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"I don't see the problem," Eddie says.
Buck glances at him, then turns his head up to stare at the ceiling of his—very nice, whatever Eddie says—apartment. There are faint textured swirls in the cream-colored paint that go squiggly and uneven at the corners. It's a much less stressful sight, right now, than Eddie's stupid, handsome, earnest face.
The silence stretches out. That's the problem with Eddie. He's much better at silence than Buck, just letting it sit there while Buck itches and squirms and eventually has to speak, even when Eddie is being the ridiculous one.
"You don't see the problem," he says finally, in as measured a tone as he can, "with getting married to me. For tax purposes."
"Not just tax purposes," Eddie says indignantly, like that's Buck's main sticking point. Buck finally turns his head and looks at him. Still stupid. Still beautiful, in a light-colored Henley that makes his skin glow, his long fingers curled around the neck of the beer bottle resting on his knee. His big brown eyes and the encouraging little smile on his lips, like he's offering Buck a special treat, instead of a lifelong fucking commitment of platonic marriage. Buck wants to kiss him, or maybe strangle him. Either one would serve Eddie right.
"I'm a guy," Buck points out.
"I'm aware," Eddie says, dry and smiling, like Buck is the one being absurd here.
"You're straight," Buck says. And there's maybe an instant, just a quick one, of stupid hope that Eddie will awkwardly clear his throat and say, yeah, actually about that…
Instead, Eddie says, "So?"
Buck groans, loud and long. "So you don't see any issue with getting married to me, your best friend, who is a guy."
"No, not really." Eddie shrugs, takes a slow swig of his beer. Buck watches his throat move as he swallows, watches his tongue dart out to lick the lingering droplets off of his lower lip. It's one of those things he usually tries not to do, but he figures he's entitled right now considering that Eddie just fucking proposed to him, out of the blue, on his couch, halfway through an America's Top Chef marathon. He didn't even get a ring, and Buck considers pointing that out, then decides that the last thing he needs to do is encourage Eddie in this insanity.
"Despite the fact that you're straight."
Eddie shrugs again. "We don't have to have sex. Besides, it's not like either of us is planning on marrying anyone else. We're both single. This makes it easier for you to get custody of Chris, if it comes to that. It just makes sense."
"Just what every guy wants to hear," Buck says.
Eddie laughs. "So how about it?"
The thing is, there was a time when he might actually have gone along with it. Would have gone along with almost anything, just to see Eddie smile. Move back in, play house. Share the bed, most likely, because it's not like there's room anywhere else for him to sleep long term. Maybe buy a new house together, one with more space. Get a dog. Sign all the paperwork, endure the teasing, stand up together at the court house or maybe in someone's backyard for a low-key family thing and formally bind their lives together.
For just a moment, he lets himself imagine it. Eddie at the altar in a nice suit, smiling at him while Buck slides a ring onto his finger. Eddie in his bed, grumbling into the pillow when his alarm goes off. Bumping elbows at the sink while they brush their teeth. All the trappings of the happily ever after that Buck has wanted for as long as he remembers.
Coming home every day to Eddie, who loves him like a best friend, and nothing more.
Problem is, while Eddie might have sworn off relationships because of the whole Kim debacle, Buck is single because he's tragically in love with his straight best friend like a pathetic loser, which is something he really hopes Eddie hasn't figured out. Probably not. Even Eddie isn't enough of a dick to ask Buck to marry him as bros if he knew.
He sighs, tilts his head back to the ceiling, and says, "I'm not going to marry you, Eddie. Sorry."
Eddie wrinkles his nose. "Come on."
"Nope."
Eddie kicks him lightly. "You sure? I can go through my list again. It's a good list."
"Super, super sure," Buck says, and reaches for the remote. Eddie pouts ostentatiously but doesn't stop him, doesn't even seem especially put out, which pretty much confirms how serious he was about any of this. So it's the right choice. The sensible, mature choice. Obviously.
Maddie would probably be proud of him, if Buck could bring himself to tell her.
So Buck was actually stupid enough to think that'd be the end of it. He managed to forget, somehow, that Eddie Diaz is the most stubborn man he's ever met in his life.
"I just think it makes sense," he says, apropos of nothing in particular while they're cleaning up after dinner—Eddie's house this time, Chris flopped on the couch with his Switch and his headphones, having put up with as much social interaction with his dad and his dad's best friend as a fifteen-year-old can be expected to endure. Buck loves the gangly, cranky, too-cool young man Chris is growing into as much as he loved the eight-year-old who thought his Buck was the coolest person on the planet, but he'll admit that he does miss the latter version just a little bit at times like this. Mostly because things are easier between him and Eddie these days with a human buffer in place.
He's mostly focused on washing the dishes, calculating whether or not to stay for another beer if Eddie asks, which he will. Buck can still drive home afterwards, as long as he drinks it slowly. Worst case scenario, he'll take an Uber. He's definitely not sleeping on the couch, no matter how many times he's done that in the past.
That was then. This is now. Things are different now.
"What makes sense?" he asks absently, lulled by the quiet normalcy of the kitchen, the radio playing some country song he doesn't recognize, the window over the sink open slightly to a dry desert breeze. Most of his attention is on scrubbing at a stubborn patch of baked-on sauce.
"Just leave it, let it soak," Eddie says. "You want another beer?"
"Sure," Buck sighs. He lets the pan fall back into the soapy water with a faint splash, and turns to wipe his hands on the dish towel on the handle of the stove while Eddie pops the tops off of a pair of beer bottles.
He hands one to Buck, then leans back against the kitchen counter, and says, like they're continuing a conversation that Buck definitely doesn't remember starting tonight, "We'd both save so much money on rent. You could move back in, we could split the bills. You hate living alone anyway."
Oh. This again. Buck stares at the beer bottle in his hands, contemplating chugging it and then fleeing into the night. "Who said I hate living alone?"
"Come on," Eddie scoffs, and there's a prickle of real anger at that, the easy dismissiveness of his tone. It's not even that he's wrong, really. Buck doesn't hate living alone, but sometimes all the empty corners of his apartment leave too much room for him to think. It was like that at the loft, too, especially after Taylor moved out. At Abby's place, after she left. At this very house, right here, those first few sleepless nights after Eddie went to Texas.
But that's normal. He's made the adjustment before, and he'll make it again, and he'll be fine.
"I like my apartment," Buck says, with an irritable sip of his beer. "Besides, where would I even sleep if I moved back in here?"
"We'd share, obviously," Eddie says. "C'mon, it's a big bed, not like we haven't shared before."
Yeah, during lockdown, with Hen and Chim sleeping on air mattresses downstairs. And things were different then, between them. Buck still thought he was straight. Inexplicable as it seems in retrospect, when they woke up tangled together with morning wood jabbing in inconvenient places, they both just laughed it off and shoved each other out of the bed and raced to get to the bathroom first.
That's what Eddie expects, probably. No reason not to. Buck imagines waking up curled around Eddie's warm, sleeping body, hips pressed to the lush swell of Eddie's ass, and thinks that death would probably be kinder.
But it's not like he can tell Eddie that.
"We could split the cooking," Eddie says, sounding like he's warming to his subject. "Carpool to work when we have the same shift, which is most of the time. It'll be great, come on! I know you're still bent out of shape over us not being partners anymore, but—"
"Okay, you need to stop talking to Ravi," Buck grumbles into his beer. "He exaggerates."
"Does he? You're bad with change, we all know it."
"You're not really nailing this proposal thing, just for the record," Buck retorts.
"Do I need to?" Eddie asks. When Buck glances up at him, he's smiling a familiar, fond, faintly smug little smile. Like he knows Buck, down to his bones, like there's never going to be anything there that he doesn't expect to see. Buck doesn't usually find it this infuriating. "It's just us."
"I'm not gonna marry you, Eddie," Buck says, for the second time. Patiently, he thinks.
"Name me one reason why not. One good reason," Eddie adds, when Buck opens his mouth. "Your apartment doesn't count. The location sucks, and your neighbor leaves her trash bags in the hallway."
"Okay, that was one time, and only because her boyfriend dumped her and she was really going through it," Buck counters. "And the location is fine. Ashley is nice. She liked my coconut key lime bars."
"I didn't say I didn't like them, I said I thought the crust was too sweet!"
"They're a dessert, they're supposed to be sweet." Buck points at him with his beer. "They're supposed to be indulgent."
Eddie scoffs again, louder. "The kitchen here is better. You said it yourself."
"I said it was better, I didn't say it was marriage-worthy."
"It's only part of the package." Eddie is grinning now, playful. Reminds Buck, absurdly, of that basketball game, the one where he lost his mind for reasons that he understands a lot better now than he did then. Eddie in the sunlight, laughing and beautiful. Eddie in his kitchen, tipping his beer at Buck and smiling like they're both in on a joke. Buck's whole life kind of feels like one big cosmic joke lately, one that he's never actually been in on. "Anyway, you still haven't given me a good reason."
There are a lot of good reasons Buck could give him, just from knowing Eddie for as long as he has. He could go for the jugular here if he really wanted to, but the truth is Buck's never had any real instinct for blood, not when it counts.
"I'll put less sugar in the crust next time," he says, like a concession. Eddie wrinkles his nose at him, and mercifully, Chris chooses that moment to wander into the kitchen for a soda, and the conversation is tabled, at least for the time being.
He ends up in Maddie's kitchen on his Kelly day, because his apartment has started to feel big and empty in a way that's simultaneously lonely and compressing, like the air itself has started taking on shape, pressing in on him. Crushing him into the corners, into the empty space in the center of the room, into the empty couch and the empty bed and the fridge full of leftovers that he doesn't have anyone to share with. Maddie makes him tea and hands him the baby and doesn't ask any questions, at least not right away.
He bounces Robbie on his knee while she fixes a bottle, taking some comfort in the small warm weight of his nephew, his tiny chubby hands grabbing at Buck's shirt and hair and nose. He's drooling a little, gumming at nothing, but cheerful enough.
"Is he teething?" Buck asks. "It's, uh, it's early for that, isn't it?"
"Jee took a little longer, but it's not that early." Maddie tests the formula against her wrist, then circles the table to scoop Robbie out of his arms and fit the nipple against his mouth. Robbie grabs at the bottle with both hands and a satisfied grunt as Maddie settles him into the crook of her arm and then fixes Buck with a look. "So, are you going to tell me what's going on with you?"
"Nothing's going on with me," Buck says. "I'm great. Work is great. Life is great."
"Uh huh," Maddie says. "Buck."
"Okay, okay, so it's been an adjustment, whatever. I don't know what Chim told you."
"Just that you've been having a hard time with it, the same as him."
"He's the captain, it's not the same."
"Interim captain," Maddie says, with a faint, wry smile.
"Yeah, that's what he keeps saying. Is he ever going to go for the exam?"
"We've talked about it," Maddie says repressively. "Anyway, I was asking about you."
"Like I said, I'm fine." Buck shrugs, looking down at his half-full cup of tea. Maddie's got these novelty tea bags that look like goldfish swimming in the golden depths, a faint peachy fragrance rising up. "Ravi's a good partner."
"But you miss Eddie," Maddie finishes.
"I don't miss Eddie," Buck says, and even he can hear the defensiveness in it. "He lives twenty minutes away, we work together every day. It's not like he's still in Texas."
"Right."
Buck frowns at his cup, then takes a sip of his lukewarm tea, just starting to go bitter from oversteeping. He fishes the tea bag out, the delicate webs of the fish's fins plastered into a sad little lump around the sodden tea leaves when he sets it down on the saucer.
"Things have been weird since he got back," he admits. He hasn't exactly admitted why they're so weird on his end, but Maddie can probably guess. She probably knew how he felt about Eddie long before he did. "You know, Chris is older now, so that's—and we just. Things are different. And that's before he started—"
He breaks off. Maddie raises her eyebrows at him, shifting Robbie to her other arm so she can swipe absently at the dribble of formula on his chubby little cheek with the cloth slung over her shoulder. The baby ignores them both to chug blissfully on his bottle. Buck envies him deeply.
"Before he started what?" she asks finally.
Buck huffs. There's no way to say this that doesn't sound insane, which is unfair, he thinks. Given that Eddie started it.
"He asked me to marry him," he says. "As friends."
Maddie stares at him for a long moment. Then she says, slowly, "Can you run that by me again?"
Buck pushes his tea back, folds his arms on the table, and puts his face into them with a long, pathetic groan. The tabletop is cool against his cheek. "He's brought it up a couple of times. I don't know. I think he's halfway joking but…"
"But?"
"But I don't know."
"And you're sure he meant it as friends?"
"That's what he said. And he's straight, anyway."
"Is he? I'm just saying, that doesn't sound very—"
"He said," Buck repeats, into the safe darkness of his own elbow, "that we don't have to have sex. He said it'd be good for saving on rent, and, and taxes. And it makes everything easier with Chris, if—"
He breaks off again. Takes a deep breath.
Maddie doesn't know about that. Nobody knows about that, the provision in Eddie's will that Buck wasn't even sure was still there until Eddie brought it up during his first attempt at a proposal. Chris knows, probably. Maybe. Buck hasn't actually asked, because that feels like it would be stepping over one of the invisible lines that Eddie has drawn around their friendship, the ones that he keeps stumbling into no matter how hard he tries to avoid them.
"If?" Maddie asks.
"It doesn't matter." Buck lifts his head, rubbing at his face. He feels sort of weepy, but his eyes are dry. "I-I just—turns out I'm in love with him after all. I guess you probably already knew that. I'm in love with him, and he's straight, and he keeps—and I can't."
Maddie, to her credit, doesn't give him the I told you so that he probably deserves for that one. Her expression softens, unsurprised but sympathetic.
"Oh, Buck," she says gently.
"Don't—don't," Buck says, pathetically. "Please. This is all tragic and embarrassing enough."
"It's not embarrassing," Maddie says, still so gentle. She tugs the bottle out of Robbie's hands before he can start sucking on air, sets it down on the counter as he makes an indignant little squawk. "Here. You can burp him."
"That's your idea of cheering me up?" Buck asks, but he takes both the baby and the burp cloth. Robbie squirms against his chest, grunting restlessly and kicking him with his pointy little toes, and Buck smooths a hand over the back of his head as he settles him against his shoulder. "Getting me covered in spit-up?"
"Whatever works," Maddie says unrepentantly, patting him on the shoulder as she moves back to the stove. "Do you want some more tea?"
"Sure," Buck sighs. He stands up, thumping Robbie gently on the back, the same way he did for Jee when she was this age, before Maddie went to Boston and Chim followed her with Jee, and Buck didn't see any of them for months.
They came back. Eddie came back too, and Buck gets to have dinner with him and Chris at the house on South Bedford, and work with him in the field, and it's good, it's fine. It's enough, or it would be, if Buck could figure out how to stop being so greedy. If Eddie would stop danging things he can't really have just out of reach.
The kettle whistles on the stovetop, and Robbie gives a wet little belch in his ear, and Buck sighs, rests his cheek against his nephew's wispy hair.
"Feel better?" he asks.
"Abababa," Robbie says, bonking his head into Buck's cheekbone with considerable force. "Ba."
Buck pats his back again. "Yeah, well, that makes one of us."
Because Buck is apparently cursed, it's not three days later when they end up transporting a couple for smoke inhalation after their campus apartment caught fire. A man and a woman, early twenties, shiny new rings on their fingers. Grad students, apparently. Broke grad students.
"We only got married in the first place so we could get this place," the woman wails, as Hen tries to maneuver the oxygen mask back onto her face.
"You got married for an apartment?" Buck can't help but ask.
"It's a good location, man," the guy says, through his own mask. He glances back at the smouldering building and soot-stained pavement with mournful eyes. "Fuck knows what I'm gonna do now. You think we can get an annulment? We haven't even had sex."
"You said you didn't want to!" the woman shouts, and then immediately starts coughing.
"I think you both need to stop talking," Hen says, mercifully, as she comes back over with the gurney. Buck helps her load the guy up for transport, and pretends that he can't feel Eddie's eyes on him.
See, he wants to say. Turn, jab a finger at Eddie. Look how well this turned out.
But Eddie doesn't believe in signs from the universe, no matter how blatant. Buck knows that.
"I mean, how is that even a marriage," he says in the back of the engine later, once they're heading back to the station.
"Because they weren't sleeping together?" Eddie asks, frowning, and Buck really should learn to keep his mouth shut, he should, but he's never really got the knack.
"No, because they barely even seemed to like each other!" He flings his hands out. "Who gets married just for campus housing, anyway?"
"Lots of people get married for practical reasons. Nothing wrong with that."
Buck glares at him. Eddie raises his eyebrows, smiling, and Buck briefly contemplates kicking him before deciding to exercise some maturity and self-restraint.
"Come on, don't give us that, Diaz," Chim calls from the front, mercifully oblivious. "You're an incurable romantic and we all know it."
"Where'd you get that idea?"
"Oh, I don't know, the ten minute critique of my plan to propose to Maddie was a clue."
"Well," Eddie says placidly, "your plan sucked."
"It really did suck, Chim," Buck adds. He doesn't know why. He really doesn't need to be encouraging Eddie. But Eddie grins up at him briefly, eyes sparkling, and Buck is stupid for that smile, always has been.
"Joke's on you two, she's the one who proposed after all," Chim says, like they haven't all heard this story a hundred times already, but the way the corners of his mouth still turn up when he says it, affection and wonder and warmth, makes something in Buck's chest twinge painfully.
He's happy for Chim. He's happy for his sister. He is.
Eddie knocks his knee against Buck's, pressing just a little too long for it to be an accident. Buck looks up at him, eyes narrowed, and Eddie laughs under his breath and looks back out the window without another word.
He leaves his knee pressed to Buck's. Buck could move away, but he doesn't.
They're at his place again, pizza half-eaten, beers half-drunk, sharing the couch like they always have. There's a game on TV, but neither of them is really watching it, and Buck's guard is down, like it always seems to be, when Eddie clears his throat and says, "Okay, I gotta ask. Is it just the sex thing?"
He misses the days when he wouldn't have any idea what Eddie was talking about right now. As it is, he contemplates playing dumb just to see if it'll get him out of this conversation, but he knows it won't. They're alone, which was not the plan for the evening. But May's studying for finals and Harry is having dinner with his mom, and Ravi bowed out at the last minute, and it's not like he could just uninvite Eddie once it became clear that it would just be the two of them.
And despite how weird things have been lately, he really has missed this. Or he did, until now. He tilts his beer to his mouth, downing the rest of it, and pushes himself off the couch with the empty bottle.
Eddie follows him into the kitchen, settles against the wall next to the fridge, watching as Buck takes his time about rinsing out his bottle and pulling out the recycle bin. Steady and calm, waiting him out.
"Well?" he says finally.
"Well what," Buck says, still facing the sink.
"Is that it? I mean, it wouldn't be like those two at the call yesterday. We like each other."
"Speak for yourself," Buck mutters. Eddie laughs, and Buck turns, like always, toward the sound. A moth to flame: Eddie leaned against the wall of his kitchen, the sharp edge of his canines as he smiles, beer bottle dangling from his fingers, the light coming in from the window across the room limning him in gold. He's so beautiful, and it's so unfair.
"C'mon, Buck," he says, warm and teasing.
"It's not just the sex thing," Buck says finally, against his better judgement. "But like, yeah, you know, I-I would like to have sex again someday. Kinda hard to do that when you're already married."
"I wouldn't mind," Eddie says easily, and Buck's stomach goes through several acrobatic flips before he adds, "if you wanted to sleep with other people, you know."
"I can already sleep with other people without being married to you," Buck retorts, rubbing at his sternum, where something aches. For a second, he really thought that Eddie was saying…
God, he's stupid. He's so stupid and this recent fixation of Eddie's isn't helping. Maybe he should go out on the town, find a guy or a girl and have a quick, mindless, meaningless fuck in the backseat of someone's car or an unfamiliar bed. Bobby would judge him for it, but, well, Bobby's gone. And maybe it would be nice to be reminded that some people actually want him, if only for a night.
"Yeah, but that's not, you know, permanent." Eddie shrugs, and because he's never had any trouble going for the jugular, he adds, "You want something permanent."
"I want something real," Buck snaps. It comes out sharp, louder than he intends; Eddie recoils a little, like he wasn't expecting that, but he rallies fast enough.
"What, you don't think it's real? What we have?"
"I think we're best friends and you're straight."
"So what?"
"So maybe I want someone who wants me! Maybe I don't want to be some fucking—charity case, maybe I don't want you trying to do me some kind of fucking favor because you don't think I can find anyone else who'll keep me around—"
"Never said that," Eddie says.
"Yeah, you didn't need to."
"So, what, you really won't marry me unless we can—" Eddie waves a hand in a vaguely obscene illustration that would probably be hilarious if Buck were any less frustrated right now.
"I never said that," he retorts. "Look, can we drop it?"
"I'm just trying to understand," Eddie says, in a measured, patient tone like Buck is an overwrought child.
"I don't want to be married to someone who doesn't even want to kiss me, Eddie! Sue me!"
Eddie blinks at him. Then his expression takes on a familiar truculence that makes Buck's heart sink.
"Fine," he says, leaning back against the wall, eyes glittering, expression challenging. "Kiss me, then."
"What?" Buck yelps.
"Kiss me," Eddie repeats, and oh, does Buck wish he was hearing those words in literally any other context than this. "You said before that it's not that different from kissing women, right? So what's the big deal? One kiss, prove your point, and we'll be done."
"What fucking point am I even trying to prove?"
"That it's a bad idea." Eddie spreads his hands like he's made a winning summation in a TV courtroom, and not an argument that even Buck knows is abject nonsense. "Which it's not."
What are we measuring here, Eddie? he thinks, but there's something dangerous thrumming beneath his skin, a sharp edge he hasn't been able to pull back from this whole time. He should laugh it off. Again. He should stomp out, maybe—even if it is his apartment. Eddie will get the hint eventually.
Instead, he says, "You know what? Fine," and turns the water off.
Eddie lifts his chin a little, and Buck has surely lost his entire fucking mind, because his feet are moving in the wrong direction; he stalks across the room, shoves Eddie against the wall, and kisses him on the lips.
It's hard, almost punishing, a single rough press of his mouth to Eddie's that feels more like pushing on a bruise than any of the tender, heated kisses he's tried so hard not to fantasize about. Eddie strains against him, hand coming up to clutch Buck's arm hard enough that Buck can't tell if he's about to drag him in or shove him off, but it doesn't matter either way, because Buck lets go before he can do anything even stupider. He steps back, breathing hard, and swipes a hand over his mouth.
"Happy now?" he snaps, or tries to snap, but it comes out ragged, uneven. Miserable. Fuck.
Eddie stares at him, his eyes huge. And Buck—can feel it cracking, whatever this was, whatever they are, he can feel it cracking between them, and he's about to stumble back, flee the apartment even if it is his place, when Eddie sets his beer down on the counter, unsteady enough that it topples over, spilling the dregs across the light gray surface, and grabs Buck by the arm, dragging him in.
Eddie's mouth is hot against his, and Buck kisses back before he can catch up with himself, sinks into it: the slick heat, Eddie's hand gripping his arm hard enough to bruise, Eddie kissing him. Not a chaste little press of lips, either: this feels like Eddie is trying to swallow him whole. He hauls Buck closer, and Buck lets himself be hauled, lets himself press Eddie against the wall, one hand braced against the rough plaster, one hand on Eddie's jaw, tilting him up into the kiss. Eddie's hand is in his hair, rough, tugging, steering Buck where he wants him, and then he bites on Buck's lower lip, hard.
Buck lets out a noise he never expected to make in Eddie's presence, and Eddie does it again, and Buck presses closer, pinning Eddie to the wall by the hips and the shoulders, caging him with his body, close enough that he can feel Eddie's cock against his thigh.
"Fuck," he breathes, his hips hitching.
"Shut up," Eddie mutters, "shut up, shut up, just—"
He kisses Buck again, and doesn't shove him off, even though he's got to be able to feel that Buck's hard, too. He's pulling him in instead, grinding up against him, swallowing the noise Buck makes as his hips roll again, a slow, dirty grind dragging his cock against Buck's leg, his breath hot as he pants against Buck's mouth, and god, it's the worst idea Buck has ever had in a long, long track record of bad ideas, but he can't make himself stop.
"Yeah," he breathes, and he dips his head to kiss down Eddie's strong jaw, stubble against his mouth, to bite at the tender hollow of his throat. Eddie whines, tilting his head back to give Buck access, one hand fisted in his hair to hold him in place, the other one dropping to his hip to drag him in, and Buck spares a thought to wish he could see Eddie, really see him, but he can't bring himself to pull back, to put the brakes on this at all. It feels like something that might pop like a soap bubble if he even looks at it, so he doesn't: instead, he tucks his face into the hollow of Eddie's throat and lets Eddie guide him, hitching his hips until he finds the perfect angle, his underwear a slick-rough drag around the head of his cock as he works his hips, faster and faster.
"Yeah," Eddie says, rough and quick. "Yeah come on, come on," and he drags Buck up into a kiss, and Buck shudders against him, gasping into his mouth, and comes like that a moment later, hot and messy against Eddie's body.
"Fuck," he breathes, sagging and dazed. "Oh, fuck."
Eddie lets out a ragged little noise, and Buck blinks at him, dazed. His mouth is so red, and his cheeks are red, and his hair is a mess, and he's still hard, Buck can feel it, hot and pulsing against his hip.
"Eddie," he breathes, and Eddie hitches against him, bites his lip, his hips shifting like he can't help it. And it's a bad idea probably—definitely—but Buck's brain isn't really back online yet, so he dips his head to kiss Eddie again and works a hand down between them, pressing his palm against the stiff heat of Eddie's cock.
Eddie's hips move. Hitch up into the pressure, as Buck grinds his palm down, wrapping his fingers around Eddie's cock as well as he can with his pants still in the way. It's not much of a handjob, not really, and it doesn't seem to matter, because Eddie hauls him back into a messy kiss that doesn't really break, just turns into them panting hotly into each other's mouths as Eddie ruts against his palm and curses under his breath and comes in hot pulses that soak through his tight cargo pants, smear against Buck's palm.
For a moment, they just breathe together. Then Eddie tenses, and Buck pulls back, puts some space between them, and they stare at each other like that, in Buck's kitchen, sweaty and breathless. The air smells like sex, and Buck's got beard burn on his chin and the taste of Eddie's mouth still lingering.
"Fuck," Eddie breathes, wide-eyed, and then turns even redder. He looks like a mess. He looks fucking debauched, leaned against the wall with his red cheeks and his messy hair and the wetness spreading on his pants where he came against Buck's hand, just now.
"I," Buck says, and then stops. He's usually pretty good at words, or at least tipping a lot of them out of his mouth until his point gets across, but right now he's got nothing. "I—I'm sorry."
"It's not, uh," Eddie says, pushing himself upright. He tugs at the front of his pants, then blushes even harder.
"You wanna borrow a pair of sweatpants?" Buck blurts stupidly.
"I, um," Eddie says, blinking rapidly. "Yeah. Please."
"Okay," Buck breathes, and then he turns and flees into the bedroom, pulling the door shut behind him for just a moment so he can hyperventilate in the quiet dimness there.
"What the fuck," he breathes, pulling his dresser drawer open. Sweatpants on the top pile; he digs out a pair with a drawstring, because Eddie's leaner than him. Debates grabbing underwear for a long moment. The idea of Eddie wearing his underwear is almost as bad as the idea of Eddie freeballing it in his pants; there's no winning this one.
"Fuck," Buck says again, and piles underwear on top. He almost goes back out like that, before he remembers the state of his own pants. Blushing, he pulls the zipper open, peels the sticky denim and cotton away from his skin, presses a palm briefly to his bare cock, like, what the fuck.
What the fuck, indeed. He's pretty sure, if he's not hallucinating it, that he just had sex with his best friend against his kitchen wall. If it even counts as sex, given that neither of them even got their pants off. That's a kind of sex he hasn't had since he was like fifteen or so, so he's not sure.
It probably counts as sex. Something close to it, anyway. He came in his pants with Eddie grinding against him, kissing him. He made Eddie come, felt it, still has the faint stickiness of it on his hand.
There's a package of wipes next to the bed, and he uses them to clean up before he can do something ridiculous and pathetic like lick his palm and see if he can still taste Eddie on him. He pulls on clean underwear and sweatpants and throws his soiled clothes at the laundry. His skin still feels oversensitive, stinging, like he's been scrubbed raw and new.
Eddie isn't in the kitchen when he comes back out, but the bathroom door is shut, the water running. Buck crosses over to it, hesitates, clutching the pile of clothes in one hand, then knocks tentatively.
"Yeah?" Eddie says roughly from the other side of the door.
"I, uh, I have clothes. For you."
"Oh," Eddie says.
"I can, uh, leave them—"
The door swings open. Eddie's in his t-shirt and boxer briefs, his pants kicked off. Buck doesn't mean to look down, but he does. The fabric of Eddie's briefs is dark, but he can still see where it's wet and clinging.
When he glances up, Eddie is blushing, hard. Buck holds out the pile of clothes. "Um. Here."
"Thanks," Eddie says, and takes them.
"I can, uh—" Buck hooks a thumb over his shoulder.
"You don't have to," Eddie says. He glances up at Buck, opens his mouth like he's going to say something else, then takes a deep breath and shoves his underwear off. Buck averts his eyes, blushing, even though it's nothing he hasn't seen before, after eight years of sharing locker room showers with the guy. But it feels very new, as Eddie runs a washcloth under the faucet and cleans himself off, and Buck's eyes get caught briefly on a stream of water sliding down Eddie's strong thigh before he averts his gaze again. He feels clumsy and ridiculous, standing in the doorway like this, face burning, and whatever Eddie said he should definitely leave, but he can't get his feet to move.
Eddie reaches for the towel slung over the shower door handle, dries himself off, then abruptly starts snickering.
"What?" Buck asks.
"Nothing. Nothing!" He's laughing outright now. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, just—"
He waves a hand at himself—bare-assed, dick out, in socks and a t-shirt in Buck's bathroom, and okay, yeah, Buck can see the humor in that, just a little. He snorts, and Eddie glances up at him with his cheeks bright red and his eyes sparkling with laughter as he reaches for the boxer briefs on top of the pile, and they're both laughing now: Buck braces a hand against the doorframe and laughs until he's breathless, watching Eddie hop on one foot when the sweatpants get tangled around his ankle. He finally gets them on and tugs the drawstring tight, but the hems are long enough to drag around his heel, and that seems hilarious, too.
"Those don't fit you," Buck gasps.
"Yeah, well, you saw what happened to my pants," Eddie retorts, and starts laughing again. "Jesus. Okay. Come on."
"I don't—Jesus Christ, Eddie."
"This wasn't my plan. I swear."
"I fucking hope not," Buck retorts, and he should be mad, still—he wants to be mad, a little bit, but the laughter keeps bubbling up, now at the embarrassed, faintly hangdog expression on Eddie's face as he rubs sheepishly at his eyebrow.
"I didn't know—I didn't know," Eddie says, and he takes a deep breath, and Buck stills.
"What—uh, what do you mean, you didn't know?" he asks carefully.
"This, us, I didn't know. Had the idea, figured you'd go along with it. Then you didn't, and I—" Eddie stops, then says, ruefully, "I might be an idiot, actually."
"I'm not—" Buck pauses, takes a deep breath of his own. Us, Eddie said. "I—I couldn't. Not if it wasn't real."
Eddie nods, chewing the inside of his lip. Doesn't argue the wording this time around. "What if it was real?"
Buck huffs. "You're not asking me to marry you again right now, are you?"
"No," Eddie says, and meets Buck's eyes. He's holding onto his deadpan so tightly that Buck can see the nerves bleeding through more easily than if Eddie were screaming.
It's the first time since this started that he's seemed nervous about any of it.
"No?" Buck asks softly.
"No," Eddie repeats. He nods, and takes a breath, and says, "I was thinking about asking you out on a date instead. Think you might say yes to that?"
"I might," Buck says breathlessly.
"Yeah?" Eddie asks. He's starting to smile, standing there in Buck's bathroom, wearing Buck's sweatpants, still blushing. There's a mark on the side of his throat from Buck's mouth. Ten minutes ago, five feet away from here, Buck kissed him, and he kissed back.
"I—I would, yeah, I would like to go on a date with you."
"Okay," Eddie says, and nods, a little stupidly. It's endearing, Buck thinks. "Good."
"Yeah. And um. Maybe a do-over? On the first kiss?"
Eddie starts laughing again. It's soft, this time, without the faintly hysterical edge of before. Just warmth now. Buck smiles helplessly back.
"I don't know, I think it worked out pretty well," he says, but he steps forward into Buck's space anyway, pulls him in.