Archive of Our Own

“Don’t worry,” Buck says as his hand wraps around the nape of the guy’s neck, “You’re not my first.”

Buck chooses based not on what is but what isn’t, and this guy is a photographer, red hair, tall but slight. His studio apartment has been half-converted into a darkroom so there’s a chemical tang in the air, red light shining from behind particleboard dividers. When he asks if he can take Buck’s picture for a project he’s working on, Buck says sure; he photographs well. The guy — Fox, let’s say, since Buck doesn’t remember what it said on his profile — is fishbelly pale, almost blue in the strange light of the apartment, and covered in so many freckles that Buck trips over with his tongue. He always did like redheads.

Fox’s body feels different, but every body feels different, and Buck has touched a lot of bodies. Fox is more flexible; his legs fold up against his chest like moth wings. He’s pinker around the press of Buck’s fingers and then his cock, and he makes different noises and he keeps his eyes closed and he clutches Buck’s shoulders. He’s easier to lift and maneuver and more interested in letting Buck manhandle him. They share a joint after, both slumped down in the used sheets as they get pleasantly hazy, Fox’s fingers stirring Buck’s hair.

“Who was your first?” It’s out of Buck’s mouth before he knows he said it, but when he looks for embarrassment he can’t find any, so he must be all tapped out.

“God,” Fox says. “Gay people love to fuck and therapize.”

Buck doesn’t say anything. It occurs to him that he hasn’t said the word out loud before, has said dating a guy and kissed a boy but never corrected people, hadn’t even told that hot girl at dinner That’s My Boyfriend, Actually.

Fox scrapes a hand through his hair and sighs. “He was my best friend. We were twelve. Nothing ever happened, except my heart would beat so fast when I saw him that I’d have to go to the nurse because I thought I was dying.”

His tone changes as he talks, from aggravation to reluctance to a kind of raw nerve wistfulness. He has a tattoo of a film strip on the inside of his forearm. Lame, Buck thinks, with the kind of disconnected affection you can only feel for strangers. “Do you know where he is now?”

“No,” Fox says. His arms creep around his own chest, caging himself in. “And I hope I never do.”

Buck leaves an almond loaf with him.

Buck is at the bar for fifteen minutes when he leaves with Jordan, his abandoned beer still full and condensation beading, making the napkin underneath wet and easily torn. Jordan is brown-eyed, hair an explosion of tight curls on top, skin warm to the touch. There’s something bashful about him, not exactly nervous but self-contained, and his expression at rest is almost solemn. The space between them sparks. Flirtation makes Buck’s chest warm, his stomach flutter. It feels good.

“I haven’t, before,” Buck says. “Wanted to, but — never got around to it.”

This doesn’t bother Jordan. He doesn’t condescend, only runs down a checklist that Buck, a connoisseur of checklists, appreciates. Buck got ready before he went out, went out with intention, and anyway he’s done it with toys, fingers, tongues, he’s not sure what difference it’ll really make until Jordan’s cock is inside him and that’s different, alright.

Facedown, fucked. His mouth open against his sheets breathing cotton, sweat on his skin and fingers digging into the bed, heat flaring. A chest against his back, the tickle of chest hair sticking to him and making his pulse jump, making him hard, like the arm braced alongside his, like the thigh nudging into the back of his. He’s on fire.

He wonders — and even now feels a little ashamed that he wonders — how many different kinds there are and how they would all feel. Jordan is a little thicker, he thinks, and there’s a dirty excitement to imagining all the possibilities against him, inside him, on his tongue. It’s exhilarating. He feels shockingly alive and smug, almost mean — here he is doing it, exploring, and it feels fucking incredible, take that. You never got the chance to make me feel this good; you gave it up. “Call me Evan,” he gasps, then right away, “No, don’t, don’t, don’t.”

It's good, but afterwards his neck is killing him.

“Um, I was nineteen, I think,” Jordan says when Buck asks. “She was my sister’s friend. I remember — I don’t know why this is always what I think of, but I remember the two of them in the driveway with music playing, and her dancing, and how her name was like bells to me, it rung. We bumped into each other in the hallway between the kitchen and the bathroom and had this weird, I don’t know, crackle between us. She kissed me. I wasn’t expecting it; I didn’t know she even knew I was alive. I think it was the best kiss I ever had.”

Buck is surprised. It must show because Jordan says, “I’m bi — did I not say?”

“Um, no,” Buck says, and is hit with this weird yearning like a truck tipped over.

Jordan takes a pan of salted caramel brownies with him when he goes.

Ethan is twenty-six, a paramedic in training Buck meets on a call, and he’s never been with a guy before. “I mean, not for lack of…” he says, then trails off, laughs.

“What?” Buck wants to know.

Ethan looks down, smiling slightly but with a tightness at his temples that belies it. “You ever have so many people’s voices in your head you can’t tell which is yours? I talked myself in and out of it a million times. I keep — I keep thinking how disappointed my mom would be. Even though she’s, you know. Dead.”

They had exchanged numbers almost surreptitiously, with the arch of an eyebrow and sly smiles, the asphalt still smoking from a triple car pileup. Buck thought it was professionalism that made it furtive; now sees otherwise. “Why now?”

Ethan’s gaze lifts, catching as it goes on Buck’s thighs, the bend of his arm, his chest. “I don’t know,” he says. “But I want to.”

Buck’s voice softens. “Come here.”

It’s late. Buck had invited Ethan over when the post-shift adrenaline had given over to insomnia and so the sex is lazy, no rush. Ethan sits in his lap and Buck wraps a hand around both of them, cocks sliding together and denim bunching at their thighs, shirts open or pushed aside, each kiss a little off-center. Ethan squirms as he gets closer, arms wrapping around Buck’s shoulders, hands clutching, forehead rolling against Buck’s neck. It doesn’t recall Buck’s first time — not comparable — until it’s over and Ethan smiles at him, this big dopey grin of giddy relief, as though he’s gotten away with something. Buck feels a pang, then.

The intimacy afterwards is maybe out of place, but Buck wants it: Ethan boneless against his chest, Buck’s fingers moving up and down his back. It’s nice, to touch someone; to lay with them; to feel he’s giving them something they need. “I never knew, until that first kiss,” Buck tells him. “And it felt too — big to look back at everything else, so I didn’t. I spent all this time trying to interrogate myself to find this answer and I never knew what it was, and maybe — maybe this isn’t it, either, but it’s like, man. What else was I missing?”

Ethan is gluten free, and luckily Buck had been experimenting that week, so he’s able to send him off with a plastic bag of peanut butter cookies. Ethan wants to see him again but Buck declines. He isn’t looking for that.

Ethan’s head tilts, and his expression still has that sleepy post-orgasm blur, not yet come back to reality even though he’s dressed again, at the doorway. “Then what are you looking for?”

Buck thought he knew, but maybe he doesn’t.

He goes looking. He tries a group that Karen had texted him about before with a kissy-face, something she attended during her own, in her words, circular journey through the acronym. The moderator says it’s not a support group but a space for discussion for people anywhere on the sexually fluid spectrum, rattling off a list of identities Buck slots into different spaces in his brain. She stresses that this is not for hook-ups, which is when Buck notices a woman across the way with a beautiful, strong nose like a Roman coin and curly hair all swept over one shoulder.

They sit on squeaky plastic chairs in a room that is too bright with an improv group practicing loudly on the other side of the wall. He doesn’t say anything for the first half, listening intently, and then talks too much in the second — asking questions, making notes in his phone, sitting so far forward someone jokes he’s going to fall out of his chair so he laughs, ducks his head, and keeps asking. He wants to know the difference between bi and pan — not the definition but how the difference feels, and why someone chooses one label or none, why the Kinsey scale still comes up when he’s since read about its scientific limitations, is it that he didn’t know or didn’t want to look, and can a new part of yourself just appear, suddenly, or was it always there?

The moderator asks for his name again. He gives it. She says, “Buck, I think that’s the kind of thing you can only answer for yourself,” which kicks him right back to the frustration that defined therapy for him until he stopped going.

After, the woman with curly hair introduces herself as Sasha. “Some of us get food after, if you’re hungry,” she says. Buck is.

Instead they fuck in her car. Well, Buck eats her out on the backseat, contorted into the space with one knee sliding off the seat and her palm against the window. He doesn’t know if it’s bad to have missed it but he did: the way she parts for his tongue, the taste and feel of it. His mouth closes over her cunt, his hand on her stomach feeling all her little shakes. It is different. It’s the same, somehow, too. It’s body, skin, texture, heat, the feel of someone else and not exactly who that someone is. But he missed it, even so.

They go through a drive-thru to get mozzarella sticks that they eat in the parking lot.

Sasha had been married, then open, then divorced. She has a daughter. She says her ex had accused her of being rapacious, wanting too much all the time, because it was one thing for them to open their marriage but another to enjoy it as much as she did. “I never felt like I was missing out on someone, I just — Jesus, I guess I’m a bad bisexual because I like lots of people,” Sasha says. “Because I like sex.”

“My ex,” and Buck still kind of hates saying it, so he doesn’t know where the sentence is going for a minute. “I felt like I could never be, like, in enough for him — like he never believed me. We almost didn’t happen because he told me I wasn’t ready, then six months later, you know, we’re together all the time, it’s — it’s good, but somehow I still wasn’t ready enough for him.”

Maybe he did have a level of discomfort, still. In the group, no one asked which word he wanted to use, but he felt compelled to say he didn’t know, that he didn’t think it mattered, that it didn’t make a difference. But he thought maybe it did. He just couldn’t get it out of his mouth.

(It did kind of bother him when Maddie blithely said he was gay, or that Tommy pulled away because he might want someone else, someday. That there was this weight of expectation he felt. Burden of proof.)

“I just don’t know if I’m doing it right,” Buck says. “I mean, we weren’t even supposed to hook up. Group rules.”

Sasha laughs. “You’re definitely doing it wrong. But I am, too. So. Good company?”

Buck smiles. He’s going to let her have the last mozzarella stick. “Good company,” he agrees.

He keeps looking. Meeting men is easy, easier even than women and he never struggled with that. Sex has always been very available to Buck. Parks, bathrooms, backrooms, bars. Arrangements made with a quick swipe during downtime at work, minimal details except for when and where. He doesn’t mention it to anyone, not because there’s anything wrong with it but because he knows other people will think there is. But when he’s gone to his local supermarket four times in two days and there’s nothing in his fridge that doesn’t make his teeth ache yet he’s still so conscious of his phone that it feels like it’s sitting inside his chest, waiting to buzz —

Then he has to do something else. And it’s exciting, isn’t it, sharing a grin on a hiking trail before dipping behind the trees, his hand in someone’s shorts feeling them come alive for him. The dirty thrill of the bathroom stall locking. He didn’t miss it, exactly, but it’s familiar, like visiting a city he once lived in.

There had been things Buck didn’t know he was allowed to ask for. He had been nervous, maybe, or shy; not a feeling he was used to associating with sex. He didn’t know what was normal, if he was doing it right when he had already done other things wrong. He didn’t have to worry about that with guys he was never going to see again. “Push my head down,” he says, and his fingers contract, dig into a stranger’s thighs as their latexed cock hits the back of his throat. His eyes smart. His erection throbs.

He gets off in the showers at the gym. He goes in and out of apartments he’ll never remember the inside of. He double-books and fucks both guys at the same time, a tangle of limbs that makes him pleasure-dizzy, so much to have, and have, and have. His eyes closed and skin so hot he knows he must be flushed pink from his temples on down. Always a leg sliding over his, lips parting his; a hand in his hair, on his chest, thumbing his nipple. Fingertips moving along the crease of his thigh. He’s still sensitive the next day so he spends it jerking off and hydrating, makes three pans of muffins.

Sometimes he asks about firsts. The specifics merge together but he takes note of their faces as they tell him, or don’t: the way eye contact breaks, the deflection of laughter or irritation, the hurt, the longing, the anger, the indifference. And Buck thinks: yes, me too. Not just me.

He gets sidetracked. He learns new recipes; he spirals. Ethan texts him, were you on Hotshots?????? with six question marks. He bakes cookies in Eddie’s crappy oven so the house smells inviting for the people who come to view it. He sabotages, self and otherwise. He adopts a dog. He unadopts a dog. He’s a good friend, even when he doesn’t want to be.

He goes to a bar.

They careen into a bedroom that isn’t Eddie’s anymore but isn’t Buck’s yet, knocking into boxes, stumbling over the snaking cord of an unplugged lamp. Buck tugs Tommy in and shoves him back against the wall, hears this little oof as the wind knocks out of him and laughs, gets one kiss against Tommy’s throat before his chin is tilted up, sought out for a kiss again and again. Buck sticks his tongue in Tommy’s mouth, feels sloppy and giddy with booze and desire. Tommy’s hoarse as he says, “Don’t stop.”

“Why would I stop,” Buck murmurs, low and dragging, tip of his tongue against the back of his teeth. He remembers thinking once that Tommy didn’t want it like this but now he doesn’t know why, pulling up fragments — Tommy’s voice a gentle rumble against his lips, why are you always in such a hurry, hotshot, or the time he’d said flatly, Evan, I don’t bend that way, but maybe he didn’t hear it right, ear catching the wrong rhythm.

Tommy’s mouth is close, closing on his. “What else ya got?”

Buck groans. “Knees,” he says, and feels the ripple in Tommy’s body as he reacts. He kisses Buck hard with both hands on his face before sliding down between him and the wall, so big to be squeezed into that small space; his back braces against the wall and his hands are on Buck’s knees, then his thighs, wrapping around and pulling him in. He presses his face against Buck’s fly. Has his hair always been so gray?

“Wait,” Buck realizes. “Condom.”

Tommy’s eyebrow quirks. “You have been busy.”

Buck grins at him, easy. “Jealous?”

“Oh, wildly,” Tommy says, in that dry way he has, a little twitch of amusement at the corner of his mouth that makes Buck sheepish. He has to go searching. Tommy throws himself back on the mattress to wait, half-undressed with his jeans open so a trail of hair is visible over the band of his underwear, chest heaving a little no matter how casual he pretends to be — and Buck has to go back for seconds, to kiss him again, to bite his nipple through his shirt, which makes Tommy laugh and shove him off. It’s familiar, so familiar it hurts for a second, this weird abstract twinge.

Buck shakes it off.

The condoms are wherever the lube is, which will be necessary, and the other stuff from the fun drawer, which probably won’t be, in a box Buck hasn’t cracked since he moved in. He spots it in the corner, BEDROOM scrawled on one side in Sharpie with two frisky devil horns over the B and M; he digs through it, tears off a strip of condoms and flings them at Tommy, who catches them against his chest. Buck palms the lube.

“It doesn’t bother you?” Buck pushes. Tommy tugs at him so they end up in this weird diagonal sprawl across the mattress, Tommy’s black tank top all askew, the neckline jerked sideways and hem rising.

“It didn’t bother me before,” Tommy says evenly. His hand has slipped under and slid up the inside of Buck’s shirt. Buck’s cheeks are hot.

“No,” Buck says. “That you won’t be able to taste it.”

Tommy makes a rough sound. He’s up on one elbow to jerk Buck’s belt open, pops the button of his jeans and just drags it all down, denim-burn on Buck’s skin. Buck gets his own shirt up and off, sweat at the seams already, while Tommy fumbles with the condom, rolls it on and takes Buck in suddenly while the shirt’s still over his head, vision all green.

They both moan, so Tommy must not mind the latex sheen, something Buck has discovered he sort of likes in a way he can’t quite pin down; has the occasional fantasy of gloved fingers pressing down on his tongue. They’re in a messy tangle, Tommy’s weight half on his legs and jeans constricting his thighs but Tommy’s hand tight on the waistband like he needs the anchor. Buck twists towards him, hips up but back flat, arms stretched for a moment above his head. He feels the strain all down his side as the muscles stretch, and there’s the old feeling, too — wanting to be looked at. Not matter how, wanting to be seen.

“I bottom now,” Buck says, inflammatory, and Tommy looks up without pulling off, eyes dark, then lets him go.

Voice cloudy, lips wet. “Is that right?” His hand insinuates itself in that tight trapped space between Buck’s thighs, heel of the palm pressing into his balls.

“Uh-huh,” Buck says.

Now Tommy is jerking Buck’s jeans off the rest of the way, pawing at his briefs before coming back to kiss his stomach, to suck his cock. It’s like he can’t let Buck go for more than a few seconds, enough to ask, “Who was he,” then back, hand pressing hard against his ass to keep him arched towards Tommy’s mouth.

“I don’t remember all their names,” Buck says mildly.

Tommy laughs. Something gleams in his gaze as he rubs along the inside of Buck’s leg, lets them fall open. Buck expects teasing, but Tommy only asks, “Were they nice to you?”

It’s another weird little hurt that Buck motors past. “Yeah. You wanna know how nice?”

He reaches for Tommy so he can strip off that tank top at last; unbuckle his belt. Tommy helps, too many hands in the way. “Tell me how nice.”

He lands sideways on the mattress, both of them working hard to get his pants over his knees, then Buck between them; they’re trying to do the same thing at the same time, to get there faster, but they’re just getting in each other’s way.

“I have sheets,” Buck offers belatedly, but —

Tommy blows it off, impatient. “I don’t care.”

Arm outstretched to grab the lube from where it landed, Buck says, “I opened myself up for the first guy.” He was apprehensive, sweating, but leaves that part out. He came on his own fingers in his bathroom fifteen minutes before his date but he leaves that part out too. He switches the condom, squeezes lube into his palm, and gives himself a quick tug. “Your fingers are thicker. I haven’t met anyone else who — not yet, anyway.”

They did that a lot, the fullness of Tommy’s fingers inside while he sucked Buck off; alternating fingers and tongue when they were too tired after a shift for anything else. Buck didn’t return the favor as much, but not for lack of trying — Tommy only wanted one thing. “They all feel a little different,” he adds, moves to press two fingers into Tommy.

With a dismissive scoff, pfft, Tommy says, “C’mon,” like Buck knows better, and he does, is the thing; he knows exactly. (How many times had Tommy said, Just fuck me, Evan, in that exasperated, bitchy way Buck liked so much?) “How do you like it?”

Buck likes that first moment, the stretch of his body accommodating. He’s never felt anything else quite like it. He likes when they’re thick. He likes it shallow, teasing, not like Tommy who always seemed to need more, the insistent roll of Buck’s hips fucking into him deeper. Like now, both hands on Buck’s ass directing him; rising to meet him until Buck is flush against him, Tommy breathing out almost in relief. “And the jackhammering,” Buck says, voice already wavering. “I hate that, I get why girls don’t like it.”

Tommy laughs, but then they don’t talk for a while; they make other noises. The mattress groans, too, moves with the motion of their bodies until it hits the wall with a dull thump. Tommy’s arms are splayed out to clutch either end of it, holding tight to its hard seam for purchase, but his legs are folded around Buck’s hips and notched at the ankles. Buck goes slow and deep and hard, then fast and shallow, the head of his cock sliding into and out of Tommy over and over. He watches the pleasure get punched out of Tommy, the sweat collect on his reddened skin. Buck doesn’t give it to him easy.

“Like that,” Tommy breathes, answer to an unasked question, his chin dipping in an approving nod.

When he comes, Tommy hooks an arm around Buck’s neck to pull him into a kiss, wild and desperate, just like it used to be; a kiss they’ve shared so many times that for a minute all sense of temporal reality slides together and Buck expects to be faced with a row of big gleaming windows, but finds only the bare wall, stupid until his heartbeat gets out of his ears.

He's not done yet. He sits back, leans on one arm, and keeps fucking Tommy. Tommy’s hands are on Buck’s body measuring the span of his torso, feeling up and over him with not only frank desire but enjoyment, his breath stuttering as he eats up the sight of Buck. His gaze so warm.

“I’m gonna come,” Buck grits out.

“Attaboy,” Tommy says.

After, not soft yet, Buck pushes back inside. They would do that, before. Buck liked the sensation, the too-muchness of it, and that Tommy would make this thready little noise he never made otherwise. Buck always wanted to keep going, he never wanted to stop, until Tommy was breathless, wheeze-laughing, and he’d have to tap out, two quick pats on the bed. Maybe they fucked more than they talked. Can you fuck too much?

(But, no, because there was takeout with their forks knocking into each other as they dove for the last piece of chicken. There were walks to get ice cream after midnight at the one place that was open but a little far, because it was more about the walk than the reward. There was Tommy making breakfast while Buck sat on the counter, vestigial in his own kitchen, which he liked more than he ever thought he would. So they didn’t talk about the past, so what? They were there, together, then.)

He does dig out the sheets eventually. A top sheet, at least, and a couple wrangled pillows. Buck lays his palm on Tommy’s chest and feels his heart rat-a-tat-tat, the eager pounding of it even though everything is over. Buck keeps his hand there, wanting to feel it change. “Who was your first?”

“Evan,” Tommy sighs. “Not every story is nice.”

Tommy leaves before breakfast. Later Buck makes a champagne chiffon cake.

Alone doesn’t mean —

He can have sex and be alone.

He doesn’t have to feel anything. He doesn’t have to act on his feelings. He changes his settings to avoid men with graying temples and swipes sideways on any guy who might have triggered his competitive instincts in the past, what Chim has affectionately termed barking at the mailman. He chooses based not on what is but what isn’t; he sets out to prove Tommy wrong again.

Seth is a goth. That’s what Buck says to him, and he heaves a big sigh before launching into a monologue about the differences in subculture, goth versus metal versus punk, tapping his fingers with their chipped black nails and numerous silver rings on the sticky varnished table between them. Seth has silver everywhere — studs at the bridge of his nose, the arch of his eyebrows, the center of his bottom lip. As he talks, the bar in his tongue occasionally taps his teeth with an impatient clack Buck can somehow still hear over the droning music that’s starting to get into his eardrums, and he can easily say he’s never been with anyone like Seth except maybe the girl with the snake, but he didn’t even finish so he’s not sure that counts.

Seth drums his fingers harder on the table. “You listening?”

“I never really got into music,” Buck admits. He points upwards. “This doesn’t make you feel like someone’s drilling into your brain?”

Seth smiles and his smile is — surprisingly nice, that stud in his cheek winking. “That’s what I like about it.”

“No thinking?”

“No thinking.”

“I bake for that,” Buck offers. “Well, and I used to get in a lot of accidents. And hit the gym. And hook up, like, a lot, with pretty much —” As he says it, he hears it, and stalls trying to figure out how to somehow drag the words back into his mouth, but Seth is laughing, so Buck only winces and ducks his head.

“I can respect the urge to self-destruct,” Seth says. “Sorry, self-distract.”

Buck’s not sure where to go with that, but he does get distracted by Seth toying with his lip piercing, flicking it up and down, pushing it with his tongue. Buck gestures at him, then taps his own mouth. “How’s that feel?”

His voice drops a little. His head tilts.

“Never heard that one before,” Seth drawls, but he’s leaning in already. “I think my line’s: wanna find out?”

Buck pauses a moment before they make contact and smiles, because he does like this part: the change in someone’s breathing, their eyelids slipping half-closed. The moment they start to really want him. Buck smiles and kisses Seth, warm metal against his mouth, his tongue.

“Not the only place I’m pierced,” Seth says when they part, breathier, but with the corner of his mouth curling.

Buck’s eyebrow quirks. “You know, I suspected.”

Seth flicks the lip piercing again, up, down, and his gaze moves over Buck the same way, taking him in and in again. “I’m more of a no ragerts kind of guy,” he says. “But I do have one. I never did fuck the quarterback in high school.”

“Tight end, actually,” Buck says, and smiles.

They go back to Eddie’s. Back to his — his place, which is also Eddie’s, because Buck knows where that ding in the wall came from and that scratch on the baseboard, because he’ll always think of the second bedroom as belonging to someone in particular. But he screwed his bike rack into the wall; he’s considering paint swatches. He makes his check out to the landlord and sleeps through the night. Most nights.

Under his black clothes, Seth is laddered with ink, each piece transitioning into the next so there are few unbroken stretches of skin and a shocking amount of color, all kept inside. Buck gets caught up looking at it for a long time, turning Seth’s arm this way and that, rolling his shoulder forward, twisting him around. “Dude,” Seth says, entertained, which is when Buck notices all the handling has made Seth hard, and it’s as good an excuse as any to see what’s under his briefs.

Titanium gleams along his erection, the round capped ends of five bars running up the underside and a thick ring at the crown. “Couldn’t fit any more?” Buck asks mildly, feeling him with a fingertip to see if he can tell the bars are there, under the skin.

“Ah, well, you know,” Seth says, strained. “One to grow on.”

Buck grins and dips his head down. With his tongue, through the condom, he teases each piercing along the row, takes his time adjusting to the novel sensation; afterwards lays Seth out flat to press both hands to the ink on his chest while Buck takes him in, can’t help a laugh that becomes a moan, though he’s not sure if he can really feel all that titanium or if he just knows it’s there, something daring and dirty about the difference.

When they’re done, Seth asks, “How was it?”

Because Buck feels like he can be honest, he is. “Interesting.”

“I do aspire,” Seth says, shimmying his briefs back on, “to be the most interesting fuck.”

“Were you in love with the quarterback?”

“What?” Seth says. “Oh, dude, that was just horny talk, because you look like —” He waves expansively. “I wouldn’t have touched that guy with your dick. Which, by the way, congrats.”

He writes down his tattoo artist for Buck. Buck gives him pick of what’s left in the fridge and Seth goes for the key lime pie, then sits right at the island and digs directly into the middle with a fork while picking up the music lecture from earlier like the conversation had never stopped. Buck doesn’t expect it. After a minute, he gets out a fork, too.

He doesn’t end up calling Tommy. He doesn’t call Eddie, either; at least, not for that. Buck talks to Eddie a thousand times a day about everything else — a burst pipe, how to use a slow cooker, his parents, his son, but when Eddie says, how’s it going on your end, Buck shrugs and offers nothing.

He imagines it, saying: Tommy thinks I have feelings for you. After people started realizing I was queer, they’d sometimes give me a sideways look and ask, And Diaz? He can picture Eddie’s slow uh-huh, his brain whirring behind his eyes as he tries to see where this is going and calibrate his response. Would Eddie say, Buck, I love you, brother, but you know I’m straight. Would he say, actually, I’ve always wondered… Would he say, What happens if it falls apart?

Buck has considered that, and he thinks it would, because it always does when it’s him. But that can’t be the only thing, right, because Buck has driven headlong into all kinds of disasters — but the truth is he never put those pieces in quite that configuration, and now it’s like someone bashed the puzzle together before he had a chance to figure it out. He liked how easy it was to be with Eddie and Tommy together. He liked having Eddie there. He would never want Eddie to not be there, no matter who it was, if it was ever anyone. He can’t believe the entire time Tommy was nursing a jealous little grudge and never let on, the same way he’d kept so much of himself buried, tucked away.

Could he think about Eddie like that? Maybe, but he hasn’t in a while, and he didn’t know he was doing it when he was doing it. It’s so stupid, how long he didn’t know what he was doing while he was doing it. Even now his brain elides it, a prickling in his chest that feels raw and messy.

In the end, he doesn’t ask Eddie but he does say, “I ran into Tommy. He said you haven’t spoken in a while.”

Eddie, phone propped up while he tackles today’s disaster, makes a noncommittal noise. He ducks under the bathroom sink, wrench whining against the pipes.

“I thought you were friends,” Buck prompts. Friends first, even.

“We were. We got along great.”

“But you stopped talking to him.”

“Yeah, well, you’re my guy,” Eddie says. “If I have to pick sides, it’s you.”

Buck hates that he can’t just enjoy that; the part of him that warms feels queasy with accusation, too.

Buck calls Taylor. They’ve been friendly but not friends in the intervening years and the conversation is easy despite that, as though no time has passed — Taylor tough and teasing, and Buck enjoying the cadence of her voice, like he always has. She doesn’t even ask why he called. “You gonna come over, Taylor?”

He’d interrupted her tirade about the network, and the pause stretches. “Okay, Buckley,” she says. “I’ll come over.”

“I’m at Eddie’s now,” he says. “Well, Eddie’s is mine.”

She snorts. “Color me unsurprised,” she says, and he makes a face at the phone only for her to go, “Are you making a face?” And right then he can’t wait to see her. Someone who really knows him — it’s so annoying; it’s so nice.

He remembers how they used to fuck hurriedly before one or the other left for work, sometimes minutes before, Taylor a whirlwind of red hair as he picked her up and pressed her against the door, bag dropping from her shoulder. She was the only person he knew who could have an orgasm in ten seconds flat for efficiency’s sake, and she liked to rev him up then leave him hanging, knowing they’d be on each other again as soon as the door opened in ten, twelve, twenty-four hours.

Now she slides in, sly and easy, with her bottle of red. She isn’t in a flirty little dress; he won’t find her good lingerie underneath. She looks like she came straight from work, hair in a braid and blazer over jeans, and in lieu of hello, she says bluntly, “You haven’t done much with the place.”

“Thanks, Taylor,” Buck says, amused.

Her blazer comes off and she lays it over the back of the couch. “How much preliminary small talk are you looking for?” Her eyebrow cocks. “Am I here so you can cry on my shoulder?”

“I don’t need a pat on the head,” Buck tells her.

“Oh, come on,” Taylor says. “You love to play good dog.”

The back of his neck heats.

“Especially,” she says, “with those big, sad eyes.”

The heat moves through his body. “Not today.”

Taylor’s chin lifts with a quick, considering mhm before she says, “Haven’t been here in a while. Remind me of the layout.”

His brow creases. “The —”

But she cuts him off, finger coming up in a quasi-confused swirl, head tilting playfully. “Bathroom to the left?”

Buck grins, catching on. “To the right.”

“My left,” Taylor says archly. She turns on her heel, hands coming up to strip off her striped button-down as she goes, just a cropped white tank underneath — the straps thin and barely there against the sudden expanse of skin, freckles scattered like a roadmap. She isn’t wearing a bra, and he thinks about stepping up behind her, slipping his hand under her neckline. “And the bedroom is…?”

“You’re gonna want to take about twenty steps that way.” Buck pulls his sweater over his head, t-shirt catching with a static cling, and points with the handful of warm fabric. Taylor’s eyes drop somewhere between belt and hem, and he lets her look. “And hang another right.”

“Left,” Taylor corrects.

“Your left,” Buck agrees, smiling. “If you hit the fern, you’ve gone too far.”

He moves towards her and she moves away, Buck walking her backwards down the hall with this tangible space between them like a leash, fuck, he hasn’t had this much fun since —

Buck doesn’t want to think about him.

At the doorway, he sweeps her up with one arm, Taylor’s legs locking around him automatically. All of it is so familiar: the press of her against his chest, the elbow that digs into his shoulder as she gets herself situated, the slight curve of her mouth and even the smell of her perfume. He remembers suddenly that it used to linger on his skin so he’d catch it every so often when he was on shift, even under the smoke. It always made him smile, like she was there with him somehow.

He considers kissing her. Her mouth hovers just above his; he’d only have to raise his chin an inch. But maybe something vulnerable shows in his face — his big, sad eyes — because Taylor shifts against him, gets a hand in his hair and pulls, the distance between them suddenly staggering. “By the way,” she says, pleased, “I like the curls.”

Buck makes a noise that’s mostly for show, a garbled grumble of frustration that makes her grin, and then she’s shrieking out a surprised laugh as he stumbles towards the bed, drops her on the neatly made sheets. She puts her boot against his stomach. Buck picks apart the laces, loosens them, and slides it off; does the same with the other. Taylor stretches luxuriously, arms above her head and nipples standing out against her thin white shirt, inviting the coast of Buck’s hand up her stomach, over her ribs, and under her shirt, between her breasts. He hears her little intake of breath and smirks. “Oh, shut up,” Taylor says, and he laughs.

There’s something about knowing exactly what this is, how easily they click and always have, even though they probably shouldn’t. They both got going fast; in this way, at least, they were compatible.

The shirt comes off and tangles with her wrists. Taylor lets it, for now, so she can watch as he reacquaints himself with her body: his tongue on her pink nipple, his thumb rubbing slick ‘til it pebbles. She arches into him, pushy, and to calm her down he inserts his hand between her legs, middle finger up against the hard denim seam of her jeans until she does a little twist on the bed, an unwilling whimper stuck somewhere in her throat. He can’t help feeling proud of himself, knowing where all the buttons are.

“That’s enough now,” Taylor says, breathless, and uses her legs around his hips to throw him over, back on top how she likes it. He always let her have her way, enjoyed feeling overpowered not because he was, but because he was choosing to be. “Now you.”

She returns the favor, palm pushing down his chest. Nails scratching his scalp. Buck feels good. He feels good but he also feels like he’s being good for her, his lips parting as her hand slides into his open fly, his cheeks getting pink. He can feel that too, blood under the surface of his skin everywhere, rushing. She pushes his shirt out of the way, the steady pressure of the heels of her hands all the way up and her nails trailing on the way back down. She pins his wrists and he lets her, but tries to angle up to get his mouth on her again, Taylor laughing and holding him down while wriggling away at the same time, Buck straining up so his shoulders feel it. The tip of his tongue flicks against her, his mouth finds her nipple, and Taylor pushes him back down with both hands on his sternum.

“You’re still pretty cute,” she tells him. “And still trouble.”

Buck gives her a cocky grin. His hands rest on her thighs, both of them denim-bound, and says, “Is this how we’re doing it? Dry, backseat of the car kind of —”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware it was your call.” She sits up on her knees over him, fingers flirting with the button of her jeans. Once open, he can just see the lace of her lavender panties and thinks, with surprisingly tender nostalgia, that she wore her good lingerie for him after all.

Her hand slips lower, under lace. He can see her fingers working through her jeans, tits pushing together as her arm moves, the other one keeping herself steady on his chest. Her eyes flutter shut and her breath gets shorter. She says, “I could do this and then go.”

“Yeah,” Buck agrees. She’s barely touching him now, just her knees on either side of his hips; the palm of her hand on his chest. Her fingertips dig in a little.

“Can you still come without being touched?”

“Oh, yeah,” Buck says. “You should see me get fucked.”

He thinks she might come, but instead Taylor drags her hand back out, goes rigid as she pushes herself back from the edge, her eyes all pupil like a cat on the hunt. She rests her wet fingers on his lips. Buck takes them in.

Taylor rolls off him and lays back like the pillow princess she isn’t so he’ll tug her jeans off, tries to get his mouth on the damp patch on her panties but gets pushed back so she can watch him undress. She tips him onto his back again and slinks over him, settles straddling his thighs. Her hair is coming loose from the braid, slipping and spilling over her shoulders, her tits. His cock is hard between her legs. She plays with him, presses him against the curve of her cunt and stomach, strokes him tight against her skin.

She didn’t tell him what to do with his hands so they start out pinned by nothing against the bed, then find her knees, move up her thighs to her hips with greedy little squeezes. “It’s okay, you can,” she breathes out, so he cups her tits, and she fits just right in his hands, always has. His hips move under her and she just rides, thumb moving insistently over the underside of his cock, over the slit, and he can feel the heat of her, the softness of her skin and rasp of the lace. When she says, “Are you sure you don’t want to be a good boy,” he comes, on her stomach and even higher, nearly to her collarbones.

He pants.

“Rude,” Taylor says. “Make it up to me.”

She climbs up his body so he can lick his come off her skin, then shimmies out of her panties at last to sit on his face.

His tongue’s half-numb and his jaw aches pleasantly by the time he gets to ask about her first. “Some idiot in the back of a Saturn,” Taylor says dismissively. “First heartbreak, that’s the real one. That tells you something.”

They’re still in his bed, Buck’s head propped up on one hand while he lounges by the footboard; Taylor up top with the sheets shamelessly puddled around her waist. “Okay. Who was that?”

“Evan,” she says. “You know you were the first person who broke my heart.”

Buck stares at her. He didn’t know that, actually. “Taylor,” he says, and he doesn’t think he imagines the way her shoulders fold inwards. He never got to see her like that — just once or twice, really, and always turning away, burying her face, hardening her jaw.

“Write in your diary about it,” she says. “Is this about the boyfriend?”

“Ex,” he corrects absently. “I didn’t know you —”

She rolls her eyes. “I still follow you on Instagram, Buck. You splashed that beefcake all over my feed.”

He hadn’t had the heart to scrub it after the breakup, so he just logged out and deleted the app. “You don’t seem surprised.”

Her expression turns mischievous. “Ask me if I’m seeing someone, Buck.”

He probably should have led with that. “Are you seeing anyone, Taylor?”

“On and off,” Taylor says. “She’s an actress.” She smiles slightly, almost wistful. “She’s fucking crazy.”

Confusion moves over and out of his face and he smiles, small at first then wider and wider. There are so many things he never knew about her.

The conversation opens up in a different way about that, like a stopper popped out of a bottle. It reminds him of the old days when they’d sit together dissecting, oh — a treasure hunt, a mystery, a book he was reading, a story she needed to think out loud to someone about. He puts his boxers back on and Taylor claims his t-shirt. “I’m learning to be alone,” he tells her.

“I wasn’t aware you’d learned how to be together,” she retorts, then holds up a hand. “Okay, my life coach might say that’s a little mean.”

“Life coach?”

She waves that off. “You know how you learn to be in a relationship? By being in one.”

“He broke up with me!” Buck says defensively. He tells Taylor about that morning in the kitchen (where he’s eaten breakfast alone every day since), that it felt again like Tommy was accusing him of something, same as when they broke up. Of not being ready, not being in, wanting someone else either theoretically or more concretely — that there was always going to be this possibility that he would flake for someone else, different, better. “Is that what,” and it’s clumsy in his mouth like after novocaine at the dentist, “Is that just what people think bisexuals do?”

He's angry. He’s still angry, and it comes up as this lump in his throat, things he shouldn’t have said.

Taylor studies him for a moment. He feels a sudden flash of embarrassment saying this to her when he did flake on her for somebody else, a shame he thought he’d long since swallowed. “Were you ready?”

It’s not what he expects, and he’s at a loss for a second. “I don’t know,” he says.

“Knowing would probably help,” Taylor says, and it’s his turn to roll his eyes and scoff, feeling petulant.

He never knows. He’s always searching.

“Everyone thinks I’m in love with Eddie,” he says finally, and her face, the way she goes uh-huh, has him sputtering, “Yeah, that! Everyone keeps making that face at me. Tommy. My sister. What does that — what does that mean, what’s this thing that everyone knows that I don’t?”

That’s been bothering him, too. He’s lived a life of knowing looks that went over his head, and there’s that what now part of him that’s steeled for another sudden reveal. He had a brother his whole life without knowing it. He was queer his whole life without knowing it. All that looking, and he couldn’t see shit.

“Why me?” Taylor asks. “No, seriously — why did you call me? Do you think I catalogued every sideways glance, that I made a spreadsheet for any touch that lingered too long? I don’t know, Buckley. You love him. You’re a little hung up on him. Welcome to friendship; sometimes it’s like that.”

His lips press together. “You’d tell me even if I didn’t want to hear it. If it was true and I needed to know, you’d tell me.”

Oddly, this makes her soften. “No one can tell you how you feel but you,” she says, and there’s something insistent about it, almost fierce. “Now. Do I get a cookie?”

She might not mean that literally, but he leads her into the kitchen and sets her loose. Studying her ease in this space that’s somewhat his, he says, “You’re a tough nut to crack.”

“By design,” Taylor says. “Let you see my squishy insides? I’d rather die.”

“Why?” he asks impulsively, leaning back against the counter. He doesn’t expect her to answer, but he sees her weigh honesty against a joke and give in, arms dropping.

“You didn’t always like when I told you things,” she says. “You always thought the worst of me. It makes it hard to show someone your actual worst.”

Buck frowns. “That’s not,” he starts, but maybe it is true.

“And you scared me shitless,” Taylor admits baldly. “It was humiliating. You’re the golden boy and I’m the bitch, and when you said trust me I actually wanted to. So I did. And I got burned.”

He thinks of Taylor’s broken heart and that she still came over to listen to him talk about Tommy. “How are you now?”

She comes closer and touches one of the old scars that’s still faintly visible on Buck’s arm from the motorcycle crash, just a hair’s difference in color from the skin surrounding it. “Barely even twinges,” she says.

He’s glad he called her. “Are you gonna tell me about the girlfriend?”

“Hmm.” Taylor scrunches up her nose. “If you’re lucky.”

Taylor isn’t happy with anything he has in the fridge, so she sits at the island in bare legs and his t-shirt while he makes her Girl Scout cookies from a recipe on his phone, and it’s worth it to see her take the first bite, too hot out of the oven, eyes closed, smiling.

Asher’s fifty-two, he only tops. That’s fine, Buck says.

Buck’s experience in this is limited, but seeing Taylor had reminded him of certain things he liked. It’s something he’s only done with women, often unintentionally, always seeming to find himself in the situation without seeking it out: Taylor in her matching lingerie sets and one of his sweaters, giving him a stern look with her arms crossed; sitting at Abby’s feet and getting hard just from her hand moving through his hair; Lucy — well, he never got to find out, but the promise of it in how her steady gaze made him squirm.

They talk on the phone beforehand and use all the correct terms. Buck knows how to be responsible with a stranger. He’s only done the basics: spanking, restraints. Orgasm denial. Corralling his body into following an order when all he wants to do is rebel; the pleasure of those two desires meeting. Taylor liked to use her hand even though it made her palm smart, and after he’d kiss the ruddy skin while telling her made-up stories about learning-palm reading in New Orleans when he was driving across the country. She liked silk, but he’d always been curious about leather.

Asher’s fine. Steel-gray hair over a surprisingly young, unlined face; fit and proud of it, talks a lot and laughs at his own jokes, wants to know Buck’s star sign. Asher’s a Pisces. Buck kneels with his hands behind his head, back very straight, and feels how it activates between his shoulder blades, his core. Asher talks — and talks and talks — and when he puts his hand in Buck’s hair —

Buck safe-words. He’s not into it.

Asher hands him a granola bar on the way out.

He decides to try it the other way. Compulsive safety-checking, pedantic lists and rules, the planning and execution of a scene; it suits him. Buck doesn’t even realize how excited he is until he’s double-checking tracking numbers and hurrying home for the latest package left on his stoop, then laying it all out, clean and in some cases sterilized, tools of a different trade.

When he’s done with Simon — not his real name, Buck doesn’t think — they’re both sweating and tingly, but Buck is giddy. There are neat welts running in organized lines up the front and back of Simon’s thighs; his face is open and relaxed. Buck likes how good it feels to have someone’s safety in his hands, how seriously he takes the responsibility and how nice it is, genuinely — how nice to work someone up then take them back down. To have their trust.

Simon is a poet. Buck gives him a carrot loaf. He gives Buck a book of poems. He reads them between calls at the station, this thin little book with a dark blue cover, and they don’t make a lot of sense to him so he reads them again.

Buck mostly sticks to the apps, but takes Ravi out for make-up drinks one night and once again ends up leaving with someone else. This time at least it’s after a pretty good night, and Ravi’s holed up in the corner with someone of his own. The guy, Max, is good kisser, and after Buck’s phone buzzes several times in his pocket in quick succession — EW, says Ravi’s text, GET A ROOM — Buck decides to take the hint. He flips Ravi off across the bar; by the time he’s in his car, he receives a selfie of returned fire.

Max wants him to play like it’s his first time. Buck doesn’t get it, but he’s game. Would it be like the start of a seventeen-minute late-night clip, two guys side-by-side on a couch in a featureless room saying they’ve never done this before while sending a look directly to camera, five minutes later stripped down and balls deep? (Buck’s expanded his search terms in the last year.) It turns out it doesn’t take a lot of acting once the moaning starts.

When it’s done he scrolls through his contact list, lets the bluish light of the screen filter over his face while someone else sleeps beside him and thinks: text me. Just text me. Right now. I’ll count to five. One — two —

Buck thought he’d given up waiting for his phone to ring but it’s become this lurking little resentment every time he looks at it and sees nothing, no calls, no messages. Eddie calls me, he thinks viciously, but that’s not the point — sure, he didn’t call Tommy, but Tommy didn’t call him either, not the first time or the second. He might have been fighting the urge but apparently there was no fight left in him, he would just give up, roll over, done.

What was he to Tommy if he wasn’t worth the risk of chasing after, fighting for, staying with? If he wasn’t worth a broken heart?

“What do you get out of the faux first time thing?” Buck asks in the morning. He made pancakes, mostly for himself but he’s magnanimously sharing with Max, who slept like the dead until exactly eight a.m. when he shot up in bed, no alarm needed.

“It’s hot,” Max says.

“Sure,” Buck agrees. “But what about it?”

Max thinks. He says finally, “I guess ‘cause I was never anyone’s.”

Buck invites Taylor over again, this time not to talk but to make him heel. She says, “God, Buck, what do you have against brunch?”

But fits him into her schedule all the same.

Buck wants to keep feeling good. He usually ignores the married couples when he’s swiping through profiles in his downtime, bored, but today he doesn’t. He’s not sure why. Something in their smiles is kind of stilted, nervous, except in the picture where they’re looking at each other — then there’s a silly brightness there, like they both can’t believe they’re doing this.

Sarita and Arjun are older. They don’t tell Buck exactly how much but they’ve been married for thirty-two years, almost as long as he’s been alive. They’ve only ever been with each other so Buck gets to be gentle, introduce them to things. Sarita is straight. Arjun is bisexual, a word he says quieter than anything else, even though it’s just the three of them in this fairly anonymous hotel room that has likely seen both worse and better scandals. “Me too,” Buck says, and smiles encouragingly.

The sex is good but not inventive: his open mouth against the back of Arjun’s shoulder, fucking him while he shudders in his wife’s arms; watching them while his hand travels between their bodies and into Sarita’s hair, kissing her; clumsy repositioning and soft laughter.

“You were each other’s firsts?” Buck asks again. They had gotten married in a whirl between college and grad school, gave up a honeymoon for a matching set of doctorates, and they have one kid currently in college. Arjun says they woke up one day and realized they didn’t know themselves or each other, that they were a collection of goals achieved and lives unlived, and they could have split, fractured, given up and given in, but instead they started telling each other things. Things they had always been afraid to say, things they thought were horrible or terrifying. They made a new list of goals.

“Honored to be on it,” Buck jokes. “What else is?”

He expects — maybe a list of acts and positions, but instead Sarita tells him they’re making up for lost vacations now, going to a different city once a year and not taking an itinerary (“You should see her with checklists,” Arjun says, and Buck relates); they bought all these cookbooks so they could learn to make new things for dinner, alternating who cooks every night; they each like to buy a book for the other and aren’t allowed to read the inside blurb, instead trusting that the story will take them somewhere worth going.

“Are you okay, honey?” Sarita asks, touching Buck’s cheek, and he doesn’t know what his face is doing but his throat feels tight.

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah. I just miss my boyfriend.”

He hadn’t brought anything with him, running late, but Sarita leaves him with a recipe for Neapolitan shortbread cookies that she says has never failed.

Late. Blue shadows move over the walls Buck still hasn’t gotten around to painting. He can’t sleep and has already run through all the things he does when he can’t sleep, so his muscles ache and the oven is still warm, but spotless. He starts scrolling nameless and faceless torsos. He stops.

Buck hesitates only a pin-piercing second before he swipes, his heart pounding, and they match. He sends the first message. Hi.

Ellipses rise and fall, rise and fall. Then comes the response: Hi, Buck.

His stomach clenches. He says, what are you into? He says, I’m vers. He says, I can host. The removed script he’s gotten used to, as though — as though he couldn’t tell it was Tommy immediately even without seeing his face; knew just from the shape of his body, the mole on the inside of his arm, the hands that used to take Buck by the hips to kiss him hello.

He doesn’t know why he does it. It doesn’t feel so much like pressing his own bruise as pressing Tommy’s — the kind of provoking thing he used to do a lot.

Evan, Tommy says, and Buck can hear the sigh in it. The tension in his body loosens. After a long time — it feels like a long time — Tommy goes, Okay.

The house is dim and quiet. Buck is often awake when other people are sleeping and his brain has learned to click on and off as required, but this has the strange dreamlike feeling of driving all night or summertime blackouts, set apart somehow from the other hours of the day. They don’t say anything, but they don’t have to. Tommy puts his hand on Buck’s waist right where he wants it; Buck plucks at the front of Tommy’s shirt to draw him in. He thinks: you want me. I know you fucking want me.

The sharp swings of the last time they saw each other are still in Buck’s head — flirtation, elation, anger, and the hollow feeling after, a kind of nothingness. Right now he’s feeling all of it at once. They fall onto the couch together with a precarious creak and Buck pulls Tommy on top of him, mouths meeting with a furious kind of restraint, almost like he wants to bite but won’t; feels its answer in how Tommy grabs his face too hard but keeps his body angled up and away, though Buck pulls and pulls, wanting the crush.

The couch isn’t really wide enough for both of them so there’s knees slipping, the knocking of shins. Buck has the momentary prescience of mind to throw a hand out and shove the coffee table out of the way before they tumble over and hit the rug, barely a dent in their momentum. They wrestle each other out of their clothes, the kind of things quickly thrown on after midnight, tank tops and basketball shorts.

Buck left condoms and lube on the coffee table. He feels the wood floor harsh through the rug as he gets himself underneath Tommy again, unforgiving against the curve of his skull, the knobs of his spine. Tommy tries to bow his head but Buck keeps him up, doesn’t want the blowjob but just Tommy’s fingers in him, mouth falling open and eyelids fluttering as he gets them. Tommy doesn’t really say anything but the kind of mumbled nonsense he often did like this, his lips close to Buck’s ear and throat, how’s that do you like it does it feel good. Buck lifts his hips into it with little half-suppressed whimpers and tangles his arms around Tommy’s neck, feels the press of Tommy’s forehead to his temple.

Buck lets his legs sprawl as much as he can in the narrow available space, bumping into the couch and sticking slightly to the leather, knocking the coffee table further askew. But he can’t let Tommy get too far, keeps pulling him back down against his chest to kiss him so Tommy can barely fit a hand between them to line himself up, and he laughs a little, gives Buck this look like, what are we gonna do about this? Maybe it’s the first proper look they’ve shared since Tommy crossed the threshold; maybe it feels different because Buck is on his back looking up at him, the faint light through the blinds hitting his outline. Tommy’s forehead pinches. Buck touches his chin, the scrape of short hairs. Puts his thumb right in the divot.

The thing he always remembers about their first kiss is opening his eyes to see Tommy’s were still closed.

Tommy smoothes Buck’s hair back, keeps his hand there on the crown of his head for a second. Kisses him in these abrupt little stops and starts that Buck meets every time, Tommy’s stubble grinding against his, his body rocking against Buck’s, until he buries his face in Buck’s neck and gasps, “Stop it, stop it. I can’t.”

The room is still but the air moves, all that heavy breathing. Buck’s fingertips run down Tommy’s spine. “Okay,” he says. “However you want. However you want,” even if it’s not at all, but they’re both shivery, sensitive, rattling towards something. Buck tips Tommy onto his side so they’re face to face and loops a knee over him; Tommy touches it, all pitted with scar tissue. Buck nudges in close and cups the back of Tommy’s head, draws him down so Tommy can hide in the crook of his neck, breath so hot it feels like it’s forming condensation.

It takes a while. Buck isn’t in a hurry. He has nowhere to be. With hands clasping backs and napes, they’re in messy concert with each other, chasing and missing friction. When Tommy pulls back to kiss him, Buck finally slips a hand down to wrap around him, knuckles glancing off his own erection as he strokes. He keeps his eyes open, watching Tommy’s face, the squeeze of his lashes, and trying to figure him out.

They don’t get up when they’re done. Tommy pulls the throw down off the back of the couch and they lay side by side, worn out. Buck curls a hand around Tommy’s bicep like that’ll keep him there.

In the morning, Tommy stumbles blearily into the kitchen dressed in last night’s clothes, grinding the heel of his hand against his eye socket. His hair looks pretty interesting. “What is this music?”

“Satan’s Sisterhood,” Buck says. “My friend Seth recommended them.”

Tommy makes a face, his bitchy little uh-huh with both eyebrows raised, and Buck’s lips twitch as he crumbles flour and butter between his fingers.

“I’m expanding my horizons,” Buck says.

“I noticed,” Tommy says softly. “What are you making?”

“Coffee cake,” Buck says. “I’ll put it in in a minute.”

Tommy seems uncertain about whether he’s welcome to sit or not but finally does. Buck spreads the crumble over the batter and dusts his hands off, turns the music down low. While he’s busy, Tommy’s gaze travels over the kitchen: the propped-up cookbook, the utensils in their new ceramic holder, then the scones, the loafs, the sloppy petit fours under a glass dome (a first attempt), the bread dough rising under a dishtowel in a sunny spot on the counter.

“Are you opening a bakery?” Tommy jokes.

Buck sort of hums. “It’s a funny story,” he says, but then doesn’t tell it. Awkwardness hangs faintly in the air between them, and there is a part of Buck that’s impressed Tommy didn’t just slink out the door at first light; a spiteful part of him that wants to point it out. He imagines what Tommy might say if he did, another joke to keep things from dipping too deep. Well, I didn’t want to miss out on another morning-after fight. “You know, last time —”

Discomfort washes palpably over Tommy. “Evan, I don’t want to —”

“Tommy.”

“Okay,” Tommy says, and steels himself. “Okay, okay.” He puts his hands on the island, eyes angled down and to the side, that kicked-dog look.

I’m sorry is what Buck wants to say, neat and succinct, but it’s stuck in the back of his throat; it doesn’t feel like saying the words would actually be saying anything. He missed Tommy so much, thought of him constantly; got him and lost him, the same cycle from the very start. It was never quite what he expected. He didn’t know how to articulate what he meant even now, after spinning it in his head a thousand times. He’ll have to find it as he says it.

“I never expected you to stay,” Buck says. “And the fact that you would, but only if — only because someone I love was out of the picture, when him being gone was killing me, was —”

“It was a stupid thing to say,” Tommy cuts in, quick like he has to get it out, “I never should have —”

“No, that’s not what I —” Buck exhales. “What I said was stupid too. I’m not trying to, like — I just want to explain. It’s like you’re always looking for a reason to leave, and I — the more I tried to prove myself to you, the worse it went.”

“It’s nothing you did,” Tommy says.

“I fucked you and then said I didn’t have to have feelings for everyone I fucked.”

“You did one thing,” Tommy concedes, but the humor seesaws without leveling.

Buck picks up the dishtowel, folds it, sets it aside. Drags it back and unravels it again. “Did you kiss me on a whim?”

“What?”

“When you kissed me, did you actually like me, or —”

“Evan. Are you really asking me this?”

“Yes,” Buck says. “Why’d you do it? I mean, it was a pretty big risk. Did you think it’d just be a hookup? That you’d be my training wheels, my queer tour guide? And because I’m bisexual I’d get bored and move on to the next whoever?”

Buck didn’t think of it like that at the time, but he has since. Listening to Sasha talk about her ex-husband in the semidarkness of the parking lot, Buck found there was another way in which he could be not enough of one and too much of the other.

“You fucked me so you wouldn’t have to be alone in Eddie’s house,” Tommy says sharply. “Who was using who?”

“I fucked you because I missed you,” Buck says. “Because everything felt like it was slipping away from me for the thousandth time and I wanted something back and you leaving was when it all —”

Buck isn’t aware of having gotten worked up until the oven timer pings to announce it’s pre-heated, and suddenly he can feel all the little physical signs: the way oxygen gets thin in his lungs, the splotch of a flush creeping up his neck, the ramp up to one of those spirals everyone’s sick of being subjected to.

He doesn’t grimace. His smile is easy. He feels it tug at his temples and chin like all the connective tissue is too tight. He puts the pan in the oven. When he turns back around, Tommy is watching him the way he sometimes did when he thought Buck wasn’t paying attention, with a particular kind of tenderness. Buck understands why last night Tommy couldn’t; it all feels like too much.

“It’s not about you being bisexual,” Tommy says. “Look. You’re young, and you’re beautiful, and a whole new part of your life had just opened up to you. I remember what it was like right after I came out, like the bars of the cage had lifted. I wanted everything at once just because I could have it.” He sits back, hands on his thighs. He slept on a bare mattress; he slept on Buck’s floor. He put champagne in the freezer. “I wanted you. Of course I did. I wouldn’t have kissed you if I didn’t. But I told myself to manage expectations. To let you go when you wanted to go and — and enjoy every minute until then.” The corner of his mouth curves. “My time with the boy with the dimple. I didn’t mean to — yes, okay, I didn’t mean to feel as much as I did when I knew you didn’t. So I had to get out. Before it got worse. Before I couldn’t.”

Buck nods, a little bounce of his jaw. “Would it be so bad to be stuck with me?”

Tommy breathes out something like a laugh. “Evan. That’s not…”

“I know, I know,” Buck says. “Sorry.”

Tommy bites his tongue, looking away. It’s like pulling teeth or the rack, some form of torture just to say it and be seen saying it. “I’ve never been in a serious relationship where I wasn’t hiding some big part of myself. I’ve never actually — I don’t have a great love in my past. I don’t think I ever made it past a year with anybody but Abby and she didn’t know who I was. I don’t know anything. You probably know a hell of a lot more than I do.”

He shrugs like I give up. That’s it, that’s all he’s got.

“I hate basketball,” Buck says.

The whiplash in his expression is kind of funny, gaze shifting as though he’s searching for context. “What?”

“I hate basketball,” Buck repeats. “I only went for you.”

Tommy’s face does something, a kind of ripple.

“I’ve thought about it a lot, and there are things I look back on where I’m like, okay, something was happening there that I didn’t get at the time. But you, I couldn’t ignore. I think I would have gotten there eventually whether you kissed me or not, but I’m glad you did, so I could be here now, with you.”

Looking at him, Buck thinks of last night, Tommy saying stop it, I can’t.

“I did construction,” Buck says. “I was a bartender. I worked on a ranch. I’ve had three serious relationships, counting you. I’ve slept with — well, I’ve never counted but the number’s gotta be pretty high. I’ve lived in five states and two countries. I almost died four times and I did die once. You think I can’t tell when I feel something?”

He’s saying it for Tommy, but he’s saying it for himself, too.

“Evan,” Tommy says. “You live in Eddie’s house. You say Eddie’s name about sixteen times in every conversation.”

He’s my friend, Buck thinks. Just because you don’t have anyone to talk about, but no, that’s not helpful, that’s what he did last time. And Tommy’s doing what he did last time, finding a reason.

“What I have with Eddie is weird and hard to define,” Buck says. “What if it’s always like that? Will you want me anyway?”

It’s a lot to ask someone. Impatiently, Tommy says, “Of course, but —”

The way he tosses it aside like it’s a given, as though he would even if he shouldn’t, makes Buck feel — it pushes against his insides, fills that space in his chest. Even if it shouldn’t. Even if his old therapist would say let’s unpack that.

“Are you sure?” Buck asks. “I can be really self-absorbed.”

Tommy starts to answer, stops, and takes him in, seems to put two and two together. “I’m a little bit of an asshole.”

“I get locked in on something, I can’t think about anything else.”

“The more I love you, the more I’ll want to leave.”

“Sometimes if I’m afraid of losing someone, I make it easy for them to go. I test them. I don’t always know I’m doing it.”

“I might fail the test.”

“I’ve cheated on someone before,” Buck warns.

“I have, too,” Tommy says.

The worse the admission, the lighter Buck feels. “I’m really weird about the dishwasher.”

Tommy smiles. “I know that, Evan.”

“I can be jealous.”

“Me too.”

“You know, you never seemed jealous.”

“Yeah, well.”

The kitchen is brighter, too. The house isn’t the same as the last time Tommy saw it. Now Buck has begun to find a place for everything, even if it doesn’t quite fit; even if he’s still moving things around to decide where it should all go.

“I didn’t know that about you,” Tommy ventures. “The — ranch, and all that. Cowboy hat and everything?”

“Mhm. I’ve got pictures.” Buck telegraphs the movement before he steps around the island, and it’s sort of funny that he would hesitate to touch Tommy when they’ve had their hands on each other in every way a person can. Let me break your heart, Buck thinks. Let me try not to.

Tommy turns towards him; Buck steps into the space between his knees. Tommy seems vulnerable to him now, and he never really did before. Buck puts a hand on his chest, then lets it slide up over his neck, where he can feel Tommy’s pulse against his palm. Or maybe it’s his own. “I don’t know how to do this,” Tommy admits.

Buck says, “I could teach you.”