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Here’s the thing about growing up in a house that never felt like a home: you get used to that locked-door feeling. It’s locked, sure, but it’s not really yours: that door isn’t yours, the lock isn’t yours, this house certainly isn’t yours. But you’re here now, and so you lock the door and decide to pretend for just one more night that it doesn’t feel as hollow as it is.
So Buck, with every new house and apartment and bungalow and shack, tries to find that place that is just okay-enough that he can lock the door at night and pretend. But those months he lived in Eddie’s house made him too comfortable. It’s what worried him every time he didn’t work for too long: that he’d pull on his turnouts and discover they no longer fit, the seams too tight and the fabric too stiff, making an impossibility of a thing that once brought him so much certainty. He’s gotten too used to home.
Those okay-enough houses were a place to rest his head. They were a place to practice baking where the bricks he pulled out of the oven wouldn’t send anyone to the dentist. They were a place to disappear to when he knew he was becoming too much for the people he wanted to spend every single second of his life with, to give them time to rest in the quiet again before they were ready to welcome back the noise that is Evan Buckley.
That’s why he’s still looking. He needs that okay-enough place to hide in, so he doesn’t make the people he wants to cling to start to wriggle free of his clawed grip. He dreads the day that he steps inside Eddie’s house and watches Eddie hide his discomfort: a smile too bright, a spine too straight.
That day has yet to come, even though Buck can feel the tension rising the longer he takes up half of Eddie’s bed every night. He starts spending more time out, never returns with empty hands, cleans things and straightens things and greases things before Eddie even knows they need cleaning or straightening or greasing. He brings Eddie a coffee from his favorite shop by Huntington Pier. He fills the cookie jar with Halloween Oreos before Eddie even knows they’re on the shelves at Walmart. He refills the soap dispensers with that lavender soap that keeps Eddie’s hands from going dry because he’s gotten obsessed about cleaning beneath his fingernails. (That one might be Buck’s fault, after he told Eddie just how many germs live under your fingernails the time Chris came home with scratch marks on his arms from a tussle with a friend.)
And if Buck is home first, he braces for the moment Eddie opens the front door, spies Buck on the couch or in the kitchen or scrubbing the grout between the tile in the bathroom, and has to hide a grimace because he hoped today would be the day Buck wouldn’t be here. (That day has yet to come, either. Buck is certain it’s because he makes sure Eddie comes home to dinner in the oven, or Chris already tucked up in bed with his homework finished, or to that stubborn stain in the sleeve of Eddie’s jacket vanished.)
Buck finds himself regretting that last one for the brochures that fall out of the jacket’s interior when he picks it up off the dining table to dip the sleeve into the sink. It’s like Eddie was hiding them, hoping Buck wouldn’t discover them. So Buck freezes, water running over his hands and soaking the sleeve far past what the YouTuber has told him to. The video plays on, their voice ringing like tinnitus in Buck’s ears as he stares down at the colorful brochures, the kind found in those plastic holders on for-sale signs on front lawns, glossy and laminated, the bottle-blond realtor smiling with Vaseline on her too-white teeth.
He stares until the five-minute video ends, stain still stubbornly clinging to the wool. Until he starts to feel guilty for wasting water and turns off the sink, wiping his freezing, pruning hands off on a dish towel he takes care to fold so the mermaid’s face still gazes out at the kitchen. Then he picks up the brochures, takes them into the living room, and lays them out on the coffee table. He knew he was pressing his luck, staying here as long as he had been, trying to find an okay-enough house to fit himself into after knowing what home feels like.
But he thought Eddie would at least talk to him about it. Not leave hints as subtle as a two-by-four to the forehead.
It’s unfortunately how Eddie finds him, the first time he’s come home to a house that doesn’t smell of dinner, or sugar cookies, or lemon-scented table polish. Buck can feel his gaze from where he goes still in the doorway, but Buck doesn’t move to greet him. He feels too brittle, like turning his head will make him crumble as easily as old royal icing on stale gingerbread.
“Buck?” Eddie says at last, the front door shutting. Keys clatter in the ceramic bowl. Boots thud against the wall. A jacket rustles on the hook. Then footsteps tread closer. “You all ri—Oh.” A moment passes. Neither of them moves. Buck closes his eyes, bracing for the awkward stammering, Eddie trying to cover up a cruelty he never intended to bestow because that isn’t who Eddie is. They can both be jerks to each other sometimes, and this is surely no different, even if it feels like Eddie’s reached into Buck’s chest, casually stolen a few vital organs, and left gaping holes behind. He probably thought he was being helpful.
“Well, that’s embarrassing.”
Buck jolts, like Eddie shoved him, and raises his head to eye him through his parted fingers. It’s unlikely Eddie can actually see much of Buck’s face, especially considering how dark the house is. Buck forgot to turn on the lights—another slight against him. Yet more proof he’s better off alone. He gets so wrapped up in his own hurt that he forgets to be considerate.
But what Eddie can see of Buck’s face must be enough, since the little awkward smile on Eddie’s mouth drops, wiped away. He rounds the couch, one hand outstretched for Buck’s shoulder, but when Buck flinches away, he goes still.
“Buck,” Eddie says, carefully, like Buck’s a horse prone to spooking, “it’s not what you think. It’s not whatever’s making you look like that.”
Buck closes his eyes and covers them with his fingers again. Eddie makes a mournful little sound, and the couch dips far too close. Buck scoots away, hip colliding with the armrest, pillow lost to the floor. He takes a slow, steady breath, then drops his hands and nods.
“I’m going to Maddie’s,” he says and stands without waiting for a response.
It comes anyway: “What? Why? Buck, you don’t have to—”
“Clearly I’ve overstayed my welcome,” he says, shoving his feet into the first shoes he finds in a cubby, shrugging into a jacket, reaching for his keys in the dish, nestled up against Eddie’s like they belong there. Like Buck could ever belong where he wants to, so badly that it aches. He’s been hit in the chest more than a few times on the job, but they all pale to this. He half-expects to find blood dripping in his wake, a breadcrumb trail he hears Eddie follow as Buck tears open the front door and strides out into the cool, late summer night.
“Buck!” Eddie says, stumbling out after him, and when he grabs Buck’s arm, Buck simply dodges away. He unlocks his jeep, tears open the driver’s side door, and cranks on the engine the second he sits.
Buck throws the car into reverse and gasses it at the same instant Eddie dives into the jeep on the passenger’s side. Halfway into the street, Buck slams on the brakes, watching Eddie wriggle through the mostly open window Buck forget to close earlier, half-expecting the glass to shatter and slice Eddie in two, half-expecting to wake up and realize this is all a dream from too much melatonin. Maddie always did get after him for taking that on the nights he can’t sleep.
“What the hell are you doing?” Buck manages to ask when Eddie’s inside up to his hips and is slapping his hand around on the door, seeking out the button to make the window lower.
“What does it look like?” Eddie grunts, wheezes, and fabric tears before he suddenly lands headfirst in the footwell, knees balanced on the seat. He’s barefoot. Buck has no idea where his socks went, though his toes scrabble for purchase on the seatback.
He shoves up onto his elbows and looks at Buck upside-down. “Going to Maddie’s.”
Buck reaches for his seatbelt and the door. Eddie lands on Buck’s lap, Buck’s arm caught between his ankles, seatbelt trapped beneath his ass. Eddie looks as surprised as Buck feels, and he’s breathing hard as he slowly untwists his arms from where they’re balanced on the passenger seat. He props himself up on his hands and blows hair out of his face, then grins.
“I had no idea I’m still so bendy,” he says, like that’s something normal to say. Like anything he’s done tonight is something normal to do. Like he can possibly expect Buck to act normal after everything that’s just happened, literally right in his lap.
“Eddie,” Buck says, “get the hell out of my car.”
“No, visiting Maddie at”—he glances at the dashboard—“seven-thirty on a Friday night sounds fun. I’m sure Chim will love that we’re ruining date night. Or have you forgotten that I just got back from dropping Chris and Denny off, since they’re babysitting Jee and Robert Nash?”
Buck had not forgotten, no. He’d even been a little proud, especially since Chris had wrangled Chim into paying them twenty dollars an hour for it. (Chim had agreed, mostly because he was impressed at Chris’s negotiating skills.) But there was no reason he, Chris, and Denny couldn’t all babysit the kids tonight. He’d let them keep all the money.
Buck grabs the bar beneath the front of the chair and shoves the seat as far back as it can go. Then he tries to shove Eddie off his lap, but Eddie simply throws himself toward Buck, their foreheads glancing off each other. It shoots sparkles across Buck’s vision and he slaps a hand over his eyes, though if Eddie is similarly affected, he doesn’t let on. He simply wraps an arm around Buck’s shoulders and settles more firmly in Buck’s lap.
Like this is something normal to do.
“So,” Eddie says after several long minutes have passed, easing the jeep into park so Buck can ease up off the brake. The fact they’re halfway off the driveway doesn’t seem to matter. The neighborhood is quiet enough. “Come here often?”
Buck breathes in through his nose. “Why couldn’t you have just . . . I don’t know, fucking talked to me?” He means for it to come out angrier than it does. Instead, he just sounds tired. Drained. Like there’s no fight left in him.
“About buying a house?”
“I’ve been trying to find somewhere,” he says. “I have! I just—nothing feels right, and I don’t want to make a big investment before I’m sure of a place because wherever I go next is where I’d like to stay, at, well, at least for a while. But you looking behind my back, instead of—instead of telling me I’m wearing out my welcome? That’s just cruel, Eddie.”
There’s a long moment of quiet that feels stretched too thin. Then Eddie squeezes Buck with the arm wrapped around his shoulders. “You didn’t look at any of the houses, did you?”
Buck laughs. It sounds wet. “The ones you so kindly hid from me? No, I did not, Eddie. Sorry if that ruined—”
“Buck, you dummy, they were family homes. Meant for kids. In neighborhoods near some good schools. The high school isn’t that nearby, because Chris would kill us if we tried to make him live that close, but there’s an elementary—”
Buck shoves Eddie, hard—hard enough that his shoulder hits the steering wheel, and a honk startles them both. Eddie glares at Buck, even as Buck lays flat the driver’s seat, rolling into the back and reaching for the door. Eddie catches him before he can, hauling him into the front with two hands on Buck’s waist. Buck’s back slams into Eddie’s chest, knocking Eddie against the steering wheel again. Eddie jumps at the honk and Buck uses that moment of surprise to try to wriggle free once more.
Eddie holds firm.
“Let me go, you asshole!” Buck hisses.
Eddie scoffs. “Give me one good reason.”
“If you’re so fucking determined to play family with some woman, stop saying—”
A wet mouth finds the back of Buck’s neck, where his collar has slipped toward his shoulder, laying bare his skin. With a gasp, Buck clutches the headrest on the passenger seat, heat racing along his spine as that wet mouth drags down his shoulder, a nose nudging aside the collar to huff into the dark inside of Buck’s shirt, like Eddie wants to breathe Buck in.
“Y-you’re like a pig hunting for truffles,” Buck says, and Eddie snorts, pressing his lips against Buck’s shoulder. “What’ll your wife say to this, huh?”
“Dunno,” Eddie says, low, the murmur of his words scattering sensation across Buck’s skin. “Maybe we should ask him.”
Buck’s fingers tighten on the headrest, leather squeaking. “That’s not funny, Eddie.”
“Do I sound like I’m telling a joke, Buck?”
Sucking in a breath, Buck turns to look at Eddie over his shoulder—and instantly regrets it. Eddie’s eyes are dark, his lips shiny, his cheeks red. The way he’s holding Buck, fingers of one hand tight on Buck’s hip, his other arm wrapped around Buck’s waist to keep him from escaping, means Buck can feel every single breath Eddie takes, every little move he makes. It means he can feel the heat of Eddie’s body, pressed tight to his own, back to chest, ass to crotch.
“They’re for us,” Eddie says. “I was looking for us. You and me.”
Buck swallows. It’s loud in the quiet of the jeep, the idling engine nearly silent because, since moving in together, Eddie has actually been looking after Buck’s car far better than Buck ever had in the past. Buck never even needed to ask—never even needed to mention some service light had appeared on the dash. Eddie had just known, and taken care of it.
Like Buck was taking care of the house: scrubbing the grout, shining the floor, dusting the shelves.
In the quiet, Eddie continues, pulling his mouth away from Buck’s shoulder. (Buck tries not to mourn the loss.) “Well, I mean, I haven’t been looking very hard yet, considering we haven’t even talked about it. But . . . we share a bed every night. We share a calendar and a grocery list and a fucking accountant. You’re on all of Chris’s emergency forms and I—Buck, I know your damn social security number. You know mine! We—we’re already in each other’s pockets. I just thought we should . . . keep doing that. Forever, if I’m lucky.” When Buck doesn’t speak, Eddie looks away, flush darkening. And yet he doesn’t let Buck go, even as he says, “Besides, you’ve always wanted more kids, so.”
“Eddie,” Buck says, slowly, carefully. “I’m a man.”
“Well aware.”
“And you’re a man.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“And what you’re suggesting—”
“You already donated sperm once before. Figured you might do it again, but for your own kid this time. Or I—I could. If you wanted me to.”
Buck breathes in. Eddie breathes out, his gaze catching Buck’s. He doesn’t look like he’s about to take anything back. He doesn’t look like he regrets anything he’s said. And he certainly doesn’t look embarrassed. He simply looks . . . content, almost, like he’s relieved to have finally gotten those words out of his chest.
Buck wonders how long they’ve been in there.
Carefully, Buck turns so he’s not smashed up against the center console but straddling it. Eddie lets him move, perhaps because, for the first time tonight, it doesn’t look like Buck’s about to bolt for the door. Then Buck presses his hand to Eddie’s chest, pushing him backward until he’s settled against the seatback, laying nearly flat as it is. Eddie’s pupils are blown wide despite the street light slanting orange stripes across their faces. His chest rises and falls not too quickly, but quickly enough, like he’s feeling the change in intent in the air, too.
And when Buck slides off the center console to settle astride his thighs, Eddie’s hands fly up to latch onto Buck’s hips. But Buck catches both of them before they can make contact. Eddie doesn’t try to pull away, even when Buck trails his eyes down, down, down to where Eddie’s beginning to tent his jeans. It can’t be comfortable, but Eddie makes no move to get free.
Buck is watching for it. Waiting for the moment Eddie tries to hide a grimace or a wince, hiding his desire to be alone, to be away from Buck, behind a mask.
It doesn’t come. It never has.
Maybe Buck should stop looking for it.
“Eddie,” Buck says again, shifting forward to press Eddie down into the seat, to slot them together where Buck, too, is growing hard. He watches Eddie’s eyes close, watches the knot in his throat bob, watches Eddie push up into Buck, as if he’s hungry, too. He doesn’t fight when Buck presses their clasped hands into the headrest. No, he shudders, his head tilting back, his body arcing upward. “I’m a man.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, eyes opening just a little, and he brings one hand up to the back of Buck’s neck, Buck’s fingers still tangled with his own. “You are,” he murmurs and pulls Buck down to kiss him. And Buck feels something in him give way, a hill beneath a mudslide, letting gravity take hold of him and drag him in. Eddie’s lips are warm and soft and fit perfectly against Buck’s, like they were made for it, however short the kiss is—it just makes Buck’s heart leap into his throat, makes fireworks explode in his chest.
And they break the kiss together, suck in a shared startled breath, and it’s Eddie who says, “Holy shit,” when Buck thought it’d be himself.
“Eddie,” Buck says instead, finding Eddie with eyes heavy-lidded as he looks at Buck’s mouth, a smile curling the corners of his lips. “I thought—”
Eddie’s eyes flick up to his, and he smirks. “Stop assuming things, Buckley,” he says, and before Buck can reply, he’s being kissed again.
Buck surrenders, helpless to the gravitational pull that is Eddie, and he laces their fingers together, pressing both hands back against the headrest as he gives Eddie the rest of his weight. And Eddie groans beneath it, hitching up his hips despite this narrow seat not being meant for two full-grown men, Buck’s knees digging into the center console and the door. It only seems to heighten sensation, the lack of room making every grind and grope and grab that much sharper when their erections line up. Eddie doesn’t stop moving, rolling to match each of Buck’s ruts downward, any slip of air between their bodies a chasm they can’t let grow. Fabric catches and drags and burns against skin, zipper teeth digging into erections, but it makes it all feel so much more real. Eddie wants him, badly enough he’s willing to dry-hump Buck in the front seat of Buck’s jeep. Then again, with the hunger made apparent in every gasp and kiss and grind, willing is far from the right term. Eddie’s not just willing. He’s fucking starved.
“You’re—” Buck tries to say, but Eddie refuses to give up his mouth and catches Buck’s bottom lip between his teeth, and Buck falls back in, helpless and starving too, sucking Eddie’s tongue, feeling the hitch of his hips, the stutter of his next breath. Eddie’s hands hold Buck’s so tightly his fingers are starting to go numb, but Buck couldn’t be paid to let go, move away, give Eddie up. He rolls his hips down, ignoring the bite of his zipper, the layers of denim between them, and drinks down Eddie’s groans like water in a desert.
“Buck,” Eddie says into the corner of Buck’s mouth, “buttons. Zippers.”
“Yeah,” Buck says, not sure why Eddie’s saying anything at all.
“Off.” Eddie rocks his hips upward, hard. “Now.”
“Have I reduced you to caveman grunts?”
“Yeah,” he says, shameless. “Problem?”
“Never.” But when he goes to pull one hand free, Eddie doesn’t let him go. After a moment, Buck just shrugs and reaches down between them with their fingers still laced, popping first Eddie’s button and dragging the zipper down, then his own. And yet he can’t help but rub his knuckles up the hard length of Eddie in his briefs to where a wet patch is forming at the head. The fabric sticks to it, and Buck presses his thumb into it, feels the heat of another bead of precome. His mouth waters.
“Buck,” Eddie says, and Buck says, “You’re hard,” and Eddie laughs and mutters, “Astute observation,” but Buck shakes his head and lifts his gaze to Eddie’s face and amends, “For me. You’re hard for me.”
Eddie’s brows twitch, like they want to furrow. “Is that really a surprise?”
Buck breathes in. “I thought—you wanted me gone.”
Hurt flashes in Eddie’s eyes, briefly, before something flares to life, all heat and light, and he drags the hands still tangled by their pricks to the back of Buck’s head. There, he weaves his fingers tight in Buck’s hair and tugs, looking smug when it makes Buck shudder in his lap. “I was trying to show you, Buck. That I want you here with me. I—I saw you doing it, and I thought, maybe, you’d see me doing the same.”
A breath catches in Buck’s chest, and he thinks about dinner and cookies and lemon-scented table polish—about a new crockpot because Buck was talking about a pulled pork recipe he wanted to try but bemoaned his old crockpot wasn’t up to it, and a regular shipment of the fancy Hungarian flour Buck likes but can only find at that one specialty market on the other side of town and he can’t convince himself the trip is worth it as often as he runs out of flour, and a bottle of polish that never actually empties because it has a scent that doesn’t actually make Buck descend into a sneezing fit the way so many cleaners do. He thinks about a cubby for shoes by the front door and a coatrack for three on the wall and a ceramic dish where their keys nestle together every night. Like they belong there.
“I wasn’t letting myself,” Buck realizes, and watches Eddie’s mouth curl into a smile as Eddie says, “Thought you weren’t allowed, huh? I’m familiar,” and Buck says, “Yeah, guess you are,” and Eddie says, “But you can have me, Buck. I want you to have me,” and Buck’s chest cracks open. When Buck dips back down for a kiss Eddie is already lifting his chin to catch his lips. Their teeth clack together, but Buck shifts the angle of his head and Eddie shifts the angle of his and it’s a perfect slide of lips and tongues, and when Buck rolls his hips down, their cocks dragging together through the fabric of their underwear, he can feel Eddie’s groan like his own, a vibration rumbling between their chests. It’s not a comfortable position, cramped together in the narrow front seat with Buck’s knees caught on either side of it, the ceiling too close, the walls too hard, the leather creaking with every move they make, but it’s perfect, too, and Buck’s coming before he even knows he’s teetering there on the brink.
And Eddie must feel the wet heat, since the sound that tears out of his chest when he comes, too, is almost painful. Buck grinds down in small circles that slow the longer he drags this out, wringing every last shred of sensation out of Eddie that he can get. And even then, when they need to stop for the sensitivity, the kisses don’t end, deep and slick until Eddie closes his teeth on Buck’s bottom lip once more and simply holds it there in his mouth until Buck pulls away to look down at him.
Only then does Eddie let it go, spit connecting their mouths, and Buck has to fold his bottom lip into his mouth now, tracing the divots of Eddie’s teeth with his tongue as he gazes down at him, fucked out and flushed red, his lips bruised and swollen, his hair sticking up every which way. He’s a mess, and he’s never looked more beautiful.
“Your wife, huh?” Buck says at last.
Eddie chokes on his next inhale, glaring at Buck through watering eyes. Buck simply holds onto his hands as he sits back on Eddie’s thighs, watching him regain control of his breathing. His briefs are getting uncomfortable, come drying tacky on his skin and his pubes, but he’s not eager to move. He doesn’t want to, not until he knows what world he’s climbing out into. Until he knows what shape he’s going to fill in Eddie’s life.
“Yes, well,” Eddie says at last, hoarse. He doesn’t look away, though. “It was just—”
“I like it.”
Eddie’s voice ends in a squeak. He blinks, mouth slowly curling at the corners. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Buck says, their clasped hands resting on his thighs. He squeezes Eddie’s fingers. Eddie squeezes right back. “Kids, too. House by a good school. Calendars and grocery lists and fucking accountants.”
A laugh shakes out of Eddie’s chest, and his head drops back, his eyes shut. “That’s a fucking relief.”
Buck snorts. “That so?”
“Now I can tell Pepa to cancel her plans.”
“Pepa has plans?”
“If I didn’t ask you out before her barbecue next week, she was gonna parade people in front of me until you got jealous enough to do something about it.”
Buck blinks. Eddie grins up at him.
“You’re not subtle, Buck.” He shoves up onto an elbow, their fingers still laced as he brings Buck’s knuckles up to his lips. “Nor am I, apparently.”
Turning his hand in Eddie’s grip, Buck brushes his fingertips over Eddie’s chin, five o’clock shadow rasping against his skin. He can’t help the shiver. “Well, you still haven’t asked me out, Eddie. Maybe we should go ahead with Pepa’s—”
“We have a reservation on Sunday,” Eddie says. “Maddie insisted. Pepa did, too. I think they’ve been conspiring for a while now.”
Warmth blooms in Buck’s chest. It always does where Maddie is concerned, and where Pepa is, too. When he met her that day in the hospital, he’s sure neither she nor he expected life to turn out like this. For Buck to become to Eddie what no one else could be. It’s a shape meant for Buck, built for Buck. No one else could ever fit. “Of course they have,” Buck says. “Is that why you took so long dropping Chris off tonight? Was ready to send out a search party.”
Eddie just shrugs. “Are you gonna say no?”
Buck laughs. “You haven’t even asked me yet!”
“Buck,” Eddie says, and sits up with a grimace tossed down to his own lap. He shakes his head and refocuses on Buck’s face, close enough that Buck can feel the tremble of Eddie’s exhale. His fingertips trace Buck’s cheekbone, Buck’s knuckles dragging over his cheek, because Eddie still refuses to let him go. Buck tilts his head, kisses Eddie’s fingertips, and drinks in Eddie’s little happy sigh. “Buck, will you go out to dinner with me on Sunday so Pepa doesn’t have to parade people in front of me to make you jealous?”
“Well, I know you hate to be forced,” Buck says, to which Eddie snorts and looks at Buck’s mouth and says, “You’re the easiest choice I’ve ever made,” and Buck hums and says, “Even when—” and Eddie cuts him off with a kiss and whispers, “Even then.”