Archive of Our Own

The first time Buck sees him he almost crushes his own foot under a fifty-five pound dumbbell.

Living in Los Angeles and traveling all through America in his early twenties means Buck has had the privilege of seeing, meeting, and even being with, an incredible range of beautiful people. But the man in front of him as Buck tries to do his chest and back routine is a different category of gorgeous altogether. From head to toe, he’s all of Buck’s fantasies come to life.

Buck’s eyes focus on his thighs first, which is surprising considering the amount of skin the man has on display and how his shorts cover more than half of his upper legs.

Perhaps that is what appeals to Buck the most, though. Perhaps the allure of it is catching the way the man’s shorts ride up just slightly every time he squats down, letting Buck glimpse higher up his legs at the hair that covers his thighs and the muscles that help him push up the barbell loaded with an amount of plates that is highly impressive.

It feels illicit to be seeing that. Intimate almost, like they’re the only two people at the gym despite the fact that it is most definitely full today.

After the third squat that Buck watches the man do, he pulls his eyes away realizing how disgustingly creepy he’s being.

He only lasts one set of his own dumbbell rows before his eyes slide towards the man again. This time, Buck does drop the weight he was holding to the floor when he watches the man, whose back is facing Buck, go through a barbell deadlift.

Even through a pair of loose-fitting shorts Buck can tell the man has one of the most glorious asses he has ever seen in his entire life.

A voice that sounds suspiciously like Hen’s is yelling at Buck inside his head, reminding him that objectifying people is wrong and that everyone has the right to live their lives without being ogled and stared at like they’re pieces of meat.

Buck hears the voice, Buck acknowledges the voice, Buck agrees with the voice.

And yet, he can’t stop staring at the man.

God, Buck wants to stare at him forever.

He wants to stare at the man’s well-defined calves, at the bulge of his biceps as he lifts the heavy barbell off the floor. He wants to stare at the man’s shoulder blades, and his forearms, and the back of his neck, and the hollow of his throat, and the—

“Buck!”

The word is shouted right into Buck’s ear, and he almost falls off the gym bench when he tries to move his head away from the noise.

“Dude,” Chimney says as he straightens his body from where he bent down to yell right into Buck’s brain, “I’ve been calling you for like the past five minutes.”

Buck tries, he tries with all of his might, to keep his attention on Chimney. He even goes as far as opening his mouth to respond to him, to keep the conversation going. But his brain -or his heart, or another part of his body a little more to the south- betrays him, and his gaze travels and travels and travels until it reaches its destination once more.

The man is in the middle of lifting off his tank top to clean the sweat off of his forehead.

A sudden heatwave falls over Los Angeles, and Buck swears his skin catches on fire.

“Oh no, we’re not doing this.”

Chimney’s tone of voice makes Buck turn his head quickly to the side to look at him but Chimney isn’t looking in his direction anymore. Chimney’s eyes must have followed Buck’s only a second before, because his gaze is now aimed at Buck’s man.

Well, not Buck’s man. Just the man.

The man that Buck has been obsessively checking out for the past twenty minutes.

Chimney looks towards Buck again then, and repeats, “We’re not doing this.” He pops a bubble with the gum he’s been chewing as he moves one of his fingers back and forth to point between The-Man-who-isn’t-Buck’s-man-he’s-just-The-Man and Buck. “You didn’t drag me to the gym just so you can ditch me to fuck some guy in the showers.”

The girl in the bench next to Buck’s shoots a wide-eyed look their way, and Buck tries to give her a convincingly innocent smile, but if the way she drags her bench further away says anything is that Buck doesn’t convince her one bit of his virtue.

“First of all,” Buck starts saying, pointing at Chimney with his index finger as he speaks, “I didn’t drag you here. You coerced me into coming together even though you know I like to work out on my own. Something about how I had to make sure you take the gym seriously this time.”

What Buck keeps silent is that he finds the timing of Chimney’s full fitness fad highly suspicious. And by suspicious he means it falls way too close to Maddie’s return into Buck’s life and her introduction to Chimney’s by way of last week’s 118 barbecue at Athena’s and Bobby’s house.

“And secondly,” Buck lowers his voice then, leaning forward as if trying to make the words’s journey shorter between him and Chimney so they can’t escape and reach anyone else’s ears,“I wouldn’t fuck him in the showers.”

Chimney’s response is wordless in the form of an eyebrow raise.

“Not anymore, okay?” Buck clarifies, rolling his eyes. “That’s not who I am now.”

Not after Abby, Buck doesn’t say. And yet he knows Chimney hears it.

The tale of Buck and Abby, from its hopeful and life-changing beginning to its diminishing and anti-climatic ending, was followed and shared by everyone close to Buck, so he doesn’t really need to explain to Chimney how much the experience truly shaped him.

Buck doesn’t need to explain to him how, even though a year or two ago Buck wouldn’t have hesitated to walk over to the guy and he’d have basically gotten on his knees after little more than a greeting, the thought just leaves him feeling cold and empty now. Used, even when the situation exists only in his head.

“Okay, sure,” Chimney concedes. “But I’m also not up for having to watch you drool over him all day long.”

Trying to be subtle, Buck raises his left hand to his face to run the back of it under his chin, just in case Chimney isn’t simply exaggerating and Buck was actually drooling. He’s not sure whether the dampness he wipes off is drool or sweat, but Chimney catches him doing so and he scoffs as he shakes his head lightly.

“As if you would last at the gym all day long,” Buck says, shame climbing up his chest, neck and cheeks, settling under his skin in the form of a bright blush.

“True, but cruel.” Chimney pops another chewing gum bubble, taking a step away from Buck. “Just for that I am walking away from you again and leaving you to your sad and creepy lonesome.”

“That’s what I’ve wanted all along!” Buck says before Chimney turns around to walk towards his own bench, putting his earphones back on and proceeding to ignore Buck once more even though he was the one admonishing Buck for wanting to do the same to him when they arrived.

With Chimney gone, Buck’s attention hangs by a thread.

He picks up his dumbbells again and goes to lie down on the bench to do his next set of chest presses, but before he can do that his eyes work on scanning the room around him. They have to do a second sweep when they don’t find what they’re looking for.

Sadness is not the feeling that overwhelms him then, because that would be ridiculous.

There is a little bit of disappointment coursing through his veins, sure, but that probably has to do with how long it’s been since Buck felt anything resembling interest for someone since his relationship with Abby fizzled out, and how the only person that has managed to capture Buck’s psyche for longer than a second has now disappeared from his sight. Possibly forever.

It’s not like this man was the love of Buck’s life, if such a thing even exists for him. He was just incredible eye-candy, and Buck regrets not being able to enjoy it for a little longer.

(Again, Hen’s voice shouts at him in his mind. Buck profoundly apologizes inside the confines of his own head.)

Buck sees the man again three days later, when he’s at the gym trying to burn off the frustration of the last devastating twenty four hour shift.

Bobby had wanted him to go home and sleep the losses away, but staring up at his ceiling chasing oblivion but never reaching it would have only worsened the sizzling in his veins, so Buck had directed his Jeep south instead of east after leaving the station to reach the gym just as the clock hit nine in the morning.

He’s been running himself ragged on the treadmill for about twenty minutes when he catches a glimpse of the man and his heart explodes inside his chest, making it impossible for Buck to breathe.

Stumbling over nothing, Buck has to hold onto the sides of the treadmill to keep himself upright, and he feels warmth unrelated to the physical exertion climbing up his chest and cheeks when the man and his companion -an incredibly strong looking woman- turn to stare at Buck and the slight ruckus he has caused.

For about five seconds -the best five seconds of Buck’s life-, the man and Buck hold each other’s gazes across the room, everything else around them fading to nothing. Buck keeps running mostly on instinct, the rhythm of his strides steady and quick, like maybe if Buck tries hard enough he’ll outrun the treadmill and be able to reach the man’s side.

But soon, the woman who is standing next to Buck’s man -to the man, just The Man, not Buck’s in any way- gets impatient and elbows him on the stomach, making him turn to look at her, severing the completely transcendent connection Buck and him had been having.

The woman says something to the guy that makes him roll his eyes so hard Buck actually fears for his ocular health, and then they both head towards a corner of the fitness room that has a boxing bag next to some other equipment.

It would be clichéd to say that all of Buck’s problems fade away as Buck looks at the man for the next hour or so. It would also be fatally untrue. But as Buck pushes his body to the limit through a series of explosive HIIT exercises, Buck uses the man’s presence as a perfect motivator and distraction.

Five more weighted burpees and you can stare at his ass for five seconds.

30 more seconds of Russian twists and you can look at his shoulders as he punches the bag.

Finish the next set of Bulgarian split squats and you can fixate on the way he unwraps the tape from his hands.

Every once in a while, as Buck is transitioning between exercises or taking his much deserved rests, memories of the multiple car pile up the 118 had to respond to less than six hours ago and its horrors try to sneak past Buck’s defenses. In those moments, Buck learns that the quicker he focuses his attention on the guy, the easier they are to vanish.

It’s like the man’s beauty is so astonishing, so incredibly out of this world, that not even the darkest and ugliest of Buck’s memories and thoughts want to touch him, to taint him.

This time Buck is the one who has to leave the man behind.

Before he even realizes it, there’s only half an hour to go until he’s supposed to meet Maddie for brunch at her new favorite restaurant, and he’s having to speed through the cool down portion of his workout before rushing to the locker room to take a quick shower.

His head is down as he walks hastily to exit the fitness room, his fingers busy composing a warning text to Maddie just in case he runs behind a bit, when he collapses against something. Against someone.

The most captivating eyes are staring back at him when Buck raises his head.

Inside of his chest, Buck swears he can feel his heart sigh. Inside of his pants, Buck swears his dick gets half-hard.

“Sorry, man,” the guy says.

Buck’s guy.

Up close, he’s even more gorgeous.

The proximity lets Buck see the details of him, all the things that make him real, and human, and irresistible. He’s got a slight scratch on his nose, a small beauty mark on the corner of his eye, a sweat mustache above his upper lip. His tank top has a hole right on the neckline, his smell matches the time he’s been working out at the gym, he’s got a slight tan line on his arms.

Buck catalogs all these pieces of the man in just a couple of seconds, which is an impressive feat. What must not be so impressive is the way Buck has just been standing silently staring at the guy for all of this time, letting his eyes roam freely and unsubtly over the man’s whole body right in front of him.

“No, it was— I didn’t— You don’t— I just—” Stuttering over his words like he only learnt how to speak yesterday is not helping Buck’s case at all, but the way the guy’s gaze is so focused on him makes Buck feel as if all of his brain cells are melting out of his ears. “My bad. I’m sorry.”

“No harm, no foul,” the guy says, and a beautifully gentle smile blooms on his face as he nods at Buck in acknowledgement.

Buck didn’t know heart orgasms were a thing until right this second, and he’s kind of mad at the world for keeping them from him for so long.

For one more erratic beat of Buck’s heart, they stand still in front of each other, just looking.

The guy ends up being the one to break the spell by raising his eyebrows, clasping his hands in front of him, right where his abs hide under his tank top -the abs Buck glimpsed and drooled over just fifteen short minutes ago- and saying, “Well, bye.”

Only when the guy has begun walking away from him does Buck do the same in the direction of the exit.

But as hard as he tries, Buck loses the battle against his dignity and turns his head to look back over his shoulder at the guy, hoping to catch a glimpse of his ass and back before he has to leave and risk never seeing the guy again. What he finds instead is the guy already looking back at him, his gaze as piercing from a distance as it was when they were standing a mere feet apart.

That stare is the memory that Buck keeps coming back to again and again and again all through his brunch with Maddie, his drive back home, his afternoon chores and his night jerk off session.

That stare is what makes Buck baptize the man inside his head as Big Beautiful Brown Eyes.

Big Beautiful Brown Eyes is at the gym the next time that Buck goes that week, and he even aims a nod Buck’s way while he’s doing leg presses that make his knees feel like they’re actually jelly.

He’s also there three times the next week, and Buck realizes then that he’s been watching him so much that he could now quote from memory the man’s workout schedule better than his own.

Chimney -who despite many promises and bribes to himself has been slacking on the gym once more (“It’s not like I need it, okay, Buck? We’re firefighters. We work out enough as it is.”)- is there once to see Buck almost hits himself in the face with the lat pulldown bar when Big, Beautiful Brown Eyes passes him by and says a quick, “Hey, man.”

The teasing is relentless after that, but it dies down a couple of days later, after Buck watches Chimney swallow his gum just because he saw Maddie pull her hair up in a ponytail.

Every new Big Beautiful Brown Eyes sighting is one for the books — as in, Buck has actually started a note on his phone to keep track of all of them, trying to decipher the routine he would need to follow in order to prompt as many of them as possible.

But whether it’s because Buck’s schedule isn’t that reliable -between firefighting, trying to reconnect with Maddie, and keeping up with the surprisingly large amounts of 118 social gatherings- or because Big Beautiful Brown Eyes’s own timetable is just as hectic and random, Buck isn’t able to figure out the hows and whens of their meetings.

Which leaves him where he first started: never knowing when he’s going to see Big Beautiful Brown Eyes next, always on the verge of heart failure -either from disappointment or elation-.

When Buck arrives at the gym during his first and only free Saturday of the month, the former almost happens when he sweeps his eyes around the fitness room only to find it devoid of what he was searching for. Who he was searching for.

He goes through his usual motions, grabbing one of the only two available benches and setting it right in front of the mirror and the long rack of weights. He selects the different set of weights he’s going to need and places them right next to the bench, close enough to reach them when he needs to do each exercise.

With each movement his eyes also shift, again and again, studying the room, as if they’re going to discover some secret nooks and crannies in which a 200 pound god of a man could be hiding. Unsurprisingly, the room doesn’t grow new corners, and Big Beautiful Brown Eyes doesn’t appear from thin air.

It takes Buck a while, but eventually, about two sets of bicep curls in and three different songs, he gets sucked into the rhythm of his workout. His whole world reduces to the way his muscles protest during the last repetitions on a set, to the way sweat runs down his temples and neck before he wipes it away with his towel, to the way he feels invincible every time he’s able to push through the tremble and do one more rep or grab a heavier weight.

He’s just finished his third and last set of shoulder presses, weights hanging by his sides for a minute before he bends down to set them on the floor, when a voice to his right calls out, “Hey. Would you mind spotting me?”

The weights fall down on the floor with a clatter when Buck turns his head to find Big, Beautiful Brown Eyes standing next to his bench, his hands on his hips, his eyes focused on Buck.

Big Beautiful Brown Eyes doesn’t startle when the weights thud against the floor, but he raises an eyebrow as he looks down at them before looking back towards Buck. A suspicious warmth is crawling up Buck’s neck, slowly heading to his cheeks, and the only thing Buck can do about it is pray that the exertion from his workout made him look so flushed that this new wave of reddening doesn’t stand out against it at all.

A heartbeat passes, and then another, and instead of acting like a normal person Buck finds himself just opening and closing his mouth like a stupid fish as his brain tries to reconnect its wires back together. All the while Big Beautiful Brown Eyes keeps staring at him, the frown between his eyebrows deepening the longer that the silence stretches.

“Well, okay,” Big Beautiful Brown Eyes finally says, taking half a step away from Buck. “I guess I’ll—”

“Yes,” Buck almost shouts, standing up quickly from the bench, almost reaching out to grab Big Beautiful Brown Eyes’s wrist but stopping himself just in time. “I mean, I can— I can spot you. If you, you know, if you need it.”

This time, the heartbeat of silence that looms between them before Big Beautiful Brown Eyes speaks makes Buck worry. But then, a softly gorgeous smile grows in the corners of Big Beautiful Brown Eyes’s lips and reaches the corners of his eyes, softening every single one of his features.

Looking at him was already painful before, like trying to stare at the sun directly willing to risk the burn for just a few seconds of indescribable warmth and light.

But now, staring at Big Beautiful Brown Eyes feels like more than just a miracle of nature. It feels like an out of the world experience, like something for which Buck has no words for yet because the universe has never seen anything like it. The universe has never seen anything like Big Beautiful Brown Eyes wearing a loose tank top that shows his arms, his shoulders, and even part of his chest, while the gentlest smile paints his face.

“Great,” Big Beautiful Brown Eyes says, tilting his head to the side towards an unoccupied bench with a red towel thrown over it. “I’m over there.”

Buck follows him almost as if under a spell, feeling like he’s not really walking but floating on air.

If Buck had just a little bit of self-respect he’d probably be shuddering in embarrassment at what a pair of pretty eyes, a sweet smile, a round and perky ass, and some well-defined arm muscles are reducing him to. But self-respect is not really one of Buck’s fortes, as Hen and Chim would love to confirm.

If Buck was a little less distracted by the aforementioned pair of pretty eyes, the sweet smile, the round and perky ass, and the well-defined arm muscles, he’d be questioning what is it that makes this one guy so special, what is it that makes this one guy be able tangle Buck’s tongue every time he tries to speak and his heart trip over a beat every time the guy blinks.

But Buck is pretty distracted, and he just has enough brain power to control his eyes so they don’t roam too obviously over Big, Beautiful Brown Eyes’s body as Buck positions himself behind the bench and over the barbell as Big Beautiful Brown Eyes lies down and grabs onto it tightly with his hands.

The perspective that the new position offers is — well, it’s interesting, to say the least. Buck tries -he really does- to keep his gaze somewhere safe, but no matter where he looks there is something a little too enticing, or a little too forbidden, in his line of sight at all times.

Big Beautiful Brown Eyes breezes through his first set of barbell chest presses, so all Buck has to do is hover his hands near the barbell as he desperately avoids thinking of what other activities outside of the gym could get Big Beautiful Brown Eyes to breathe as heavily as he is now.

When the barbell is back on the rack and Big Beautiful Brown Eyes is taking his first rest, Buck puts his hands inside the pockets of his sweatpants as he rocks his weight back and forth on his feet. Loud sounds reach them from all around them in the gym -the incessant thud of feet on treadmills, the metallic clacks of weights being dropped, the upbeat and fast music meant to keep everyone moving at all times- but Buck and Big Beautiful Brown Eyes stay silent.

That is, until Buck, his only neuron probably too focused on drooling over the guy in front of him, opens his mouth to stupidly say, “You’ve got nice form.”

Drinking from his water bottle, Big Beautiful Brown Eyes turns to look at Buck, raising an eyebrow at him as his throat bobs with each gulp he takes.

Buck’s tongue feels heavy and dry inside his mouth when he clarifies, “With the barbell. The chest press, you know. You have good form.”

“Thanks,” Big Beautiful Brown Eyes says as he finishes drinking, chuckling lightly while he uses the back of his hand to wipe his lips. Buck has never been jealous of a particular body part before but he finds himself wishing to be that hand very, very badly for just half a second.

Only twenty seconds later Big Beautiful Brown Eyes is lying on the bench again, lowering the barbell close to his chest until his elbows hit a ninety degree angle and then pushing it back up as he exhales through his mouth. Buck’s job is still mostly just watching him this second set, but he makes himself pay a closer attention when the second to last rep of the set has Big Beautiful Brown Eyes’s arms trembling as he extends his elbows.

Another minute of rest later and two more weight plates added to the barbell find Big Beautiful Brown Eyes working on his last set while Buck follows his movements with his eyes and also his hands, now completely focused on the task, mindful of the trust that’s been placed in him by this stranger that not only is hotter than any other person Buck has ever seen in his life, is undeserving of dying crushed by the weight of his barbell simply because Buck was too busy ogling him.

It’s strange, when it happens.

One moment Big Beautiful Brown Eyes is finishing the second to last rep of his set with some obvious effort but with absolutely no need for help, giving Buck the chance to lift up his t-shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead before he moves onto the final rep, and the next Big Beautiful Brown Eyes’s arms seem to collapse, like he’s lost all of his strength in a second.

Buck squats down a little as he positions his hands really far apart on the barbell, gripping it and helping Big Beautiful Brown Eyes push it away from his chest and move it towards the rack.

“Dude, are you okay?” Buck asks once the barbell is secured, as Big Beautiful Brown Eyes is sitting up on the bench, using one of his hands to rub at the spot on his chest where the barbell must have hit him.

“Yeah, I—” Big Beautiful Brown Eyes clears his throat as his face turns a pretty shade of red, probably due to the exertion of his reps, maybe even because he feels a little embarrassed that he needed Buck’s help. “I’m good. Thanks.”

His eyes are focused somewhere near his own feet, pointedly straying away from Buck’s gaze.

Having been on the suffering end of many embarrassing moments, Buck takes half a step forward to pat Big Beautiful Brown Eyes on the shoulder amiably, trying to help him relax.

“Sure, it happens,” Buck says, feeling a little lightheaded when Big Beautiful Brown Eyes raises his gaze to look at him again, his stare so deep Buck can almost feel the exit wound it leaves on the back of his head. “I mean, you were lifting quite a lot, man, like a seriously impressive weight. It’s normal that your arms gave up on you at the end there.”

For a second, Big Beautiful Brown Eyes says nothing, he just sits on the bench as his eyes travel a couple of times from Buck’s face to somewhere near his stomach for some reason. Then, he lets out a short laugh as he stands up while shaking his head and positions himself in front of Buck.

“My arms gave up on me, you’re right. That’s all that happened,” he says, chuckling again, and Buck thinks he sounds amused and a little disbelieving maybe, but this is the first full conversation he’s ever had with the guy so he can’t be sure. “But you really saved me there.”

That simple acknowledgment makes Buck feel like he swallowed a star and it’s shining bright right on the center of his chest.

“Me?” he asks, lowering his head and then raising his eyes to look back at Big Beautiful Brown Eyes through his eyelashes.

The star’s glow brightens when the smile on Big Beautiful Brown Eyes’s face grows and he says, “Yeah. You can have my back any day.”

“Or you know, you— You could have mine,” Buck counters, feeling half-delirious and half-ecstatic.

In front of him, Big Beautiful Brown Eyes laughs as he extends his hand out for a handshake. Inside of him, the star explodes and creates a whole constellation when their hands meet right between their bodies.

Theirs is, in Buck’s completely unbiased opinion, the best handshake that has ever been shared by two people ever.

It lasts, to Buck’s immense delight but also to his immense surprise, a weirdly long amount of time. Long enough that Buck swears they’ve crossed the line between handshake and hand holding by the third second.

But Buck is not going to be the one to let go, so he just waits for Big Beautiful Brown Eyes to drop his hand and end the best non-sexual body contact he’s ever had in his life. And then he waits some more. And then some more.

Finally, Big Beautiful Brown Eyes releases Buck’s hand, and Buck pulls his arm to his side reluctantly as he closes his hand into a fist, trying to keep the memory of the touch inside it so it won’t get lost.

“I’m Eddie,” Big Beautiful Brown Eyes says.

Eddie.

Buck rolls the name around in his head, not yet able to roll it off his tongue just in case it gives too many of his thoughts away.

Eddie.

Truth is, Big Beautiful Brown Eyes could have had a prettier name.

And okay, sure, it’s not like Buck has lots of room to judge -Evan isn’t exactly the pinnacle of beautiful and unique names-, but it’s just that as Buck stares at the man in front of him with his recently learned name echoing in his brain, it’s impossible not to think about how un-moanable it seems to be.

“I’m Buck,” he responds, and the simple act of giving this piece of himself away to Big Beautiful Brown Eyes -Eddie- makes a shiver run down his spine.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Buck,” Eddie says, and the way he pronounces Buck’s name for the first time makes Buck question whether or not names really are un-moanable or ugly, or if they just need to leave the right pair of lips.

Their conversation doesn’t last long after that, and soon Buck is at his own bench, valiantly trying to complete his workout without letting himself get lost in the memories, if something can even be called a memory when it happened about two and a half seconds ago.

For hours, however, even long after he leaves the gym for the day, the phantom of a touch still tingles on his hand.

For hours, the name Eddie follows his every thought, and while Buck still maintains it sounds un-moanable, he can’t deny that the more he traces its shape in his mind, the more he learns to see its beauty.

Before he falls asleep, Buck says it out loud for the first time, with his eyes closed, his head thrown back, and his hand on his dick.

“Eddie.”

Well, worse comes to worst Buck knows that sighing it out as he comes works just fine.

“Okay, Buck, you can do it. C’mon, you can do it.”

This is now the third time Buck has repeated these words to himself and he still has not, in fact, been able to do it.

And by it he means closing the short gap that separates his corner of the gym and Eddie’s bench to ask him to spot him during his barbell squats.

For the fourth time, Buck says, “C’mon, you just have to do it. Don’t be a fucking baby now.”

A group of women walking past him to get to Zumba class aim several concerned looks his way, and Buck swears he sees them pick up their pace to get away from him as quickly as possible. At the rate things are going, Buck is sure that by the end of the year there won’t be a single person who has a membership to this gym that Buck won’t have embarrassed himself in front of.

But really, the only person Buck is really worried about embarrassing himself in front of is Eddie, which is the reason he’s spent the last twenty minutes trying to work up the courage to approach him instead of just doing so or instead of just giving up and admitting defeat.

Now, Buck knows he doesn’t really need to ask Eddie for help. It wouldn’t be the first time that Buck has to go through his barbell squats on his own without a spotter. In fact, this would be the first time that Buck has actually asked someone else for help in spotting him through them.

But for the past five days Buck has racked his brain looking for excuses to talk to Eddie for even just a second, only to chicken out of all of them. They either seem too obvious when brought to the light of day after Buck spent an entire night making up scenarios in his head, or Buck takes one look at Eddie in his workout gear and feels his tongue getting tangled inside his mouth every time.

This time, the latter is the biggest problem that Buck is facing as he steals glances at Eddie while reminding himself that he is a firefighter that has faced literal death in the eye and come out on the other side of it.

One single man should not be able to terrify Buck this much, not even if the man in question has the most attractive calves Buck has ever seen in his entire life. Not even if the man in question is so perfect he has Buck questioning whether he has ever accidentally given someone a heart attack just by walking into a room.

“It’s just a simple question,” Buck mutters to himself as he turns around just to pull his eyes away from Eddie, hoping that if he’s not in Buck’s line of vision for a second maybe Buck’s brain will decide to turn on again. “One simple question. It isn’t difficult at all. What are you eve—”

“Hey.”

Despite having only heard that voice a few times, Buck recognizes it to his core. It makes his shoulders tighten and his eyes widen as he turns around slowly, so slowly it must look like he’s doing it in slow-motion, to face the person who just spoke. s

“Buck, right?” Eddie asks, towel slung over his shoulder, hands on his hips, and Buck’s dignity at his feet.

“Me? Buck? Yeah,” Buck responds, and a second goes by in which Eddie just looks quizzically at him before Buck even realizes how stupid he sounded. “I mean, I am Buck, yes.”

Is this how other people have felt like before when Buck has flirted with them? Is there anyone out there that has felt the jittery knees and the shortness of breath and the lack of coherent thoughts around Buck at any time?

If so, Buck would like to formally and sincerely apologize to them.

The closest Buck has ever felt to being this mess of a person ruled by the butterflies in his stomach was with Abby, back at the very beginning, when their interactions mostly happened on the phone. But then, the innocence of his giddiness felt easy, manageable. It was more like hugging clouds, and now it’s as if he’s being punched by them every time that his eyes catch Eddie’s.

“You’re… You’re Eddie,” Buck says, and he hopes Eddie can’t tell that he’s almost worn down his name from thinking it so incessantly since Eddie introduced himself.

“Yeah,” Eddie confirms, smiling at Buck freely. Buck wants to trace the laugh lines that run down Eddie’s cheeks with his index finger. “Good to see you, dude. Do you need any help? Would you want me to spot you?”

Buck has to bite the inside of his cheek to stifle the automatic and desperate assent that wants to rip out of him.

“Oh, sure,” he says, so calmly and collectedly he expects his Oscar nomination to be announced on the spot. “That would be great. Thank you.”

It takes Buck approximately one minute to regret his original plan, his agreement to Eddie’s generous offer, the day he decided to move to Los Angeles, and even the day he was born.

Not much happens in that one minute, just Buck getting into position for his squats, with the loaded barbell on his shoulders, and with Eddie behind him. It’s that second thing that really makes him question his entire existence.

It’s something about how close his ass gets to Eddie’s crotch every single time Buck squats down.

It’s something about how Buck can see their reflection on the mirror in front of them and can’t help but think they look good together, even more attractive together than they do separately.

It’s something about having Eddie’s whole attention focused on him, making encouraging comments at Buck with every move, practically whispering them in his ear.

“Just a little lower.”

“That’s it. That’s really good.”

“C’mon, Buck, c’mon.”

Against all odds, Buck survives the experience, even gaining some great insight about himself from it once it’s over: it’s good to know that he’s still young and fit enough to repeatedly squat 130 pounds and yet be able to get half hard in the process.

To make matters worse -or maybe better, Buck has lost the ability to discern at this point-, Eddie claps him on the shoulder when Buck has put down the barbell after his fourth set, seemingly uncaring about sweat and Buck’s ability to keep his composure.

“Good job.” Eddie compliments him, all sincere and earnest and gentle, almost looking proud.

And okay, Buck has known for a while that he has somewhat of a thing for being praised, even if he’s never wanted to explore the hows and whys too deeply, aware that the introspection would point towards his insecurities, his traumas, his fears.

But there’s a difference between knowing and knowing, and right there and then -with Eddie commending him in a deep and silky voice- Buck has to admit that wanting to get on his knees because of one simple comment probably means he has more than somewhat of a thing for being praised.

The whole truth is Buck has a full-blow praise kink, at least when it comes to imagining Eddie whispering in his ears all the things he’s doing well, and how much Eddie is enjoying them. Preferably with nothing in between them, not even their clothes, and with a bed underneath their bodies.

Buck has to clear his throat before he speaks, and he hopes Eddie thinks that the hand he’s using to fan himself is because of how warm he got doing the previous exercises. “Thanks,” he says, halting the movement of his hand to rub at the back of his neck.

“Sure. We have each other’s backs, right?” Eddie asks, and Buck is really going to need him to stop being so sweet on top of being so hot. Awkwardly timed boners Buck can deal with, but he’s not as great at managing the heart flutters.

Really all he can do is smile and nod, trying hard not to remember how it felt and looked like to have Eddie behind him, their bodies the closest they’ve ever been and yet so far. He smiles and nods, trying hard not to imagine how it would look and feel like to have Eddie hugging him from behind.

It happens again two days later, but this time it’s Buck spotting Eddie once more.

Then the next day, it’s both of them helping each other out through their routines, their benches close as they transition between moves, some light chatter accompanying their workout for the first time.

This is when Buck finds out that Eddie is originally from Texas, that he’s only been living in Los Angeles for six months, and that he has a horrible taste in music and workouts listening to the Pokémon theme show.

“Laugh all you want, you dick,” Eddie grumbles as Buck truly does laugh all he wants, doing so even harder at Eddie’s prickly jab. “You obviously don’t know how difficult it is to share your Spotify account with your 7-year-old kid.”

All the laughter is drained out of Buck with that comment.

“You have a kid?” Buck asks, entirely unsure why it feels like so much of his future depends on the answer he’s about to receive.

Eddie is, at the end of the day, nothing more than a stranger to Buck still. Sure, a very attractive, very fun fantasy of a stranger, but a stranger nevertheless. Whether he has a kid or five of them, whether he’s married to the love of his life or has been single for years, whether he’s even into guys or the straightest of men to ever roam the earth, none of those things should really matter to Buck all that much.

And yet, Buck waits with bated breath for Eddie’s answer while he goes through the next rep of his bicep curl series.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and the softest smile pulls at the corners of his lips while he looks down at his phone in his hand. He extends his arm out to show Buck his phone, much like he had done a minute ago to show Buck a workout video he had filmed but instead letting Buck realize that Eddie’s wireless earphones had been playing a children’s show tune.

Now on his screen Buck can see the picture of a little boy with unruly curls, red glasses and matching crutches, and who is wearing the biggest smile on his face. “That’s Christopher. He’s my whole world.”

Buck’s heart somersaults inside of his chest at the way Eddie’s voice curls around his son’s name, like it’s precious, like even just the sound of it needs to be protected.

“He’s adorable,” Buck says, keeping his eyes on the picture both because the little boy truly is one of the cutest kids he’s ever seen and because he’s not sure he could be held responsible for his actions if he looked at Eddie now. “And I can see the Pokémon obsession really is going strong.” Buck’s referring to the song on Eddie’s Spotify and also to the t-shirt Christopher is wearing in the picture, a yellow one full of little Pikachus.

Eddie chuckles, swiping his thumb on the screen to show Buck a different photo. This one has Christopher hugging a Squirtle plushie almost as big as him. “Yeah, he’s obsessed. You know the Pokémon Go game?”

Boy, does Buck know the Pokémon Go game.

The Pokémon Go game was responsible for almost making the 118 firehouse collapse in on itself a couple of years ago when Hen and Chimney got so competitive over it they would actually stand around active scenes trying to catch Pokémon that stood next to on-fire buildings or totaled cars.

Three months was all that the game lasted, not because Hen or Chim got tired of it but because Bobby had to actually threaten them with never eating another one of his homemade meals again if they didn’t delete it from their homes.

Still, three months is apparently a long enough time to learn hundreds of Pokémon names, because it’s been years since Buck has heard one of them and yet they still live inside his head to this day.

“Yeah,” Buck confirms. “A couple friends of mine got really into it some time ago.”

Eddie is not yet ready to be exposed to the full Hen and Chimney experience. Or maybe Buck is not yet ready to expose him to it, lest Eddie realize Buck and his life are too much for him to handle so soon.

“Well, Chris has been very interested in exploring L.A. since we moved here,” Eddie says, locking his phone and putting it inside the pocket of his sweatpants. Buck feels a little sad that he won’t get to see more pictures, meaning he hasn’t even gotten to see one of Christopher and Eddie together. “But it’s not really the city that intrigues him, it’s how many different Pokémon there are around for him to catch.”

Buck laughs. “The kid has his priorities right.”

“He sure does,” Eddie agrees, laughing along with Buck.

The silence that surrounds them next isn’t really silence, as the noises of the gym are loud around them, but its stillness manages to unsettle Buck. On the bench to Buck’s right, Eddie is sitting down working on his shoulder presses, and Buck tries to focus on his barbell rows while looking at himself in the mirror, mindful of his form.

Questions claw at Buck’s mind, however, and it only takes a minute more for the intrigue to win out, making him ask, “So about Christopher… Did you move here alone? I mean, alone with him. So not alone but with him. I just mean like, did you guys move here on your own?”

Maybe if Buck lies down on the floor, and rests a 60 pound dumbbell on his throat his vocal cords will get crushed under the weight and that’ll prevent him from ever sounding like a moron again.

It seems that Buck’s verbal flailing goes unnoticed by Eddie as he puts his dumbbells down on the floor and focuses his gaze somewhere far away, appearing a little lost, a little dulled. It pains Buck to watch the change in Eddie’s demeanor, especially because something makes Buck sense that the sadness and heaviness that cling to Eddie at the moment are familiar companions to him.

If he could Buck would take a million awkward and embarrassing blunders that Eddie could side-eye, laugh at, or judge, over this. He’d make a fool of himself as often as possible if that could save Eddie even just a little bit of pain, of discomfort.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and Buck watches him swallow harshly, like the word is too big for him to comfortably interiorize. “It’s just me and Chris. It has been for a while. His mom… She actually lives in Los Angeles too but we got divorced when Chris and I moved here.”

“And Christopher and his mom, do they…?”

Buck is unable to finish his question, overcome by the shame of being so nosy about what is obviously such a sensitive topic and also saddened by what the answer could be.

“No.” Eddie shakes his head, shrugging his shoulders dejectedly. Buck wishes he could take his half-question back, his heart aching for a little kid he has never met. “I don’t know if in the future… But no, at the moment Shannon is not in Christopher’s life at all. It was her choice and I had to respect it. Even if…”

This time the silence that envelops them feels truer to its name, as if the sounds of the gym have been muffled by the intensity and heaviness of the conversation, drowned in the sadness that Buck can see Eddie dragging around with him.

Though the sight is one that twists Buck’s heart he can’t deny that peeking behind the curtain of who Eddie is makes him want the man so much more.

This isn’t Big Beautiful Brown Eyes - someone who Buck had completely made up in his head, someone who just had an incredibly nice body and an even more incredible face. This is Eddie - someone who offers to help strangers at the gym, a devoted father, a man with deep and complicated emotions that Buck wants to peel off until he can get to the core of him.

Big Beautiful Brown Eyes was a dream that Buck is realizing more and more could have never compared to the reality that is Eddie.

“I’m sorry,” Buck says sincerely, wishing his words could take a little bit of the burden off of Eddie’s shoulders. “That must be really difficult.”

Eddie bends down at the waist to pick up his dumbbells from the floor, straightening his upper body when he’s grabbed them and repositioning himself against the bench to continue the exercise he had paused in the middle of. He’s pushed the dumbbells over his head when he tells Buck, “It hurts me that it has to be like this for Chris. For me… Well, I’m okay. Christopher is all I really need.”

The words feel not exactly dismissive but final, a period at the end of a sentence that lays in the middle of a chapter that Eddie seems adamant to want to skip. Buck doesn’t push it any further, and he switches the dumbbell he’s holding from his left arm to his right to finish the end of his workout.

Eddie’s last words stay with him, however, especially the way they sounded so light and beautiful at first -his devotion to his son inspiring and enviable- but prove to be tragic the more Buck goes over them.

“Christopher is all I really need.”

What about what you want? Buck wants to ask, selflessly and selfishly curious. Is that not important? Could what you want ever be in any way, shape, or form… a man?

Having pried enough for a lifetime in the span of a single workout, Buck bites his lip and he pushes the question so far deep into his soul he actually feels it getting cozy next to his teenage crush on Robert Pattinson during his sparkling vampire era.

Things seem to click between them after that, like the flash of vulnerability that Eddie showed during the conversation was the key that was needed to unlock the full potential of them, of their partnership.

Not a single day goes by that Buck and Eddie are at the gym at the same time that they don’t spend their whole workouts together, cheering each other on, distracting each other with quips and teases, ignoring their rep counts and timed rests just to talk.

Buck still finds himself alone at the gym every once in a while, and those days are always a little grayer, a little less exciting.

His muscles seem to fatigue faster when Eddie isn’t there to encourage him to just do one more rep, pushing through the shallow breathing is more torture than accomplishment when Eddie isn’t next to him hacking up a lung as well, and stretching at the end of a session is far less interesting when he can’t look at Eddie’s body contorting in ways that shouldn’t be legal for a man as hot and strong as Eddie is.

Fortunately, those days are far and between, and soon Buck realizes he doesn’t have enough fingers or toes to count the amount of times he and Eddie have worked out together.

“Like working out alone, my ass,” Chimney tells Buck one day, the first time that he’s showed up at the gym while Buck and Eddie are there together. The words are being thrown back at him teasingly, but also curiously, because Chimney is first and foremost a gossip who always wants to know what’s going on in everyone’s life. “I sure can see that, pal.”

Buck grabs Chimney’s upper arm and starts pulling him away to put some distance between them and Eddie. Looking back over his shoulder, Buck sees Eddie raising a questioning eyebrow at him, his gaze focusing on the few feet of space separating their benches and him and Chimney’s new position.

As casually as he can -which is to say very much not casually at all-, Buck aims a wave his way before he turns back towards Chimney, saying, “You caught me. I just prefer working out alone than working out with you.”

Chimney throws his head back in laughter, and Buck pinches him on the arm, looking around them to find half of the people at the gym staring at the ruckus Chimney is causing.

“I’m a changed man. I don’t do that anymore. I’m not fucking him in the showers,” Chimney says, doing a truly horrifying impression of Buck - horrifying because it’s either the worst impression of another human being someone has ever tried to do, or such an accurate one that Buck should really start thinking of changing how he talks, and acts, and lives. “I called this. Didn’t I call this?”

“I’m not fucking him in the showers,” Buck mutters, pinching Chimney in the arm again and getting his hand slapped away this time. “Now go. Shoo. Leave.”

Putting his right hand over his heart and faking a pout, Chimney says, “You’re not going to introduce us? What are you? Embarrassed of me?”

“Yes,” Buck deadpans, putting his hands on Chimney’s shoulders and turning him around so he’s facing the opposite side of the gym, the one furthest away from where Buck and Eddie took their place when they arrived.

“You won’t be able to keep me away forever, Buckaroo,” Chimney says, and it sounds weirdly threatening, like he’s already planning at least five ways to embarrass him in one single conversation with Eddie. He starts walking away, though, and Buck breathes a little easier at that. “Have fun working out all on your own.”

Buck flips him off to his back and is startled when, without even looking back, Chimney flips him the bird right back, like some kind of annoying superhero who’s only real superpower is knowing every time someone is cursing them to their back.

When Buck walks back to their shared space, Eddie is waiting for him with his arms crossed and curiosity painting his face.

“A friend of yours?” he asks, the corners of his lips pulled up in an amused smirk.

“More like an annoyance of mine,” Buck says, swearing there and then he’ll never allow Eddie to meet Chimney under any circumstances.

In fact, he’ll keep the Buck he is when he’s with Eddie and the Buck who has a life outside of the gym so far away from each other that Eddie won’t ever get a chance to realize they’re the same person at all.

Gym Buck is someone that Eddie might like, but real life Buck… Well, Buck doesn’t really want to risk finding out what Eddie would think of that version.

Eddie’s phone starts ringing when he’s in the middle of a Bulgarian split squat.

“Can you check who that is for me?” Eddie asks him, breathing almost as heavily as he is sweating.

Sitting on his bench taking his rest, Buck nods, bending down at the waist and reaching over towards the floor next to Eddie’s bench where his cell phone had been placed at the beginning of their workout.

The phone’s screen is lit up as Eddie’s basic, boring and loud-ass ringtone continues announcing the call for everyone in a five mile radius to hear. Buck picks the phone up carefully, mindful not to accept or reject the call accidentally, and reads the name on the screen before straightening his upper body and raising his eyes to look at Eddie.

“It says Tia Pepa,” Buck announces, using the hard-earned Spanish skills he acquired while fucking his way through half of Peru.

Immediately, Eddie halts his movements, dropping his weights to the floor, uncaring on where or how they land, and extends his hand out towards Buck, bending his fingers to silently ask him to pass him the phone.

Buck has barely put the phone down on the palm of Eddie’s hand before Eddie swipes at the screen and brings it to his ear, saying, “Tia?”

In the span of just a few seconds Buck watches Eddie’s face go through a myriad of emotions, some that Buck doesn’t really recognize and some that Buck swears he can feel down to his core. What starts off as Eddie looking confused moves to him seeming worried and ends with him appearing devastated, eyes wide, hands shaking.

“Tia, Tia, is she—” Eddie goes silent, listening to whatever is being said on the other end of the line. His shoulders somewhat relax at what he’s hearing, but Eddie still looks affected enough that Buck feels the need to stand up from the bench and take half a step closer to him. He doesn’t know if his mere presence is going to help Eddie, but having Eddie closer certainly helps Buck feel a little more centered, and he can only hope he can anchor Eddie just right.

“Okay, yeah. No, that’s good, I’m glad,” Eddie sighs, using his free hand to rub at the bridge of his nose with his thumb and his forefinger. “Can you tell me what hospital you’re at? I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

The mention of a hospital makes Buck tense up, and he unconsciously reaches over and settles a hand on Eddie’s hip, squeezing in a silent show of support. Eddie’s gaze raises from where it had been focused on the floor and meets Buck’s. His eyes look troubled, but his smile, while shaky and small, looks genuine on his lips when he aims it at Buck.

“Okay, Tia. Thank you. I’ll see you in a bit. Love you too,” Eddie says, before moving the phone away from his ear and finishing the call.

For just a heartbeat, Eddie is still. He’s got his phone pressed to his lips, his eyes closed, his brow furrowed, and he’s taking deep, even breaths through his nose and then exhaling through his mouth. Buck stays silent so as to not disturb him, but curiosity and worry are eating him alive.

And then, Eddie whispers, “Fuck,” and it’s like someone has pressed the fast forward button with how quickly he begins to move.

He moves away from Buck, leaving the hand he had placed on Eddie’s hip hanging awkwardly in the air, and begins to pick up all of his things - his towel, his water bottle, his AirPods case, the roll of tape he’d been planning on using. All the while he’s muttering to himself, words too quick and quiet for Buck to really catch, but words he can tell are working Eddie up into a frenzy more and more.

“Hey, Eddie.” Buck tries to catch his attention by grabbing his elbow, but Eddie moves away before he can do it. “Eddie, just slow down. Eds!”

Maybe it’s the nickname, which Buck has never used before and sounds both clumsy and right coming from his lips, that finally gets Eddie to stop his frantic moving and turn to look at Buck. His eyes are wide and he looks a little disoriented, like Buck just woke him from a thousand years of slumber.

Taking a step towards him, Buck ducks his head a little to really catch Eddie’s gaze as he extends his arms and puts his hands on Eddie’s shoulders.

“What happened?” he asks gently, keeping his voice low, trying to keep Eddie this calm.

It doesn’t work, and Buck can watch the turmoil behind Eddie’s eyes blooming again, though he luckily stays put, Buck’s hands on his shoulders, as he begins rapidly rambling, his voice higher than normal in his desperation.

“My Abuela was watching Christopher and she apparently fell down the porch steps or something and broke her hip.” Eddie stops only long enough to take a deep breath before he can continue speaking. "My Tia Pepa is with them at the hospital now because she’s Abuela’s emergency contact, and I need to go meet them, so I need to get my things and drive to the hospital and I need to see if Chris is—”

“I’ll drive you.”

Buck’s interjection leaves Eddie silent, his mouth gaping open like a fish.

For a second, Buck worries that he’s gone too far too fast, that he’s crossed the invisible line between a good buddy and an obsessed one, but it takes him less than a second to realize he doesn’t care if he has. His concern for Eddie and Eddie’s wellbeing trumps his desire to be perceived as a normal human being, so if keeping Eddie safe and happy means the intensity of his feelings are going to be seen from outer space Buck hopes whatever astronauts are at the International Space Station will have a good laugh at his expense.

“You’re in no condition to drive right now, okay?” Buck explains, squeezing Eddie’s shoulders gently. “And you need to get to the hospital in one piece for your family, so just let me get you there.”

Eddie doesn’t really voice his acceptance to Buck’s offer, but just five minutes later Buck has been able to guide him through picking up his things from his locker and getting into Buck’s Jeep, so the win is undeniable.

It takes them a little over fifteen minutes to get to the hospital -which Buck counts as a miracle considering which city they live in- and then another couple of minutes to find Eddie’s Tia inside the building.

Watching Eddie sink into his Tia’s arms as soon as they reach her feels both like an intrusion and an honor. This is a side of Eddie that would be impossible to see inside of the gym -the space that has been their natural habitat up until this point- and it hits Buck then that this is the first time he’s ever been anywhere else with Eddie.

There are no dumbbells anywhere in sight, no treadmills, no barbells, no workout machines. It suddenly feels like Buck has stepped into a brand new world, one in which the colors are brighter, the air is clearer, and the stakes are higher. This is real life - Eddie’s real life, to be more precise.

A life that Buck has just entered, he realizes. A life in which he now exists.

Buck wants to take it all in and walk around every single moment like a tourist needing to immortalize every part of his journey. Buck also wants to throw up, if he’s being honest, the weight of what this moment means settling right over his stomach.

“She’s okay, Eddie. She’s okay,” Eddie’s Tia reassures him as she pats his back. Buck pulls his eyes away from the scene, wanting to give Eddie some privacy. “The doctors told me she’s going to be completely fine.”

Pulling away from his Tia’s embrace, Eddie nods at her, moving his hands to hold hers as she says, “That’s good, that’s really good. Where’s Chris?”

Buck has never been punched in the face before but he imagines it must feel very similarly to what he’s now experiencing. Maybe he’ll ask Chimney to punch him right on the eye during their next shift just to know whether he’s right or not.

Chris.

Christopher.

How did Buck not realize it sooner? How did he not put two and two together? Sure, he’s never been particularly good at Math, but he should have known that being in the hospital with Eddie’s family would mean being in the hospital with Eddie’s son, which would mean potentially getting to meet said son.

“He’s over there, the little charmer,” Eddie’s Tia says, motioning with her head towards a spot on the other side of the room. “He’s going to be running the hospital in just a few more minutes.”

Instinctually, Buck’s eyes move to the place she just motioned to, until his gaze finds what it was searching for.

Chris.

The boy is even tinier and more adorable in real life than he was in Eddie’s pictures. He’s surrounded by a handful of nurses and what looks to be one doctor, all doting and adoring on him as Christopher giggles delightfully and enchants them with whatever tales he’s telling.

“Eddie,” Eddie’s Tia says, and the seriousness in her voice makes Buck reluctantly pull his gaze away from the happy scene to look back at her and Eddie. “I need to get back to work now. But you know that—”

“I know, I know,” Eddie says, rubbing his eyes with his fingers, an action Buck is growing familiar with. It’s something Eddie does when he’s tired, or worried, or both things at once. It’s something that makes him look dangerously vulnerable, fragile in the way only beautiful things can look. “I shouldn’t have left Christopher with her. And for what? To go to the gym? It was so selfish and she already does so much for me when I’m at work and—”

“Hey, hey.” Eddie’s Tia says, gripping Eddie’s upper arm with her hands, making him look her in the eye as she speaks. “You know your Abuela loves staying with Christopher and she would never want you to doubt that. And you deserve to have a life, cielo.” She moves one of her hands so she can gently pat Eddie on the cheek. “It’s just… For your own sake, you need to start looking into better arrangements. It’s going to help you. And it’s also going to help Christopher.”

And this— This is why Buck wants to throw up.

No one could have prepared him for the rush of emotions he feels entering into the reality of Eddie’s life. Nothing could have warned him about the way his insides are both melting and twisting seeing all these brand new sides of Eddie.

It was easy, just an hour ago, to think of Eddie, despite the nerve-wracking crush, and the debilitating physical attraction. Now, Buck’s feelings for Eddie are getting Complicated. With a capital C.

And what makes them even more Complicated is that Buck doesn’t want to simplify them anymore. He’s only caught a glimpse of the behind the scenes of Eddie’s life, and he’s sure he can’t even begin to imagine the complexities and difficulties of it by simply listening in on one single conversation between Eddie and his Tia, but the truth is Buck wants more. He wants to know more, he wants to help more, he wants more of Eddie.

It’s been less than an hour since Buck has had Eddie outside of the gym but he can’t even fathom the idea of going back to keeping their interactions confined to those four walls again.

Outside of the gym the limits are non-existent, the possibilities are endless, and that is in part what makes Buck feel like he just rode a rollercoaster after eating eight hot dogs in a row.

“You’re right, you’re right,” Eddie tells his Tia, nodding his head. “I’ll start really looking into it. Promise.”

Patting Eddie on the cheek again, his Tia gives him a sweet smile. Once more, Buck pulls his eyes away from the intimate moment, but he soon brings his gaze back to them when he gets the feeling of being watched. He almost jumps a foot in the air when he meets the intense and judging stare of Eddie’s Tia.

“And who is this, huh?” Her question feels somehow loaded, like there are layers under it, and behind it, and surrounding it on all sides.

“Oh,” Eddie murmurs, and his eyes also settle on Buck then.

Under their pair twin of stares Buck feels like doing something ridiculous, like wave despite being only a couple of feet away from them. And because he doesn’t have any inhibition skills, he waves. He immediately regrets his action, even more so when he swears he can see a slight blush grow on Eddie’s cheeks as he bites his bottom lip, probably regretting the day he ever decided to speak to Buck.

“Tia Pepa, this is Buck. He’s my—” Eddie seems at a loss then, like he can’t find the right words to describe Buck or their relationship. Buck really, really regrets that wave. Finally, Eddie settles on, “He’s my gym partner.”

Pepa’s eyes travel the whole length of Buck’s body, and Buck knows he is about to pass or fail some kind of test.

“Well,” Pepa says when she appears to have made her evaluation. “That explains the muscles and the sweat.”

And with that and a sweet kiss to Eddie’s cheek, Pepa leaves, but not before walking towards Christopher and giving him a loving hug as a goodbye.

Buck chooses to believe he’s passed her test with flying colors, even if the only other exam he’s ever done well on in his life was the fire academy one.

For just a heartbeat after Pepa’s departure, Buck and Eddie stand next to each other in silence, not quite strangers, not quite acquaintances. They’re getting used to these new versions of each other, Buck thinks, the ones that do more than sweat, and lift, and run, and grunt.

Eddie’s the one who speaks first, addressing Buck but looking at Christopher when he says, “Do you want to meet Chris?”

“Yes,” Buck says, without hesitation or delay. He’d be embarrassed for his eagerness if not for how Eddie turns to look at him with a soft smile painting his face.

They only have to take a few steps to reach Christopher and the nurses he’s still entertaining, and soon they’re close enough to him that Buck can hear the giggles that are shaking Christopher’s body as a nurse shows him something on her phone.

“Chris,” Eddie calls, automatically opening his arms up before Christopher has even turned to look at him.

Christopher’s eyes widen behind his glasses when he catches sight of his dad, and he exclaims, “Daddy!”
The embrace that Eddie and Christopher lose themselves in looks like those that are shown in television ads, usually in slow motion, usually with very cheerful and upbeat music playing in the background. Buck didn’t think they existed in real life, which says a lot about the kind of childhood he had, but also says a lot about how picture perfect Eddie and Christopher look.

Simply standing next to them as they hug makes Buck feel like he’s catching some of the waves of the love they share for each other, and Buck wishes he could follow them around everywhere they go just so he wouldn’t have to let go of this feeling.

“How’s Abuelita?” Buck hears Christopher ask, concern evident in his soft voice. It tugs at Buck’s heartstrings, and it’s right there and then that Buck realizes how wrapped around Christopher’s little finger he’s going to be.

“She’s good, buddy,” Eddie says, pulling away from their hug to stroke Christopher’s hair, moving it away from his forehead. “She’s going to be just fine.”

The answering grin that Christopher gives Eddie is more blinding than the sun, and Buck swears he can feel the gravitational pull that is going to make his whole world revolve around this adorable little boy from now on kick in.

“Hey, bud,” Eddie says gently, his voice having gone softer. He turns a little from where he’s been crouching on the floor so both him and Christopher are facing Buck better. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Eddie stands up from the floor without breaking contact with Christopher, one of his arms staying wrapped around Christopher’s shoulders and nudging him so he’ll turn to look at Buck.

“This is Buck,” Eddie announces, like all of who Buck is can be defined and described in just that one word.

It’s good that the hospital is so busy around them -at least for Buck, even if it’s not for the people who are actually there being treated- so that no one can hear the way Buck’s knees are knocking against each other as Buck shakes like a leaf from nerves.

“Hi, Chris. It’s very nice to meet you,” Buck says, carefully kneeling on the floor, both so he can look at Christopher better and so he’ll stop feeling like he’s going to pass out at any given moment.

One of Christopher’s little hands reaches over like he wants to touch Buck, but it drops back to his side as his eyes open widely behind his glasses and his mouth hangs open in surprise.

“You’re Buck?” Christopher gasps, like he knows him from legends, from myths, like he’s awed that such a thing as a Buck truly exists. “Dad says you’re really strong!”

So Christopher does know him from legends and myths, only these tales have been spun by his father rather than animated Disney movies or interactive picture books.

Something sparks inside of Buck -a comforting flame that will never be able to be extinguished- at the thought of Eddie telling Christopher -his son, the most important person in his life- about Buck.

Buck only moves his eyes away from Christopher for a second, just long enough to glance at Eddie and see his sheepish smile before turning back towards Chris. The boy’s arm is outstretched again, and this time Buck takes Christopher’s little hand in his to give him a silly handshake, one that wiggles and waves and swings wildly. Christopher laughs delightedly at it so Buck keeps it going for a couple more seconds.

“Well,” Buck says as soon as he’s halted the movement of their hands. “Your dad says you’re the best Pokémon trainer in the world. But he still hasn’t told me which one is your favorite.”

It seemed impossible that Christopher’s eyes could grow any bigger or that his face could light up any more, but both things happen as he seems to begin to vibrate in excitement in front of Buck.

“It’s Chikorita!” Christopher says for the whole hospital to know. “And then Wooper and then Shaymin! Do you want to see my cards?”

“Christopher…” Eddie begins to warn, but Buck answers before he can continue talking.

“Yes, please,” he says happily, having to fake none of his enthusiasm.

Before Buck has even finished blinking next, Christopher takes off towards the row of chairs where Pepa had left his backpack, his crutches clicking with every step he takes. Buck watches him go, not yet ready to pull his eyes away from the brightest thing he has ever seen.

“I hope you realize you’ve just now become his best friend forever,” Eddie tells him, making Buck pull his eyes away from Christopher to look at the second brightest thing he’s ever seen.

Forever. As much as Buck tries not to hyper-fixate on that one single word, he fails at it.

Forever. Forever. Forever.

Synonym for eternally, everlasting, endlessly.

Pulling his eyes away from Eddie, Buck thinks it’s a good thing they’re already in a hospital, because that means someone can check out the weird tripping and flying his heart is doing inside his chest.

“Well good, because he’s just become mine,” Buck says, truthfully, ready to start working on the friendship bracelets right away, as soon as he gets around to asking Christopher what his favorite color is.

Christopher, who is still rummaging around his backpack, pulling out folders, notebooks, and pencil cases and piling them up on the chair next to him. He finally seems to find what he was looking for, a small metal box with a Poké Ball painted on the lid, and then his work to put everything back inside the bag begins again.

“I need to—” Eddie interrupts himself with a sigh before he finishes the sentence. Buck turns to watch as he runs a hand through his hair while looking troubled. “I need to talk to my Abuela’s doctors, find out what we need to do next. And I want to see her, too. But with Chris here… I don’t want him to have to be around for all that. I don’t know how to…”

Again, his sentence stays unfinished.

Buck waits a couple of seconds to see if he’s going to say anything else, but as Eddie continues to be silent he decides to step inside of it fully, to break the last barrier down.

“I can stay with him,” Buck offers, finally standing up from his crouched position and coming to stand next to Eddie, their shoulders not quite touching but close enough that Buck wouldn’t have to lean far to reach Eddie. “I mean if you— If you trust me to stay with him.”

Doubts start bubbling up inside of Buck as Eddie stays silent, making it feel like his lungs are being squeezed too tightly and he can’t breathe. Eddie’s eyes are focused solely on Buck, and as hard as Buck tries to read the expression on his face it is foreign to him.

The tension breaks when Christopher walks back to them, his box of Pokémon cards tucked safely into the front pocket of his jeans.

“Hey, Chris,” Eddie says, keeping his eyes on Buck as he speaks. “You’re going to stay with Buck for a little while so I can go see Abuela, okay?”

Happiness and pride eclipse every other emotion Buck has ever felt in his life with the intensity in which they come sweeping in, and they grow even stronger when Christopher cheers, “Yeah! I can show him all my drawings, and my books, and my cards.”

And that is how Buck finds himself having the most riveting conversation of his entire life with Christopher after Eddie leaves to see his grandmother. For a little over an hour he and Chris sit together, completely uncaring of how uncomfortable waiting room chairs can be, going through every and any topic of conversation.

“Chocolate ice cream is good, but you’re right that it’s a little boring sometimes,” Buck concedes in the middle of them rating the best foods and worst foods they know.

“I want to be able to talk to animals. I would make so many new friends,” Christopher says as they’re discussing what superpowers they want to have.

“The moon, definitely. I would be afraid to know what animals are at the bottom of the ocean,” Buck chooses after Chris asks him what place he’d prefer to travel to.

“What do you call a dinosaur who is sleeping? A dino-snore,” Christopher jokes, making Buck burst out laughing as he clutches his stomach.

That’s how Eddie finds them when he comes back, giggling helplessly but trying to keep their voices down so as to not disturb anyone around them, their hands covering their mouths.

“I don’t know who’s the bad influence here, I really don’t,” Eddie says, and he sounds a thousand times more relaxed than he did an hour ago. His shoulders have lost most of their tension, his smile stretches genuinely across his face, and his eyes look fond as they gaze upon Christopher and Buck.

“Dad!” Christopher greets when he catches sight of Eddie, waving the dinosaur drawing Buck and him have been working on for the past five minutes. “Buck named his dinosaur Fossil and I named mine Horacio.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow, this time looking at Buck directly. “You named a dinosaur after their dead remains?”

“I didn’t realize I was being culturally insensitive at the time,” Buck defends, shrugging his shoulders and making an apologetic face. “And now Chris won’t let me change the name because he thinks it’s funny.”

“It is,” Christopher assures them, and Eddie chuckles lightly. When Buck’s eyes meet Eddie he can’t help but let out a short chuckle as well.

“Well, you’re the boss,” Eddie tells Chris, walking closer to him so he can ruffle Christopher’s hair gently. “And now, boss, do you want to go in and see Abuelita?”

“Yes,” Christopher answers immediately, and Eddie smiles at him before gesturing to all of Christopher’s stuff that Buck and Chris had been gradually spreading across the coffee table in front of them for the past hour.

“Then put everything in your bag and we can go in for a little bit, okay?”

Wasting not even half a second, Christopher practically jumps out of his chair, both Eddie’s and Buck’s hands reaching out towards him instinctively, but he just wobbles slightly for a moment before regaining his full balance, immediately moving to put away all of his stuff.

Giving Christopher back the crayon he had been using last, Buck stands up from the most uncomfortable chair his ass has ever felt and stretches his arms over his head, hoping to lose the knots that have formed all over his back muscles and legs. A satisfying crack is heard when he bends backwards with his hands on his lower back, and he sighs in relief.
“Hey.”

Eddie’s hand settles right where Buck had his only a second ago, but his touch is so different, so unfamiliar and yet recognizable. Buck wants to ask him to leave his hand there for just a little while longer so he can tattoo the outline of it on his skin.

“Thank you,” Eddie says, his voice as warm as Buck feels his skin right where Eddie is touching him. “Seriously, Buck. Thank you. For… Well, for everything.”

If Buck thought before that one single compliment from Eddie could end his whole life by melting every single one of his brain cells, it was because he hadn’t yet known the full damage that Eddie’s gratitude and fondness could do to him.

The overwhelming rush of emotions that Eddie’s touch, and Eddie’s words, and Eddie’s stare, stirs up inside him, coupled with the soothing happiness that spending his time with Christopher has brought him, has Buck feeling dizzy, even a little confused, almost like he can’t quite believe that today even happened.

“Anytime,” Buck says, and he means it deeply, desperately, devoutly. It’s too soon to be making any kind of vows, even just friendship ones, but that doesn’t mean Buck can’t think them in the relative safety of his own mind. “Do you need me to stick around? Drive you to get your car back from the gym later?”

“No, no,” Eddie rushes to say, pressing his hand further onto Buck’s lower back. “Tia Pepa is going to pick us up in a couple of hours when she leaves her work, and until then I want to stay with Abuela.”

Nodding his head, Buck realizes he’s a little afraid of letting this day end, even if it’s felt like a whole week has gone by in just the span of a few hours and his exhaustion is just now catching up with him.

The fear claws at him that when he walks out the hospital doors his and Eddie’s dynamic will reset to what it was not just this morning before they arrived but back at the very beginning, when Buck needed to be hit across the head with a dictionary before every single one of his interactions with Eddie in the hopes that some words would make it back into his brain.

“Sure, okay,” Buck has to end up saying, because this is not a world in which he can actually follow Eddie and Christopher around every minute of every day, seeing as how some could consider that stalking and he’d loathe risking the chance that it’d end up being Athena arresting him for it. “I’m glad that your Abuela is okay. And I’ll see you soon, I guess.”

“Can I have your number?”

The question is so abrupt Buck swears he can see the skid marks it leaves on the floor as Eddie asks it.

“I just—” Eddie chuckles and then clears his throat, moving his hand away from Buck’s lower back and putting it inside the right front pocket of his sweatpants. “It’d be easier, wouldn’t it? To coordinate when to go to the gym.”

“And I could talk to you again!” Christopher says, and Buck watches as Eddie startles at the sound of his voice, like for a millisecond he had forgotten his own son was even there.

“Right, right,” Eddie concedes, pulling Christopher closer to his side with an arm around his shoulders. “And then Chris can call you and you guys can name more dinosaurs together. Maybe he’ll call the next one Armando and you’ll call yours Extinct.”

And with a pitch like that, who is Buck to say no?

At this point, he’ll give Eddie and Christopher his phone number, his time, his affection, and maybe, taking advantage of the fact that they’re in a hospital, he can throw in a kidney or two just for free.

“Are you telling me we’ve known each other for two months and we’re only finding out we’re both firefighters now?”

“Actually,” Eddie says, “we’ve known each other for three months.”

Just as they’re crossing the threshold to the locker room, Buck pushes Eddie’s shoulder with enough force to make him walk into the doorway. Eddie just chuckles before regaining his balance and pushing Buck in retaliation, though Buck saw it coming so he stays unmoving, leaving Eddie’s hand resting on his shoulder.

“No, seriously,” Buck insists, very calmly and very maturely staying still and not moving even an inch so that Eddie’s hand will touch his skin instead of the fabric of his t-shirt, “you’re a firefighter too?”

Eddie shrugs his shoulders, minutely tightening his grip on Buck’s shoulder. “Probationary firefighter for now. But yeah.”

“That’s insane,” Buck says, biting his lip as the image of Eddie in his turnout pants and suspenders assaults his brain.

He works alongside firefighters -attractive firefighters, at that- everyday so the allure of the uniform should be a little lost on him by now, but it seems that Eddie’s allure can make everything and anything feel exciting, new, and desirable again.

Just to distract himself from the mental image and the fire it lights inside him, Buck asks, “What’s your station?”

Before Eddie can respond, a guy clears his throat to their right, making them turn to look at him. He’s waiting next to them, his arms crossed as he taps his foot on the floor more quickly with each passing second like he’s growing impatient.

If it were up to Buck he would stay right where he is, connected to Eddie forever, even if it meant the guy would have to walk all around the gym just to reach the other entrance to the locker room to actually enter it. Eddie ruins Buck’s plan, however, by dropping his hand from Buck’s shoulder and taking a few steps away from him.

The guy walks between them then, and for less than a second Buck thinks about extending his leg and tripping him up. He doesn’t do it, of course, because he’s a mature adult who doesn’t feel petty and upset about having lost Eddie’s touch. And also because as strong as Buck is, the guy looks like he could wrap his massive hand around Buck’s neck and dangle him around like he was nothing more than a rag doll.

“The 136,” Eddie says, and Buck turns around to look at him confusedly. “That’s my station. The 136.”

“Oh!” Buck exclaims, being brought back to their conversation and leaving behind thoughts of getting maimed and killed by guys three times his size whose only real offense was separating Buck from Eddie a second earlier than it would have naturally occurred.

“I’ve actually been a floater for a while. I started with Station 6 after graduating from the Academy but I’ve been passed around a couple of times now because of understaffing,” Eddie explains as he begins to walk towards his locker to grab his things, Buck following close behind. “I’ve been with the 136 the longest now. A couple of months.”

“That must suck,” Buck says, opening his locker and taking out his sport bag to drop it on the bench behind him. “My team is like my family. It’s part of why I love being a firefighter so much. Just being with a group of people that I can trust and that I feel close to… It makes the hard parts worth it.”

Sitting down on the bench, Eddie smiles ruefully at Buck before taking off his sweaty tank top, making Buck avert his gaze like he’s a guy in Victorian times feeling overwhelmed by a lady’s bony ankle. He’s seen pecs before, and chest hair, and abs, and a pair of nipples. Hell, he’s got pecs, and chest hair, and abs, and a pair of nipples. But these are Eddie’s pecs, and chest hair, and abs, and pair of nipples. That makes all the difference.

“It was definitely not what I pictured when I decided to become a firefighter,” Eddie says, and Buck risks a glance at him, almost letting out a sigh of something between relief and disappointment when he sees Eddie has already put another t-shirt on.

They undress and dress again in silence for the next minute or so, having both decided to bypass the gym showers for the day in lieu of using Eddie’s cleaner, better pressurized, and more private shower at his house, as Buck is supposed to be spending the afternoon with him and Christopher.

“What’s yours?” Eddie suddenly asks, breaking the silence they had settled into. “What station are you part of?”

“The 118,” Buck answers, immediately feeling a rush of pride and affection when thinking of them, of his place in the group, much more solid, stable and natural now.

It’s funny, really, that it’s taken Buck so much time to mix the two things in his life that make him feel more like himself.

With the 118, as a firefighter, he feels like the version of Evan Buckley he’s always wanted to be. With Eddie -and with Christopher, too- he feels like the version of Evan Buckley who doesn’t need to be anything other than Evan Buckley.

“No fucking way.”

The expletive is so unexpected and so unlike Eddie Buck actually turns to check over both of his shoulders whether it could have come from someone else. But then Eddie repeats, “No fucking way,” and all of Buck’s doubts vanish.

“You work under Captain Nash?” Eddie questions, and Buck’s eyes widen at hearing Bobby’s name from Eddie’s lips. His response is wordless, just a nod, and Eddie chuckles loudly. “I can’t believe…”

Eddie stands up from the bench, fully dressed in his dry clothes, and moves to be right in front of Buck, much like they were standing before The Rock’s look-alike interrupted them before, except this time Eddie’s hands are nowhere near Buck.

“Captain Nash offered me a spot on the 118 right when I finished the Academy, but I ended up choosing Station 6. I don’t even remember why now,” Eddie laughs, shaking his head as he keeps his eyes on Buck’s. “Can you imagine? We would have been working together all this time.”

And the thing is — The thing is Buck can imagine it very well.

There is no doubt in Buck’s mind that he and Eddie would make a good team, probably the best. It’s something about the way they move around each other at the gym, the way they’ve learnt how to reach each other’s faces, moves, and words. They fit together, not like puzzle pieces, but as one of those impossible circle shapes, the ones that seem to be infinite, whose ending and beginning you can never find, despite knowing they must exist.

Buck can see them in the middle of calls, complementing each other perfectly, working as one, having each other’s backs, like they promised months ago.

But better yet -or worse-, Buck can see them in the smaller moments, during the insignificant times. Devouring dinners made by Bobby right next to each other, catching naps in between cleaning the truck and doing routine maintenances. Buck can see them calling Christopher during their downtime, telling him all the kid-friendly firefighting stories. He can even see them helping Christopher slide down the pole on the days Carla can bring him around the station for a visit.

These images play like a feature film inside of Buck’s brain, their quality so pristine Buck actually wonders if he tele-transported to some alternate universe for a moment, taking the place of a much luckier Buck who gets to keep Eddie so close at all times.

It hits him right there and then, though the blow is so soft Buck thinks maybe he knew before and he had just been avoiding thinking about it too much.

Buck is in love with Eddie, in a way that gets his heart beating faster than running for an hour in a treadmill, in a way that gets his muscles trembling more than when he deadlifts 300 pounds, in a way that has him more breathless than doing twenty burpees in a row.

Buck is in love with Eddie in a way that is dizzyingly all-consuming, in a way that he’s never been before.

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Buck says, though his voice is barely a whisper, and the smile he gives Eddie is a nervous one.

Eddie must see it, because he always does, because he knows Buck better than anyone has ever known him even though they’ve only known each other two -sorry, three- months, and that’s what has him aiming concerned glances Buck’s way as they exit the gym and walk towards their cars in the parking lot.

It’s a little crazy that even the way Eddie walks next to Buck, having to speed up a little every few steps to keep up with Buck’s longer strides, makes Buck want to propose on the spot.

They’re in front of Eddie’s truck, a couple of spots away from Buck’s Jeep, when Eddie asks, “Hey, you’re still— You’re still coming around for lunch, right?”

His hesitation must be showing on his face more than Buck wants it to be, because Eddie bites his bottom lip worriedly.

“You wanted to give Christopher those Pokémon candies you found, didn’t you?” Eddie reminds him.

“The Pokémon Pez dispensers,” Buck confirms, thinking of the ten of them he’s got wrapped on the back seat of the Jeep, one for each Pokémon he could find, except for Pikachu, which he got two of just so he could keep one for himself.

“Well, then it’s settled,” Eddie says, opening his truck. “You’re coming for lunch.”

They head in the same direction with their cars even though Buck didn’t offer an agreement to Eddie’s plan simply because there was no other way their day would go. Buck will always go where Eddie goes, Buck will always want to keep them as close as possible, regardless of having just had life-altering and potentially friendship-ruining love epiphanies.

But most importantly, on the off-chance that Buck will be greeted by the brightest and loveliest smile in the universe to the tune of “Buck!” when Christopher sees him, Buck will always head in whatever direction Christopher is.

“Chris!” Buck greets in return, kneeling down right on the threshold of the Diaz front door, opening his arms and waiting for Christopher to reach him so he can squeeze him in a hug.

In the background, Buck can hear Eddie saying hello to Carla, but Buck’s full attention is on Chris and Chris only.

With Christopher in his arms Buck feels a little stupid for not having realized just how in love with Eddie he is sooner. Not because Christopher and Eddie are’t different people that deserve to be loved for their individuality, which they are, but because the more Buck’s love for one grows, the more he finds his love for the other matching it, like his heart had been waiting for them all along to grow to its fullest potential, which seems to be infinite when it comes to the Diaz boys.

Christopher’s tiny arms circle and squeeze Buck’s neck as Christopher whispers in his ear, “Buck… You smell.”

The whisper must not have been as much of a whisper as Buck thought it was and as much as Chris intended it to be, because Carla bursts out laughing and Eddie admonishes, “Chris!”

Buck only tightens the hug for a second as he chuckles and then releases Christopher to bop him on the nose with his index finger.

“Don’t worry, bud. Your dad promised me a shower, so I won’t smell for much longer,” Buck says. “And later I have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?” Christopher asks, awed. “After your shower?” Buck nods his response, making Christopher’s hands settle on his shoulders and push at them fruitlessly but with a lot of might, like he’s trying to guide Buck’s body to the bathroom himself. “Go, go, go!”

Barely a minute later Buck is in the bathroom after having hugged Carla goodbye, letting the warm water wash away the effort from the morning’s workout and wishing it could wash away his doubts just as easily.

Luckily, the only other mishap of his morning happens after getting out of the shower and almost cracking his skull open on the floor after he slips, and as soon as he’s dressed in clean clothes and reunited with Christopher in the kitchen after Eddie heads to take his own shower, things start sailing more smoothly.

Because Christopher is the king of the house -and should be king of the world-, Buck lets him pick the lunch they’re going to make. They end up cooking a simple pasta dish that Buck lets Christopher mostly take the lead on as he watches over him carefully.

There is nothing too complicated about it, and the preparations mostly consist of chopping vegetables, slicing bacon, and stirring the sauce, but looking at Christopher and his enthusiasm as their food comes together makes Buck feel like the proudest person in the world.

When Eddie walks into the kitchen after his shower and he compliments the smell of their food, Christopher’s excitement only grows, and with it Buck’s as well.

Minute by minute, Buck settles comfortably in the Diaz house, almost like he’s always been meant to be here, like every single step he’s ever taken in his life was supposed to lead him to this moment with Chris and Eddie as they eat macaroni and spread tomato sauce all over their mouths and faces.

For the duration of the afternoon Buck is able to leave behind his incredibly obvious and yet incredibly shaking revelation to just enjoy his time with the Diaz boys.

It’s not that Buck forgets about it, because forgetting that one is in love with Eddie Diaz is as impossible as changing one’s DNA, Buck can already tell, but he can push the knowledge to the back of his head and ignore the way his whole body just feels the love that he’s carrying with him.

Buck ignores the way his hands shake and his knees buckle when Eddie laughs at one of his jokes, his mirth brightening the whole kitchen as they both load the dishwasher together while Christopher prepares the movie they’re going to watch in the living room.

He ignores the way his throat tightens and his skin sizzles when the three of them sit together on the couch, Christopher between Eddie and Buck, and Eddie extends his arm until his fingertips are grazing the nape of Buck’s neck, a touch as light as it is branding.

He ignores the way his heart trips up every time Eddie does anything at all, no matter how small, no matter how mundane, or unappealing, or ridiculous. He hits an all time low when he has to pretend really hard like he doesn’t want to sigh wistfully after Eddie lets out the loudest burp in the history of all humanity just to get Christopher to burst out laughing.

He ignores, and he ignores, and he ignores, although if he’s being honest he has to admit that he does a really bad job at it, because his love for Eddie is all he can focus on all day long.

But never let it be said that Buck is a quitter. For hours and hours, he bites down his whimpers, he swallows the love declarations, he controls his suspirations, all while staying less than three feet away from Eddie at all times.

By the time Christopher’s bedtime rolls around, Buck is ready to declare this the longest day of his entire life.

It’s all been worth it, however, just to watch Christopher lying in bed with two of his Pokémon Pez dispensers held in his hands as Eddie kisses his forehead and ruffles his hair.

Buck stays glued to the doorway, biting his lip and accepting deep in his heart that ignorance has never been and will never be an option.

Sure, Buck’s a little dumb, in a charming golden retriever kind of way. And yeah, he’s a little oblivious, what kids these days call a himbo, though he doesn’t really understand the full meaning of the word. But Buck isn’t stupid, or at least he isn’t stupid enough to think this is the kind of love one can just will away with time and patient. He doesn’t think this is the kind of love one can will away, period.

“Buck,” Christopher whispers sleepily, raising his arms slowly, silently asking for a hug that Buck can’t and won’t deny him.

“Good night, bud,” Buck says once Christopher is in his arms, murmuring the words into Chris’s curls. The only response he receives is deep and even breathing, the sign that Christopher has already slipped into a peaceful slumber.

Once they step out of Christopher’s room -Buck ahead of Eddie, Eddie closing the door behind himself-, fire alarms and ringing bells and the very familiar wee woo sirens of fire trucks start going off inside Buck’s head.

If ignorance is bliss, Buck is feeling very not blissful right now.

The living room is quiet when they reach it, but Buck thinks Eddie must just be ignoring the way Buck’s heart is the loudest sound in the whole universe. The thumps of its beats sound like the footsteps of someone clumsily running away from all their problems, and that’s exactly what Buck is going to do.

“Do you want a bee—”

“I should leave.”

“Oh,” Eddie exhales, his shoulders dropping as he bites his bottom lip.

For half a second, Buck debates taking back his words and accepting that beer he only allowed Eddie to half-offer. But if there’s one thing Buck is known for is having a loose tongue when he drinks, his only rival for not being able to keep quiet Chimney in any and every situation.

Staying and having a beer with Eddie would be tempting fate, and by fate Buck means tempting his own self-control and resistance threshold to Eddie’s everything, which at the moment Buck suspects is dangerously low.

But Eddie’s face is still set on a disappointed expression, and because his resistance threshold to Eddie’s everything is so low, Buck finds himself needing to reassure him, to make sure he knows it’s not that Buck doesn’t want to stay, it’s that he can’t.

“No one ever warned me how much of a full-day workout being around a kid for hours can be. I’m beat,” Buck says, chuckling softly as he shakes his arms lightly like he sometimes does after dropping his weights at the gym.

Eddie’s expression clears a little as he lets out an amused laugh, and Buck feels unreasonably happy to have made him look happier, even though he had been the reason Eddie looked discouraged in the first place.

“Yeah, lifting 300 pounds never does make the muscles work as hard as having to keep a kid from having a meltdown over there not being popcorn in the house,” Eddie agrees, making Buck flashback to Christopher’s quiet but insistent whining only a few hours before.

“But hey,” Buck says, the corners of his lips curling in the shape of a smile at the memory. “We maxed out that rep pretty well. The gummy bears' fight distraction was amazing of us.”

As they speak, Buck and Eddie keep inching closer to the front door, their steps small but the living room even smaller, meaning they cross the space in about three and a half paces.

“I’m still bitter the red one won, though,” Eddie jokingly complains as they stop right in front of the door. “Yellow should have taken the title.”

Chuckling, Buck ducks his head, simultaneously wishing he was back in his sad and empty loft already and that he could chain himself up to one of the legs of Eddie’s kitchen table so he’d never have to leave.

A heady silence falls on them as Buck bites the inside of his left cheek, pushing down the feelings and words that are threatening to explode out of him the longer he stays within the comfort, the safety and the happiness of the Diaz house.

“You know that…” Eddie clears his throat before he continues to speak, but Buck keeps his eyes away from him, not wanting to make things even harder on himself. “You know that you’re always invited for more full-day children-run workouts here. Chris would love that. And I would love it too.”

Would it be totally undignified of a grown man to put his hands to his cheeks and scream his heart out like a teenage girl at a boy band concert simply because the man he’s in love with has so graciously extended his friendship and affection towards him? Yes.

Does Buck still feel the almost uncontrollable urge to do it? Also yes.

Will he do it? Fuck no.

“Thank you. I am—” Buck’s voice breaks in the middle of the sentence, and he has to swallow harshly before speaking again. “I’d love that too.”

Too much, a voice whispers in his head. You’d love it too much and you’d probably end up not only screaming like you’re in a One Direction concert hoping Niall Horan will catch your eye from the stage and fall in love with you, but passing out when his hand touches yours as he high-fives everyone in the crowd.

The voice sounds suspiciously like Hen’s, who loves to make fun of Buck’s real suffering about having only gotten into One Direction’s music after the band went on hiatus.

“But maybe next time we can do something else,” Eddie says, and his voice has a different intonation to it, an intriguing enough change that makes Buck raise his eyes from the floor to catch Eddie’s gaze. “Maybe we could do something more interesting. We could go out, even.”

“That sounds fun,” Buck says, holding Eddie’s eyes with his even though his mind is flashing through a hundred possibilities, a hundred reachable but still impossible dreams.

He can see it clearly in his head, all the future plans they can make, all the ways in which they can intertwine their lives further.

It will start with a trip to the zoo, most likely. Something exciting and fun for all of them, something that will have them opening an entire day together as the sun shines down on them, bouncing off of Christopher’s curls and lightly tanning Eddie’s nose and cheeks.

Museum visits will follow, trips in which Buck will have the opportunity to ramble on about his internet rabbit hole findings as Christopher listens attentively and Eddie rolls his eyes fondly.

Then it’ll be mornings spent at the beach and afternoons at the arcade. Picnics in the park, hikes easy enough that Christopher can do, a day at the Santa Monica Pier. Moments upon moments upon moments that they’ll get to create together. Moments upon moments upon moments of everything that Buck has always vaguely desired and now wants so desperately it hurts.

Maybe one day, when they’re all walking around eating ice cream and enjoying a sunny and slightly breezy weather, someone will stop Buck to tell him, “You’ve got a beautiful family.” And Buck won’t have the heart -or the desire- to correct them, so he’ll just respond, “Thank you.”

All of this might happen, all of this can happen, except that Buck could have the power to stop it, maybe.

It’d be disingenuous to take Eddie up on his innocent suggestion when Buck knows how selfishly driven his acceptance would be, when he knows that his clinging to Eddie and Christopher has other motives, ones that he shouldn’t burden upon them, even if they don’t know he’s doing it.

It’d also be unfair to himself, even Buck with his tendency to overlook and downplay his own worth and survival can tell that. As much being constantly surrounded by Christopher and Eddie will bring an incomparable source of joy, the little reminders he’ll get of just being an outsider who is sometimes invited will hurt enough to be a type of micro-dosed self-flagellation.

So with his power, now that he still wields it, he should take a step back. He could do the sensible thing and separate himself just an inch away from the situation, until he can make sure that gym Buck is what Christopher and Eddie remember, and not whatever version of himself he could become that could make him lose them both.

But Buck has never been that sensible of a human being. In fact, as previously stated, he’s known for being considered a himbo, which apparently requires him to have a quite impressive dumbassery streak.

“Maybe…” Buck says, knowing this was always what he was going to say. “Maybe we could go to the zoo. You think Chris would like that?”

“Oh,” Eddie exhales in surprise, like he’s actually shocked that Buck has taken him up on his offer, though there’s no universe in which Buck wouldn’t. “Go out to the zoo… With Chris.”

There is a slight edge to Eddie’s words as his face grows a little serious, contemplative even, the frown between his eyebrows both cute enough that Buck wants to kiss it and deep enough that it worries him.

“It could be something else. Whatever you think Christopher would love best,” Buck clarifies, knowing that his dreams and musings will shift and change to fit whatever Eddie and Christopher want and choose.

“No, no, Christopher would love the zoo,” Eddie confirms, his soft smile returning to his face as he looks at Buck. For a heartbeat the smile is unwavering, genuine, but then Buck thinks he catches it shaking with Eddie’s next words. “I was just thinking… We could also look for something a little more mature, you know? For us, I mean.”

Us.

What a stupid, silly, little word. No one should have given it permission to hit Buck so hard when it’s just two letters long.

Us.

There is no them, not really, but there is in a way a them that matters, one that Buck should be grateful for and careful with. It’s just that it’s way too soon, only hours removed from his biggest love revelation to date, for him to be able to focus only on the positives.

Us. Us. Us.

Buck’s dramatic ass can’t help but only hear the death sentence, the part that he wishes he had instead of the one he actually gets.

“For us?” The word tastes worse in his mouth than the first bite of the first lasagna he tried to make on his own with Bobby’s recipe during his probie year. “Right, yeah, sure. I can— I can look for something a little more interesting for us that will still be appropriate for Chris. There’s a few cool hikes we can do. They’d get us moving outside of the gym and they’d be good for Chris too.”

“For Chris too,” Eddie says, echoing Buck’s last words in a whisper. His bottom lip is caught between his teeth, and his eyes are roaming Buck’s face, like they’re looking for something in it.

When Eddie’s gaze catches Buck’s, Buck tries to give him a convincing smile, one that answers the question Eddie is clearly asking but Buck isn’t sure he understands.

Nodding, Eddie says, “Yeah, that sounds perfect,” but Buck feels like whatever response his face just wordlessly gave Eddie was probably not the one Eddie wanted.

It makes Buck feel wrong-footed as Eddie opens the front door for Buck, and pats him on the shoulder as a goodbye. The walk to his car is short, only a few feet, but Buck turns to look over his shoulder at Eddie at least five times, always finding Eddie leaning on the doorway as he watches Buck go, his face serious, his arms crossed.

As Buck starts the car and carefully backs out of Eddie’s driveway, he wonders if it was possible that he actually did fall to the floor after getting out of the shower this morning, rattling his brain so hard he doesn’t remember it happening. It would explain the way the world hasn’t seemed to make sense all day.

It would explain the feeling that he’s missing something, something quite obvious, something quite big. Something that will make him feel incredibly stupid when he realizes what it was.

Being in love with Eddie is not the easiest thing Buck has ever had to go through in his life, but he’s proud to say that after a week of growing used to his realization he’s got a much better handle on it.

Gone is the angst of that first night, with his brain going a thousand miles a minute over-thinking his whole existence.

Now, even though he still feels like his pupils threaten to transform into hearts every time he looks at Eddie and his heart threatens to transform into a bomb every time Eddie is near, he can at least pretend to be a half normal human being. He can be Eddie’s friend, his good friend Buck, his best friend Buck, who doesn’t want to fuck him against a wall, who definitely doesn’t want to be the little spoon to Eddie’s big one, who absolutely doesn’t want to have his babies.

Buck’s got it all under control, and he feels very confident in his ability to keep his love for Eddie close to his chest, where it can’t reach Eddie or anyone else. Where it can’t ruin lives — in particular Buck’s life.

“Man, you’ve got it so fucking bad,” Chimney says. “I think they can see your crush from Saturn, dude.”

So much for having it under control.

“Shut up, Chim,” Buck mutters, turning away from where he’s been watching Eddie training with Lena and the boxing bag for the past several minutes.

Okay, so maybe he can see why he’s not doing so well at the whole “keeping his feelings for Eddie under wraps” thing, after all. It’s just that looking away from Eddie has always been difficult even on a normal day, but now that Buck understands what the butterflies fluttering in his stomach and the elephants stomping on his chest mean it is near damn impossible.

“It’s been barely half an hour,” Chimney says, lightly punching Buck’s shoulder as he passes him a dumbbell so he’ll place it back on the rack next to them. “You’ll be back with your workout soulmate in no time.”

“Have I told you lately how much I hate you?” Buck asks, turning his back to Chimney and facing the mirror so he can steal a glance at Eddie through it. “Because I feel like maybe you might have forgotten and I can’t have that.”

Chimney’s head pops out from behind Buck’s shoulder, scaring the shit out of him and blocking his view of Eddie just as he was about to throw a punch, which makes Buck feel like throwing a punch himself, one aimed very deliberately at Chimney’s stomach.

“This is getting pathetic, Buck. It actually pains me to watch you.” Chimney emphasizes his words by popping a gum bubble right after he speaks them, and Buck swears the sound is the most annoying thing he’s ever heard. And he has to hear Chimney speak almost every day.

“Hey,” Buck says, turning around to look at Chimney once more, extending his index finger until it almost hits Chimney right on the sternum. “Can you remind me how long it took you to ask my sister out?” He allows a second of silence before he snaps his fingers and continues, “Oh, that’s right, you didn’t. She was the one who asked you out. Because you’re a baby.”

Opening and closing his mouth as he searches for the right words to say, Chimney slaps Buck’s finger away from his chest.

“It wasn’t about being a baby, I’m just… I was— It was— I’m a feminist!” Chimney exclaims, like the excuse just hit him like a bolt of lightning. He opens his arms and puffs out his chest as he half-smirks at Buck. “I respected your sister’s right to choose for herself and take the lead in our relationship.”

Buck scoffs, rolling his eyes as he walks past Chimney, letting their shoulders lightly crash so he’ll destabilize him. “Sure, of course. It had nothing to do with you being a coward and everything to do with you being ally of the year.”

“Oh no, no, you’re not walking away from this so easily, Buckaroo,” Chimney says, following Buck to the bench he’s been using and coming to a stop in front of him as Buck takes a seat. It probably makes him feel powerful to be taller than Buck like this when he’s typically the shortest one in every room, except in kindergarten classes. “It’s so fun watching you fumble like this. The great stud Evan Buckley has been reduced to a pile of mush by some muscles and a floppy hairstyle.”

It’s good that Buck is so well-versed in the art of pretending like Chimney isn’t talking half the time, because even though Buck has been called talkative thousands of times in his life, he thinks Chimney actually gives him a run for his money.

“Do you doodle your names together inside a heart when you get home after your shifts? Have you already started your Pinterest wedding board?” Chimney asks, putting his closed fists under his chin as he bats his eyelashes at Buck.

“Chim—”

“Have you picked out the names of the ten children you’re going to have together?” Chimney continues, moving his hands to rest over his heart. “Is he going to have to ask Bobby for your hand in marriage? Do you—”

“Chimney, stop,” Buck interrupts, and he didn’t even know how forceful his words were going to be until after he has said them, until after he’s practically growled them.

Still standing in front of him, Chimney looks as if he’s suddenly been paralyzed, the only part of him that is moving being his eyes as he blinks slowly at Buck. When he moves again it’s to turn his head in the direction of Eddie, then turning it back around to look at Buck and repeating the same process a couple more times.

“Wait…” Chimney whispers, his voice so low Buck almost doesn’t hear the word. “Wait, wait.” His voice is growing in volume. “Wait.” Chimney prolongs the vowels in the word for a second as his gaze fixes on Buck. “You’re not…”

In that moment, Buck knows he’s fucked. And not in any of the fun ways.

“Oh man. It’s not… You don’t have a crush,” Chimney says, and though his voice is gentle the words still make Buck feel like he’s being accused of something terrible. Murder, maybe. Not petting a puppy that has bared their tummy at him, possibly. Destroying the best friendship he’s had in his life, definitely. “You’re actually— You’re in love with him.”

A week. Seven days. That’s how long Buck has been able to keep it a secret.

At this rate, in about four more days, the entire state of California will know about it, and the information will reach overseas in approximately a fortnight.

“I…” Buck thinks about denying it for just a heartbeat, but he ends up sighing, accepting his fate as he rests his elbows on his knees and lowers his head onto his hands. “I’m in love with him.”

It’s the first time Buck has said the words out-loud, and they feel as right as they feel wrong in his mouth.

Saying them for the second time is both easier and harder. “I’m so in love with him.”

The world keeps turning after Buck’s confession, people around him continuing with their workouts and their lives, completely oblivious to the way Buck feels like his whole universe has just shifted and rearranged.

“Okay…” Chimney says, and though Buck doesn’t move his head from his hands he feels Chimney taking a seat next to him on the bench. “I don’t really— Why do you look like this is the worst piece of news since you found out your landlord wouldn’t allow you to have any pets, not even a clown fish, in your apartment?”

Shocked, Buck raises his head and raises an eyebrow as he looks at Chimney.

“Because it is,” Buck states, pronouncing his words very slowly, assuming Chimney must not have had his coffee this morning and that’s why his brain isn’t working right and he’s not grasping the importance of the situation. “It’s worse than the clown fish debacle.”

“Why?” Chimney asks, shaking his head and Buck almost gasps at the audacity of the question, at the plain wrongness of it. “Have you tried just telling him about it?”

Buck’s head snaps to the side immediately, his eyes seeking Eddie’s figure in the distance, like he needs to make sure that Chimney’s words haven’t actually made Eddie spontaneously realize Buck’s feelings for him. His shoulders relax when he watches Eddie going through his boxing routine normally.

Not even Buck’s worry over the current conversation he’s having can keep him from having the most obscene thoughts about the marvel that is Eddie in motion.

Not even Buck’s worry over the current conversation he’s having can keep him from imagining what it would be like to unwrap Eddie’s hands after he finishes his workout to kiss his knuckles tenderly.

Keeping his eyes on Eddie, Buck says, “Are you crazy? I can’t tell him.”

“Why not?” Chimney asks, just as Lena tells Eddie something that makes him throw his head back in a joyful laugh.

Why not?

Buck wants to scoff.

Why not?

Buck wants to extend his arm out, gesture towards all of Eddie and answer, “Because.”

Because it’s Eddie. Because he has a beauty mark under his left eye that I want to kiss every morning in greeting. Because I’m pretty sure he could bench press me if he just tried. Because he’s funny in an understated and sneaky way. Because he can quote dozens of Disney movies but can’t remember the name of a single Pokémon. Because he’s not the greatest at cooking but he makes a mean guacamole. Because he’s the best father in the world but he doesn’t believe he’s a good one. Because he’s great at Mario Kart but terrible at Mortal Kombat. Because I’m pretty sure he’s the love of my life.

“Because,” Buck ends up saying, his eyes fixed on Eddie, his heart in his throat, “he’s my best friend. And I can’t lose him.”

“But maybe you wouldn’t!” Chimney says, patting Buck’s knee so he’ll get Buck’s attention and get him to look back at him. Buck does, reluctantly pulling his eyes away from Eddie to settle them on Chimney’s face, which is set on an encouraging smile. “You won’t know unless you try.”

“Again, Chimney, tell me: when did you ask Maddie out?” Buck asks, a slight edge to his voice that makes the smile on Chimney’s face dim. Buck feels instantly guilty, but he stays rigid in his posture. “I can’t tell him, okay? I can’t risk it. He’s my best friend. We’re just… We’re best friends and that’s enough. It’s— It’s more than enough. It’s everything.”

Chimney sighs, sounding dejected, maybe even a little disappointed, and turns to look in Eddie’s direction. Buck opts to keep his eyes on Chimney just to give his heart a break.

“Obviously it’s your decision, and I don’t know the guy at all, much less like you do but… If you love him he must be a great person, and I think that means no matter what you wouldn’t lose him,” Chimney says, and the words actually warm Buck’s heart — The confidence in his judgment, the genuine concern for him, the unwavering support Chimney’s granting him, it all reminds Buck of how lucky he truly is.

“He’s my best friend,” Buck repeats, like that explains everything, because to him it does.

Again, Chimney sighs, but this time Buck thinks he sounds a little exasperated. “Well,” he says, tilting his head to point towards Eddie, “Then you better act quick because that guy over there looks like he’s trying to steal your best friend.”

With that, Chimney stands up from the bench and heads towards his own, leaving Buck behind as he turns his head to look in Eddie’s direction.

At some point during the last minute of Buck’s and Chimney’s conversation, Lena disappeared from Eddie’s side, her presence replaced by some guy that Buck thinks he vaguely recognizes from around the gym but can’t quite place.

The guy -with his long and luscious blond hair, his broad chest, his popping biceps- is standing awfully close to Eddie, close enough that their shoulders are almost brushing.

As he watches Eddie and the guy talking, Buck swears to himself he’s not going to approach them, that he’s going to stay seated and mind his own business and accept that the jealousy that is trying to eat him up from the inside isn’t actually his to have, that he has no claim whatsoever over the possessiveness he’s feeling.

It only takes Buck a minute to break his promise to himself as he allows his feet to carry him forward until he’s standing right next to Eddie, conveniently putting himself between Eddie and the guy.

He doesn’t mean to do it, but Buck’s eyes travel the full length of the guy’s body -a length that’s only longer than Buck’s by an inch or so, thank you very much-, and he’s pleased to find that standing close to him helps Buck find the very obvious flaws in him, like the way his lips look very chapped. Eddie deserves so much better than kissing someone that’s going to feel like sandpaper, really.

“Hey,” Buck says, once he’s finished cataloging every single one of the guy's features, including the way his nails look roughly bitten and slightly dirty. Eddie deserves to hold hands that look nicer and cleaner than that. “How’s it going?”

The question isn’t meant for anyone in particular, but Buck asks it as he looks intensely at the not-so good-looking guy in front of him, feeling proud when his forceful gaze makes the guy take a couple of steps back, putting some much needed distance between him and Eddie. Buck himself takes half a step closer to Eddie until their arms are touching, their hands so close that Buck could wrap his pinky around Eddie’s.

“Hey, Buck,” Eddie greets, and that’s all that it takes for Buck’s attention to be pulled towards him, everything and everyone else -including the not so impressive guy in front of them- completely forgotten as Buck’s eyes settle on Eddie’s. “Everything okay?”

His voice sounds soft and concerned as his fingers wrap gently around Buck’s wrist, squeezing it gently and making Buck’s pulse jump in response to the touch. Eddie’s eyebrows are slightly furrowed, as are his lips, but one of them rises curiously as his thumb presses further into Buck’s skin.

“Everything’s fine,” Buck responds breathlessly, simultaneously trying not to make a big deal out of their point of contact and trying not to die of a heart attack.

“So, Eddie—” The Blond and Burly but not so Beautiful man tries to say, but Buck speaks over him saying, “Everything’s great, Eds.”

With a huff and no more words to offer, the guy turns around and leaves, which is the last proof that Buck needs that he never in a million years would have been worthy of Eddie if he’s someone willing to give him up that easily. Eddie deserves someone who stays through it all, someone who can’t imagine ever leaving, no matter what.

Humming, Eddie moves his eyes away from Buck to look at the guy as he walks away, and he tilts his head and says, “Well, bye.”

It all comes crashing down on Buck then.

No wonder Chimney was so quick at seeing right through him when Buck is acting like an overzealous dog peeing on every inch of the things that he thinks belong to him.

“I’m sorry,” Buck says, trying to move away from Eddie but forgetting that Eddie’s still holding his wrist, and only succeeding at leaving his arm awkwardly extended as Eddie refuses to let go of him. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything,” That’s the biggest lie Buck has ever told and he’s pretty sure Eddie knows him too, “or, you know, cockblock you if you guys were—”

“We weren’t. We really weren’t,” Eddie states, chuckling softly as he shakes his head.

When he finally releases his hold on Buck, Eddie does so slowly, relaxing his grip one finger at a time until Buck’s wrists rests solely on Eddie’s index finger before it falls to Buck’s side when Eddie removes his hand completely.

“I think he was trying,” Eddie says, like he’s oblivious to the kind of power he holds over people, like he’s oblivious to how many would fall at his feet if he just asked - which would be both very convenient for Buck and also incredibly baffling, “but I’m not— I’m really not interested. Not in him.”

Relief is a powerful emotion, and Buck feels it running him over and rearranging his bones with Eddie’s words.

“Good, that’s good. I’m glad, ” Buck says, and then tries to backtrack when he realizes how fucking obvious he’s being. “I mean, not glad, I’m not glad, I’m just… It’s good that I didn’t disrupt anything. It’s good that, you know, that the guy, that he, like, went away. That’s… Good.”

Yeah, maybe he should have quit while he was ahead, though he doesn’t think he has ever really been ahead a day in his life.

“Yeah, good,” Eddie echoes, and the way his chuckles sound amused and soft and not harsh and mocking puts Buck slightly at ease.

What doesn’t put Buck so at ease is the way Eddie’s eyes are searching him, first as Eddie stares right into Buck’s soul through his eyes and then as Eddie moves his gaze to roam over all of Buck’s body, like maybe he’ll be able to find what he’s looking for in the curl of Buck’s fingers, or his Adam’s apple as he swallows, or the way his bottom lip is trapped between his teeth.

“Are you done with your workout?” Eddie asks gently, right as his eyes reach Buck’s again and their stares intertwine in the most intimate embrace Buck has ever shared in his entire life, even above the ones he’s been entirely naked for. “If you are, we can go out. Get something to eat. Spend some time just us. No Chris, no gym.”

The agreement is on the tip of Buck’s tongue, but as he opens his mouth to speak it out-loud, Eddie runs his fingers through his hair, pushing some of the strands away from his forehead and making Buck’s world move in slow motion for about 5 seconds that feel like 5 years.

“I can’t.” The response is out of Buck’s mouth before he’s even aware that he’s giving it. “I have to— There’s something I need to do. With Chimney. And my sister. I’m just… Today’s a busy day.”

Desire to take the excuse back tangles inside of Buck with the satisfaction of having chosen the healthiest option for himself. Today might not really be a busy day for Buck, but it’s turning out to be more emotionally busy than he would have hoped for.

Space might now be what Buck ever wants from Eddie but he knows it’s the correct choice for the day, especially if he wants to keep his sanity. Especially if he wants to keep his friendship with Eddie in the long run.

After his conversation with Chimney, Buck isn’t exactly in the best state of mind to carry normally through his interactions with Eddie. He’s pretty sure if he was left on his own with Eddie through lunch he’d either break down crying before they could get past the appetizers after Eddie blinked more prettily than usual, or he’d scream his heart out by the time dessert rolled around and Eddie licked his spoon to get all the flavor from it.

Buck needs to regroup. He needs to sit down with himself, breathe in deeply, and sort through the love that’s spilling out of him until he can fold it neatly and store it safely in his heart, where he knows it will live on long after his heart stops beating.

That’s what Buck needs to do, even if what he wants is to stay with Eddie, be with Eddie. Even if what he wants is Eddie.

So Buck’s proud of himself for making the right decision, for doing the responsible thing.

Except — Except that Eddie’s face is telling Buck maybe he didn’t actually make the right decision.

“Right,” Eddie says, and when he chuckles there is a rueful edge to the sound, just like the smile that curls the edges of his mouth looks resigned. “Okay. I understand. I get it now.”

Confusion clouds Buck’s thinking as he frowns. “You get it now? Wha—”

“Yeah,” Eddie answers before Buck can finish his questions, and he starts moving so quickly he practically becomes a blur in front of Buck. He grabs everything he had brought into the gym only an hour or so ago, gathering it in his arms before he takes a step backwards, separating himself from Buck. “Yeah, I get it now. It won’t happen again. I— I’ll see you soon, Buck.”

And just like that, between one blink and the next, Eddie is gone.

In the middle of the gym, Buck is left standing feeling like someone just kicked his puppy.

Worse, he’s left standing feeling like he was just the one who kicked Eddie’s puppy, even though he didn’t even know Eddie had a puppy to begin with.

Buck almost loses his nerve once he’s in front of the Diaz house.

It’s mid-morning on a Monday, which means Christopher is at school, and Buck can see Eddie’s truck parked in front of the house, meaning Eddie either has the day off today or has yet to leave for his shift.

>

Buck is equally glad and disappointed that Eddie is actually home, because then Buck has to keep his promise to himself and face this situation head on.

It’s been almost two weeks since Eddie and him have gone together to the gym. Two weeks since they’ve had any kind of meaningful conversation. It’s been almost three weeks since Buck got to spend time with Christopher and Eddie, all three of them together. Two days since Buck picked Christopher up from this very same house to take him to the zoo, only seeing Eddie in passing as he tried to read an answer in his gaze but couldn’t even manage to get their eyes to meet.

Confusion has colored these past two weeks for Buck, and hurt has highlighted them. He’s raked through his brain for an explanation, combed through memories to find the moment where he fucked up, because he must have fucked up. There is no way he didn’t cause this somehow.

Now, with his hand raised to knock on the front door of Eddie’s house, Buck wonders if maybe it wouldn’t be better to just never know.

He can still turn around, get to his apartment, grab the essentials, move back to Peru, re-dye the tips of his hair in that atrocious way that he once upon a time thought made him look cooler, and just pretend like none of this matters. Pretend forever and ever like losing Eddie isn’t the hardest thing he’s ever had to go through.

Pretend like he’s not a complete and total failure of a person.

But Buck likes Los Angeles, he likes the life he’s made for himself here, and losing it is not an option he can even contemplate at this point.

Most importantly, though, Buck loves Eddie. In a crazy, passionate, romantic way for sure, but also in the most genuine and self-transcending of ways. Buck loves Eddie entirely for who he is, regardless of what he can or can’t be for Buck, and Buck is not willing to give up on him this easily. Buck isn’t willing to leave, and he’s not willing to let go of Eddie, even if he can only half-hold him, even if he can only half-have him.

So with his left fist, Buck starts knocking on Eddie’s door, ready to face his mistakes and do anything he can to fix them.

Buck knocks and knocks and knocks, getting so into the knocking that he doesn’t even register when the door opens and his fist ends up almost hitting Eddie straight on the forehead.

Luckily, he stops the momentum of his hand just in time. He doesn’t think punching Eddie on the head would help solve anything at the moment. In fact, he thinks it might just complicate things further.

Maybe that’s why he stupidly feels the need to clarify, “I wasn’t trying to hit you,” even though any rational person would be able to tell.

“I figured,” Eddie says, because he’s a very rational person.

For the next few seconds, Buck and Eddie just stand staring at each other, Buck’s arm still raised as if he’s prepared for Eddie to close the door on his face so that he’ll have to start his knocking routine all over again.

Eddie, however, doesn’t close the door on Buck’s face, but he doesn’t invite Buck in either.

Slowly, Buck lowers his arm to his side, putting his hands inside the front pockets of his jeans just to have something to do with them as he shuffles his weight from one foot to the other under Eddie’s watchful and heavy gaze.

Questions pile up inside of Buck’s head, tangling themselves until Buck can’t tell one apart from the other. Words mix and run into each other chaotically, making it impossible for Buck to really choose them wisely.
“Apologize. That’s what I want. To apologize,” Buck says, and instead of shutting his mouth once he realizes how little sense he’s making, he digs himself in further into the hole he’s excavated with his own hands. “I don’t really know— I apologize. I’m sorry. For what I did. Or what I didn’t do. I don’t know what— I just— I apologize. I’m sorry.”

A heartbeat passes where Eddie just looks at him with an eyebrow raised, his eyes wide and his mouth half-open. Then another heartbeat passes as Eddie closes his eyes and his mouth, shakes his head lightly and opens the door to the house more widely.

“Come in,” Eddie sighs, moving away from the threshold to let Buck take a step into the house, and then another, and then another, until finally Buck and Eddie are under the same roof for what feels like the first time in forever.

The living room of the Diaz house looks exactly like Buck remembered it, and yet it feels like an unfamiliar country all the same.

Eddie looks — Well, he looks exactly as he did on Saturday morning when Buck picked Christopher up for their zoo trip, and yet he looks so much more handsome, so much more irresistible.

Just the sight of him has Buck wanting to fall to his knees, and this time it’s not even a little bit sexual, though the grey sweatpants Eddie is wearing outline everything -and Buck does mean everything- he’s packing.

Okay, so maybe it is a little bit sexual.

But still, the main reason Buck wants to get on his knees is not sexual at all. He wants to show his remorse, his commitment to doing better. He wants to beg for forgiveness, despite not knowing what the forgiveness he’s begging for is even for.

Knowing that going through all that pagan ritual would be more creepy than helpful is honestly the only thing that keeps Buck on his feet. Knowing that he’s here to keep Eddie’s presence and friendship in his life and not to scare him away more is what keeps him acting like a sane person.

What Buck ends up doing is repeating “I’m sorry,” only a little more coherently this time.

“You don’t have to apologize, Buck,” Eddie says, sounding exhausted as he sits down on the couch, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his upper body lean forward. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”

Buck sits down on the other end of the couch, keeping as far away from Eddie as possible just in case Eddie needs the space, even though Buck is dying to reach out and touch him just to make sure he’s real.

It’s been a long two weeks and Buck has found himself waking up in the middle of the night thinking Eddie to be just a dream, a figment of Buck’s imagination, so touching him would maybe help put those doubts to rest.

“You can’t help how you feel. Or how you don’t feel,” Eddie keeps saying, and though the sentences are in English and by all accounts made up of words that Buck understands, he questions whether Eddie has switched to a completely different language that Buck has never learnt. “I’ve just… You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“You haven’t really spoken to me in the past two weeks,” Buck points out, fidgeting with his fingers when his and Eddie’s gazes catch as he speaks. “It feels like I have done something wrong.”

Shaking his head, Eddie breaks their staring so he can gaze at some point past Buck’s shoulder.

“You haven’t done anything wrong but… But you need to understand that I’ve needed some time. That I need some time,” Eddie says, swallowing harshly when his voice breaks a little in the middle of the sentence. “Just like you can’t help how you don’t feel, I can’t help how I do feel, okay?”

If Buck was a cartoon character, right now would be the moment when dozens of question marks would circle round his head, bouncing and shining and dancing, signaling his confusion. Hell, Buck is so confused that maybe they’ll start sprouting out of nowhere anyway, despite him very much not being a cartoon character.

There is a sadness that Eddie is carrying that Buck hadn’t expected to find in him, a weight that makes his shoulder look burdened, that makes his face look somber. It’s a sadness that Buck is pretty familiar with, the sadness that drowns him every time he thinks of losing Eddie and what they have.

And look — Eddie has the right to every and any emotion, but it is a little baffling that he’s the one radiating this dejection right now.

Anger is an emotion Buck would understand Eddie having, although he knows Eddie pretty well by now, and he is sure that even if Buck deserved it Eddie would never really direct any kind of rage towards him. Irritation, maybe. Frustration, most likely.

Regret is an emotion Buck has imagined Eddie showing. He’s pictured this conversation hundreds of times in his head during the past two weeks, and his biggest fear has shown constantly in the script of how their interaction would go: Eddie having realized Buck’s feelings towards him and telling him it’s better if they’re not friends.

Because this is Eddie that Buck is picturing he knows that Eddie would never be mean about it, or cruel, or forceful. He’d be gentle with Buck’s emotions, soft in his turning Buck down, sweet in his dismissal. Hence, the regret Buck has been expecting from him.

But this devastation in Eddie doesn’t scream “I found out my best friend is in love with me and now I have to break his heart.” This devastation in Eddie — This devastation screams “I am the one who’s had my heart broken.”

More and more question marks fly around Buck’s head, some so big they actually become the size of his whole torso.

“Look,” Buck starts, turning his body so he’s facing Eddie better but keeping the distance between them, “You can tell me what I did. I want to know. I can fix it. I swear I can.”

“What you—” Eddie’s eyes focus on him once more, and this time his eyebrows are slightly furrowed and his bottom lip is caught between his teeth. “You can’t fix this. This isn’t something to fix. Not on your part, at least. Your feelings aren’t something you can change so I guess I just… I need to work on changing mine. And for that I need a little time. That’s all.”

“I don’t— I don’t really understand,” Buck finally confesses, when the question marks have become so big that they actually are twice the size of him and Eddie combined. “You keep talking about my feelings, and your feelings, and I don’t— I am so confused. Can we start over?”

With a sigh, Eddie stands up from the couch, walking around the coffee table so he can begin pacing in front of it.

“Hey, Buck. Hello. Good to see you,” Eddie says, like he’s really starting the conversation over. “It was nice of you to come here and check on me.” Buck’s eyes follow Eddie’s body as he moves from left to right, again and again. “It means a lot that you care about me that much, it means… It means a lot that you still want to be friends.”

“Of course I do,” Buck confirms, and his words seem to relax Eddie a bit, because he stops pacing for a second to look at Buck and smile softly at him.

“I do too, I promise,” Eddie says, and something relaxes inside of Buck as well. For the first time in days, he’s able to take a deep breath. Eddie continues speaking just as he continues his pacing. “But before that I need some time, some space. To sort through the feelings. To work on them. Then everything will be alright again.”

Buck is the one who stands up and walks around the coffee table this time, placing himself in the middle of Eddie’s path so he’ll have to stop his frantic pacing.

“Again with the feelings, I don’t— What happened? What did I do?” It must have been bad to elicit so many feelings in Eddie if that’s all he’s able to talk about. Feelings. Feelings. Feelings. “What feelings are you talking about?”

“The love feelings!” Eddie says, throwing his arms up as he faces Buck. “The love feelings!”

Oh.

The love feelings.

Oh.

So not Eddie’s feelings then. Buck’s.

If Buck was a cartoon character this would be the moment that the Earth would open up and swallow him whole. But he’s not a cartoon character, he’s nothing more than a regular old human in love with his best friend, so he doesn’t get spared the embarrassment or the pain of having to face the issue.

The love feelings.

Looks like Buck’s imagination wasn’t so mistaken after all: this is Eddie’s “I found out my best friend is in love with me and now I have to break his heart” moment, only Buck hadn’t accounted for how empathetic and devastated about it Eddie would be.

“I’m sorry,” is all that Buck can think to say.

All the fight seems to leave Eddie’s body then, and though he tries to aim a gentle smile Buck’s way, his eyes cast downwards, avoiding Buck’s gaze.

“Again, there is nothing to apologize for,” Eddie tries to reassure him, but apologies are piling up inside of Buck until he thinks they’re the only words he’s ever learnt to say. “We can’t help our feelings, right? No one can.”

No, they can’t. Buck can’t help being desperately and madly in love with Eddie, just like Eddie can’t help not being desperately and madly in love with Buck. It’s no one’s fault. There’s no one to blame.

And yet… Buck feels guilty to his core.

“I know, but I feel… I feel like I am ruining everything. I wish I could—” Buck stops his words before he can finish the sentence when he realizes what he was about to say would have been a total lie.

I wish I could just fall out of love with you, he was going to tell Eddie, even though the truth is something very, very different.

I wish you could fall in love with me too. That’s the truth. That’s Buck’s real wish.

But again: they can’t help their feelings. Just like they can’t force themselves out of them or into them. It is what it is, Buck guesses, even if what it is is completely and utterly unfair.

“I know,” Eddie says, raising his gaze so it’ll meet Buck’s again. Buck’s heart flutters and breaks at the same time at the unfiltered affection in Eddie’s eyes. How could Eddie have ever expected Buck not to fall in love with him when he’s so — so Eddie? So kind, and good, and thoughtful, and gentle. Buck never stood a chance. “I know you do. But really, it’s okay.”

Something in the way Eddie says the last sentence makes Buck believe, for the very first time, that maybe everything truly can be okay.

Buck’s feelings have created a rift between them, they’ve managed to make things awkward and weird, but if the way Eddie is talking and treating Buck says anything is that he’s willing to work through them.

Because Eddie is Eddie, and the same kindness and goodness and thoughtfulness and gentleness in him that made Buck fall in love mean that he’s more than willing to keep Buck’s friendship despite this slight bump on the road.

Eddie wants to have Buck in his life, even if he can’t want it in the way Buck so eagerly desires, and he believes that Buck’s feelings don’t have to mean the end of their friendship, which is actually more than Buck could have ever asked for.

“Rejections can be hard,” Eddie says, and Buck thinks, Tell me about it, “and it will hurt for a while, I think.”

It will, Buck knows. It will hurt more than anything has ever hurt before in his life.

“But it can pass. It will pass,” Eddie continues, making Buck feel a little lighter. “You’re my best friend, Buck, and I know our friendship is strong. I don’t want to lose it. We are not going to lose it.”

They aren’t, Buck now is sure of it. Their friendship means too much for this to destroy it.

“I just… I just need a little time before that,” Eddie says, and though the words still sting a little, Buck can breathe through them now.

Eddie wants to keep their friendship, he wants to keep Buck, so how can Buck begrudge him needing some time so he won’t have to feel uncomfortable with the knowledge that Buck wants him and loves him in such a different way?

“I understand,” Buck assures, holding on tightly to the feelings of happiness and relief that keeping Eddie brings him.

“Everything will be fine,” Eddie repeats, and Buck believes it even more this time. “Just because I am in love with you and you aren’t in love with me doesn’t mean I am going to let this change what we have, okay?”

Wait a minute, Buck thinks. Wait a fucking freaking fudging minute.

It’s like hearing the loudest record scratch sound effect in the history of the world.

Wait. A. Minute. Buck thinks it again, each word like its own interminable sentence, only it must be that he says them out-loud because Eddie stops his talking and stands there just blinking expectedly at Buck, like he’s really waiting a minute.

“You. In love with me,” Buck says, and he’s so thunderstruck that he can’t even feel embarrassed about his inability to form coherent sentences. “You. In love with me.”

For a second, Eddie stays silent, maybe because the minute Buck told him to wait still isn’t up or maybe because he’s trying to figure out why Buck sounds like a two year old baby who has not yet learnt to properly speak.

“Yeah,” he ends up saying, prolonging the word a bit in confusion.

“You. In love with me,” Buck repeats. “You. In love with me. Me. Not in love with you.”

If Buck was a cartoon character those words would make as much sense as they do right now, which is to say none, because there is no universe out there in which Buck isn’t in love with Eddie. Even in the alternate universes where there is no Buck or there is no Eddie it is a universal truth that Evan Buckley is and always will be Eddie Diaz’s.

“Yeah,” Eddie insists, as if the words make sense to him, which is, as previously stated, crazy. “That’s… That’s what this whole thing… That’s what this is all about.”

“No!” Buck says, practically shouting the word. He points to himself and then to Eddie as he speaks, emphasizing his words with his gestures. “Me. In love with you. You. Not in love with me.”

Buck can see it in Eddie’s eyes the minute that he’s the one who hears the loudest record scratch sound effect in the history of the world.

“What? No. What? You. Don’t. What?” Eddie says, and Buck feels a little vindicated at not being the only one regressing to a toddler speech stage.

Luckily, Buck’s words haven’t been lost forever, and they come back to him stronger than ever.

“Eddie, I think we haven’t been having the same conversation,” Buck says, as Eddie keeps gaping at him, his words quite obviously still eluding him, probably his higher brain functions as well. But it’s not like Buck can judge. “Because it seems to me like you think this is somehow about me not being in love with you. And that is the craziest thing I have ever heard.”

“Well,” Eddie says, finding his words again, and making Buck’s heart start racing like it only does when he’s been using the Step Master machine at its hardest setting for 15 minutes already, “it seems to me like you think this is about me not being in love with you. Which is the craziest thing anyone has ever said.”

All at once, Buck’s heart explodes, stops, races, escapes his chest, and becomes permanently and irreversibly branded by Eddie’s name.

Silence traps Buck and Eddie for a few heartbeats, but it’s a silence that promises action, the calm before a storm that will sweep them off their feet and will turn their lives upside down in the most devastatingly awing of ways.

This anticipation can almost be tasted, smelled, touched, seen, heard. It’s everywhere and anywhere.

It’s in the rush that’s traveling through Buck’s veins, making him feel like he could lift a fire truck with his bare hands. It’s in the way his fingers are trembling, more desperate than ever to reach out and touch Eddie just to make sure he’s really offering everything that Buck has ever wanted. It’s in the wave of love that is drowning every other emotion that Buck could ever feel, the wave of love that starts right in the center of his heart and soon grows to wash over the whole of him.

“You…” Buck has to stop to take a deep breath, his trembling voice breaking through the smile that is slowly but surely growing on his lips. “You love me.”

“You love me,” Eddie says back, his own voice shaking, his mouth curling on a smile as well.

The world stops turning. The universe dies and is reborn in the time it takes to pronounce a four-lettered word. The world starts spinning again.

And then, both Buck and Eddie burst out laughing.

Peals of laughter ring around the Diaz living room, brightening the space until one could think the Sun itself had come to meet Buck and Eddie and the joy they’re so delightfully sharing.

As they laugh and laugh and laugh, Buck and Eddie fall into each other, their bodies gently colliding in an approximation of a hug, Eddie’s arms around Buck’s waist, one of Buck’s arms around Eddie’s shoulders, the other around his mid-back.

They’re two magnets that have resisted the pull they felt towards one another for too long and that now will find it impossible to ever separate. They’re two satellites that have been orbiting around each other for the longest time and have only just found out they always needed to crash to become one single planet.

Buck tries to find more cheesy metaphors that could very well belong in one of the historical romance novels that he will deny reading until his last breath -one of those where the man’s shirt is always ripped open so the woman’s hand can gingerly touch his abs-, but he gets distracted by Eddie’s forehead coming to rest on his shoulder, pulling their bodies even closer together.

Tightening his arms around Eddie’s body, Buck feels Eddie do the same to him, and their laughter ends up synchronizing until it’s just one single, happy sound that continues for a few more seconds until it begins to trail off and becomes mostly air.

“God, I missed you,” Eddie says, pressing the words to Buck’s shoulder as the last few chuckles left in him shake his upper body.

Pinching Eddie lightly on the shoulder over his t-shirt, Buck says, his words spoken onto Eddie’s temple, “I was right here. You were the one who went away.”

Before he speaks again, Eddie pulls away slightly from Buck’s hold, prompting Buck to let out the single most embarrassing whine he’s ever made. Eddie exhales amusedly through his nose as he moves one of his hands to cup Buck’s cheek.

His thumb is caressing Buck’s under-eye softly, hypnotically, when he says, “Buck… Buck, baby…. You rejected me so many times. I thought it was time I took the hint and took a step back.”

“Rejected you?” Buck asks, hoping the words sound as disgusting coming out of his mouth as they taste when he has to say them. “I would never, ever, ever, ever reject you. Never. Not a single day in my life.”

Maybe he’s gone a bit overboard with the denial, maybe he’s been a tiny bit too dramatic in his delivery, but he needs Eddie to know how serious he’s being, how ridiculous the idea is. So just for good measure, he tackles on, “Never, ever, ever. Ever.”

Eddie chuckles airily again as his thumb moves over Buck’s face to trace the bridge of his nose.

Sparks follow his touch everywhere it goes, and once more Buck thinks of the romance novels he never, ever, ever, ever reads, and he begins to sympathize with the heroines on those, the ones that always faint into their beau’s arms, as his knees buckle dangerously.

“I asked you out so many times,” Eddie says, and Buck’s brain goes through every single interaction Buck and Eddie have ever had to properly conclude that he has absolutely no idea what Eddie is even talking about. “You always found the nicest and gentlest way to let me down. At first I thought maybe it was really that you couldn’t, or that you were a little nervous but… After a while I just had to accept it was always going to be a no.”

“With all the love in my heart,” Buck says, “I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. You’ve never even asked me out, Eds.”

Raising an eyebrow and bopping the tip of Buck’s nose with his thumb, Eddie counters, “I’ve asked you out a trillion times, Buck.”

“No,” Buck denies.

“Yes,” Eddie argues.

“You haven’t,” Buck insists.

“I have,” Eddie reiterates, and Buck knows that because Eddie is the stubbornest asshole in the whole planet he’ll never be able to win an argument like this against him, so he just sighs. “And every time I tried you always gave me the most platonic bro-dude-pal answer, always making sure I knew you accepted as friends. Always saying yes to spending time with me and Christopher both, because we were such good friends.”

The situation starts making a little more sense as Eddie speaks and Buck starts seeing things from his perspective and comparing them to the own view he had of every single one of their interactions in his head.

Every time that Buck felt his heart breaking when he believed Eddie could never be offering what Buck wanted him to really be offering, Eddie was feeling his own heart break when he believed Buck didn’t want what he was truly offering.

“That’s what I thought you meant,” Buck explains, leaning into Eddie’s touch until he feels Eddie’s other hand settle on his right cheek so that he’s holding Buck’s face in both of his palms. “I always thought you were just talking about making casual plans as friends. You never once used the word date so I… I didn’t think you could be interested in that.”

“I didn’t think I needed to use the word date,” Eddie says, testing Buck’s concentration skills by caressing his bottom lip with one of his thumbs as he speaks. “I thought I was being obvious enough.”

“You thought you were being obvious?” Buck asks, his lips dragging against Eddie’s fingertip every time he opens and closes his voice as he talks. The sparks have now turned into full on flames. “What about me? I couldn’t have been more obvious if I had actually been trying. You couldn’t have possibly missed it.”

Eddie’s thumbs stop moving as he bites his bottom lip, and Buck lets his eyes follow the action closely, aware that Eddie is going to easily notice where Buck’s attention has drifted, thrilled that he can now be open about it.

Desire, affection, yearning, love — those were some of the things Buck thought before he would get punished for if he didn’t hide them, and they’re the things he now knows Eddie was harboring himself as well.

It’s like all the walls have tumbled down, like every door has been kicked open, and now the emotions pour out of Buck unstoppably, uncontrollably.

“I mean, no, I didn’t, not in the beginning,” Eddie confirms, and Buck would be ashamed about it if not for how he now knows that Eddie loves him. Eddie loves him. “But then you just… I don’t know, it just stopped.”

“Stopped?” Buck says, fighting the urge to pout his lips again and again until Eddie starts moving his thumbs against them once more.

As if their love confessions have created a telepathic bond that links them, Eddie’s thumbs begin caressing the shape of Buck’s lips slowly, taking extra care to trace over his cupid’s bow perfectly.

“Yeah, everything stopped,” Eddie explains, shrugging his shoulders. “At first you always stared. Always. And you blushed when I so much as said hello to you. I knew you were attracted to me, but then, when we became friends things just… changed.”

Cursing the good upbringing that Maddie provided him with, and Hen’s insistence on him being not just a Nice Guy but an actual nice guy, and his ineptitude to find a good balance between not being Buck 1.0 and not being Buck Hopeless-With-a-Crush.0, Buck wishes he would have just left his eyes glued to Eddie’s ass a little bit longer. Maybe then he could have spared them both a couple of months of confusion and hurt.

“I was trying not to be a creep!” he exclaims, putting his hands on Eddie’s waist to bring their bodies even closer together, hoping to make up for the doubts he caused in Eddie. “The obvious staring and drooling felt a little disrespectful after we became friends. But believe me when I said the continued, just… Just on the inside.”

One day, hopefully soon, maybe even today, Buck is going to prove to Eddie just how much the staring and drooling didn’t actually go away.

One day, today if Buck has anything to say about it, Buck is going to lay Eddie down on any flat surface he can find and show him everything he was dreaming about doing to him when Eddie was so sure Buck’s desire could have simply disappeared.

“I guess I am thankful, then,” Eddie chuckles, squeezing his hands on Buck’s cheeks gently until his mouth is pursed. “You’re a true gentleman.”

It’s difficult to stick his tongue out through the tight press of his lips that Eddie is creating with the squeezing of his cheeks but Buck manages to do nevertheless. It’s worth it if only for the way Eddie laughs again.

Less than one hour into their relationship and Buck already knows he’ll do anything in the world to make Eddie laugh and be happy forever.

“But at the time…” Eddie’s words trail off as he releases his hold on Buck’s cheeks, moving one of his hands to the back of Buck’s neck where he begins playing with the short strands of his hair, and placing the other one right over Buck’s collarbone. “I thought that maybe now that you knew me better, now that we were friends, you had realized you weren’t actually interested. It’s one thing to be attracted to me, but it’s a very different thing to actually want me.”

“Yeah,” Buck says, tightening his grip on Eddie’s waist. “Wanting you is actually much, much easier than being attracted to you. And being attracted to you is pretty damn easy in the first place.”

This time when Eddie bites his bottom lip, Buck’s eyes stay focused on Eddie’s gaze instead of lowering to follow the move, and it’s not even so that Buck can make some kind of point, it’s because the point that he’s trying to make is true.

His attraction to Eddie was instant, powerful, heart-stopping.

His falling in love with Eddie was all of that and so much more.

It was instant and gradual all at once, because Eddie stole his heart the minute they first bumped into each other and he keeps stealing his heart every minute since then. It’s powerful and peaceful both, an emotion unlike anything Buck’s ever felt that makes him feel on top of the world and at home at the same time.

Falling in love with Eddie has been heart-stopping and heart-healing, and Buck truly believes that he has never been more alive than he has been since he met Eddie, especially since he put a name to him and he stopped being Big Beautiful Brown Eyes.

“I love you,” Buck says, realizing that he hadn’t actually said the words properly yet and quickly becoming addicted to how perfectly they fit into his mouth. “I love you. I love you. I am so in love with you.”

And because he knows he needs something big and daring and epic to follow his words, Buck leans forward and captures Eddie’s lips in a kiss. Their first kiss.

The last first kiss of their lives, Buck knows.

It’s everything Buck has imagined it to be and more than he could have ever pictured. Eddie tastes minty and fresh, and although his lips are soft, his light stubble scratches Buck’s chin and cheeks as their lips move against each other’s. It’s a thrilling feeling, a pleasant kind of burn that Buck can’t help but imagine traveling up and down his body.

Buck gasps against Eddie’s mouth when Eddie’s teeth clasp his bottom lip and pull on it gently before letting it go.

“I love you,” Eddie says, alternating each word with a gentle peck to Buck’s lips as he speaks. I. Peck. Love. Peck. You. Peck. It’s the sweetest conversation Buck has ever had. “I am stupidly in love with you.”

And well, Buck knows about being stupid, and he knows about being in love, and he thinks being stupidly in love isn’t so bad if you’ve got someone who can stupidly love you back.

Getting lost in Eddie’s kisses is a pretty easy thing to do, and Buck absolutely loses his sense of time as he and Eddie kiss for what seems like a lifetime. He wouldn’t be surprised if the next time he separated his mouth from Eddie’s and opened his eyes Christopher was already prepared to head off to college.

When Buck finally opens his eyes, there is no calendar to check and there is no Christopher to look towards just to check if he’s grown to tower above Buck and Eddie in his young adulthood, but Buck gets the feeling that he and Eddie have luckily stayed within the confines of the same day.

The tip of Buck’s nose grazes the tip of Eddie’s nose even as they have separated their lips, and Buck moves his head from left to right a few times just to drag their noses together in a slow nose kiss.

Eddie giggles at this and Buck feels a happiness that he’s never known clinging to his bones like it’s making itself a part of Buck’s DNA.

It takes them another minute before Buck and Eddie can separate enough to look each other in the eye comfortably, but when they do Buck can read the exact same joy in Eddie’s pupil.

“Breathtaking Bright Blue Eyes,” Eddie whispers, staring straight into Buck’s soul as they hold each other close.

“What?” Buck asks, but Eddie just shakes his head in response as he grips the side of Buck’s neck.

“Nothing,” he says, and this time he’s the one who initiates their kiss, making Buck forget what he just asked. Hell, making Buck forget his own damn name.

That’s okay, really, because the only name Buck really needs and wants to remember is Eddie’s anyway. And that one he knows he would never forget.

Buck has always known that people were right when they said that going to the gym was a healthy decision to make. He’s always known that he feels his best when he keeps active, when he finds movement that feels good on his body, because that translates to feeling good inside his own head.

He could have never imagined, however, just how much going to the gym would actually end up transforming his life.

In between all the running, and lifting, and squatting, and boxing, and cycling, and deadlifting, Buck found himself a completely different life. In between all the sweating, and delayed onset muscle soreness, and counting his protein, and measuring his body fat percentage, Buck found himself the love of his life.

Truth is, Buck owes the gym many things. Truth is, he owes the gym everything.

And yet, the gym hasn’t seen Buck for the past two weeks. It hasn’t seen Eddie in that time either.

Buck doesn’t feel an ounce of guilt over it, either.

The past two weeks have been, without a doubt and with absolutely no exaggeration on his part, the best two weeks of Buck’s life.

Most of his time has been spent either with Eddie, or with Christopher, or with Eddie and Christopher, or thinking of when and where he’d be seeing Eddie and/or Christopher next.

They’ve spent their mornings cooking breakfast, getting ready for school and work next to each other, hugging goodbye wishing they didn’t have to separate. They’ve spent their evenings cooking dinner, going through homework assignments, choosing what movies to watch or what board games to play, and getting ready for bed together, happy to be able to say goodbye to the day next to each other.

It’s been everything they had before and so much more. It’s been everything Buck could have ever dreamed of and everything he would have never allowed himself to picture.

Who’d be thinking of going to the gym in times like this?

And look, it’s not like Buck and Eddie have actually neglected their workouts. In fact, Buck is pretty sure they’ve both been more active in the past two weeks than they have ever been in their entire lives.

So what if their exercise mostly happens on horizontal surfaces nowadays? That doesn’t negate the good it does them. It might actually even enhance it, really.

Still, walking into the gym holding hands for the first time kicks Buck’s heart into overdrive.

There is something special about coming back to where everything started, something thrilling about comparing the last time Buck and Eddie were here together and their situation today.

If Buck is honest, their first gym session as boyfriends isn’t really a productive one.

They spend more time looking at each other than they do holding their weights, and they keep sneaking touches every time that they can subtly do so — and even during times when Buck knows they’re not being that subtle to begin with.

It’s going to take a while, Buck knows, for them to settle into the newness of things, but he thinks it’s understandable and acceptable.

The honeymoon phase is famous for a reason, and right now there is no denying he and Eddie are right in the heart of it. Which maybe explains why Buck can’t stop thinking about an actual honeymoon with Eddie. Maybe. Probably. Possibly.

When the hour mark at the gym passes them by, Buck mentally pats himself on the back for having lasted all that time without kissing Eddie. It is the longest he’s gone without kissing him when the opportunity exists to do so since they’ve gotten together, and he’s proud of himself for it. He’s proud of himself for being able to pretend for just a little bit that he’s a normal human being that doesn’t get all of his life force and motivation from kissing his boyfriend and nuzzling his neck.

When the hour and a half mark at the gym hits, it is Eddie who breaks first.

Their kiss is chaste and tame for some of their standards, but it is definitely too obscene for their surroundings. The middle-aged women that were exiting the Zumba class just then linger around the fitness room for a suspiciously long time, not doing much to conceal the way their gazes fall upon Buck and Eddie time and time again as they breathe each other’s air.

“Eddie, baby,” Buck murmurs into Eddie’s lips as Eddie’s tongue tries to sneak past his teeth, “These shorts are not going to hide a hard-on.”

For a second, Eddie’s mouth presses harder into Buck’s, but then Eddie takes a deliberate step away from him as his eyes travel down to Buck’s crotch. Buck swears he hears a few disappointed groans and even a hearty complaint from the suburban mom gallery.

Raising his eyes back to look him in the eye, Eddie says, “I think we’ve spent enough time warming up and it’s time to move to the next part of our workout. Let’s go home.”

The shorts are definitely not hiding Buck’s hard-on as he walks out of the fitness room, following Eddie to the locker room, trying and failing not to blush too hard when one of their many witnesses sends a cheeky wave his way as he holds his towel in front of his crotch.

Buck is mostly going through the motions mechanically, almost mirroring every single one of Eddie’s moves just a millisecond after Eddie does them, his brain incapable of actually thinking for itself, Buck’s blood flowing south of his body continuously and steadily.

Eddie walks through the locker room door and then so does Buck. Eddie uses his gym bracelet to open his locker and Buck opens his just a heartbeat later. Eddie moves his gym bag to the bench and Buck puts his down next to it immediately after.

All the while, Buck feels like his heart is about to escape his chest, and his shorts are about to burst.

“Okay,” Eddie says, hastily putting his towel and his water bottle inside the bag, “We can skip the shower today. I mean, it’s not like we’re not going to need another—”

“Actually,” Buck interrupts him, turning to look at him slowly.

The thought is so outrageous that Buck should have discarded it as soon as it crossed his mind. But instead of being dismissed, the idea grows and grows inside of Buck’s brain until it is the only thing Buck can focus on.

Raising his eyebrow, Eddie wordlessly asks Buck his intentions, and Buck, instead of answering, hoists their bags up on his shoulders, closes his fingers around one of Eddie’s wrists, and begins leading them towards the showers.

It takes Eddie three steps to catch up with Buck’s line of thought.

“Buck, we can’t,” Eddie says, but his voice is nothing but an exhale and it breaks right in the middle of his half-hearted complaint.

Buck doesn’t need to turn around and focus his gaze on Eddie’s lower body to know the idea appeals to him as much as it appeals to Buck.

The showers are empty when they reach them, but Buck still walks them towards the one that is furthest away from the door, right on the corner of the room. It isn’t really private because this still is, at the end of the day, a gym locker room, but it’s positioned just so that it gives a false sense of seclusion to step inside of it.
Wasting no time, knowing they are racing against the clock, Buck drops their bags outside of the shower door and pushes Eddie inside before he walks in himself and closes the half-door quickly.

“Buck,” Eddie says again, like Buck’s name is the only word in the English vocabulary he can remember. Buck wouldn’t be surprised if that was the actual case with the way Eddie’s dick is tenting his workout pants.

It appears as if both of their bodies are absolutely willing to let go of higher brain functions in the name of doing unspeakable filthy things to the other.

The water is thankfully warm when it hits them after Buck turns the shower on without even waiting for them to take their clothes on. Hopefully, the noise of the spray raining down on them and hitting the floor drowns the groan that escapes Eddie’s mouth when their bodies collide in the middle of the shower right before their lips tangle in an endless kiss.

It’s a little difficult to get their clothes off after they’ve been plastered to their bodies by the water, but Buck manages to get Eddie’s t-shirt over his head and onto the tiled floor, and he only needs to break their kiss for a second to do so.

On his part, Eddie is only able to push Buck’s tank-top up enough so that it’s bunched under his armpits, but this gives Eddie’s fingers access to Buck’s nipples, and Buck has to bury a moan inside of Eddie’s mouth when his left nipple is twisted and tugged.

Faraway voices drift in and out of the showers from the lockers area, a perfect reminder of the forbidden and dangerous nature of their position.

Eddie’s dick twitches where it’s pressed onto the groove of Buck’s hip and one of Eddie’s hands grabs Buck’s ass and squeezes it while Eddie rocks his hips, probably in the hopes of bringing their lower bodies closer together so he can rut desperately onto Buck.

But Buck has another plan, one that he’s not ashamed to say has been in his mind for as long as he’s known of Eddie’s existence.

With all the care in the world -not because he wants to revel in the anticipation but just so he won’t slip and crack his head open on the tiles leaving Eddie to deal with the most awkward situation known to mankind-, Buck kneels down on the shower, taking Eddie’s pants down with him as he lowers himself to the floor.

“Fuck. God, Buck,” Eddie says, and Buck shushes him as he runs the palms of his hands up and down his thighs.

“Baby, you gotta keep it down,” Buck whispers, just loud enough to be heard over the water pouring down on them. “You don’t want anyone to see you like this, right? This is just for me. Only I get to see this.”

It might have been a while now since Buck has been in a situation quite like this, since he renounced his Buck 1.0 ways and embraced the desire for something more meaningful, but some things he learnt during that time are things he doesn’t just find useful still, but things he actively takes advantage of.

One of those things is the knowledge that Buck on his knees looking up at whoever is standing in front of him through his eyelashes can hold all of the power in the world.

As the water trails down Buck’s face, Eddie’s hand moves to push some of Buck’s hair away from his forehead, and the desire in his eyes makes Buck shiver even under the warm shower spray.

Slowly and without breaking his gaze away from Eddie’s, Buck begins to move his mouth closer to Eddie’s dick as his right hand grabs a hold of the base of it.

When Buck’s mouth brushes the head of Eddie’s dick, Eddie gasps and his eyes close for a heartbeat before they open again and focus on Buck’s lips as Buck traces them with the tip of Eddie’s dick. His tongue licks the pre-come off it before the water can wash it away, and Eddie’s fingers bury themselves in Buck’s hair, just holding on to him like Eddie needs that lifeline desperately.

“I’ve been dreaming of this for so long. Me choking on your dick in this shower,” Buck says, licking the underside of Eddie dick’s with the flat of his tongue. “I’ve been dreaming of this before I even knew your name.”

And then Buck takes Eddie into his mouth until his dick bumps into the back of Buck’s throat and Buck tears up from the pleasure. Also a little bit from the lack of oxygen and the roughness of the deep-throating. But it’s mostly from the pleasure.

It doesn’t take much to get Eddie to come. In just a couple of minutes, and with a few tongue tricks, a well-timed swallow, the hollowing of his cheeks and a twist of his wrist, Buck is tasting Eddie’s release on his tongue and not letting a drop of it waste.

Buck would tease Eddie for his easiness if not for how it actually takes even less for him to come, as just Eddie’s orgasm brings Buck to his own. And what’s even more incriminating: while Eddie got to come down Buck’s throat, Buck didn’t even get out of his shorts.

Standing up from the floor of the shower is the easiest and the hardest thing Buck has ever done.

The easiest because he needs to kiss Eddie desperately and because he knows that the longer he stays kneeling down the higher the chance that someone will walk by them and realize they are not in fact one single human who has grown four legs but two dudes getting it on in a public space.

The hardest because Buck is nearing 30 years old and his bones crack and pop when he so much as wiggles his toes, so they practically sound like an orchestra and feel like they’re being wriggled when he finally gets to his feet.

“Babe,” Eddie murmurs right before Buck steals any other words he would have said out of his mouth with his lips.

This kiss is lazier and slower than any of the others they have shared here at the gym today. It’s a kiss that speaks of the intimacy that has settled between them in the past two weeks, a kiss that speaks of how much of their lives now actually happen outside of this building, of how much their lives have been intertwined and stitched together forever.

Their kisses before weren’t meant for the gym because they threatened to show a bit too much to casual onlookers, because they were the prelude to something bigger. This kiss now isn’t meant for the gym because it shows all of them to the world, because it is the something bigger.

And it’s not about the way that Eddie is helping Buck undress so he can wash his own come off, or the way they both let the rhythm of their lips decrease once they’re both naked so they can focus on running their hands down the other’s body. It’s about what’s laying underneath, about the way their hearts are poured into their embrace and visible in their every touch.

“Can we go home now?” Eddie asks after another minute of kissing, letting his hands wander down until they settle on Buck’s ass and his right index finger teases Buck’s hole lightly. “I have bigger plans for you today than this.”

The tip of Eddie’s finger pushes past Buck’s rim and Buck moans, “Eddie,” proving his past self wrong for the thousandth time by showing just how moanable Eddie’s name actually is.

And in the spirit of being able to moan it many more times without having to control his volume, Buck lets Eddie move away from him so they both can quickly rinse their bodies, towel off and get into their clean and dry clothes to head to the Diaz house and lose themselves in each other and Eddie’s sheets for a few hours before they have to pick Christopher up from school.

But getting out of the shower doesn’t mean Buck and Eddie can keep their hands, or their eyes, or their mouths away from each other.

As soon as their wet clothes have been put inside their gym bags and their gym bags have been grabbed from the floor, Buck places himself behind Eddie, wrapping his arms around Eddie’s waist and pressing his chest so close to Eddie’s back that anyone who looks at them will have trouble knowing where one of them begins and the other ends.

The position makes it difficult to walk, especially because Buck’s legs are considerably longer than Eddie’s and every time they try to take a coordinated step they either end up bumping their legs against the other’s or stepping onto each other’s foot.

“Buck,” Eddie giggles when they’ve only managed to move three feet in about as many minutes.

With his face buried in the crook between Eddie’s neck and shoulder, Buck says, “What?” but his word is practically unintelligible with the way his lips are attached to the warm skin there, probably leaving a beautiful and unmissable mark to it.

Giggling again and making Buck feel like he’s walking on an indestructible cloud, Eddie covers Buck’s hands on his stomach with his own, intertwining their fingers as they try to take one more step but trip over themselves.

It is on their next step that Buck feels Eddie’s body tense in his embrace as Eddie stops their movements and murmurs, “Wait.”

Standing in front of them when Buck detaches his mouth from Eddie’s skin and raises his gaze is none other than Buck’s co-worker, friend, and most likely candidate to become his future brother in law.

Chimney’s eyes are wide when they first settle on them, but they grow wider and wider the longer he stares at their figures, like he’s slowly putting together the pieces to a puzzle he never wanted to have to make.

Their bodies basically sewn together, their damp hair, their inability to separate even just an inch, the towels that are hanging from around their necks, the way their gym bags are dripping water droplets all over the floor like breadcrumbs showing the way home — every single thing acts as a clue, a warning sign that Chimney only needs a few seconds to correctly interpret.

“Oh,” he says, as his eyes focus on Eddie’s and Buck’s linked hands over Eddie’s stomach.

“Oh,” he repeats as his gaze moves to the spot on Eddie’s neck where Buck’s face was just buried only seconds before.

“Oh no,” he despairs as his stare turns towards the way to the showers behind them. “No.”

A heartbeat of silence passes as they all simply stare at each other — Buck and Eddie on one side of a bench, still stuck to each other like a mishap with a glue gun while they tried to help Christopher with an art project just happened to them; Chimney on the other side of it with a face that is slowly starting to resemble the one he wore that one time that Buck got him to unknowingly eat some dog treats during a shift when they were in the middle of a prank war.

“Oops,” Buck says, in lieu of an apology, shrugging his shoulders as he presses his hands further into Eddie’s stomach to bring their bodies even closer together. “Hi, Chim.”

One more instant of silence and then Chimney throws his hands up in the air and says, almost shouting, “For fuck’s sakes, Buck!” before turning around and exiting the locker room.

Buck guesses he’s probably going to cancel his gym membership, pack a light suitcase, pick Maddie up from her apartment, and convince her to move to a remote cabin in the middle of Canada where he won’t have to look Buck in the eye ever again.

Sure, Buck will surely miss them, but he’s decided he’s more than happy to stay put in Los Angeles, with Eddie and Christopher, where he’s always been meant to be.

“Should you be worried about that?” Eddie asks, but he doesn’t sound worried or even embarrassed at having obviously been caught. He sounds amused, maybe even delighted.

“Nah,” Buck says before he lowers his face to graze his nose over Eddie’s pulse point as he nudges the back of Eddie’s legs to get him to start walking again. “He’s seen much worse from me.”

“God help him, then,” Eddie says, which means Buck is obligated to move one of his hands under Eddie’s t-shirt to pinch his stomach lightly as Eddie laughs and they both step out of the locker room and trudge towards the gym’s exit.

To be quite honest, the walk from the locker room to Buck’s Jeep is a thousand times more physically taxing and difficult than the entire workout Buck and Eddie ran through this morning when they got to the gym, but neither of them even thinks about separating to make it easier.

One step at a time they leave the gym behind for the day, knowing they’ll be back soon enough.

Knowing that they don’t actually need to ever step a foot inside of it again if they don’t want to.

(They will want to, they absolutely will, because Buck knows neither of them deal well with periods of inactivity, but that’s not the point he’s trying to make.

He’s trying to say, in a romantic and perhaps convoluted way, that wherever they are going next, they are doing so together. Be it the gym, the grocery store, the zoo, or the end of the world.)

(Hopefully not the end of the world but, again: Romantic and convoluted.)

two months later;

“You have good form.”

The comment makes an immediate smile tug at the corners of Buck’s mouth as he moves the barbell he’s holding back to rest on the rack as he lies on the gym bench.

He doesn’t need to turn his head towards the voice to know who just spoke, of course he doesn’t. The voice belongs to the person Buck wakes up next to every day, the person who Buck sees last every night before he falls asleep. The person Buck would recognize not just by sound, but by touch, by taste, by simply standing a few feet away from him and feeling his presence.

Still, Buck turns to look at him, because if there is one thing Buck knows is that as long as he’s alive, he will never pass up an opportunity to look at Eddie Diaz. Much less pass up an opportunity to look at Eddie Diaz wearing his firefighter uniform.

Moving so he’s sitting down on the bench instead of lying down, Buck lets his eyes travel the entire length of Eddie’s body slowly, like he wants Eddie to think he’s picturing him naked. Which he is, he absolutely is.

The way Eddie raises an eyebrow at him tells Buck that he knows it.

“Thank you,” Buck says, letting his legs spread slightly so his shorts ride up his thighs. “I’ve had a good gym partner for the last couple of months.”

Eddie hums, and even as his eyes settle on the pale inside of Buck’s thighs, the grin on his face looks soft, almost innocent.

“What about a partner partner? Do you have one of those?” Eddie asks, raising his eyes to catch Buck’s gaze, and Buck chuckles gently as he stands up from the bench and walks the couple of steps that separate him and Eddie.

The station is buzzing around them, but the world might as well just have stopped. Buck can hear the telltale sounds of a shift that is just starting at Station 118 -the chattering voices, the coffeemaker being turned on, the lockers opening and closing- but all he can focus on is Eddie in front of him.

“Yeah,” he answers once he’s standing just a few inches away from Eddie, their chests almost touching as they stare at each other. “I do. My gym partner is actually my partner partner as well.”

“Lucky guy,” Eddie says, and Buck can see his fingers twitching, like he’s dying to put his hands on Buck already. “What about a firefighting partner? I promise I would have your back at all times.”

This time it’s Buck who hums, and he doesn’t have to extend his arm very far to be able to offer his hand out to Eddie.

“I could do with one of those,” Buck says just as Eddie grabs his hand in the most intimate of handshakes Buck has ever shared with another human being, one that is less a handshake and more just hand holding with some swaying. “Welcome to the 118, Firefighter Diaz.”

“It’s great to be here,” Eddie says, tightening his grip on Buck’s hand and using it to pull Buck closer so he can whisper his next question right into Buck’s lips. “Do you want me to spot you?”

Maybe if Buck was a little more cautious he wouldn’t be thinking of dropping to his knees right in the middle of the station’s gym in the very first minute of Eddie’s first shift with the 118. But Buck isn’t very cautious. He’s really not cautious at all.

It’s a good thing he already knows how good of a firefighter Eddie is and how little of a chance there is that Bobby will regret asking for his permanent transfer to their team, because he knows that getting caught in the magnetic force of Eddie’s presence during shifts won’t ever go away.

“For the rest of my life,” Buck says, and now he’s thinking of dropping down on one knee in a very different context.

Eddie’s thumb caressing Buck’s bare ring finger while they get lost in their first kiss as firefighting partners tells Buck he’s probably picturing something very similar.