hasn’t even allowed himself to think about, because the mere idea of losing Eddie breaks him.
“Can I – can I ask you a couple questions?” Eddie asks after a few moments of quiet. “You don’t have to answer any of them,” he hurries to add. “I just – I want to make sure I get this right. With you.”
“Eddie, I don’t know how to get this right,” Buck points out. Eddie just looks back at him with big, earnest eyes, though, so Buck sighs and gives in. “Yeah, ask away. I’ll – I’ll do my best.” And he will, for Eddie.
“When you say you think you’re trans –” christ alive, it’s even scarier to hear from someone else’s mouth. “Are you – do you mean that you’re a woman?”
Not do you want to be or do you wish you were. Just, are you a woman?
Buck allows himself one last, longing thought for the lock that had once held all of this in the secret, shadowed places of his brain, and then lets it go.
“Yeah,” Buck says quietly. “I think I am.”
“But…you’re not sure?” Eddie pushes.
Buck shrugs, because he isn’t. “Not really? I mean, how’m I supposed to know, you know? I know I wish –” and his voice breaks a bit there, and he has to clear his throat before he continues, “— I really, really wish I was, but. But what does that mean?”
Eddie nods, and takes this little bit of inanity with a silence more thoughtful than Buck thinks it probably deserves. After a moment, he asks, “Can I try something?”
“Um, sure?” Not really sure what Eddie can do about it, but hey, at this point Buck will take any help he can get, here.
“This is Buck,” Eddie begins, like he’s introducing Buck to someone who isn’t there. “She’s my best friend, and one of the best people I’ve ever met.”
And, oh. Oh. Eddie studies Buck’s face for a moment, and whatever he sees there must encourage him, because he continues, voice a little stronger than before.
“She’s great with kids, basically co-parents my son with me, and I’m actually wondering if he likes her better than me, these days.” Eddie smiles at Buck, and it’s – it’s soft, private. It’s the serious-kitchen-talk smile, and it’s kinda wild, Buck thinks, that Eddie has one of those. That Buck recognizes it. “She’s goofy and she’s hilarious – although her puns are stupid, and if I tell her she’s funny too often it’ll go to her head –”
“Hey!”
“And she’s the bravest, kindest, most stupidly reckless, wonderful woman I know,” Eddie finishes, his voice soft and impossibly fond. He’s still holding Buck’s eyes with his own, but that’s not going to last long because Buck –
Buck is crying.
“Buck?” Eddie prompts, gentle and concerned. “Was that – was that too much? Are you okay?”
Buck manages to pull together, and, after a few false starts, says, “Thank you.”
Eddie’s mouth starts to curl up in a tentative smile. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I didn’t – I didn’t know I could –” Buck trails off, not sure how to describe what’s happening. “It’s like – like I’ve been wearing a thick mask my whole life, and I got used to, to breathing through it, around it, to never having enough oxygen. And then – then you just lifted the mask and I can – I can breathe, Eddie.”
Eddie’s smile widens into a full grin, and he reaches over to take both of Buck’s hands in his own. Both of her hands, holy shit. “Yeah?” Eddie says, and gives Buck’s hands a squeeze. “So, we like she?”
“I really, really do,” Buck agrees, squeezing Eddie’s hands back. “I – Eddie – I know it’s just a stupid pronoun, but I didn’t know it was possible to feel like this.”
“And how do you feel, Buck?”
“Like my skin fits,” Buck says, and it’s nearly a whisper. God, she’s still leaking tears and she’s pretty sure she’s grinning like a loon, but holy shit. “Like – like you’re seeing me.”
“Always, Buck,” Eddie says, equally quiet. He lets go of Buck with one hand, raising it in favor of gently wiping the tears away from under her eyes. It’s probably the sweetest, most tender thing anyone has ever done for Buck. “Always.”