Archive of Our Own ^beta

"I wanted to see him so bad that I didn't even dare imagine him anymore."
— PARIS, TEXAS (dir. Wenders, 1984)

now those memories come back to haunt me, they haunt me like a curse
is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?
— THE RIVER by Bruce Springsteen.

BUCK.

Buck helps Eddie clean house.

They’ve been at it for weeks, at least half a dozen evenings defined by Eddie’s playlist on shuffle, the acrid smell of the cardboard boxes bought from Home Depot, hot melted cheese slipping off slices of pizza and six-packs of beer. Buck approaches it all with a sort of cold acceptance. Someone’s gotta do it. Why not him? Most of the time it gives him something to do besides focusing on the inevitable conclusion that’s hurtling towards him. Other times it feels like cruel self-flagellation, an exercise in pain tolerance. How long can he take it — wrapping each of Eddie’s dishes in newspaper, cushioning the space between them with paper towels, feeling closer and closer to losing his best friend with each metal fork, each ceramic mug, each glass plate.

Because that’s the truth, no matter how hard Buck is trying to pretend that it’s not staring him in the face: Eddie is leaving. Eddie is moving to Texas. Eddie is leaving Buck behind. Whenever Buck thinks about it for too long he feels like he’s being swallowed by a black hole.

It lives cavernous in his chest, unending and unfeeling as it devours, a yawning maw of endless pitch dark. Buck’s read the Wikipedia article on spaghettification, he knows what happens when you cross the event horizon. Time passes differently around a fallen star. To watch someone succumb to it is to watch them exist on its edge forever, to be the one to succumb to it is to watch the entire long life left in the universe, up to and including its inescapable heat death. What might be seen, in the ending of everything? There were once things Buck thought he could be sure of, and now he feels like he can’t be sure of anything.

When Buck was a baby, his brother died. Daniel took a lot of things with him when he left, things Buck didn’t realise he was missing until they were already gone. He often wondered what it was like, to live in those moments now lost to time; for his parents, for Maddie, for Daniel, for the version of Buck that wasn’t even capable of conscious thought. His brother, sick and dying, and him, the squirrelling infant who couldn’t save him. Did Daniel resent him? Did he spare Buck any thought at all? Did he ever hold Buck in his arms, touch him skin to skin. They were brothers, mirror traps; parts of them would always be the same, whether they willed it or no. There were pieces of Buck inside of his brother when he died, in his bones. Could he feel it? Did it offer him comfort? Did it offer him nothing, as all other things involving Buck seemingly did?

Daniel was the first person to really leave. It was so early in both of their lives, before either of them were even given the chance to know one another; it’s been a repeating pattern in Buck’s life ever since. People walk into his life, linger for a while, and then always find the door-marked-exit. Like Daniel set the standard.

So Eddie is leaving. So of course he is. Here one moment and gone the next. Except it wasn’t just one moment, it was seven years of moments, moments that mattered, moments that wove themselves into Buck’s skin, stuck between his teeth and lived sentient inside of him. Buck loves Eddie, in ways he can name and even more ways he can’t. He loves Eddie’s kid too, and this whole accidental family he has somehow ended up a part of, despite never quite feeling like he deserved it. And what more proof could there be that he doesn’t; the fact that they were always going to pull away from him anyway? The last one left in the house with the porch light still on.

Buck will never know what his life might have been like with Daniel in it. He knows exactly what his life is like with Eddie and Christopher in it. And it’s not the same, of course, nor is it a competition but, well, one of those absolute truths hurts more than the other right now.

Bobby and Athena throw a going away party in the backyard of their new home. It’s warm and sweet and melancholy. What a beautiful thing — to show Eddie all these people who love him — and how sad, for this to be the reason why. Every smile Eddie wears throughout the evening tears into Buck’s chest like a wild animal. He can picture the trauma in his head, he has seen it with his own eyes before: strips of flesh so bright red it’s hard to believe they’re real, the blood crimson as it pulses through the wounds with each heartbeat.

Buck’s thoughts spiral, circling and circling like birds, as they have for weeks. Eddie needs his help. Eddie is moving away. Eddie is leaving him. Eddie isn’t leaving him, not for the sake of it, he just wants to be close to Christopher. Eddie didn’t ask Buck to go with him. Buck didn’t ask Eddie to stay. Eddie didn’t ask for Buck’s help. Maybe he never wanted it. Buck’s helping him run away faster. He was always going to go anyway. Eddie has so much stuff. Eddie needs his help.

Eddie. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, the birds caw in his brain, a warning call and wail of mourning all in one.

Eddie leaves on a Tuesday, and he doesn’t even let Buck say goodbye.

On Saturday, Buck seals another box with tape while Eddie talks to him about renting a moving truck. They collapse into the couch afterwards and finish the six-pack in the fridge. Buck’s drunker than he meant to be, tittering on the edge of tipsy, drunker than he should be. His head is such a mess.

Buck looks at Eddie. Eddie’s not looking at him. They’ve both sunken into the cushions beneath them, limp as puppets with the strings cut, and nothing is playing on the TV. Music warbles low in the background and the song goes is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse. With nowhere left to go, Buck stays with Eddie.

“This is it, isn’t it?” Buck says. His head is tilted, resting on the back of the couch.

Eddie turns to face him, “what do you mean?”

“You’re really leaving.”

Eddie’s expression does not change, not really, but Buck swears he can see it when the sadness seeps in. Buck imagines if could just crack the mask and peel back the layers, there’d be something lying deeper, something Buck might want to know. But, then again, something he might not.

“Not — not yet,” Eddie says, and what he means is not today. Not tonight, not tomorrow, maybe not the next day but — “but soon. Yeah.”

And, well, that’s that. They’ve danced around the subject for weeks, sidestepped the elephant in the room of every conversation. Buck helped Eddie fold all his clothes into boxes. He used a marker to write words like KITCHEN and EDDIE’S STUFF and CHRISTOPHER’S ROOM in big block letters on cardboard. He thought the world would wait and he thought wrong.

(Buck told Maddie that Eddie was leaving in her kitchen. It was late, pitch-dark. There were stockings hung in the living room. She had looked at him, face so sad, and said, you could always ask him to stay, like it was all somehow that clear-cut. They had abandoned the chance of that long ago. It was never going to be that simple ever again. Anyone I’ve ever asked to stay has always just left anyway, Buck thought to himself in Maddie’s kitchen, in her family home. That’s not what he said to her. What he said to her was he’s doing it for his kid, for Christopher, I can’t force him to choose. And Maddie had nodded, smiling though she still looked so, so sad.)

There’s a lot of things Buck could say now that he’s been presented with the opportunity. There’s a lot of things he doesn’t know how to say, a lot of things he doesn’t even know how to begin figuring out how to say. Words loose themselves like arrows across Buck’s mind, and none of them ever find their target. So Buck does what he does when words fail him: he acts.

Eddie’s mouth is soft and warm and tastes like beer when Buck kisses him. If Buck had let himself imagine this (which he almost never did, too terrified of what it would mean if he let himself in the daylight; reserved it for the darkest times of night in the deepest parts of his own brain), this wouldn’t be the version of events he would have predicted. And yet: Buck can’t help the way he feels like he’s existed here before, a hundred years from now and a hundred years ago. He carved this space for himself and forgot all about it, and now here it is, waiting for him. Eddie’s whole body goes rigid in surprise, but then he sighs and sinks into it — into Buck’s mouth and into Buck’s body and into Buck’s space. An orbit he can’t escape, pulled by the force of gravity. In Buck’s wildest dreams, he’ll allow himself to consider that maybe if tried hard enough, he might have been able to find a way to make Eddie stay. In the real world, in this second, Buck runs from the thought like it’s chasing him.

He can’t do it to himself. He can’t do it to Eddie.

The world doesn’t wait for Buck but Eddie does. Waits for Buck to deepen the kiss, to take this from the fringes of innocence into something more hot and heavy, opening his mouth under the insistent pressure of Buck’s tongue against his teeth. Buck licks in greedily, unsure if he could ever have enough to truly drink his fill. The room is spinning but it’s not from the beer. It’s all heat and sparks, fire and electricity, the reality of consuming and being consumed. Buck puts his hands against Eddie’s stomach, under his t-shirt, and presses with intent, like he wants to slip beneath Eddie’s skin and live there with him.

Buck can recognise his feelings are intense. He can feel them bubbling up inside of him, a volcano at the point of eruption, shooting fat molten globs of magma. Everything threatens to slide right out of Buck’s mouth, but he keeps it all inside; locks it up tight, pushes Eddie back against the cushions of the couch and bites into the fleshiest part of his bottom lip, swallows the words one by one down the back of his throat.

Buck is hard. He cups the shape of Eddie through his jeans and finds him just the same. It sends a thrill through Buck, concentrated at the base of his spine until it travels to all his extremities. He feels Eddie in his bloodstream, rushing through him, filling him up. Eddie whines, high and tinny, and Buck ducks his head to bite the curve of Eddie’s jaw. He lets Eddie rut into his hand for a little bit, content to keep himself busy nibbling and sucking at the flesh of Eddie’s throat. He leaves no marks but there is this beet-red blush on Eddie’s face that travels down the slope of his body and disappears past the collar of his shirt. Buck wants to know where exactly that pretty colour stops. He pulls Eddie’s shirt roughly over his head in pursuit of the answer.

It doesn’t really stop, just fades away into splotches that paint themselves all across Eddie’s chest and his abdomen. Buck is possessed by the deep urge to put his mouth on all of it, every stretch of crimson-flushed skin.

Eddie whines, wordless as he tugs on the hem of Buck’s t-shirt. Buck gets the hint, sheds the piece of clothing, and matches Eddie in his nakedness. He folds his body back over Eddie’s, lining up their hips, and then it’s just hot-seared skin on hot-seared skin and the meeting of their wet mouths.

Neither of them have said a word, not since the kissing started. Something about the moment feels so precious, so delicate, that even a single word might shatter the glass and turn it all back into sand in Buck’s hands. It’s okay. They don’t need to talk. Physicality is straightforward. Words just complicate things.

Except Eddie moans, ”Buck,” against his lip like it’s being wrung out of him and it makes Buck’s guts twist up tight. Eddie sounds wrecked, and that’s just from rubbing his hard cock against Buck’s palm. He’s not even naked, still wearing his pants and his underwear. Buck needs all of it off so badly, needs Eddie splayed out and needy below him, at his mercy, in the palm of his hand, letting go. Of everything, of all of it, of every moment that came before this and every moment that will come after. If Eddie can’t stay, at least Buck can have this.

“You need to take your pants off,” Buck insists, already fumbling with Eddie’s button and fly. Eddie hastily jumps into help. Their knuckles bump, and they get in each other’s way, but neither of them are willing to give up any second not dedicated to the pursuit. Buck watches Eddie’s jeans slide down the meat of his thighs and his mouth feels dry.

“Can I suck you off?” Buck asks, unable to help himself. He dips forward and nuzzles the tent of Eddie’s dick through his boxers with his nose, breathes hot air over the fabric. The couch groans when Eddie grips the cushions tighter.

“I — yes — fuck — please,” Eddie’s speaking like the words are being pulled out him with fishing line, crawling up his esophagus and forcing their way passed his lips. He’s so red all over, pretty and sexy and cute and, fuck, Buck would do anything for him. Climb a mountain, run into a burning building, brave sniper fire. Suck his brains out through his cock.

Buck is shackled to his baser instincts. His mouth moves without him needing to will it. “I wanna swallow your load.”

Eddie keens, every morsel of air punched out of his lungs. “Yes, yes, okay, please. Buck, I can’t wait any longer —”

Buck pulls Eddie’s cock out of his boxers and spits on it. He smears the wetness across the head, mixes it with the precome leaking from the tip of Eddie’s dick. It glistens, glittery in the living room light. Buck wants to taste it. He wants Eddie to taste it more.

He swipes back and forth over Eddie’s cock head a few more times, listening to the way Eddie’s breath hitches, until the pad of Buck’s thumb is nice and wet. Satisfied, Buck switches hands, grips Eddie’s dick at the bottom with the opposite. His thumb, glazed and dewy with bodily fluids, finds its way to Eddie’s mouth, parts his lips, and presses down against his tongue. Buck flicks his other wrist, jerks Eddie’s cock hard and fast, and Eddie groans deeply around his full mouth.

Buck pulls his finger away and replaces it with his tongue. He imagines the taste of Eddie’s mouth is the taste of the two of them, leaving pieces inside each other. Buck thinks about imprinting his teeth in Eddie’s neck, about engraving the shapes in his fingerprints into the skin of Eddie’s hips. He wants to leave a mark so deep it’ll never fade. He wants it bright purple and big, something Eddie will notice every single day.

He settles for slithering down the length of Eddie’s body and biting bruises into the flesh of Eddie’s thighs instead. There’s so many places for Buck to put his mouth, so many inches of skin yet unexplored by his tongue and spit and teeth. Buck needs to feed on every part of him, to drink Eddie’s sweat and taste his come.

“Lost my train of thought,” Buck looks up at Eddie through his lashes from between Eddie’s thighs. “I was gonna put your cock in my mouth,” he says, and then he does.

Buck sucks Eddie’s cock as far back as he can take it on the first go, eager to adjust to the girth. He wants to have his cake and he wants to eat it too, wants this to last forever and yet can’t bear the thought of not giving it to Eddie as hard and as fast as he can. He’s waited so long. Too long. They both have.

Eddie’s put one hand in Buck’s hair, tugging gently when Buck gags on him. The other he uses to dig his nails into his own thigh. Buck slides his palm slowly up the length of Eddie’s leg, his throat still open around Eddie’s cock, and when Buck passes over Eddie’s knee and their fingers brush, Buck threads them together.

Buck is half-hanging off the couch, one ankle thrown over the arm behind him and one foot planted firmly on the floor. It’s not really that comfortable, but it does give Buck a good angle to rut against the couch cushions, to rush after some relief for his achingly hard dick. He loves watching Eddie unspool. Loves watching his head tilt back and expose the column of his throat, loves to hear it when a deep groan rumbles through his chest, loves it when he whines and goes beat red in the aftermath. God, Buck could give him so much more. He could give Eddie everything. He could love him, if only Eddie would let him.

“Buck, I’m gonna,” Eddie chokes on the next word. His fist tightens in Buck’s hair. Buck swallows Eddie’s cock until it bumps the back of his throat. He sucks hard, hollowing his cheeks, and then pulls all the way off.

“Don’t come yet,” he tells Eddie, smirking something deadly. Eddie is looking at him with equal parts affront and desire. “Want you to come on my dick.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, kinda sheepish.

Buck furrows his brow. “We don’t have to—” he starts to backtrack.

“No, no,” Eddie rests his hand against Buck’s sternum. It’s so close to where he would have pushed down, over and over, to get Buck’s heart beating again. “I wanna. I just didn’t,” Eddie bites his lip. “Didn’t know if we were gonna get there tonight.”

How does Buck tell him? That he took one bite of the lotus plant and now he can’t help himself? That if it was only up to him, there’d be no stopping now. That Buck needed to know what it was like to have all of it, to possess it mind and body and soul.

Buck leans into Eddie’s hand on his chest. “Eddie. I wanna be in you so bad.” Their noses touch. Eddie lets out a puff of air, a little half-laugh.

“Okay,” Eddie nods. “Then get in me.”

Buck readjusts. He climbs back onto the couch, positions himself on his knees between Eddie’s spread legs. He takes hold of Eddie’s calves, one in each hand, and pulls him forward, until Eddie’s nestled up real close, the thickness of Buck’s cock nearly pressed against the cleft of Eddie’s ass. Buck drags his hands up the back of Eddie’s legs, tilting his hips up slightly so he can grip the band of Eddie’s boxers and pull them off his legs. Eddie helps him without being directed, and when his underwear lie in a discard heap on the floor, Buck puts one of Eddie’s legs up on his shoulder. The other curls itself around Buck’s waist, tugging Buck forward, pulling the two of them even closer together.

“Do you have lube?” Buck asks, a little belatedly, considering their current positions. He wasn’t really thinking ahead, just needed all up in Eddie’s space, needed Eddie all up in his space in return.

“In the bedroom,” Eddie replies and Buck feels a slash of envy cut through him shallowly. Eddie tightens his leg around Buck’s hip. “Don’t get up,” he tells Buck, voice too thin to not sound like he’s begging.

Well, that settles it. Buck sucks two fingers into his mouth. Eddie watches him to do it, pupils blown wide, but Buck doesn’t have the patience to put on a show. He gets the digits wet and messy fast, and then immediately presses both against the tight muscle of Eddie’s asshole. Eddie hisses, sucking in a breath so hard it fills his chest, and his thighs fall open a little wider.

The prep is a bit dodgy, all things considered. Buck should take his time, especially without lube, but he can only find it in him to exist in the absolutes. There is no dimmer switch on this, there is only off and on and Buck is definitely fucking on.

Not that Eddie seems to mind. He’s bearing down on Buck’s fingers inside of him, tightening his leg around Buck’s waist periodically. They are both sweaty, but Eddie moreso, his entire body damp and gleaming, just like the head of his cock.

“You are so fucking —” Buck says, gritting his teeth as he works his fingers into Eddie passed the knuckle. “Hot, Eddie. Jesus Christ. I need to fuck you, need to fuck you so bad.”

“Buck,” Eddie calls his name like a plea, like a prayer. “Do it. I want you to do it. I need it. Need it so bad.”

Buck grips Eddie’s cock with the hand not currently two fingers deep inside of him. He holds it loosely, non-committed as he drags back and forth across Eddie’s heated flesh. Eddie is whining high and long, face folded with layers of pleasure, caught between pushing against Buck’s fingers inside of him and thrusting up into the circle of his hand.

“Buck, please, I’m ready. I need it. I want it so bad.”

“What do you want?” Buck says, and holds his hand still.

Eddie groans, throwing an arm over his face. His chest is heaving. “You can’t —”

“I want you to tell me.”

The moment hangs in the air like a bird on a wire. Eddie lifts his arm to look at Buck. Buck looks back at him, still as he holds Eddie’s cock and presses his fingers inside of him. Eddie wriggles under Buck’s gaze.

“Okay,” Eddie sighs. His cheeks are heating up bright pink and he hasn’t even said anything. “Okay, I — I want you to fuck me. I want your cock. Want it inside me.”

“Yeah?” Buck teases, urging him on.

“Yeah, yes, it’s all I want,” it tumbles out of Eddie the way you stumble down a steep hill. “Want you to fuck me so hard, want you to shoot it so deep inside of me that I’ll be able to taste it.”

“Shit,” Buck breathes. Eddie’s ankle is still balanced on his shoulder. He pulls his fingers out of Eddie’s ass, lets go of his cock and smears precome across the dip in Eddie’s waist when he grabs him there. Buck spits on Eddie’s taint and uses his cock head to drag it across Eddie’s hole. Buck plays with it a little, slaps his cock against Eddie’s entrance, runs the tip back and forth across the fluttering muscle. Again, Buck mixes spit and spunk, until Eddie is as wet and shiny between his ass cheeks as he is everywhere else. And then, and only then, does Buck start to slide home.

All this build-up, and Eddie moans like the intrusion is a complete surprise. Buck revels in it, letting every whimper and whine and shudder wash over him, settle into the growing pit of pleasure in his gut but also someplace deeper, someplace more permanent. He’s going to keep this. He needs to keep something — something of Eddie’s, something from Eddie — or he’s never going to make it alone. Eddie is already halfway gone; all that’s left now is to think of ways to make sure he comes back.

Eddie is so tight. The fingers and spit got him loose enough for Buck to get himself inside, but there’s a distinct difference between the girth of two fingers and the girth of Buck’s hot cock. He knows Eddie is adjusting to him in real time, breaths stuttering and body trembling. Buck turns his head and kisses the knob of Eddie’s ankle where it rests just by his head. It is tender and soft, even as Eddie squeezes tight around Buck’s cock.

“You’re so —” Eddie starts before he cuts himself off. And that won’t do. Buck is greedy. Greedier than he’s ever been before.

“So what?” He challenges Eddie. Buck is not yet fully sheathed inside of him, Eddie’s rim sitting about halfway down the distance of Buck’s dick. Buck holds him open like that, unmoving as he allows Eddie to settle into it. He’s teasing Eddie too, of course, but who could blame him when Eddie looks the way he does, speared apart by Buck’s cock?

“Big, fuck — Buck, you’re so big,” Eddie stutters, like he’s mad about it or something. Like he’s not falling apart and dick-stupid.

“You gonna take all of it for me, baby?” Buck snaps his hips, forcing himself deeper inside of Eddie. Each moment before this had been a slow, torturous crawl; Eddie is unprepared when Buck’s cock jumps so suddenly further up inside of him. “Gonna let me give you every inch of my cock?”

“Shit. Yeah, Buck, yeah. Make me take it. Make me take all of it. Wanna feel you for days.”

Buck grips Eddie by the hips to pull him down against his cock as he drives it forward. Slides his cock into Eddie up to the hilt. Eddie snaps like a rubber band: digs his heel into the base of Buck’s spine, grips into the couch cushions until his knuckles go white, moans through a chorus of ah-ah-ah’s as Buck fucks into him, each of them louder and more broken than the last.

Buck slams into Eddie like a freight train, over and over, until Eddie has to put an arm over his head to keep it from knocking against the arm rest. Once Buck gets moving, he can’t slow down, taken by the way Eddie’s whole body rocks back and forth against him, the way his cock spurts come through all of it, the way his body bends towards and away from the intrusion. If Buck had known this was a way to make the world stop around him, maybe he’d have done it sooner. But who is he kidding? He never could have done this sooner. He had to be forced into a corner, into an inevitability, to even allow himself to bring the thoughts forward into the light. He thinks, sickeningly, that if Eddie wasn’t moving to Texas this never would have happened.

“Fuck, I —” Eddie sounds spread thin, taut like piano wire, like a bow string. “I wanna come. Can I come?”

“Shit, Eddie, you wanna come on just my cock? Huh? I’ve barely touched yours.”

“I know, I know,” Eddie blabbers. Buck swells with pride, to see Eddie so wrecked at the mercy of Buck’s cock and his mouth and his hands. “I’m gonna — I wanna — you gotta let me, Buck, please.”

God, he’s so fucking perfect. Perfect for Buck, every single inch of him. Made for him inside and out, like Buck dreamt him up, or made him in a lab. Except better because he’s real. Except worse, because in the end none of that matters. If this were a better story, maybe it could.

“Do it, Eddie. You can come. Come on my cock and get yourself all wet and messy so I can see.”

“Oh my god, Buck, fuck,” and that does it. Eddie blows his load, shooting in an arc across his own stomach. Buck can’t resist: he slides his hand through it, spreads it across Eddie’s abdomen and up, further and further, across his pecs and all the way to the base of his throat.

Buck feels the familiar threads of the apex of his pleasure wrap themselves around him. They tug, at his wrists and ankles and deep in his guts. “Where do you want it?” He asks Eddie, trying to hold off until he gets his answer.

“On me, c’mon, mess me up, Buck,” Eddie slurs, voice threadbare as he comes down from his own orgasm.

Buck groans. He mourns the loss of the feeling of Eddie clenched around his cock, for just a moment. But then he’s leaning forward as he jerks it, getting as close to Eddie as he can and Eddie eggs him on the whole time. He says yes and come on and give it to me and please. Buck captures Eddie’s mouth, sucks on his tongue, and comes in a surge across Eddie’s chest.

They’re still kissing as Buck’s dick goes limp in his own grip, body sagging. Eddie’s leg slips off his shoulder but Buck remains in the brackets of Eddie’s thighs.

“I —” Eddie starts when they finally pull away.

“Can’t believe we just did that?” Buck supplies with a chuckle.

Eddie tilts his head, expression odd for a blink-and-you-will-miss it second, before his mouth tilts up in one corner. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Wow.”

On Sunday, Buck’s parents visit unexpectedly after they find out Maddie’s pregnant. Buck texts Eddie to tell him he can’t make it that night and Eddie texts back, no biggie, it’s almost finished anyway.

Later, Buck will regret not asking what Eddie meant by that. In the moment, the words feel different, make Buck’s chest feel sticky, but he brushes it off. Later, he will wish he didn’t. But that’s later, because first:

On Wednesday morning, Buck pulls into Eddie’s driveway with a take-out coffee in each of his two cup holders. Eddie’s truck is not in the driveway, and there are no curtains hung in the windows. Buck’s heart sinks until it crash lands somewhere near his feet.

If he was smarter, he’d let it lie. He’d take the hint and leave it at that, make do with the half-truth. Let himself cling to the sliver of hope, to whatever modicum of faith he has left in the man who is supposed to be his best friend.

His best friend, who is leaving. His best friend, who left.

As is Buck’s ultimate curse, he always has to prove it to himself. It’s not like really matters; either option will torture him in equal measure. He crosses the space from the driveway to the front window like a man on his way to the gallows.

Buck peers inside. The house is empty.

For one long, horrible moment, Buck thinks he might start crying, the angry tears of heated betrayal. He climbs back into his Jeep and sits, still parked in the driveway of a home that was once Eddie’s but isn’t anymore, staring at his phone. The coffee is cooling in the cupholders. Eddie’s most recent text mocks him. Buck feels the familiar bubbling of feelings he’s used to, threatening to pour themselves over, but he doesn’t cry. He slams his fist into the steering wheel, hard and fast, and tries to block out everything but the ache it leaves in his knuckles. The outburst embarasses him, even with no one around, and then Buck does cry. Just a few tears, but still, they burn hot trails down his cheeks. Buck wipes them away fiercely. The last time Buck cried over Eddie, Eddie was recovering from a gunshot wound in a hospital bed. Somehow, this feels worse.

It takes days for Buck to decide what he’s going to say.

You didn’t even let me say goodbye.

It takes two months for him to get a reply.

I’m sorry.

I hope you can still forgive me.

Buck knows he can; it’s as simple as breathing, as inevitable as the beating of his heart. His body would lead him to it even without his permission. It’ll go on forever until it doesn’t and by then it won’t matter to him, because he’ll be dead.

It is not immediately mended without time to heal. Much like a broken bone, it needs to be set, first, and then left alone. Buck doesn’t reply to Eddie’s text message right away, no matter how badly he wants to. There’s another urge below that — one to even the playing field — so Buck makes Eddie wait three days.

But there was never any doubt. Not really. Buck was always going to let him back in.

You’re forgiven, Buck replies. How’s El Paso?

Eddie doesn’t have much to share about Texas. Buck has to probe him with question after question, and Eddie hardly has more than one-worded answers to offer. He hates the weather. The food is better. His parents are alright, most of the time. Sometimes they talk about Christopher, but Eddie’s not any more forthcoming with information regarding that situation either. And thus: they speak mostly of frivolous things. Buck fills Eddie in on the comings-and-goings of the people he left behind at the 118, the revolving door of firefighters they’ve brought in to replace him. We’ll never find someone as good as you, Buck tells Eddie and he means it.

Time passes, as it inevitably does, and their correspondence flourishes naturally. They pass sans-issue from casual messages every so often to daily, constant communication without Buck even really noticing, not until all of the sudden it’s been two months, and they’re talking about breakfast cereal preferences early one morning and Eddie, out of the blue, says:

You should come visit.

Buck rereads the text a dozen times before he can let himself believe it’s real. Then, okay. Then, maybe early next month?

Then, ten minutes later, Buck sends Eddie a screenshot of his flight information. Eddie reacts to it with a heart.

The sun is blazing when Buck lands at El Paso International. The air is different here. Dusty, and with a distinct lack of proximity to the ocean. It makes Buck itchy under his skin, a place he can’t scratch.

Eddie is waiting for him at Arrivals. They made the plans for Eddie to pick Buck up over FaceTime. It had been the first time Buck had heard Eddie’s voice or seen his face in motion in months. Buck had asked him, “will you make me a sign? Y’know, like, Buck Buckley, in big letters.”

Eddie had laughed. “I’ll make one that says ‘precious cargo’ instead.”

Eddie isn’t holding a sign. Buck isn’t disappointed. He spots Eddie from the top of the escalator as he’s descending. Standing there, looking sort of lonely in a room full of people, watching the screen above the customer service desk with his hands shoved into his pockets. He looks the same as he did when he left, Buck thinks, and it trickles down his spine with something that feels vaguely like relief. But it begs the question — if nothing was going to change, what was the point of all this anyway?

He didn’t want Eddie to go. He never managed to ask him to stay.

Near the end, when Buck’s quiet optimism gave way to desperation, he had considered it. Thought about cracking open like an egg and letting it all slip out of him. And with a small trickle would come all of it, like a wave, bursting forth and ruining everything it’s in path. Even one morsel, and Buck would not have been able to hold anything else back. Admit one thing, and give way to another, another, and another, until Buck would have been left with everything on the table and nowhere to hide.

He wasn’t ready for that. He has been a lot of time, alone in L.A., wondering if he ever would be. He had already brushed up against it, that night on Eddie’s couch, and look where they got them.

Buck pushes the thoughts away when Eddie’s eyes meet his. Buck is stepping off the escalator, manoeuvring awkwardly with his suitcase, when Eddie jogs over to him with a smile. For a second, Buck thinks Eddie’s going to hug him but he stops short.

There is so little space between them, and yet still somehow there is too much.

But isn’t that how it’s always been? If nothing else: they are playing their chosen parts.

“I missed you,” Eddie says softly, a secret that’s not a secret but perhaps something that makes you nervous to say aloud.

Buck is smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. “I missed you too,” he replies, and then Eddie’s smiling too. Buck reaches out, puts his hand on Eddie’s shoulder, and pulls him into an embrace.

EDDIE.

He was afraid Buck would hate him.

Buck had said he forgave him but it was so hard to take that for what it was, especially when Eddie struggled to even forgive himself. Two months had felt like so much longer — like decades, like a millennia — each day dragging into the next at a snail’s pace. Back then, Christopher wasn’t much interested in speaking to Eddie. The two of them shared largely silent meals a few times a week. At first, Eddie had tried to prod his son into speaking and each time proved fruitless. Eventually, Eddie just settled into the silence. Christopher would talk to him when he had something he wanted to say, Eddie decided, though that didn’t make it any easier to make himself feel okay about it. But there was no use forcing it on him. Eddie could find happiness in merely spending time with Christopher again.

The day Eddie texted Buck, he had taken Christopher out for ice cream. There was no reason for it; a simple excuse to get his son out of the house with him, away from the looming shadows of Eddie’s parents. Halfway through a double-scoop cone of Rocky Road, Christopher had asked, “do you know how Buck is doing?”

Eddie’s heart had seized up at the question. “He’s good, bud,” Eddie lied, for he had no way of knowing. He hadn’t spoken to Buck in such a long time. “Why do you ask?”

Christopher shrugged. He wasn’t looking at Eddie. He was looking at the pavement beneath their feet, cracked and patterned with drips of half-melted ice cream. “You’re here, with me” Christopher kept his words short. “So Buck’s all by himself.”

Eddie had texted Buck that night, after he dropped Christopher back off with Ramon and Helena. He had decided he was no longer content with so much not-knowing.

And Buck forgave him, or so Eddie hopes. It would be unusually cruel, and unlike Buck, to come all this way just to tell Eddie that he hates him. But Eddie knows that Buck would do anything for Christopher, and maybe this could be one of those things.

Eddie is grateful when it’s not. Eddie is grateful when Buck smiles at him, tells Eddie I miss you too. He is grateful to be pulled into the circle of Buck’s arms. In the middle of the El Paso airport, his best friend’s wrapped around him, Eddie breathes a little easier.

He worries about what he’ll say if Buck asks him why he did it.

I’m a coward, Eddie decides. That’s why I did it.

I did it because I’m a coward.

It’s close enough to the truth to be a good lie.

The incessant ringing of his phone wakes Eddie up on a Friday night. He rolls over in bed, groaning as he searches for it on his bedside table blindly. He was dreaming; it was a good dream, one where he had Buck’s hands on him, and they were caring and insistent as they tugged at Eddie’s clothes, tugged his cock out of his jeans and —

Buck, the screen is illuminated with his name. Eddie’s been caught, his dick still vaguely interested in the images his brain was supplying him only moments ago.

Eddie answers because he can’t not.

He doesn’t say hello, just: “Buck.”

“Eddieeeee,” Buck drags out the syllables, and Eddie knows immediately that he is drunk.

“Buck,” Eddie sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s late.”

“I know,” Buck replies and from his tone of voice Eddie knows, without seeing him, that he is pouting. “I’m sorry. You can’t be mad at me, okay? I just wanted to talk to you. I wanted to hear your voice.”

Eddie swallows. He feels solitary, his big empty bed in his empty room in Texas. So close to his son, with such a wide breadth of space still between them, and far from anything else he holds close to his heart. Eddie thought he was lonely in California, without his son. It’s nothing compared to this.

“You’ll see me next week,” Eddie says, because Buck will. In five days to be exact. Eddie knows because he’s been counting, reminding Chris of Buck’s impending visit every time he sees him.

“That’s so far,” Buck whines. “Too far. I couldn’t wait that long.”

Eddie chuckles. “You’re drunk.”

Buck makes a pfft noise. “Okay, okay. You got me. But I only had like,” it sounds like Buck is counting on his fingers, mumbling under his breath. “Like, four drinks? Or maybe five. But that’s not that bad!”

Despite it all, Eddie is smiling as he shakes his head. “Did you have fun, at least? What’s the occasion?”

“Um, well, we went out for drinks with everyone because, um, well, Anthony. Anthony is gonna stay at the 118,” Buck explains. Eddie remembers him mentioning Anthony before, a transfer from another firehouse, another candidate to fill the hole Eddie left in the team. Sounds like someone finally worked out. Eddie tries not to harbour any bitterness about it. He’s the one who left, after all. “And I did have fun! But then I started thinking about you, and it kind of made me sad.”

“Oh, Buck,” Eddie’s heart pinches in his chest. “You don’t have to be sad about me. I’m happy for you guys.”

“It’s not the same,” Buck blurts out, all the words so smashed together and slurred there are no pauses between them. “Sorry. I shouldn’t say that. I shouldn’t make you feel bad.”

And maybe Buck shouldn’t. Maybe it was never Buck’s decision to make. The proof of it — the confirmation that Buck’s been putting on a brave face for Eddie’s sake — well, that makes Eddie feel like dog shit. He would rather Buck be honest with him.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Eddie tries to sound soothing across miles of phone static. “You can tell me the truth.”

With explicit permission, Buck does not hesitate. “I miss you,” he says, and then, “I think about you a lot,” and then, “I wish you never left.”

“Yeah,” Eddie swallows around the lump in his throat. “I wish that too.”

“I wish I could kiss you.”

“Buck.”

“I’m sorry,” Buck says, like it hurts him. Eddie wishes he could see his face, touch his skin, remind himself that Buck’s still real, remind Buck that Eddie’s still real too. “It’s the truth.”

“I know, Buck, I —,” Eddie sighs, remembering the taste of Buck’s mouth in his dream and his cock half-thickened up in his underwear. “I wanna kiss you too. If you were here, I’d kiss you.”

“What else?” Buck asks, and his words carry no hesitancy. Eddie feels his skin prickle. He’s taken back to that moment on the couch, when Buck made Eddie lay himself bare, through his skin and through his words. “What else would you do?”

“Buck, I don’t know if we —”

“Do you want to know what I would do?” Again, Buck’s voice is steady and assured. Eddie can hardly believe this was the same Buck who called his name through the phone playfully, not even ten minutes ago. “Do you want me to tell you what I would do if I was with you right now?”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, releasing a breath he didn’t realise he was holding. “Tell me.”

Buck fires two questions in quick succession. “Where are you? What are you wearing?”

“I’m in bed,” Eddie tells him. “I’m wearing my boxers. And a t-shirt.”

“Mhmm,” Buck hums. “I wanna get my hands under your t-shirt and push it up so I can put my mouth on you.”

“Yeah,” the affirmation slips from Eddie breathlessly. He rocks his hips up against nothing but the blanket that covers him. “I love when you put your mouth on me. Your hands, too.”

“God, Eddie, you don’t even get it,” Buck very-nearly whines. Eddie feels hot all over. He kicks the blanket away, grinds the heel of his hand against his cock. “I wanna put my hands all over you. Wanna touch you everywhere.”

It’s Eddie’s turn to ask a question now. “What about your mouth?”

“Well, first, I wanna suck on your nipples. Maybe use my teeth a little. Would you like that?” Eddie responds with a long, drawn out groan. It’s enough to get Buck to keep going. “Yeah, I’ll bite your nipples until you're squirming and begging me to stop.”

“Jesus,” Eddie wants to slip his hand into his underwear and palm his cock. He’s not sure if he should. “You’re gonna kill me, Buck.”

“Are you touching your cock?”

“No, I — yes, kind of. On top of my underwear.”

“Would you take it out if I asked?”

“Yes,” god, Eddie can’t believe this is happening. He’s thought, over and over, about that single event all those months ago, on the couch in the home he used to have. The one in the home he left behind, the home he abandoned. Eddie didn’t mean it, not really. He just didn’t know what else to do.

“Okay. So I’m asking,” Buck affirms. “Take your cock out for me, Eddie.”

It’s all Eddie needs. He clumsily manoeuvres one leg out of his underwear, abandons them still bunched up above his opposite knee. Eddie grips the base of his dick and takes in a tight inhale. He never forgets that Buck is listening, breathing through the receiver against Eddie’s ear.

“What else would you do?” Eddie asks, fucking up lazily into his fist. “I wanna know.”

“Wanna open you up with my tongue,” Buck tells him. Eddie groans, thinks about what it would feel like to have Buck’s tongue in his ass while Eddie fucks his own hand. “Make you so fucking wet, shove my tongue in your ass and then open you up with my fingers.”

Eddie doesn’t even know where Buck is, or what Buck’s doing. For all Eddie knows, Buck could be holding his own dick in his hand, or he could not be touching himself at all. He could be in his loft, in his bed or sitting on the chair in the living room. He could be outside the bar, standing under the light of a street lamp, whispering into his phone while Eddie makes his dick fat in his jeans and people periodically walk by. Eddie’s not sure which scenario he prefers, so he asks for no details, content to live in a state where all options are equally possible. Shrodinger’s phone sex, if you will.

“You think you come from just my fingers, Eddie?”

“Yes,” Eddie chokes. His hand and his hips find no common rhythm, everything about this wet and messy and complicated, so complicated Eddie is afraid of what it’s going to feel like when this is over before it even is. In the aftermath of the last time, Eddie ran so far that Buck couldn’t follow. What could be done now? He has already run as far as his feet would take him. “I could. I would. If you let me.”

“I would, Eddie. I’d make it so good for you. Open you up one finger at a time. You’re so tight, y’know? You were sucking my cock in so good the last time.”

“Ugh,” Eddie’s face is on fire. His eyes are screwed shut but he knows he’s blushing deep. He can never help it, the way he turns so red at a moment’s notice. He’s afraid the first time he sees Buck again he’s going to flush from head to toe.

“Anyone else ever made you come from their fingers in your ass before?”

Eddie feels the humiliation of the words wash over him before he even says them, but he can’t keep anything from Buck. Not when he’s like this. “Buck, no one ever put anything inside of me before you, so no.”

“Fuck, Eddie,” there’s a certain tinge of awe to Buck’s voice. “You should have told me. I barely even prepped you. We didn’t even use lube.”

“No. No, I liked it,” Eddie confesses, feeling dirty and sexy and hot and gross all at once. “I liked how it felt. Felt like you were tearing me open.”

“God, Eddie.” There’s a brief pause before Buck continues, “well, I’d take my time with this. One finger at a time, like I said. Get you all loose on each of them before I add another. And then when I was four-fingers and knuckle-deep, I’d fucking wreck you.”

“Yes. Yes. I want it so bad. Please, Buck, please.”

“Are you gonna come?”

“Nhnng — yes, Buck, I’m gonna come. Can I come? Please, please, can I come?”

Buck is the only person who has ever done this to him; turned Eddie into a blubbering, hopeless mess. Pulled thoughts from his head Eddie barely knew how to acknowledge the existence of, laid him out on the table and counted all his ribs, slid past every barrier and stole all the deepest parts of Eddie’s soul like a thief in the night. It’s so hard to run from Buck, when Buck has been inside of him, and has been for so long.

Buck tells Eddie, “come,” and Eddie does, gasping for breath as his hips lift off the mattress and he blows his load. The come starts to dry as Eddie catches his breath, and he finds himself lamenting the lack of warmth; the last time this happened, Buck came on Eddie right after, and it had filled Eddie with a bone-deep comfort that lasted for hours. It reminds Eddie, hollowly, that he is alone.

They sit in silence on the phone together for a long while. Eventually, Eddie’s breathing settles. He wipes his hand clean against his sheets. “Where are you, by the way?”

Buck laughs. “In the hallway outside my apartment. Sitting on the floor. I forgot my keys in the Uber.”

“Oh.” There’s a pit in Eddie’s stomach. “Did you get them back yet?”

“No,” Buck replies. “I’m waiting for Maddie to call me back.”

Eddie squawks. “You called your sister before you called me to have phone sex,” he asks, incredulous.

“Well, I wasn’t really planning on the, uh — on the phone sex, when I called you,” Buck explains. “I really did just — just want to hear your voice.”

“I was dreaming about you,” Eddie tells Buck. The blanket has fallen off the edge of the bed, and Eddie’s boxers are still caught around his leg, and his come is still drying on his stomach. “When you called.”

“Yeah?” Buck sounds smug. “A good dream, I hope.”

“It was a good dream,” Eddie admits. “But I’m glad you woke me up.”

They’ll talk on the phone a little bit longer, until Eddie starts to drift off, because it’s late and he recently had an orgasm. No better cure for sleeplessness. Eventually, Buck will say goodnight, and Eddie will hang up, leave his blanket abandoned on the floor and fall asleep dirty and naked. He’ll wake up in the morning and shower for a long time, letting the water roll off his body with his head titled under the spray. He’ll be sore, and tired, and he’ll wait all day for a single text from Buck. And when Buck eventually texts Eddie, he won’t bring any of it up, and neither will Eddie, and they’ll just keep not bringing it up, over and over, until time runs out.

There’s a certain level of excitement Eddie has, to show Buck the house they picked out together. It’s Buck’s first time seeing it in person, after all, and the virtual tours on the real estate website didn’t really do it justice.

Buck wolf-whistles when he steps through the front door. “Eddie,” he sounds impressed. “This is swanky. Who’d you pay to decorate?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “My mom,” he answers. “But I didn’t pay her, obviously. She kind of, um, just did her thing.”

Buck gives Eddie a lot of gentle ribbing with regards to his interior design choices. Eddie doesn’t mind. It’s all in good fun and Eddie can admit that his tastes are — specific, to say the least, and in many ways. The idea of paying someone to decorate his home for him doesn’t bother him, per se, but the fact that it was Helena who ultimately decided it was her responsibility? Well, that makes Eddie feel a little queasy. He didn’t say anything to her when it was happening, and he doesn’t say anything now, and he makes no changes. Keeps everything exactly how she arranged it, that first week after he moved in. When it comes to his parents, Eddie’s learned to pick his battles, and to mostly keep his head down and do the best he can.

“And lucky for you,” Eddie sing-songs, taking Buck’s suitcase from him. He beckons Buck to follow him down the hallway with a tilt of his head. “You’ll be over here in the guest room. No more sleeping on the couch.”

“Hey,” Buck shoots back, annoyed on behalf of a piece of furniture. “That couch was very comfortable. I never had any problems sleeping on it.”

“No,” Eddie chuckles, feeling heat rise in his cheeks. He knocks his shoulder against Buck’s to distract him from it. “You definitely did not.”

Eddie didn’t take his old couch with him to Texas. He thought about leaving it behind for the new owners, but that seemed crass. In the end, he took it to the dump, and as he drove away he got the sick feeling in his stomach like he was leaving something important behind.

He had felt like that all the time in the weeks leading up to the move. He felt like that for weeks afterwards.

They’re standing in the doorway that leads to the spare room. Inside, it is modestly decorated. A bed with a big headboard, a bedside table with a small lamp. There is a mid-sized dresser in the corner and hangers in the closet. The walls are almost entirely bare, save for a clock hung on the far wall, and there’s a single photo on top of the dresser. It’s of the 118, all of them squished together to fit into the frame. Eddie remembers taking the photo, clear as day; Buck with an easy arm thrown over Eddie’s shoulders, Bobby’s hand on Buck’s own shoulder in return. Hen and Chim were somewhere near the front of the group, crouched down to the floor and making faces at the camera.

It is hauntingly regular, the way nostalgia can twist your stomach into knots. Eddie feels so happy he hardly knows what to do with it. And he knows it can’t last, and that’s the worst part, the reality of it settling like a stone of dread in Eddie’s guts. He’s always doing the wrong thing. There’s always a problem that he’s causing that he can never figure out how to fix. He always ends up beating his fists against the wall in frustration but nothing ever budges, and someday soon Eddie might end up with more scars than skin.

“How’s Christopher?” Buck asks. Mirroring, unbeknownst to him, the question Christopher asked Eddie all those months ago.

Eddie smiles, sadness stuck in the corners of his mouth. He know it’s there. Everything that makes Eddie feel good always fills him with such despair, like he can’t help it. “He’s good,” Eddie answers, a truth that gets a little bit truer each day. It’s still hard, and the process is long, but they’ve started getting better. Started, anyway. “He asks about you all the time.”

“Duh,” Buck’s face is smug when he says it. “I’m his favourite.”

“Yeah,” Eddie does not falter, still wearing that melancholy smile. “You are.”

They go out for breakfast with Christopher the next morning. He doesn’t hug either of them when he sees them. Eddie can tell it disappoints Buck, but he doesn’t push it. Eddie’s been learning how to listen more closely, even when his son isn’t saying anything at all, but Buck was already so good at that. They order stacks of pancakes with fruit and whipped cream, coffee for him and Buck and chocolate milk for Christopher. Buck steals Eddie’s toast off his plate and dips it into the runny yolk of Eddie’s eggs, smiling at Eddie as he chews.

Conversation between Eddie and Christopher remains stilted. It’s alright, though, because Buck does enough talking for the three of them. He asks Christopher about everything: from his summer spent by the pool, to his new friends at school, to how he’s finding the chess club.

“You’ll have to teach me,” Buck says. The cadence of his voice is one Eddie is familiar with, the one he always uses when he’s talking to Christopher about stuff like this, like he can’t help his genuineness, and how it’s always so sturdy and unshakeable. “I never learnt how to play.”

“It’s kind of hard at first,” Chris tells him. “All the pieces do different things. There’s a lot of strategy.”

Buck nods along, listening intently. Eddie sits back and watches, content in a way he hasn’t felt in so long. “Well, at least I can be sure I’ll have a good teacher,” Buck replies. “What does the horsey piece do?”

“It’s called a knight,” Christopher corrects, that know-it-all kind of way that you’d expect from any fourteen year old if they're smart enough. And Eddie’s kid is very smart. “It moves in an L-shape.”

Christopher spends the next fifteen minutes talking to Buck about all the different chess pieces, giving him each of their names and explaining all the different ways they move. It’s the most Eddie has seen his son talk since he joined him in Texas. Eventually, Eddie isn’t even really listening anymore, the words turning into a simple pleasant hum of background noise, as he watches the two people at the centre of his universe interact. Eddie had nearly forgotten what this could be like.

Like coming home; like a soft bed at the end of a long day, like a chilly evening spent on the couch with a blanket and a bowl of soup. Like peanut butter toast with the crusts cut off, the feeling of jam sticky between your fingers, the taste of the milk leftover at the bottom of a bowl of cereal. The way the light comes into the bedroom window in the morning, slanted through the curtains, the smell of bedsheets in the early morning sun. The way a house smells after it’s been cleaned, the way a kitchen smells after someones been cooking in it. Like walking into a dark room and knowing exactly where to find the lightswitch. Like opening the fridge and finding the leftovers you’ve been saving. Like the way a blanket feels straight out of the dryer, or the perfect nap on the couch. Like building gingerbread houses, and making blanket forts, and sorting Halloween candy, and the hug you give someone when you’re saying good morning, good evening and good night. Like you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, with exactly the people you’re supposed to be with.

They drop Christopher off at home just after 2 PM. Eddie walks him to the door while Buck waits in the truck. Eddie notices it, when his mother looks over his shoulder and sees Buck sitting in the passenger seat. She doesn’t say anything, but her lips press into a thin line, and Eddie doesn’t stay long enough for her to do anything else.

Eddie pulls out of his parents driveway and down the street before he says to Buck, “thanks, by the way.”

He can see Buck look at him out of the corner of his eye. “For what?”

“He never talks that much with just me,” Eddie explains. His hands tighten on the steering wheel and the leather creeks. Eddie’s knuckles jut sharp from skin like broken glass. “I haven’t seen him talk that much in months, actually.”

“Eddie,” Buck breathes his name quietly. It fills up the whole car, no other noise but the sound of the road beneath Eddie’s tires. “I didn’t —”

“No, no — I’m happy. Don’t make me sad,” and Eddie’s voice catches on the last word, wavering. He doesn’t think he’s going to cry, but he rubs vigorously at his eyes with the back of his hand just to make sure. “It’s been hard. We’re getting better. It’s — it takes time, that’s all.”

Buck reaches across the centre console to put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder. It’s warm, a comfortable weight. Eddie counts the street signs that pass by the window to keep himself from leaning into the touch.

“That’s good,” Buck says, so sincere. That’s all Buck knows how to be: genuine, generous, sincere. All these things that Eddie never learnt how to accept. All these things Eddie has always forced himself to turn away from, to put the sunlight at his back. “I’m glad that I could — that I could do something to help, maybe. Anything.”

The radio’s on, Eddie realises. The man singing on the other side of the speakers is saying, and it's a miracle to be alive, one more time.

“Yeah,” and when Eddie allows himself to glance at Buck quickly, Buck is already looking at him, soft and smiling but sad. “Thanks for coming, Buck. Especially after,” Eddie swallows, “after — after all of it.”

Eddie says nothing and everything at the same time. Buck’s hand slides off of his shoulder, but the pressure of his touch lingers. Eddie’s ears are kind of ringing.

“Of course, Eddie,” Buck’s voice comes through the static in Eddie’s brain crisp and clear. “I was always going to come. No matter what happened.”

Eddie wishes, desperately, that he could believe him. He knows Buck would never lie, that he isn’t lying — it’s just, Eddie could never be convinced that he could ever handed something so sweet. To keep. Buck can say all of this now, but tomorrow is never promised. Whether by Eddie’s own hands or somebody else's. It wasn’t so many months ago that Buck told Eddie about him and Tommy going on a date.

“I need something to drink,” Eddie takes a hard left into a grocery store parking lot. Buck laughs and it breaks the tenseness, and he follows Eddie into the grocery store so they can each buy a six-pack of beer.

BUCK.

Buck hates Eddie’s new place.

He was the one who helped Eddie pick it out. After long hours of endless scrolling through listings, both with Eddie and on his own, this place appeared from nowhere, like an island in the centre of the ocean. Or a black hole. Buck almost didn’t want to show it to Eddie, but he did anyway. “It’s a good size, bigger than what you have now,” Buck had told him. There was also a sizable backyard, and it was in a good school district. Buck knew Christopher was already enrolled somewhere close to his grandparents but, y’know, just in case.

Eddie had put an offer down on the house the same day Buck showed it to him. It took until after the weekend was over for him to find out it was accepted.

It’s a nice home with good bones. In the photos the previous owners had posted, it looked cosy, warm and inviting. But now, inside of it, it doesn’t feel like a home. It doesn’t feel like Eddie’s home. There’s a distinct lack of personal touch; fabric in colours Eddie would have never chosen for himself, impractical pieces of decor meant to sit on shelves and do nothing, accomplish nothing, shelves with stacks of books no one is reading and plastic potted plants that will never need watering. There was always something organic and practical about Eddie’s living space. It was never as if he was arranging things on purpose, but rather that he had collected all this stuff he had deemed necessary and had to make the room for it. It wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing space, but it accomplished what Eddie needed it to, and that was good enough for Eddie. All of that is gone now, traded in for knick-knacks and tchotchkes.

It’s not at all what Buck pictures when he imagines the world that Eddie exists in. It is in conflict with everything else about him. Who is this person occupying this home? Buck knows his face but nothing about the rooms are familiar.

There’s a door at the end of the hallway that Eddie keeps shut. Buck spent a long time looking at the virtual map of this place, over and over, so he knows what’s on the other side: a mid-sized bedroom, with windows that face the west to overlook the sunset. It must be where Eddie is keeping all of the things that belong to Christopher that he brought with him. Does it look like the bedroom Christopher had in L.A.? Or did Eddie’s mom get her hands all over it, the same as everything else? There is no evidence of Christopher anywhere else in Eddie’s house beyond photographs stuck to the fridge. Buck wonders if anyone has ever even spent a single night in the room at the end of the hall.

What Buck has never told Eddie is the way he existed in those months between when Eddie left and Eddie texted to apologise. The months where the birds cawing in Buck’s head made him dizzy, made him spiral out until he couldn’t tell up from down and right from left. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, they said, over and over, and Buck could never get them to stop. It fostered dread in his heart like a death knell, like a tree that grew wrong, no fruit for it to bare and gnarled, ugly roots. And then the 118 had responded to a small fire in a gay bar that had been started and put out before they even got there, and Buck could feel the bartender's eyes on him the whole time. Then, just as they were leaving, he pushed a napkin across the bar top towards Buck with his name, Jude, scrawled across the top and, below that, his phone number. Buck called him and fucked him on the same night. It was enough to keep his head quiet for a little while.

Eventually, though, the birds always returned. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. The way Eddie looked when Buck slid inside of him, the way he looked all fucked up on Buck’s cock and covered in his own spunk. The way he’d let Buck lick it off his chest and push his tongue into Eddie’s mouth. The way Eddie groaned around the intrusion and pressed his whole body further into Buck.

Next was Adam, and then Tyler, and then Sasha and Michael and Joshua. Each of them cleared the noise for an evening, maybe a morning or an afternoon, but nothing ever banished it fully. It tapped at the back of Buck’s skull, until it was banging in his whole head, until Buck was afraid to open his mouth and have crows fly out.

And then Eddie had texted him, and Buck suddenly remembered what sex could feel like when you really meant it, and that particular coping mechanism never quite worked the same way again. He didn’t stop trying, though.

They drink most of both of the six-packs because they have nothing else to do. “I barely leave the house,” Eddie admits to Buck after the first few. “Sorry I didn’t think of anything fun for us to do.”

Buck shakes his head. “Don’t even worry about it. I came to Texas to spend time with you, and with Christopher. This is plenty of fun.”

“Well, I wish I was more fun,” Eddie huffs. “I’m just, like, boring and sad right now.”

“You’re not boring,” Buck corrects. Then, he adds, “and I’m here to make sure you’re not sad.”

Buck’s never noticed it before, but it’s all coming to him in stunning clarity now, regardless of the taste of warm alcohol on his tongue. He and Eddie chase each other in circles. It's the very nature of their relationship. One of them falls, and the other comes running. What is there to be done? Buck’s leg was crushed and Eddie held onto him. Eddie was trapped below the earth and Buck clawed after him. Buck tried to hold Eddie’s blood inside of him with his hands. Buck died and Eddie restarted his heart. Buck calls, and Eddie comes; Eddie begs, and Buck gives him what he wants.

“Can I ask you something?”

It’s a familiar situation: the two of them sharing opposite sides of the same couch. How many evenings have passed between them like this? How many of those evenings stayed with Buck for hours, for days and weeks and months after they happened? There’s a catalogue full of Eddie in Buck’s brain and he’s spent all the months they’ve been apart flipping through it over and over again. He’s seen the shift, chartered it to its exact moment and rewound the tape again, and again, and again, a million times. He tries to discern where and when it happened. What Buck has come to accept is there was no singular moment, they merely followed what was laid out before them brick by brick.

Eddie nods. “Whatever you want.”

“Do you still think about it?”

Buck watches Eddie’s finger grip the neck of his beer bottle a little bit tighter. Eddie clears his throat. “Think about what?” He asks.

All of it, every single moment. It’s all I think about all the time, but especially —

“When I fucked you on the couch in your old house,” Buck watches Eddie’s go wide at his candidness. “And, like, a week ago. When we had phone sex.”

“Right,” Eddie rolls the word off his tongue. His eyes are still wide, and his cheeks are bright pink. Buck doesn’t say anything, content to sit in silence and wait for Eddie’s answer. He can’t look at Buck when he says it, picking the label of the glass bottle he’s still holding. “Yeah,” Eddie trails off then, again, louder this time, “yeah, of course I do, Buck. I think about it all the time.”

“Good,” Buck responds without thinking. “I think about it all the time too.”

And then, of course, Buck asks Eddie: “what do you think about?”

Eddie’s eye flick back up to meet Buck’s gaze. They are dark and wide, obscured slightly by Eddie’s hair falling into his face.

“I think about how good it felt to have your cock inside me,” Buck sucks in a breath. “And I think about how you took such good care of me. I think about — about what you told me on the phone. How you said you were gonna make me come with just your fingers inside of me.”

“Shit,” Buck chews thoughtfully on his bottom lip before he continues. “When was the last time you thought about it?”

“This morning, right after I woke up,” Eddie admits easily. He’s always made confessions to Buck like a man on his knees, begging for understanding, for forgiveness, for the righteous wrath of God. “I thought about how you were right there, in the other room. How I could have just walked over and let — and let you do whatever you wanted to me.”

“I was thinking about you too,” Buck says. It’s hard to believe, but then again maybe it isn’t. The two of them, lying only feet away from one another, each of them thinking about the other person. “Did you jerk off?”

“No, I —” Eddie breaks away from Buck’s eyeline again. He mumbles through his next admission. “I — I already came in — in my sleep. I was dreaming about you. I dream about you all the time.”

God, when was the last time Buck had a wet dream? He can’t remember. But it was so hot, to imagine Eddie rutting into the mattress below him without realising, just because he couldn’t help himself. That it was images of Buck playing in his mind, on the screen in the porno theatre in Eddie’s head.

And what Buck can’t help are the words that leave his mouth. What Buck can’t help is to say, “can I fuck you?”

“Yes,” Eddie breathes. “In the bedroom, though. On the bed.”

“Okay,” Buck nods. “I’m cool with that.”

They let it rest for a moment. What else is there to say when everything has already been said? They always like to pretend these interactions they share exist outside their greater context, but that’s not the truth, is it? They are what all this hangs on. It’s the hinge that keeps them moving back and forth, closer and then away from each other and then closer again.

Eddie sets his half-empty beer bottle down on the coffee table. He plucks Buck’s own drink out of his grip and does the same. And then he closes the distance between them, climbs into Buck’s lap, and kisses him.

Like coming home; like existing in the space you made for yourself, familiar and snug. Like being exactly where you should be with exactly who you should be with.

They kiss sloppy, mouths wide open around each other’s tongues. Buck was right — he could never satiate his hunger for this. He could eat for years and never be full. Drink straight from Eddie’s mouth for hours and still thirst. He is greedy, and selfish, and he should have asked Eddie to stay, but really he shouldn’t have, because Eddie would have done it. And where would that leave them, where would they have ended up?

Not here, certainly. Buck can’t imagine getting here without the worst of it all happening first.

Eddie rocks forward in Buck’s lap, rubs the thickness of their cocks against one another. Their mouths unseal and Buck drags his tongue wet and hot across Eddie’s jaw, bites against the curve of it. Eddie keeps rocking forward against him, his arms around the back of Buck’s neck while he breathes heavily, his whole chest rising and falling with the force of it. They’re still fully clothed and Buck is so warm and he wants to get Eddie naked so bad. But Eddie’s skin tastes so good against his tongue, and it feels so good every time their cocks drag together even through all the layers of denim. It comes down to this every time with Eddie; Buck only knows how to drive forward, to accomplish the task sitting directly in front of him. He wants Eddie on his cock again, but he wants to open Eddie up on his fingers slowly and deliberately, but he wants to get Eddie naked against the sheets on his bed, but he can’t stop dragging lips and teeth and tongue across all the places on Eddie he has and hasn’t tasted before.

“Buuuuuck,” Eddie whines, same as the first time they did this. He is so open, his voice so broken. Buck tastes the sweat and musk across his collarbone. “We gotta — I gotta —”

“What is it?” Buck asks, finally peeling himself off of Eddie.

“You’re distracting me,” Eddie complains half-heartedly with a non-serious frown.

“Me?” Buck’s eyebrows raise up towards his hairline. “You’re the one who crawled into my lap and started dry humping me.”

“Shut up,” Eddie mutters, flushing red and ducking his chin towards his chest. Buck coaxes his head back up with his mouth, swallowing a groan as he slides his hands across the curve of Eddie’s fat ass. He digs his fingers in, gets a good handful and squeezes.

Buck speaks right up against Eddie’s open mouth. “You should get up and go into the bedroom and get naked.”

“And what? Wait for you?”

“Yeah,” Buck licks the sweat off his top lip. “And wait for me.”

Eddie looks at Buck with his lip caught between his teeth. He already looks so debauched, his hair all a mess and his lips kissed red and the apples of his cheeks all pink. “Okay,” he agrees, and Buck tries not to be too disappointed when Eddie clambers out of his lap. “Don’t make me wait too long, alright?”

Eddie closes the door to the bedroom behind him, but not before he leaves Buck with one last, long and lingering and lustful look. Buck just stares after him for a little bit, at the streaks of paint across the door. He imagines what Eddie is doing behind it, wonders if he’s shucking off his clothes with a fervor or if he’s taking it slower. After marinating on it for a while, Buck stands up from the couch, picks the discarded bottles up off the table and brings them into the kitchen. He puts Eddie’s protein powder away in the cabinet. He puts the remnants of the second six-pack into the fridge. He washes his hands. He leans back against the counter and just breathes slowly, in and out with a consistent rhythm. He wonders if Eddie’s in his bedroom, empty and open and aching, breathing in and out just like Buck is. It’s probably a good time for Buck to go in and find out.

Buck’s not sure what exactly he’s expecting, but the sight kind of takes his breath away. Eddie, lying on his back and spread eagle on the bed, cock hard between his legs, rosy from chest to thighs. He’s looking at Buck all coy, all sexy and cute and lewd.

“Hey,” Eddie calls softly as Buck advances towards him.

“Hi,” Buck answers. The mattress dimples under the weight of Buck’s knees as he climbs up onto it, nestling right into that open space between his legs that Eddie has left for him. He rubs across Eddie’s thighs with open palms, close to his cock but not quite close enough. Eddie tilts his hips up into the touch, whether on purpose or without even realising.

Buck scratches against the coarse hair on Eddie’s stomach, below his belly button. “You’re still wearing so many clothes,” Eddie whines.

“Yeah,” Buck agrees, but makes no attempt to remedy the situation. “I’m gonna fuck you with my fingers until you come,” he tells Eddie matter-of-factly, “and then I’m gonna make you come again on my cock.”

“Shit, okay, alright,” Eddie nods along with his verbal affirmations. “There’s lube in the drawer,” he points vaguely towards his bedside table.

Buck leans over him, pressing his clothed cock against Eddie’s naked hard-on. “I thought you liked the way it felt without it?”

Eddie says nothing, but his jaw flexes and his lashes flutter, and for Buck that’s enough of an answer. He holds his fingers up to Eddie’s mouth, lets Eddie drag the sharp edges of his teeth against the pads of them. He makes Eddie work for it; makes Eddie pull the fingers into his mouth, fill his cheeks up with them, suck on them wet and loud. Buck sits back and watches, his cock hot and heavy and hard, trapped behind denim. Spit drips down across Eddie’s chin, his pupils blown and his eyes glassy.

Buck pulls his fingers free of Eddie’s mouth with a pop and reaches down, wipes Eddie’s spit across his own hole. Eddie gasps prettily as soon as Buck touches him. He spreads Eddie’s saliva across his asshole like it’s lube, pressing in slightly periodically but never breaching the ring of muscle. Eddie shudders through it, his inhales and exhales speeding up, falling out of time with one another. Buck drinks it all in, every twitch in Eddie’s muscle, every flame that licks hot behind his eyes, every gasp that tears itself from chest to throat.

Satisfied with the sloppiness of Eddie’s hole, Buck gives him one finger up to the knuckle. The muscles in Eddie’s thighs tense. He bends his legs and pulls up his knees, allowing Buck to chart the curve of his leg, following the planes of Eddie’s wide open skin to the meat of his thigh. Again, his touch lingers near where Eddie’s cock curves up towards his stomach, leaking messy, but he does not reach for it. His finger slides inside Eddie, leisurely and calculated.

“Jesus, Buck,” Eddie puffs out. “You must be up to your elbow by now.”

“You wish,” Buck teases, and Eddie doesn’t deny it. “I’m just trying to —”

“Ohhhhh,” the sound vibrates all through Eddie’s body. Buck can feel it where Eddie is wrapped around his finger.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Buck presses in again, hard, and watches Eddie’s dick twitch and gush. “Feel good?”

“You know it does,” Eddie starts, and he doesn’t so much as punctuate the sentence as moan threw the end of it. “Holy shit. I didn’t — when you said you wanted to do this I didn’t think that it would —”

“Be like this? Yeah, surprise, Eddie. You’re welcome.”

Eddie swats Buck’s shoulder, so Buck brushes up against that spot inside of him again, only this time he moves back and forth, up and down. All the fight in Eddie melts away, replaced by the sweetness of surrender.

When Buck pulls his finger out, Eddie whimpers. His poor baby, Buck doesn’t make him wait very long before he is sliding back in, two fingers this time. He scissors them at first, opening Eddie up to it, until Buck reaches for that spot deep inside and presses it like a button, again and again. Each touch shoots through Eddie like a lightning bolt, tightening up his muscles before coaxing them into relaxation again. Buck takes Eddie right up to the edge, makes him look over it, and then pulls him right back.

“Buck, Buck — right there, again. Please.” Eddie doesn’t even have to ask. Buck likes to listen to him beg for it anyway.

Buck’s not sure if Eddie’s realised it yet; that Buck would give him anything he wanted. Maybe he has, and he’s good at pretending. Maybe he hasn’t, and everytime he begs he means it, bone-deep. Either option makes Buck feel hot and bothered. He is content to exist in the version of the world where each has an equal chance of being true.

Eddie’s self-control is shot, the whole of him frayed at edges. Buck can tell because he’s blathering, voice worn thin from overuse, from all the noises that tear Eddie open. Fuck Eddie says, and, oh my god, and uh-uh-uh and Buck, Buck, Buck, especially. He’s so fucking slutty and sweet and hot. Buck could swallow him whole.

Three fingers, and then four, and Buck continues his incursion on the tight bundle of nerves that lives inside of Eddie’s ass. Even if Buck didn’t already know the truth, he thinks he would be able to tell that Eddie’s never had an orgasm wrung out of him through his prostate before. Each new sensation rips into Eddie and pulls him further and further apart. Buck loves it, the way Eddie is incoherent around the fingers Buck has inside of him.

“Are you close?” Buck asks him, feeling the sweat as it drips from his brow.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m close,” Eddie professes. “Can I come? Please let me come, Buck.”

“Hmm,” Buck hums, playing up his non-chalance when, in reality, his dick could drill through a diamond it’s so fucking hard. He’s been watching Eddie fall apart under his hands for what is probably over thirty minutes now, so of course he’s not unaffected. Especially when Eddie looks like that, the most perfect thing Buck has ever laid his eyes on. “I’ll think about it.”

“Buck, c’mon, please,” Eddie drags the last word through his teeth like sandpaper, like it’s burning a hole through his esophagus.

“Shhh, baby,” Buck presses a kiss to the side of Eddie’s bent knee. “I got you, baby, don’t worry. I got you.” Buck teases his finger across Eddie’s prostate one more time before he’s relenting, voice soft as he tells Eddie, “you can come.”

“Oh, Buck,” Eddie whines, one last time, and comes apart in long, hot streams of spunk. He shoots in such a wide breadth it splashes against his chin, throwing drops even further, until Eddie ends up painted across his own mouth. Buck can’t help himself; he has to surge forward and lick Eddie’s own come off his lips, shove his tongue into Eddie’s mouth and lick at the back of his throat.

When Buck pulls back Eddie is looking up at him with wide-eyes, vulnerable and pretty. Buck pushes Eddie’s sweaty hair out of his eyes, kisses the spot just below his eye.

“That was . . .” Eddie trails off.

“Yeah,” Buck chuckles. He’s still fully clothed, and Eddie is naked and covered in come. If Buck laid down and died at this very moment, he’d definitely die happy.

“I feel,” Eddie scrunches up his face. “Gross. But good. But really gross. Can you get naked, please?”

Buck laughs again. He had plans to tease Eddie with it a little bit more — about their two opposite ends of the spectrum, when it comes to the state of undress — but now that some of the keyed up energy has faded, he just wants to press against Eddie skin-to-skin. Eddie watches him with a tilt of his head and a playful look in his eyes regardless, as Buck pulls his shirt over his head by the scruff and then shimmies out of his pants.

And then, naked as the day he was born, Buck stands at the foot of Eddie’s bed. Eddie gleams in the low-light, like a fucking glazed donut. Spit and sweat and come all marked across his skin. Forgive Buck for being so crass but it kind of makes Eddie look angelic, if you really think about it.

Eddie reaches for him.. “Come here,” he calls softly. Buck does.

They kiss for a long time. Their skin sticks, drags together. Buck smears come across Eddie’s abdomen by accident with his own stomach. For all the hot pleasure that was coursing through Buck — is still coursing through him, honestly — it’s all unbelievably tender. Eddie’s mouth is so soft and open. His legs still tremble from the remnants of his orgasm. Buck thumbs across Eddie’s nipple, once, and Eddie chokes.

Eventually, Eddie’s dick starts to thicken up again. Buck’s been hard enough to cut glass for the better part of an hour at this point. He’s starting to hit that level where the world is fading away and all he knows is the pursuit of the end. Buck reaches down between Eddie’s legs and thumbs at his hole, watching the way Eddie’s lips part and his face scrunches up. “Do I need to open you up again?” Buck asks, “or are you still good?”

“I’m good, I’m good,” Eddie mutters, nodding. “Fuck me, Buck, please.”

“It’s okay, I got you,” Buck pets his hand down Eddie’s side, feels how hot his skin is, the goosebumps that raise themselves in the wake of Buck’s touch. “I’ll take care of you.”

Buck wonders what he looks like from Eddie’s point of view, looming over him and touching him tenderly. What can Eddie see behind Buck’s eyes? Does he see it all — the desire and the care and the — the stuff below that, the stuff that makes Buck’s chest feel stuffed with cotton. Can Eddie see all of that? Does he know what he’s looking for?

Buck spits into his own hand unceremoniously, uses it to facilitate the slide of his palm up and down his own cock. He’s not thorough about it by any means. It doesn’t have to be, not when Buck thinks about it all the time; about how Eddie told him he liked feeling like he was being split open. Again, it occurs to Buck: he’d do anything Eddie asked of him.

Eddie is still tight when Buck slides into him. He whines at the stretch, thrashes his head back and forth a little bit. Buck shushes him gently, trying to hold himself together, trying not to fuck into Eddie too hard and fast. They’ve done it like that before; this time, Buck wants to savour it.

“Good?” Buck mumbles, just to check in.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Eddie croaks back. “I’m really good.”

Buck smiles. He leans forward to press a kiss against Eddie’s sternum. And then he moves, rolls his hips against where he’s nestled up into Eddie’s ass. Eddie gasps, and grips Buck by both of his shoulders. His hole sucks Buck in greedily, just like the last time, and Buck loves it. It also almost makes him blow his load right away, and Buck has to breathe through it to reel himself back in.

Buck keeps the pace slow at first, pulling almost all the way out of Eddie before feeding his cock back into him inch by inch. He grips Eddie by his hips, scratches lightly at the dried come still painted across his chest. Eddie whimpers and hiccups and groans, every noise a symphony that fills up every gap in Buck’s brain, where it’ll live now, forever.

“You feel so good,” Buck tells Eddie. He means it in so many ways: so good where Eddie’s wrapped around Buck’s cock, good where Buck pits his hands all over Eddie’s skin. The shape of Eddie’s mouth, the press of his teeth, the taste of his tongue. Where Eddie fits into Buck’s life, where Buck fits into his.

“Harder,” Eddie keens. Buck sees the tears as they gather in the corner of Eddie’s eyes. He wipes them away with his thumb, resists the urge to lick the salt from his skin. “I need it harder, please. Fuck me harder.”

Buck obliges. Eddie groans when Buck slides out of him, but he is quick to follow wordless instruction when Buck leads him into laying on his stomach and raises his hips so his ass is in the air. Buck bites into the soft flesh, because he can’t help it, then smoothes across the red mark left behind with the same thumb he used to wipe Eddie’s tears. He lines himself up with Eddie’s entrance, grips him by the hips, and pulls Eddie back onto his cock. It makes Eddie punch out a moan at full force, broken and wrecked and so fucking sexy.

From this angle, Buck hits deeper, gripping Eddie by the waist and forcing him to meet Buck’s every thrust. It’s fast and loud, the sounds of their skin slapping together, their hot breaths, the same noises they’ve been making this whole time. Buck will never get tired of hearing all of it. Feels like the conductor at the front of the company, using his body to pull out all this music.

Eddie’s face is pressed into the pillow below him, eyes shut tight. Buck tries his best to keep his rhythm as he leans forward and touches Eddie’s cheek. He’s so warm to the touch, and so pink. Eddie’s eyes shoot open, his lips parting, choking on his own pleasure.

“Hey,” Buck says, soft and delicate. “I’m right here, okay? Stay with me. Right here.” He taps against Eddie’s cheek gently. Eddie’s eyes are wet with unshed tears, looking awestruck at Buck as he fucks him. Something flashes through his expression, changes his face for just a moment, but then it’s gone as quickly as it appeared, and Buck is distracted by how badly he wants to come.

“Where do you want it this time, huh?” Buck asks.

Eddie’s looking right at Buck, gaze blazing as he says, “inside.”

“Shit.” The string inside of Buck snaps and he’s nestling himself right up against Eddie’s ass, burrowing his dick as far inside of him as it will go, and, fuck, his orgasm slams into him. It makes Buck curl in on himself, the entire house of cards of his resolve tumbling down around him. He’s never come this hard in his life, and Eddie’s ass gets every drop.

“Fuck, Buck, I think I’m gonna —” Eddie’s voice brings Buck from the haze of his own bliss, back into the moment playing out in front of him. He’s still inside Eddie, can still feel Eddie fluttering around his cock. He’s starting to get soft, but that’s not enough to make Buck stop. He can’t stop, not when Eddie is teetering on the same precipice that Buck just crossed over. Buck grabs a handful of Eddie’s ass, pushes his thumb back against the same spot he bit into earlier, and listens gladly as he wrings a second orgasm out of Eddie.

Buck winces when he slides out and Eddie collapses onto the bed below him.

Buck pauses, allows himself to watch the way his come leaks out of Eddie’s hole for just a minute, before he curls his body around Eddie’s, kinda-sorta laying right on top of him. Eddie is breathing hard, shuddering breaths through his nose. His eyes are closed, but Buck can see the hot tear tracks staining his cheeks. He kisses the corner of Eddie’s mouth, wraps his arm around Eddie’s waist, pushes Eddie’s mussed-up hair off his forehead. He waits for Eddie to move, to say something, to open his eyes, but it doesn’t happen. Buck kisses along the curve of his shoulder and watches his face carefully. He speaks Eddie’s name gently against his skin. Still, no reaction.

“Hey,” Buck keeps talking, afraid to let this silence sit any longer. “Hey, Eddie, come back. Come back to me, okay? I’m right here. I got you. Just come back.” Eddie’s lashes flutter open. Buck smiles at him. Eddie doesn’t smile back. “There you go,” Buck says, scaling back up so he can kiss Eddie on the mouth.

They still don’t move. Buck just lays there, snuggled up around Eddie, and Eddie doesn’t say anything. Eventually, Eddie’s heart stops hammering in his chest. His breathing slows. Buck reaches over — albeit with some difficulty, considering he doesn’t want to pull too far away from Eddie — and plucks the blanket, long forgotten, off the ground, draping it over both their bodies. They’re both filthy, covered in each other, but if Eddie doesn’t want to move then neither does Buck.

Eventually, in the silence, they both fall asleep.

When Buck wakes the next morning, the bed is empty.

EDDIE.

Eddie runs. It’s what he’s good at. It’s what he’s always been good at. He ran from his family when he got Shannon pregnant, he ran from Shannon when he joined the Army. He ran and ran and ran, always ended up in places he’d never been before, with people he’d never met. He kept running, waiting for something that would make him want to stay. He started to worry he would never find it.

He ran from Buck. All the way to Texas, and then Buck followed him, and then Buck had said to Eddie, come back to me and he had said I’m right here, I got you and Eddie didn’t know what to do. So he ran.

Eddie’s terrified of the thin line; terrified of what it means to cross it, of everything he will be forced to feel the subjugation of if he does. He’s a coward. He’s always doing the wrong thing. He can’t even get the most important things right.

Buck shouldn’t want him. Not when Eddie’s like this, not the way Buck seemingly does.

Not even seventy-two hours in Texas and Buck has made it feel as close to home as it ever has for Eddie. Eddie worries it will never, ever feel like this again.

Buck was dead to the world when Eddie slid out from under his grip this morning. He showered and dressed, and worried that at any moment Buck would wake and catch him. But he never did. Not even when Eddie walked out through the front door and closed it behind him, climbed into his truck and started driving, without really knowing where he was going.

And now it’s 8 AM and he’s parked in the driveway outside his parents house. He doesn’t knock. He sends Christopher a text instead, asking him if he’ll meet Eddie outside, and waits. He’s prepared to wait for a long time, if he must. Better here than alone in his house with Buck.

Eddie must doze off at some point because he’s awoken by the wrapping of knuckles on the passenger side window. His eyes slide across the dashboard — the clock proclaims it is 9:30 — and land on Christopher, who is opening the passenger door and climbing inside. Eddie resists the urge to help him. Christopher will ask him for it if he wants it.

Christopher slams the door shut. He’s not looking at Eddie when he asks, “where’s Buck?”

Eddie does his best to speak around the lump in his throat. “He was, uh, still sleeping. I told him I’d come back later.” Christopher doesn’t respond. Eddie continues. “You were happy to see him yesterday, right?”

Christopher shrugs. “Guess so.”

“Did you miss him?”

Christopher doesn’t say anything for a bit. Then, “I did.”

Christopher still isn’t looking at him. Eddie smiles at him anyway. “Yeah,” he agrees, “me too.”

“Dad,” Christopher finally turns towards Eddie. There’s still sleep in the corners of Eddie’s eyes and he’s sore all over, from sleeping in his truck and from the night before. “Why did you come here?”

Eddie swallows, unsure of how to really answer that question. There’s so many answers and none of them feel quite right, and lots of them are things that Eddie doesn’t necessarily need to be sharing with his son.

Eddie settles on, “I came here for you, bud.” He explains, “I came because I didn’t like being so far away from you.”

“But now you’re so far away from everyone else.”

Wow, Eddie’s kid sure is perceptive. It makes him nervous and proud all at the same time.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Eddie admits. “But it was more important for me that I be here. With you.”

They lapse into silence again. In the front window of his parents home, Eddie watches the curtain shift, Helena’s gaze popping out from between the fabric.

“I’ll wait here for as long as you need me to, Chris,” Eddie wipes his sweaty palms against his jeans. The muscles in Eddie’s thighs feel tight beneath the pressure of his hands. “If you ever want to go back to California — we can get up and go, whenever you want. I’ll go with you. And if you don’t ever want to go back, if you want to stay here in Texas — well, I’ll stay right here with you. You’re the most important person in my life. I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like that wasn’t true.” Eddie’s face is damp. He turns away from Christopher, tucks his head against his shoulder and wipes his cheeks with the back of his hand.

“I’m sorry too.”

“Oh, kid, you don’t have anything —”

“I was mad at you,” Chris cuts him off. “I didn’t want to talk to you, even after you came all the way here. I — I could have been nicer, I guess.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie reaches across the centre console, carefully puts his hand on Christopher’s shoulder, waits for any indication Christopher doesn’t want to be touched by him. It never comes. “You don’t have to say sorry because I forgave you already. I forgave you right away. I’ll forgive you every time, no matter what. Because you’re my kid and I love you.”

For the first time in a long time, Eddie feels like he and his son are having an honest conversation. He hopes Christopher feels the same.

“Do you think, um,” Christopher stutters, looking sheepish. “Um, maybe next Friday, I could — I could come and stay with you? For the weekend?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Eddie nods vehemently. “That would make me really happy, y’know? You can come over whenever you want. It’s — it’s your home, too.”

It’s not everything, but it’s something. It’s closer to something than anything Eddie has even brushed up against in the last few months. Time moves slowly, but it’s always moving. The world never stops turning, and that’s a good thing. There is no growth without decay. So Eddie sits in his truck, reaches across the centre console, reaches across miles and miles of desert, and hugs his son and his son hugs him back. He inhales deeply. The clock keeps ticking. He does not think about Buck, sitting alone in his house.

Eddie and Christopher sit and talk for a little bit. They move from the truck to the porch and, at some point, Helena brings them two glasses of lemonade. The condensation makes the glass damp, but the juice tastes sweet. Christopher finishes it all in three big gulps.

Eddie is not expecting it, when the unfamiliar car pulls up to the curb outside Eddie’s parents place. He’s expecting it even less when Buck steps out, carrying his suitcase with him. Eddie sits up straight, his heart jumping into his throat.

He knew he’d have to face Buck again sooner or later, but Eddie was doing a really good job at not thinking about how that was actually going to go. He made no plans and, naively, thought that would be his salvation. And now here he is, watching Buck standing on the curb as his Uber pulls away, wholly unprepared.

How does Eddie explain himself? How does he make Buck understand? How does he tell him that Buck took him to places Eddie never thought he would be allowed to go, that Buck made him glimpse heaven in the reverie of his gaze and the touch of his hands. How does he tell Buck that he’s not worth any of it? That all of his time and effort and care has been so horribly misplaced, that Eddie is just a black cavern of sadness and rot. Eddie’s never learnt how to really be with someone because he deserves to be alone. The universe has proved that to him, over and over again. He can’t drag Buck down with him; not when Eddie is this close to having his family back.

He just hopes Buck can forgive him. Again.

But first:

“Hey, Buck!” Christopher is smiling when he calls his name. It breaks Eddie's heart that little bit more.

Buck leaves the suitcase on the lawn, bounding up the porch steps to meet Christopher in some special handshake they’ve never shared with Eddie. Eddie, for his part, can’t even move. Just stares, feeling like his heart is beating through his chest, cracking open his ribs and letting him bleed out. Buck and Christopher talk like everything is normal, while Eddie could not feel any further from it. He sits there, says nothing, just folds his hands in his lap and counts each of his breaths as they tremor through his lungs.

“Are you leaving?” Christopher asks, gesturing to Buck’s dumped suitcase.

Buck looks over his shoulder like he forgot all about it. “Yeah,” he turns back to Christopher, smiling sadly. “I had to come see you, though. Couldn’t leave without saying goodbye.” His eyes flick to Eddie. Eddie wishes he could disappear.

Buck planned to be in El Paso for at least another two days. He must have found the first flight out. Because of Eddie, because Eddie left him, because he offered Eddie everything and Eddie couldn’t even look him in the face and tell him no.

“Can I give you a hug?” Christopher asks, and Buck says yes, because of course he does. Eddie has to turn away. It’s like staring at the sun.

Helena calls Christopher inside, then, and as he’s retreating back into the house, he turns to Buck and gives him one final goodbye. Then, to Eddie, he says, “I’ll see you next weekend, Dad.”

Eddie’s voice is hoarse as he responds. He does his best to smile through the growing dread of bile in the back of his esophagus. “I’ll pick you up on Friday, bud. Make sure you pack a bag.”

With Christopher gone, Buck and Eddie are left to themselves. Another car drives by. Buck picks up his suitcase, leans against Eddie’s truck with his phone in his hand. Eddie descends the porch stairs slowly, feeling like he’s stepping through a minefield.

“Buck, I —” Eddie starts but when Buck lifts his head the look in his eyes is frigid, burrowing beneath Eddie’s skin like an ice pick. It makes Eddie stop short.

“Why did you leave?” So they’re abandoning all preamble. They’re not even going to try and pretend. And after they have both managed to get so good at it, too.

“I just —” Eddie’s not even really sure what he’s planning on saying. “I didn’t —”

“Never mind,” Buck shakes his head. “I don’t wanna know, actually.”

“Buck, I’m sorry,” Eddie pleads, desperate and morose. He ruins everything he touches, spreads pain like it’s the plague, like it’s contagious. No one should ever touch him again. And yet, Eddie can’t help it, he needs Buck to believe him when he says: “I’m really sorry.”

“I thought —” the words sound sticky coming from Buck’s mouth, like they don’t fit inside of him. “I don’t know what I thought, actually. Whatever it was, I guess I was wrong.”

I’m broken, Eddie thinks. I’m broken and no one can fix me. Not even you.

But Eddie can’t say that. Because he knows Buck would try and do it anyway.

“You don’t have to leave,” Eddie says, a last resort. He’s not sure if he means it. Well, no, he does mean it — he just isn’t sure what the fuck he’s going to do if Buck takes him up on the offer.

He’ll never find out, though, because Buck says, “I do, actually.”

It’s only fair. Buck is always being left, and now he’s the one leaving.

Eddie tries again. “I can drive you to the airport, then.”

Buck gestures with his phone. “Already called the Uber,” he tells Eddie.

“Buck,” Eddie says and he means to keep talking, to say something else, but he has no idea what to say. What do you do when the words mean nothing? What do you do when you’d say anything but could never follow through with your actions? Buck might never believe anything Eddie says ever again.

“Eddie, I — I can only say this once. So I’m gonna say it and you — you can do whatever you want.” Buck shoves his phone into his pocket before he continues. “We’re a family, okay, Eddie? Whatever that means — whatever version of it we are, that doesn’t change the fact that we are one. And I — I can’t let you keep going back and forth on that, so. Yeah. I’m leaving. But you should come back to California. The both of you should. And when you do — well, whatever, we’ll figure it out. Whatever version of this it is that you want.”

Eddie wants to scream. Wants to claw himself out of his own skin. He wants to grab Buck by the shoulders and shake him, tell him no, no, no, you can’t do this, you can’t, I don’t deserve it, don’t wait for me, please, I can’t live with it, knowing your waiting for someone who can’t come.

But the only word Eddie can force from his vocal chords is, “okay.”

Eddie and Christopher work on it for another four months in Texas. It turns out, like with everything else in life, the best method of treatment is the passage of time. The first weekend Christopher spends in the bedroom Eddie’s been keeping for him goes really well, and then there are more weekends, more meals where conversation flows freely between them, trips to the movies and Eddie picking Christopher up from school and Christopher inviting Eddie to watch him play chess. Eddie buys a chessboard to keep at his place, and Christopher even starts to teach him. Eddie’s kind of floored at how good his son is at the game, but Eddie is also, like, uniquely bad at it. Christopher is very indulgent of him anyway.

And then, one day, Christopher is eating a bowl of cereal on the couch in the living room when he asks Eddie, “can we go home?”

“To L.A.?” Eddie responds with another question.

“Yeah,” Christopher answers. “I miss it. I miss everyone.”

Eddie smiles. “Me too, bud. Me too.”

It’s not an easy task, moving back to California. Eddie’s offers on three different places get rejected before he just starts making offers on anything even remotely suitable. It still takes a month, but they end up with something not totally bottom of the barrel, close enough to where they used to live that Christopher can enroll back at his old school. Bobby is gracious enough to let Eddie have his job back, and doesn’t mention anything about Anthony, the man who was his supposed replacement. Eddie’s sure he’ll get the gossip eventually. He just hopes it was less traumatising for everyone then the whole, uh, Jonah thing.

And then it’s just a whirlwind of packing, of selling stuff that Eddie doesn’t want to take with him, of deciding what to throw away and what to donate. Christopher is actually a really big help with all of it, and Eddie can tell he’s excited to go back. Thank god for that, at least.

Eddie spends a lot of the time leading up to the move thinking about Buck. About what he might say, about how he might say it. How he’ll stop himself from feeling like the earth is shattering beneath his feet when he sees Buck again for the first time. It’s been months of no contact. Not even a text, since Buck left him alone on the lawn that day, climbed into his Uber and left Eddie aching and wanting. The time and space has offered Eddie some clarity, but it hasn’t really solved his problem with saying all of it out loud. Maybe he should practice in the mirror.

A week before they move back, Christopher is asleep in his bedroom and Eddie drinks the two beers that have been sitting in his fridge for a long, long time. He thinks fuck it, opens his Message thread with Buck, and sends him a text.

Christopher’s coming back. I hired movers this time. We’re flying into LAX next week.

Buck, blessedly, does not make Eddie wait two months for his reply.

What time, Buck sends back, and then, I’ll pick you guys up from the airport.

When they meet Buck in Arrivals, he’s holding up a sign that says CHRISTOPHER DIAZ in big block letters.

Most of their stuff is being driven down with the movers Eddie hired, so there’s not much unpacking to do when they arrive at the house. Buck stays anyway. He helps Christopher hook up his PS5 in his bedroom, and they order pizza and eat it on the floor in the living room, since their couch isn’t here yet. It is all so shockingly familiar that Eddie forgets to be afraid of everything that’s hurtling towards him at light speed for a little bit. But then Christopher goes to bed, and it’s just Buck and Eddie, standing in the kitchen, like so many times before this and, if Eddie is lucky, maybe so many times after.

“I thought about what you said,” Eddie says. There’s a big block island in the centre of the kitchen, Eddie stands on one side of it, and Buck stands on the other. He looks exactly the same as he did all those months ago, when he was helping Eddie pack to move away. In some lights, it feels like Eddie never left, but they can’t ignore the fact that he did. “I thought about it a lot.”

“That’s good,” Buck replies, sounding honest. “I wanted you to think about it.”

“I think I — I think I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t — I didn’t know how to take what you were offering me. I felt like — I felt like I didn’t deserve it.”

“Eddie,” Buck’s voice is soft.

Eddie lifts a hand to stop Buck from continuing. “Let me — get through this, before you start trying to make me feel better,” because he knows that’s all that’s on Buck’s mind right now. Buck seems taken aback by Eddie’s words, for just a moment, before his mouth tilts up in one corner, a half-smile. “That night — the last night, the night before you left, when you said to me,” Eddie can feel the emotion in his throat, sticking right behind his Adam’s apple. “When you told me to come back to you, when you said you were right there with me — I know it wasn’t — obviously it wasn’t about this, this whole situation, but it was all I could think about. And I wanted to, y’know? I wanted to come back so bad but I couldn’t . . . pick between you and Christopher.”

“I would never ask you too.”

“I know you wouldn’t, Buck,” Eddie affirms, smiling back at Buck a little bit himself. “And I know that’s not what all that was but . . . well, that’s what my brain latched onto. And I couldn’t deal with it. The thought of you just . . . sitting around. Waiting for me. Waiting for something I didn’t even know if I could ever give you.”

“Well, could you?” Eddie has never seen a more vulnerable look on Buck’s face. But there’s hope, too, below the surface, behind the look in Buck’s eyes. “You said you thought about it a lot. So . . . could you?”

Eddie licks his lips. “I,” his heart is hammering in his chest, his own voice ringing through his ears, he doesn’t know how to say anything but he knows if he says nothing that’s all he’ll be left with, that’s all he ever allows himself to have. Not anymore. This can’t be the fate Eddie dooms himself with. “I could. I think I could.”

Buck steps forward. The kitchen island is still between them.

“I wanna try,” Eddie reaffirms, “is what I mean. I wanna try. With you.”

“Okay,” Buck nods. “So let’s try.”

In the end, Eddie gets a better story. In the end, it turns out everything does matter. Buck and Eddie try, and they take it day by day, and on some days it’s easy and light and other days it is hard and heavy, but they never take it for granted. When Eddie feels like he didn’t earn something Buck reminds him not everything is bound to the laws of equivalent exchange. When Buck seems afraid of the world is leaving him behind Eddie reminds him he’s here to stay. Not everything has a magic fix, but they’re good at triaging, at the treatment of wounds, and it’s easier, especially, when they work on it together. Everything is easier when they do it together.

Most importantly, Eddie never forgets to say goodbye, and Buck never forgets to remind Eddie he’ll always be waiting for him to come back.

the end.