Archive of Our Own

Buck didn’t mean to ask Eddie out.

Really, he didn’t. It was just that Buck had never been known for his forethought, and that certainly wasn’t going to change the moment Eddie came out to him.

They were nearly three quarters of the way through a 24 and were decompressing on the roof after a kitchen fire at a Mexican restaurant in WeHo. Buck hadn’t thought that Eddie was being weird on the call, but he seemed a little on edge since they got back, which is why he’d made hot chocolate and suggested sitting in the beach chairs on the roof.

Hen and Chim had begged off to nap since they were both scheduled to be on for the full 48, and Bobby was catching up on paperwork, so it was just Buck and Eddie up there, watching the sunlight pull up on the edges of the dark night sky.

Eddie seemed like he had a lot on his mind, so Buck held off on telling him about the new documentary he’d found, that he thought Chris would love—it was about disability in Hollywood, so it was bound to be both inspiring and horrifying.

But that could wait. After all, they had regular movie nights again, now that Chris was back from Texas. For now, he just sipped his hot chocolate and pretended he didn’t notice Eddie turning his mug in his hands, passing it back and forth like a slow motion hot-potato. It was the kind of fidgeting Eddie usually did when he didn’t want to talk about something.

Buck had learned to wait him out. He used to think that when Eddie got like this, he should say something to put him at ease; offer him a distraction. But then Eddie usually took the distraction and ran with it, and before Buck knew it he’d be an hour into explaining the Mariana Trench, and then he couldn’t be sure if Eddie let him ramble that long because he was actually interested or because he was happy to avoid whatever he actually needed to talk about.

“I—” Eddie started, opened his mouth, closed it again and made a hmm noise. Buck sipped his hot chocolate to hide his smile. “You know how—” Eddie started again, then trailed off, making really intense eye contact with the building across the street.

“Yeah, I totally know that,” said Buck. Because even if he wasn’t going to give Eddie an out, he wasn’t going to leave him hanging, either.

Eddie huffed out an irritated breath, the kind where his bottom lip stuck out and so his hair blew up from where it was curling over his forehead.

“I’m trying to—” he started again, and Buck stayed quiet this time. “I’m trying to like, tell you something.”

A jolt of anxiety shot through his body. Eddie had to tell him something. The last time Eddie needed to tell him something, it was that he was planning to move to Texas. He wasn’t moving back, was he? He and Chris were in a better place. Why would they go back to Texas?

Oh god, what if they were moving somewhere else? What if Eddie was moving to a new fire station? What if he met someone and—

Eddie was finally looking at him. Right, he should probably say something. Something a sane best friend would say.

“Shoot,” he said, trying to sound the most casual he’s ever sounded.

But Eddie was back to hedging; he was gnawing on his lip and tapping his finger on the mug in a way that was ratcheting up Buck’s anxiety. Did Eddie get some bad test results back? He’d had an appointment recently—but it was just his annual dentist visit. How bad could news be that you got from your dentist?

“It’s like—” Eddie started and stopped again. Buck’s brain was kicking into overdrive—Eddie had met someone online but they lived in another city; Eddie had gotten a woman pregnant; Eddie gotten a job offer as a chief at some small-town station. He tried to distract himself by taking a sip of hot chocolate, but he’d already finished it. His mug was empty, but the terrible possibilities were endless. Life was so unfair.

“Just spit it out already,” he snapped, when the noise in his brain got too loud.  

“I’m gay.”

Oh.

Buck wanted to shove his own words back into his mouth; go back in time ten seconds so he could stop himself from goading Eddie into coming out.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” he said.

Eddie scrunched up his face. “That I’m gay?” he asked. Buck was blowing this so hard.

“No, god, no,” said Buck. His hands were doing some wild gesturing that he wasn’t entirely in control of. It was a good thing the mug was empty, after all. “That I just told you to spit it out,” he clarified. “I’m not sorry you’re gay. I’m—that’s great, I’m—I’m really happy about that.”

Who said they were happy about that instead of being happy for you? Buck, that was who.

Eddie’s face was un-scrunching itself, at least. One side of his lips were pulling up in a small smile—it was the kind of look he usually gave when Buck was being ridiculous. Eddie was the only one who looked at Buck like that when he was being ridiculous.

“Yeah?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah,” said Buck.

He’d bungled his own coming out—let it slip to Maddie mid-rant; called himself an ally mid-date; and then outed himself to everyone in his life by showing up with a face covered in soot mid-wedding. He’d been so nervous to tell Eddie that he basically blacked out during their entire conversation, and he could only remember snatches—Eddie being confused, Eddie giving him a hug, Eddie leaving his apartment, telling him to call someone else.

So, he didn’t really know how he was supposed to react right now. He tried to think of what he would have wanted his own coming out to be like, if he hadn’t made the entire thing about Eddie, and what Eddie did and didn’t know. But the realization that he liked dudes was nowhere near as troubling as it was to be on the outs with Eddie, so he couldn’t really imagine it going any other way.

But this was Eddie’s turn. This was Eddie’s realization, and it had nothing to do with Buck.

If he thought back, it actually made a lot of sense. Eddie’s religious upbringing in Texas; his shotgun wedding; his time in the military. How he’d never wanted to go on dates and how he had panic attacks when things got serious with Ana and how quickly he’d asked Marisol to move out.

“I feel like I should have known,” he said, before he realized that probably should have been an inside thought. But Eddie just laughed; was it Buck’s imagination, or did it sound lighter? Freer?

“Buck, you didn’t even know you were into guys until a few months ago.”

“Yeah,” shrugged Buck. “But that’s me.” He almost said, I pay way more attention to you, but he managed to keep that thought from slipping out this time. “Did you—like, did something make you realize?” he asked, instead. He suddenly really wanted to know. Did Eddie always feel this way and keep it hidden? Did someone trigger his discovery?

Eddie finally took a sip of his hot chocolate, which was probably cold by now. “I don’t know,” he mused. Buck was relieved to see that Eddie looked calmer now, more relaxed than he’d been the whole time they were on the roof. Maybe he wasn’t messing this up. “I think maybe a part of me has always known,” he said, glancing up at Buck and then back down to his mug. Pieces of his hair were falling over his forehead, and it made Eddie look younger in the early morning light.

“But where I grew up—the way I grew up, it was never an option. It wasn’t until Chris was in Texas that I even started to think . . . I had this weird conversation with a priest, actually,” he said, chuckling. “He told me I was denying myself joy. Which is funny, because according to all the priests I heard from growing up, that was kind of the whole point of being Catholic.”

“You’re not really Catholic, though,” Buck pointed out.

“Spoken like someone who wasn’t raised religious,” said Eddie. “Trust me, it bakes in deep.” He took another sip of hot chocolate and then shrugged. “I guess I just . . . didn’t think about it. I guess that sounds stupid.”

“Hey,” said Buck. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Sometimes,” Eddie replied, without missing a beat.

“Yeah well,” said Buck, glancing back out over the short section of LA skyline that was visible from the roof. It was really beautiful, with the sunlight starting to shine off the buildings and the sky turning a light pink hue. But he couldn’t really focus on it when Eddie was right next to him. “Maybe we’re both idiots, then.”

“Maybe,” said Eddie, with a grin that was entirely to blame for what Buck said next.

“We should go out.”

Forget wanting to shove his words back inside his mouth; Buck wanted to shove his entire body. Somewhere far, far away from this conversation. Off the roof, maybe. The silence his words landed in was so loud he could hear a phone conversation happening on the street below. Eddie had frozen with his mug halfway to his mouth, and he was staring at Buck as if he’d grown two heads.

In the seconds following his word vomit, dozens of saves flickered through his brain. To celebrate your discovery, he could say. Or add on, with the team. He could even say something truly awful like, so you can meet a guy.

But even though he never meant to say it, and even though he was actually very seriously considering something drastic—if not jumping off the roof, then maybe shouting the Q-word and hoping to be saved by the bell—now that the words were out there, hanging between them . . . he didn’t want to take them back.

Eddie was into guys. Eddie was into guys.

Buck was a guy.

Eddie was still staring at him. It took a second for Buck to notice that Eddie’s grip on his mug had gone slack and hot chocolate was dripping on his knee. It was comforting to see that he wasn’t the only one who seemed to have lost the ability to function. Maybe there was a gas leak. On the roof.

After what was probably only thirty seconds but felt like several years, Eddie finally cleared his throat.

“Like, on a date?”

There it was: another out. He could deny it, laugh it off. Pretend it was poor-timed joke. There was even a chance he should apologize—it probably was not cool to find out your best friend was into dudes and assume that meant he saw you as an option.

But he really, really didn’t want to take it back.

What he wanted was to take Eddie on a date.

Buck’s first date with a guy had been a disaster. Sure, he’d turned it into a six-month relationship—though that had ended in disaster, too—but he still remembered how it felt, when Tommy had seen his uncertainty and acted like he wanted to leave. And then when Tommy actually did leave.

He didn’t want Eddie to go through that.

At least since Buck was bi, he never felt like all the years he spent dating women, he’d been lying to himself or trying to force something. Sure, he’d been missing a part of himself, and yeah, maybe he hadn’t had the healthiest relationship with sex, but still—it sounded different for Eddie.

It sounded like Eddie had always felt like he needed to be something he wasn’t. That Eddie never let himself want what he actually wanted. That Eddie denied himself joy, apparently. And now Eddie was going to be who he really was, and want what he really wanted, and give in to things that made him happy.

And—what, Buck was supposed to let some random guy be there when that happened?

No way in hell.

Eddie was his best friend. They were partners. And they’d already crossed nearly every boundary two people could possibly have with each other. It suddenly seemed imperative that they cross this last line together, too.

It flashed in his mind, Buck-and-Eddie. Partners in everything, not just on shift. Late nights that didn’t end with Buck on the couch and early mornings in their pajamas, no excuses for Buck to be there and no reason for him to leave. Grocery shopping and dropping Chris off at camp and matching rings on their fingers and Eddie’s body underneath his. And suddenly, he wanted it so badly he couldn’t stand it.

“Yeah,” he said, and his voice didn’t even waver. No one had ever accused Buck of being too cautious with his heart: why should he start now, when it mattered the most? “Like a date.”  

Eddie opened his mouth.

The bell rang.

The bad thing about six-car pileups—besides, you know, the injuries and the damage and the traffic—was that they weren’t quite exciting enough to keep Buck’s mind off the question hanging between himself and Eddie. Buck knew the drill: fetching braces and backboards, ferrying patients to the ambulance and using the jaws to pry open backdoors. It was so routine that he barely had to think about what he was doing, which meant instead his mind was free to wander. And it wanted to wander after Eddie.  

There was Eddie, gently coaxing a teen girl out from the passenger side door with that soft voice he saved for victims that were really shaken up. There he went, wrenching open a door with a crowbar, making some sort of obscene grunting noise. Buck met his eyes over the stretcher they’d popped up and wondered if it would be some against LAFD regulation to discuss the possibility of a romantic relationship over a mostly-conscious victim. Probably.

He deserved some sort of medal for his self-restraint. Forget the cruise ship rescue—it was taking so much more effort today, now that Buck had to act normal around Eddie. But Eddie certainly seemed to be acting normally. Too normal. If Buck couldn’t still see the hot chocolate stain on his pants, he would have thought he’d hallucinated the whole thing.

They finally cleared the scene, with Hen and Chimney taking the ambulance to the hospital and the tow trucks arriving to remove the totaled cars. Buck and Eddie and the rest of A shift piled into the back of the engine, and Buck even restrained himself from elbowing his way into the seat across from Eddie, so instead he wound up on the opposite side, in the seat behind Bobby.

He tried to make himself look out the window, he really did, but nothing in LA could compete with the weight of Eddie’s eyes on him, so when he felt it, he turned. And there was Eddie, staring at him. He didn’t blink or blush or turn away. He just watched Buck.

So Buck watched him back.

They were still watching each other when the truck pulled into the station and Eddie finally had to break eye contact to open the door and let everyone out. But when Buck piled out last, he found Eddie standing there, waiting for him.

“Hey,” he said. His turnout coat was off, but the pants were still on, with bright yellow suspenders pulling over his shoulders, and his arms were crossed over his tight blue LAFD-issued tee shirt. “Did you mean it?”

 “I—yeah,” said Buck. His stomach was somersaulting so actively he was surprised it wasn’t visible through his shirt.

“Okay,” said Eddie. Simple as anything.

“Okay?” Buck repeated, just making sure.

“Yeah.”

“Great. Cool. Okay.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, one more time. “Okay.”

“Okay,” echoed Buck.

“Are you guys ever going to move?” asked Ravi. He gestured to the pocket door in the side of the truck, and said, “I have to recharge the jaws.”

----

Eddie would never have admitted it, but from the moment he knew he was going to have to come out of the closet, he’d harbored a tiny, insane, ludicrous hope. It was barely a hope—more of a fantasy, far-fetched and ridiculous.

It was this: that he would tell Buck he was gay, and Buck would say, I have a confession, too: I love you.

And then. That happened.

Not in so many words, maybe. But meeting someone’s declaration of sexual preference with immediately asking them out—that meant something. Right? It did. It had to.

Sure, Buck had been known to make some reckless moves in his love life. He tried to resolve two separate relationship issues with invitations to cohabitate. He fell in love with a woman twenty years his senior over the phone. He dated someone who openly admitted that the thing she liked most about him was that he had died.

That was Eddie’s least favorite thing about Buck.

The point was, sure, maybe it was a stretch to say Buck’s offer was the sign of a long-held desire or a thoroughly thought-out intention. But it had been his gut reaction, which had to mean something. Buck always operated best when he trusted his own instincts. And apparently it had been instinctual to hear that Eddie liked men and offer himself up for consideration.

As if Eddie would ever have looked elsewhere. As if there could be anyone else.

For the last seven years, Buck had been there, like a security blanket he didn’t mean to roll himself up in. By the time he realized that no one else would ever really get through to him, he could see why—Buck was already there. Protecting Eddie from the elements, being soft, making him feel at ease.

Eddie had never really felt comfortable in his relationships before. His entire doomed dating history had been made up of women he’d wanted to get out of his home—sneaking Shannon out back, asking Ana to leave and Marisol to move out, begging Kim to go.

But he’d never even once looked at Buck and thought, I wish he wasn’t here. He’d never wanted less of Buck.

And that was when he realized how much he wanted more.

He wanted Buck to stay over, in his bed. He wanted to scare off everyone who flirted with him on calls. He wanted to know what it was like to feel his best friend’s pinkish lips on his.

God, he wanted.

He’d even talked to Christopher about it. About—not what he wanted to do, specifically, but about the idea that he might want Buck. And he’d taken his son’s blessing and his new conviction and he’d done shit-all about it.

It just never seemed like a good moment to test the waters. When would it be the right time to mess with the most stable relationship of his life?

But it had been nearly a month since he’d talked to Christopher, an if nothing else, he had to do it for his son, so Chris wouldn’t have to lie for him. And then maybe Chris would stop ragging on Eddie.

Plus, Buck had been blissfully single, but who knew how long that would last? Eddie wouldn’t survive another Tommy. Or, god forbid, a Taylor.

Loosely, his brain formed a plan. First, he’d tell Buck he was gay. Just so that the idea of the two of them, together, wasn’t a complete and total impossibility. So that Eddie being romantic partner material, wasn’t, as it had always been, entirely off the table.

And then he would start on a charm-offensive, doing the kinds of things that would woo Buck. He’d show him how good a partner he could be—he’d bring him coffee and massage his back and make sure Buck knew how much was, actually, on the table.

He’d thought it would take weeks to tease it out, to drive Buck to the point of making a move, or maybe even feel secure enough to make one himself.

But within one conversation, Buck asked him out.

On a date.

Eddie had checked.

And then he’d gotten halfway through a vehicular collision call before he realized he had never actually answered Buck, so when they got back to the station, he said okay.

Okay. As if he wasn’t going to lose his whole damn mind over this.

They clocked off, and Buck waited until right before Eddie climbed into his truck to pick up the thread.

“Tonight—is tonight good?” Buck asked, running his hand through his hair. He was shifting his weight back and forth, like he was getting ready to bolt, and when he clarified, “for the date,” he almost winced. Eddie wanted to bundle him up into his car and suggest they start the date right now.

“Yeah,” he said, instead, like a regular person would. “Chris is sleeping over Liam’s house, so I’m free after I drop him off.”

“Great, good, yeah,” said Buck, already backing away from Eddie. “I’ll text you?”

And then four hours passed. Their shift ended at 8 am, so they had plenty of time, but still—shouldn’t Eddie have heard from him yet? All morning he’d been opening up his text thread and typing out messages: can’t wait for tonight and when do you want to meet and we're really doing this, right? But then he kept deleting them instead of hitting send.

The previous messages on their text thread—a mundane exchange about whether Eddie could help Buck replace a tail light on the jeep—was so deeply platonic that it felt like it was mocking Eddie.

Finally, at 1 pm, Eddie’s phone lit up with a message.

Hey, does 5 work? And then a link to a place called Molly Malone’s near the Miracle Mile. He clicked on the link and opened it to find a fairly unremarkable Irish pub that looked a lot like their regular first responder bar, except that it was several neighborhoods away.

Was that weird?

Was it weird that Buck wanted to meet him at 5 pm?

When Eddie pictured his and Buck’s first date, he’d imagined they would go to a restaurant with outdoor seating and strings of lights—one of those places that had a trendy menu but still served actual portions of food—followed by a moonlit walk on the beach. Or maybe that Buck would cook him dinner, in his apartment, where Eddie could sit at the kitchen island and watch him work, and then afterwards, Buck would dim the lights and lead Eddie up his staircase.

But here he was, showing up at a dingy Irish bar, fifteen minutes earlier than a respectable time for senior citizens to eat dinner.

At 5:01—Eddie was looking—Buck finally walked through the door.

He looked good. Really good. He had on black jeans and a shirt that made his eyes look extra blue, and he hadn’t gotten a haircut in a little while, so his curls were even less restrained than usual, loose and windswept. When he spotted Eddie, he smiled.

Eddie swiveled on his barstool, not realizing until he had turned to face Buck that his knees were splayed out, suggestively wide. Buck stepped closer; but before he could fully enter Eddie’s space, the bartender interrupted.

“Hey, man,” he said, waving his dishrag to get Buck’s attention. “You need a drink?”

“Uh, yeah, I’ll just have what he’s having,” Buck said, gesturing towards Eddie’s drink, barely looking at the man.

“Were you in here recently?” The bartender asked, stepping forward to peer at Buck, but then Buck was turning away, pulling Eddie with him towards a high top at the far end of the room.

“This is a good spot, right?” Buck asked, once Eddie was parked at a table for two. “Okay then, just gonna go grab my drink,” he said, gesturing to the bar and darting away. What the hell was that? Did the bartender recognize Buck as some sort of regular, here? Is this where he brought all his dates?

Before Eddie’s thoughts could go any further, Buck was back with a drink in hand. “Sorry about that,” he said, breathlessly. Eddie wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for.

“Oh, sure,” he said, anyway, and took a sip of his beer.

They sat for a second in silence.

Eddie was starting to think there might be some merit in calling out how . . . weird this was. He and Buck had never pulled any punches with each other, so it would be totally fair if he said something like, interesting bar choice or even are we meeting at 5 because you’re double booked tonight?

Oh god. What if Buck had a date after this?

No, that would be crazy. Buck hadn’t been dating since Tommy; and he certainly wouldn’t have picked the same night as a date with Eddie to get back out there. Besides, it was his idea to go out tonight.

Maybe he shouldn’t make the joke, anyway. That sort of ribbing was what they did as friends. Was he supposed to be, like, flirting, now?  Did he even know how to flirt?

“So,” he tried, lamely. “Come here often?”

Well. Guess he was bringing up the bartender’s words after all.

Buck palmed his forehead and groaned. And while Eddie felt a little bit bad about that, he was more relieved that he and Buck were no longer sitting in silence.

“I meant that as a joke, but the bartender did recognize you . . .”

“It’s too embarrassing,” Buck protested. “Can’t we make it five minutes into our date before I start being embarrassing?”

Our date. It gave Eddie a thrill; it gave him the confidence to keep pushing.

“Do you bring all your dates here?”

Buck pulled his hand away from his face so that he could glare at Eddie. Eddie just raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, Eddie,” Buck said, gesturing around to the sticky floor, the ceiling patterned with stickers, the axes on display behind the bar. “I take all my dates here. They can’t resist the romantic atmosphere.”

“Okay, so,” Eddie started, picking up the coaster and rolling it between his hands. “You didn’t want this to be romantic. That’s, uh. That’s okay.”

“No, I just—”

“Excuse me?”

A woman came up to their table. She had a short bob of red hair and low-cut shirt and a great smile, and she was looking at Buck.

Eddie hated her on sight.

Eddie watched as Buck glanced towards him, and then turned to her. The way he was keeping his eyes on her face was some consolation, but Eddie’s mind couldn’t help cataloging the things about her he knew Buck liked in a woman. Why had she approached? Were they not giving off date energy? Should they be sitting closer?  

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and glancing to Eddie before looking back at Buck. Possibly because Eddie was trying to glare her out of existence. “I was just wondering, are you—are you guys,” she added, with an even shorter glance towards Eddie. “Firefighters? It’s just, my office had a fire the other week, and—”

“Oh,” said Buck, snapping his fingers in recognition. “The start-up, in the Mercury Building? On Ellwood?” Buck was so freaking nice. Why did his best friend have to be the friendliest guy in LA?

“That’s it,” said the woman, looking inordinately pleased. “I told my friend,” she gestured towards the front of the bar; Eddie didn’t bother turning to look. “And she didn’t believe me. But I have a great memory for faces.”

“Seriously,” agreed Buck, “especially since we’re usually in masks.”

“Well, it’s hard to forget those blue eyes,” she said, quirking her lips up and yeah—that was flirting. Eddie didn’t really know how to do that.  

“Oh, uh,” said Buck, leaning back in his chair, finally catching on. For a man with his sexual history, Buck could mistake flirting for small talk for an alarmingly long period of time. Maybe it was just the only way people interacted with him: a little awed, a little dazed, a little willing to follow him wherever. It would explain a lot.

“I—” Buck started, but she barreled on.

“Could I buy you a drink? As thanks? And—and your friend, too,” she said, not even looking at Eddie that time. “You guys could come join us, and—”

“We’re on a date.”

Both the woman’s and Buck’s eyes shot to Eddie. He’d dropped the coaster and crossed his arms on the table, trying to look very nonchalant. But also, a little intimidating.

“Oh—I—”

“Yeah,” said Eddie, gesturing between the two of them. “It’s a first date. Lots of build-up here,” he added. “So, Buck, unless you’re having second thoughts—”

“Nope,” supplied Buck, a grin overtaking his face.

“—great,” Eddie said, keeping eye contact with Buck for an extra beat before he turned back to the woman. “I’m gonna go ahead and say this guy is taken.”

Her cheeks had reddened and she let out a laugh that was half embarrassed, half genuine. “Right. Well,” she said, looking at Eddie fully, this time. “Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she nodded towards where Buck sat. Eddie just squinted in return. She gave a quick wave and disappeared. Or maybe she was still standing there; Eddie had gone back to looking at Buck, so his awareness of his surroundings was not at its best.

Buck was looking at him with an expression that made up for the whole dingy-Irish-bar-at-5-pm thing. It was like he was smiling with his whole body; soft eyes, loose shoulders, head tilted in a way that made Eddie shift in his seat.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” he said, softly.

“What?” asked Eddie. “Tell the woman hitting on you that you were on a date?” Eddie gestured over his shoulder to wherever she’d gone. “Did you want me to leave you alone with her?”

Buck’s grin only widened, and under the table, he kicked Eddie in the shin. It was something they’d done hundreds of times, but this time Buck slid his foot forward after, resting it on the footrest in between Eddie’s legs.

“Yeah,” said Buck, leaning in. “I know I just met her but I feel like she and I really had a connection.”

“I’ll show you a connection,” said Eddie, squeezing his ankles together around Buck’s foot, instinctively. Stay, he thought.

Buck leaned back then, doing some smug thing with his lips as he lifted the drink to his mouth. Eddie thought it was a bit outrageous of Buck to look at him like that in public. “No,” Buck said, after putting the drink down. He shook his head a little, like he was coming out of a daze. Maybe Eddie was flirting with him, after all. “I just—I was super weird on my first date with—with a guy. So, if you need to be weird, just—I won’t . . . I won’t leave, or anything. Unless you want me to.”

Eddie cocked his head and kept his legs locked around Buck’s. “I didn’t think you were going to leave, Buck.” He went to take a sip of his drink but then paused, thinking. “Wait—did Tommy leave? Like, in the middle of your first date?”  He remembered Buck saying something about it when he came out, but he’d been so distracted by the whole Buck-dating-a-man thing that he hadn’t gotten around to processing the rest of his news.  

“Uh, yeah,” said Buck, cutting his eyes sideways. His posture had gotten a little less relaxed; Eddie supposed bringing up his ex probably wasn’t the best move to pull on a first date. Still—better than leaving. “I told you that,” he added. “You and Marisol came in, I got weird, he said I wasn’t ready.” Eddie watched as Buck took a generous drink of his beer. When he swallowed, he gestured back to Eddie. “Then you told me to call him.”

“Okay, well, there’s your mistake,” said Eddie. He wanted Buck to relax again so badly. “You should never have taken my advice. When has my love life ever not been a train wreck?”

Buck’s lips were doing that thing again, that made Eddie wish they weren’t in public. “Now?” he asked, some teasing in his tone.

Since they were in public, Eddie replied, “that remains to be seen.” He shrugged, hoping to wind Buck up.

“Oh, does it?”

“Yeah,” said Eddie. “So far, you’ve taken me to a dive bar for an early bird special, in a neighborhood that—wait,” he said, pausing to think. “Did you take me here so we wouldn’t run into anyone we know?”

“What? No—”

“So it is where you take dates—”

“Oh my god, Eddie, no—”

“Then why did the bartender recognize you?”

“Because I was here at 4,” Buck said, and then immediately turned pink. Eddie squeezed his legs around Buck’s again. It felt so good. Maybe he could hold his hand, next.

“You got here at 5,” Eddie said, holding in the :01 with impressive coolness. “I would know, because I got here early.”

“Well, I got here even earlier than you,” said Buck, embarrassment forgotten in his victory. He was so cute. “And I had a drink while I freaked out, and then I realized I didn’t want to be sitting there, drinking alone like a loser when you showed up, so I walked around the park for like a half hour.”

“Makes total sense,” Eddie. “It was smart of you, to try to hide how big of a loser you are.”

“Thank you,” said Buck, finally looking relaxed again. “I’m trying to make a good first impression here.”

“It’s working,” said Eddie. “Are you going to explain why you wanted our first date to be at Molly Malone’s Irish Pub, in the middle of the day? Besides you not wanting it to be romantic?”

Buck rolled his eyes. “I never said I didn’t want it to be romantic,” he groaned.

“Buck, we’ve been on more romantic emergency calls,” Eddie pointed out. “That couple, where the girl got stuck in the window—that was better than this.”

“Oh really?” Buck raised his eyebrows. “What if I go get myself stuck halfway out the bar bathroom window, would that improve things?”

Eddie had a flash of the scene—Buck, pinned, his entire bottom half at Eddie’s mercy. It was an interesting proposition.

“Oh my god,” said Buck, leaning in. “You’re having dirty thoughts right now.”

“No, I’m not,” said Eddie, reflexively.

“You are,” accused Buck. “About me?”

“Gross, no,” said Eddie. “Wait—yes, obviously,” he admitted. “Stop—you can’t just say things like that to a Catholic.” Buck was chuckling at him now. The low pitch of his voice was doing things to Eddie, so instead he pointed an accusing finger at Buck with the hand holding his beer. “Laugh all you want, Buckley. I already know you’re not going to leave.”

“I’m not,” agreed Buck, pushing Eddie’s beer back towards him. “But we are. Finish your drink.”

“We’re leaving?” Eddie put away the rest of his beer and felt light and floaty, like he was drunk. But he wasn’t that much of a lightweight, so that feeling must have been the company. “Is it because I kept making fun of it?”

“No,” said Buck, pulling his foot back from where it had stayed, warm and snug between Eddie’s, so he could stand up. Eddie felt the absence between his legs like an ache. “We’re leaving because this is just stop one.”

----

Buck didn’t mean to sound dramatic, but he had literally never felt as much pressure to get something right as he did, this date, tonight.

When Eddie had agreed—to go on a date, with him, in real life—it suddenly felt urgent that the date be as soon as possible. Mostly so that Eddie wouldn’t have time to change his mind, but also so that Buck wouldn’t have time to overthink things.

But overthinking was his specialty, no matter how much time he had to do so, so the minute he’d gotten in his car he’d texted Maddie SOS where are you?

Within a few seconds, she replied, at work, what is wrong???

Not that kind of emergency, he’d texted; having to retype it several times because his hands were shaking with an adrenaline comedown, the likes of which he hadn’t had since he was a probie. Be there soon.

Maddie was still finishing up a call when he arrived, so he just hovered over her, bouncing on the balls of his feet, until she waved to Josh and gestured to Buck, and then Josh hustled him into the breakroom and made him sit down while he made coffee.

“Since you’re not actually interrupting Maddie’s call,” said Josh, emptying out the coffee grounds and putting in a new filter. “I’m going to guess this is more of a love-life emergency than a life-and-death emergency.”

Buck was so obvious. He was so, painfully, obvious.

“Yep,” he said. He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and stared at it. He had no new messages, but that made sense, because he told Eddie he would text him. Still.

Josh finished counting out the scoops of coffee grounds and pressed a few buttons, waiting until the coffee machine gargled to life before turning to fix Buck with a stare.

“So—?” he said, when Buck didn’t volunteer any more information.

“So . . . I just made—I have a date. Tonight,” he said. The words sounded foreign in his mouth, even though he’d said them hundreds of times before. It felt like there should be a different word than date for this thing with Eddie. I have the first night of the rest of my life—that felt right. As long as he didn’t blow it.

Josh raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Who are you asking out before 9 am?”

Before he could reply, Maddie opened the door. “Morning, Buck,” she said, heading over to greet him with a hug. Buck felt thankful for the millionth time that his sister lived close enough that he could do this—show up at her workplace and freak out and know she’d have the answers. “I trust everyone we know is alive and well?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding at Josh when he held up a coffee mug in offering. “Yeah, this is—I need—”

“He has a date tonight,” Josh answered for him, sliding a mug across the table at Buck. He filled one up halfway for Maddie, next, and she made a real show of breathing in the smell of it; she’d let it be known that it was much harder to give up caffeine during a second pregnancy, given they already had a toddler running around.

“Been a while,” she said, bluntly, but Buck had to admit she was right. He just hadn’t felt like getting back out there, after Tommy. Maybe part of him knew, that he had something to wait for.

“Yeah, well,” he eyed his phone. He needed to start googling for date ideas. “I’m kind of freaking out,” he admitted.

Maddie and Josh met each other’s eyes and then looked at him, expectantly. He didn’t have it in him to be annoyed at their silent exchange; they’d earned it, with all the time they’ve spent taking breaks from helping people with actual emergencies to help him sort through his disaster of a love life.

“I have to—to get this right,” he said.

Maddie glanced to Josh again before narrowing her eyes at him. “Why?”

“Because . . .” he said, dragging it out, as if someone was going to fact check him once he spoke the words out loud. “It’s with Eddie.”

Maddie and Josh let out identical gasps, and they both started nudging each other’s arms, their eyes still fixed on Buck.

“Buck—”

“Wait,” said Josh. “Just—Eddie Diaz, right?”

“What? Yeah, of course, what other Eddies do we know?”

“No, good call, Josh,” said Maddie, looking at Buck apologetically. “We’ve been burned before.”

“I’m honestly shocked he hasn’t dated a different Eddie,” muttered Josh.

“Seriously, that would be the least—” Maddie broke off, mid-sentence. “Oh my god, what am I doing, get over here, Buck!” She abandoned her precious coffee and rounded the island to pull him into another hug. And even though she’d just been making fun of him, it still felt good. “I’m so happy for you,” she said.

When she pulled back, he saw that tears were streaming down her face. “Woah, Maddie—it’s okay, don’t cry.”

“These are happy tears,” she said, and then her voice broke in a sob. Josh hurried to grab a box of tissues. “I just—” she hiccupped, and then grabbed a tissue and blew her nose while Buck tried to comfort her. About how he had a date. “I just was so afraid you’d never get it together—”

Buck made a face at her, and she hiccupped again, half-laugh, half-sob. “Sorry,” she said. “I just mean, obviously we all knew, but we never knew if you two would realize—”

“Wait, what?” asked Buck. “We all—you all knew what?”

“Damn,” said Josh, looking at something on his phone. He waited until Maddie was looking at him and then gestured down and said, “it’s either Hen or Athena.”

“What’s Hen or Athena?” Buck asked.

“Who asked who out?” Josh countered.

“I—I did,” Buck said.

“Athena,” Josh affirmed, with a nod.

“Chimney’s going to be so mad.”

“What are you talking about?”

Josh held out his phone, where the screen showed a complicated breakdown of odds paired with phrases like near death experience and drunken confession and an ex is involved. Buck grabbed it and scrolled down the page, which looked alarmingly complex. There seemed to be a different color scheme for Buck makes a move and Eddie makes a move, and it was all tied to a series of date ranges.

“What the hell?” He looked up at Josh and Maddie, who were watching him with unapologetic looks on their faces. “Is this, like, an official betting app?”

“There were a lot of variables to consider,” Josh said, tugging his phone back out of Buck’s hands.

“Chimney got really into it after his Fantasy Football league ended,” Maddie said, shrugging.

“How did—?” He was at a loss. “I didn’t even know I was going to ask Eddie out,” Buck said. “How did you all know?”

“Technically, Athena is the only one who knew,” said Josh, gesturing to the app.

“Wait, you can’t tell anyone,” said Buck, snatching Josh’s phone back out of his hand again. “Eddie just came out to me this morning, I don’t know if anyone knows.”

“Aw,” said Maddie, taking the phone from where Buck was holding it away from Josh and passing it back to him. “He came out to you, and you asked him out right away?” She sniffled, and her face crumpled into a watery smile. “I’m so proud of you, Evan.”

“Yeah, well, not a word, either of you,” he said. “Especially not to Chimney.”

Maddie held up her hands in surrender. “I don’t know a thing,” she said, unconvincingly. “Now tell me everything—what did he say when you asked him out?”

“He said, like, a date?” Buck relayed. “And then the bell rang and after the call he said okay.” As he was replaying their conversations, he realized how unenthusiastic it seemed. “It—it was better than it sounds,” he said. How could he explain the charged look Eddie had given him in the back of the engine? The way they’d both stood there, saying okay, and probably would have kept saying it if Ravi hadn’t interrupted?

Maddie hadn’t stopped looking teary-eyed, at least. “We’re going out tonight. But I have no idea what to do. Maddie, you gotta help me,” he said, ignoring the fact that he could hear how desperate his own voice sounded. “It has to be perfect.”

“Okay,” said Maddie, seriously. “Josh, I’m clocking out. Morning sickness,” she said, patting her stomach with an exaggerated wince and then pushing Buck towards the door. “I should feel better in a few hours,” she called over her shoulder.

Twenty minutes later, they were camped out in the brunch spot down the street from the call center. They were both furiously scrolling their phones, occasionally taking breaks to try one of the three stacks of pancakes between them, and ignoring the judgmental looks they were getting from their waitress.

“Are you sure you don’t just want to pick a nice restaurant?” Maddie asked, after fifteen minutes of silent googling. Buck was going to have to find an outlet for his phone charger soon.

“I tried that for my first date with Abby,” Buck said, thumbing at the scar on his throat. “Even before the tracheotomy, it wasn’t going well. It was too—formal. Stiff. Eddie would hate that. Hey, maybe I should take him to a Lakers game. He likes basketball.”

“Buck, it’s June,” said Maddie. At his confused look, she continued, “it’s not basketball season. Also, you hate basketball.”

“Yeah, but Eddie likes it,” he argued, even though it was no longer an option. “He likes baseball—maybe a baseball game?”

“Maybe we can find a happy medium in between a candlelit dinner and two bros watching a Dodgers game,” Maddie suggested.

“See, that’s my problem,” said Buck. He cut a giant chunk of banana-chocolate-chip pancake and folded it into his mouth. “What if it’s too much like when we usually hang out?” he said, still chewing. “Or what if I overdo it and scare Eddie off?”

Maddie reached out and grabbed Buck’s wrist where he was reaching for another piece. There was a chance he was stress eating.

“Buck,” she said, waiting for him to swallow. “I promise you that you cannot scare Eddie off. I know that, you know that.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” said Maddie. “Come on, think about it for a second. Could Eddie do anything to scare you off?” She stared at him, and Buck was forced to contend with the fact that he found out Eddie was having an emotional affair with the doppelganger of his dead wife, and he would still gladly point Eddie out in a lineup and say yes, that’s the one I want to spend the rest of my life with.

“Okay, maybe not,” conceded Buck. “But that’s—”

“If you say that’s me, I’m going to stab you with my fork,” threatened Maddie.

The waitress stopped by to refill their coffees, but she paused at Maddie’s words, and Buck took advantage of her hesitation to hold his hand out over her mug. “She’s exceeded her caffeine limit today,” he said, giving Maddie a pointed look.

“I’ll stab you with my knife, too,” said Maddie, under her breath. She slid the mug out from under his hand and gave the waitress an angelic smile. “Thanks for the top off.”

“Well excuse me for trying to make sure my new niece or nephew has regulated sleep patterns,” grumbled Buck.

Maddie took a sip of her coffee and said, “don’t talk to me about sleep patterns until you have a toddler and a fetus taking turns waking you up.” She paused, looking up from where she was giving a disturbingly loving look to the coffee. “Wait—are you and Eddie going to have kids?”

Buck’s eyes widened. “Oh my god,” he said. “I don’t know. Are we?” Images flashed in his mind—a little girl with Eddie’s brown hair and brown eyes; a boy with curls like his and Christopher’s; Buck and Eddie and Chris wrangling several small children into the frame for a Christmas picture; Eddie, smiling at him over a crib; Eddie pushing a stroller down the street.

“You’ve always wanted kids,” Maddie pointed out. He didn’t know what his face was doing.

“Yeah,” said Buck. “But, Chris—”

“Right,” said Maddie nodding. “Well—something to think about.”

“On our date tonight?”

“No—god, no,” said Maddie. “Well, actually,” she reconsidered. “I don’t know, you guys are weird. It could come up.” Buck opened his mouth to grouch at her for putting it in his head when he had enough to be panicked about, at the moment, but she continued. “Anyway, we’re getting off topic. We need to figure out the plan for tonight. Are you sure you don’t want to cook him dinner at your place?”

“We do that all the time,” whined Buck. “It wouldn’t be, like, special.”

“Right,” she agreed. “Okay, so, what’s something you both like?”

And that was how Buck had arrived here, leading Eddie towards the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

His first stop could have gone better. He’d just thought it would be nice to start their night in familiar territory, just the two of them, having a casual beer. But it might have been a little too casual, if Eddie’s reaction was anything to go off of. It made Buck inordinately grateful that he had more planned, and hadn’t agreed to Maddie’s idea of cooking dinner at home.

After another hour of research at the diner, they’d found this—the Academy Museum had a special exhibit going on about telenovelas, complete with costumes, set recreations, and clips of interviews with the cast. The primary featured soap opera, Corazón salvaje, was the one Eddie had watched with Christopher, so Buck thought it was a safe bet that it was one of Eddie’s favorites.

“A museum,” said Eddie, glancing around as Buck held the door and ushered him in. He even put his hand on the small of Eddie’s back and left it there, just because he could. “This explains the location. And the timing.” Buck stopped at the door and produced the two tickets he’d bought when he arrived in the area hours ago. Eddie glanced at him while their tickets were scanned, and Buck wanted to ask how am I doing?

Instead, he said, “I told you, there’s a plan.”

“Does this plan involve dinner, or should I have eaten more peanuts at the bar?”

“You’re a dad, didn’t you pack snacks?” Buck joked. But it backfired, because now he was picturing Eddie with a diaper bag. “I think there’s a vending machine around here, if you can’t wait,” he went on, leading Eddie down a hallway. Their shoulders brushed as they walked, and then their elbows, and then—he didn’t know who made the move, but suddenly they were holding hands.

It felt so . . . right. Like all of the other things he’d ever held—other hands and fire hoses and axes and cooking utensils—those were just extraneous functions, and this was what his hand was actually built for. He wanted to say something mushy, but when he glanced down, Eddie was still looking straight ahead, so instead he paid attention to the map of the museum layout and used his new favorite thing—Eddie’s hand—to lead him in the right direction.

This was so useful, he thought, feeling Eddie’s calloused palm under his own, his body heat as he remained a half-step behind Buck. They should start doing this on calls. To make sure they didn’t get lost in burning buildings, or whatever.

When they finally arrived at the new exhibit, Buck pulled them both to a stop and let himself look his fill at Eddie. He couldn’t resist any longer, he had to ask.

“What do you think?”

----

Despite only being an hour into their date—a date that started a dive bar in broad daylight and then involved him being dragged down the block to a museum—Eddie could confidently say that this was the best one he’d ever been on.

And it had nothing to do with the pub or the museum or whatever else Buck had lined up, and everything to do with the fact that Buck was now holding his hand.

At almost any other point in his life, Eddie would never have thought this was a possibility. That he and his best friend would be out on a Friday night, holding hands in public. But it felt so right. It felt like he always wanted to have Buck by his side, right where he could keep an eye on him, and now he could. It soothed something animalistic in him, being able to put his hand on Buck and keep it there. Mine, he was saying, to all the prospective Tommys and Taylors in the world. This one’s mine.

“What do you think?”

It took Eddie a minute to figure out what Buck was asking him. But he made his mind focus on the exhibit Buck had led him to, which was—oh, shit.

“Is this the set of Corazón salvaje?”

“Yeah,” said Buck, looking so proud of himself that Eddie wanted to do something sickeningly sweet, like kiss him on the cheek. “And a few other shows—they have this whole exhibit going on about telenovelas. I thought it’d be—I don’t know.”

“What?” Eddie prodded.

“Romantic,” Buck admitted. “Just—it’s all these love stories, and I know you like them, even though you pretend you just watch them to teach Christopher Spanish, and I like museums, and I thought maybe you could like, tell me about it, and—”

“Buck,” Eddie interrupted. He watched Buck’s face as he waited for Eddie to say more; he looked like he was expecting Eddie to pass down a final judgment on how well Buck had done planning their date. Knowing Buck and his need for validation, that might actually be what he was thinking.

Eddie thought of all the things he could say, how cool the exhibit was, and how thoughtful Buck was for remembering, and how much Eddie was enjoying himself. But he wanted to cut to the chase, get to the heart of it.  

“I’m not going to leave, either,” Eddie said, instead of anything else. But the way Buck’s brilliant blue eyes met his, Eddie thought that Buck understood that what he said was about so much more than tonight.

After a long moment, Buck gave a half-hearted shrug, stepping back to face the first display case. “Yeah, well,” he said, in an overly casual tone. “I didn’t think you were going to,” he said, repeating Eddie’s words back. Eddie bit his lip to keep a smile from overtaking his face. “So,” said Buck, gesturing to where four mannequins were showcasing some truly heinous dated costumes. “This the kind of stuff you’re into?”

Eddie had never had so much fun in a museum before—which seemed like it wasn’t saying much, but actually some of his best memories were in the museums Buck found for him and Chris: the Science Center and the Medieval Torture Museum and even the Getty, which Eddie thought was overrated, but Buck had packed a picnic for them and they’d spent a really nice afternoon overlooking the city.

But there was something so fun about this one, and not just because Eddie was realizing how much telenovela content remained in his brain, even though he’d mostly stopped watching them when he got to high school and bailing on your friends to watch your abuela’s stories with her stopped being an acceptable way to spend the afternoon.

Corazón salvaje was the one he’d shown Chris, but he could still remember the plot twists in La usurpadora, and the forbidden romance in El privilegio de amar, and María la del Barrio, which Eddie never minded watching because the male love interest was so awful that he never made Eddie feel any kind of way.

“You’re really telling me that none of these guys were little Eddie’s Gay Awakening?” Buck was pointing to a wall of headshots, featuring men with long hair and thin mustaches and terrible 90s fashion choices.

“Nope,” said Eddie, crossing his arms. Buck had let go of his hand a few minutes ago to rifle through the box of props they had out in what was almost definitely a section to entertain children; since it was nearing closing time on a Friday night, there wasn’t much competition. Eddie was totally fine with the fact that they were no longer holding hands.

“Come on,” Buck said, sliding on a ridiculous silver pair of wrap-around sunglasses. It was a testament to how attractive Eddie found Buck that it was almost working for him. “I barely watched TV and I still know my gay awakening was that Cole guy from that show Maddie used to watch. Oh! Charmed.”

Eddie was fine with this conversation, too.

“Again—weren’t you straight until a few months ago?”

“Oh, come on, you’re telling me you haven’t reassessed some of your adolescent feelings now that you have new context? You haven’t thought about the experimenting you did in college and been like, oh yeah that makes sense now?”

Embarrassingly, the answer was no. Eddie’s gay awakening had started and ended with Buck, actually, and he hadn’t bothered thinking about guys he went to school or basic training with. Even if he could dig out any old crushes or infatuations, what did it matter? They were in the past. Unlike Buck, who was here, now. And who Eddie could have if he just kept it together long enough to—

“Wait, you experimented in college?”

“Uh, yeah,” said Buck, finally taking off the awful sunglasses and shrugging on an oversized blazer with shoulder pads. It must have been an exceedingly large jacket because it managed to make Buck look like Don Johnson from Miami Vice. “Didn’t you?”

“No,” said Eddie, emphatically. Buck reached into the prop box and pulled out an oversized sunhat with a flower on it. He offered it to Eddie, who stared at it, unimpressed. “I didn’t go to college, I went to the army. It was very straight there.”

“That’s not what people say about the army,” said Buck, dropping the hat back in the bucket and shucking the blazer off.

“That’s the navy,” Eddie corrected.

“It’s gay that you know that,” Buck called over his shoulder, as he wandered through to the other side of the dress-up area, where his attention had been caught by a screen playing old clips of shows.

Eddie followed, because of course he did.

He joined Buck in front of the screen, where together they watched a supercut of iconic telenovela scenes. A woman woke up from a coma and realized she was pregnant; a man collapsed to the ground and a bottle rolled out of his hand; a couple embraced passionately in a dark garden.

Eddie suddenly remembered being a kid, sitting on the floor in front of abuela’s legs, listening to her explain the backstory between two characters. If you pay attention, you can always tell who is supposed to end up together, she said. You can see two people and know—it’s meant to be.

And Eddie didn’t believe in fate or destiny or that any two people were meant to be. But he did kind of get the idea that two people could belong to each other.

He reached out and took Buck’s hand again.  

Buck squeezed it, and then turned and stared at his profile while Eddie intently watched the TV. “I—” Buck started, then trailed off.

“What?” he prompted, glancing at him.

“I remember when you and Hen were talking about these shows, and her mom’s long-lost love,” he said, and his voice was teasing but there was something a little vulnerable underneath it. “It was—you were so . . . excited, I guess. About—about love.” Buck shrugged and moved his eyes back to the TV, now that it was Eddie’s turn to study him. Eddie waited a beat for him to finish his point. “It just—you never seemed like that about yourself. And, you know. Anybody else. That you were with.”

“Sure,” said Eddie. He didn’t have Buck’s desire to walk down memory lane, but he got what he was saying. What he was asking. “That’s fair.”

“This is different, right?”

“Yeah, Buck,” said Eddie, staring into Buck’s eyes as a million love stories played out on the screen next to them. “This is different.”

They closed out the museum.

The security guard had to come usher them out from an interactive portion where you could enter words, Mad Libs-style, and a computer would generate a soap opera script for you. Buck was having way too much fun with it, but at the reminder of the time, he abandoned the keyboard and grabbed Eddie’s hand—this was a thing they did now—and dragged him out of the museum.

“Stop 3!” Buck cheerfully waved at the annoyed-looking staff who were actively locking up the museum while they exited it.

“Please, tell me this stop involves food,” Eddie whined, though he didn’t protest as Buck led him through the grassy park around the LACMA, and he was successfully distracted from his hunger when Buck spotted the displays for the La Brea Tar Pits and launched into a story from a podcast he’d listened to about a police scuba diver who’d swam down in the tar to retrieve evidence for a crime he was investigating.

“I mean, imagine being stuck that far underground, basically in mud, not sure if you’ll have enough air? He was down there for so much longer than they thought he’d be.”

“Uh, yeah,” said Eddie, trying not to laugh. “I can imagine that pretty well, thanks.”

Buck’s head snapped towards Eddie, his eyes widened in realization. “Oh shit,” said Buck. “Well, at least you were trying to save a kid,” he said after a moment. “This guy was down there to get like, some random piece of evidence. Huh,” he said, as if struck by a thought. “They interviewed his wife, and she said she was going crazy, watching it on the news. I was going to say imagine how stressed she was but like, I totally can. She might not have been stressed out enough, to be honest.”

Eddie didn’t know what to do with that, with Buck comparing himself and Eddie to a married couple. Except maybe saying something ridiculous, like, well you’d make a much better spouse. So instead he just let Buck ramble on until he led them to a hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant.

The host sat them at a table by the window, and after they ordered drinks, Buck excused himself to the bathroom.

“Sorry, those drinks I had before you got to the bar are catching up with me,” he explained, unnecessarily, in Eddie’s opinion, and disappeared towards the long hallway towards the back. Eddie checked his phone and saw a text from Chris. Good luck! He’d sent right before five, and then a second text that says Liam has the new Doom game, can we get it? And then a tell Buck I said hi, followed by a I think he’d like Doom dark ages, too.

Eddie huffed a laugh and thought about saying no, but he figured—why not? He was having a great night, he was getting everything he’d ever wanted. Shouldn’t Chris get that, too?

Sure, kid, he typed back. I’ll order it for you tomorrow.

Sus, Chris sent through, almost immediately, followed by, but I’m not going to question it. And after a few moments. You’re having a good time?

Yeah, he sent back, feeling the smile pull up at his lips. He was texting his son about the date he was on, with Buck. Really good.

Gross, sent Christopher. But then he followed it with a heart emoji.

Eddie couldn’t help feeling buoyant as he tucked his phone back into his pocket and started looking at the menu. He glanced up at the hallway Buck had disappeared down and accidentally made eye contact with the woman at the table nearest them.

She was sitting alone, too, though someone had left a jacket over the chair across from her. She smiled genially and gestured to Buck’s empty chair. “First date?”

He already liked her much better than the redhead from the bar. “Yeah,” he said, and he just knew he had a stupidly big smile on his face. Buck was right—he’d never actually been this excited to be on a date. “You?”

“Second,” she said, nodding towards the empty chair across from her. “We met on an app. No red flags so far,” she said, holding up crossed fingers. Eddie was so thankful he would never have to wade into the world of online dating.

“Wish I could say the same about this guy,” said Eddie, eyes catching on where Buck was coming back from the bathroom.

Before she had a chance to reply, Buck pulled out his chair and sank into it. The table was so small that their knees knocked into each other’s, the way they did in the back of the engine. “It’s so cool, across from the bathrooms they have this window into the kitchen and you can see them making the pasta.”

“Haven’t you made your own pasta?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah, but this is a restaurant,” Buck pointed out. He turned the menu over in his hands, then looked over it at Eddie. “Hey, should we have kids?”

The woman at the table next to them choked on her white wine, doing an actual spit-take onto the tablecloth.

“Oh shit, are you okay?” Buck asked, leaning over to her table. “Do you need help?”

She pounded lightly on her chest, giving a few easier coughs as she shook her head. When she finally took another swig and swallowed successfully, she cut her eyes to Eddie. “Do you need help?” She flickered her eyes towards Buck in an offer to help that was entirely genuine, even if it was painfully overt.

“No,” he said, doing his stupid grin again. “Thank you, though.” He turned to where Buck was watching them both with a confused expression. “You’re really banking on that not-leaving-during-the-first-date thing, huh?”

“Go ahead and try to leave,” Buck offered. “I know where you live.”

Eddie heard another squeak from the woman next to him, but she didn’t seem to be choking this time so he just ignored her.

“Buck.”

The man returned to the table next to theirs, and Eddie could hear him making a similar announcement about the view into the kitchen, but he was too distracted by an image in his mind: Buck in the kitchen, explaining how to make pasta to a toddler perched on the counter next to him.

“It’s not a dealbreaker, either way,” Buck was saying. “Maddie just said something earlier and I just thought it would be good to know. Like, early on. If it’s an option or if I’m being like—” he broke off, shrugging.

He hadn’t thought about it, after Christopher. Hell, he hadn’t thought about it before Christopher, either. But he loved being a father. He’d always felt that was specific to Christopher, but the idea of Buck with a kid—Buck as a father, Buck, being his partner as they navigated all of the stages he missed with Chris when he was overseas . . .  

“It’s . . . an option,” he found himself saying. It was barely a whisper, but Buck lit up with it, and Eddie felt a surge of satisfaction, that he had been the one who made Buck look like that. That Buck wanted that, with him, too.

“Okay,” said Buck, smiling softly. After a moment, he leaned back in his chair, and said “oh, and also, no pressure, but my lease is up in August, if you want to move in together.”

“Oh my god,” said the woman at the table next to theirs, so loudly that Buck, Eddie, and her date all turned to look at her. “Uhm,” she said, spearing a piece of gnocchi on the end of her fork. “I just, can’t believe how good this is.”

“Is that the pesto gnocchi?” Buck asked, guilelessly. The woman was staring at him like he had spoken another language. She gave him an uncertain nod, and Eddie tried to hold in his laughter when Buck turned to him and said, “we should totally get that.”

“Buck,” Eddie said, in a low voice, once he saw the couple next to them lean together and start whispering, furiously. He had a few ideas what that was about. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

“What?” said Buck, perusing the menu again. “Order the pesto?”

“Cling,” Eddie said, gently but firmly.

“I’m not—”

“Come on,” Eddie said. “Both times you asked someone to move in with you, it was like, under duress.”

“I know, I know,” said Buck, looking chagrined, which was not what Eddie had been going for. “I think I just—sometimes I think about you, like, bleeding out on the street in front of me, and I don’t want to waste any more time.”

Eddie got what he meant. He really did—in a lot of ways, it seemed like they’d been wasting time. But still, even though they hadn’t been together, they had still had each other throughout all of it, and that could never be time wasted.

The woman at the table next to them shot up from her seat. “I’m not feeling well, Greg,” she declared, carefully not looking towards their table. “Let’s pay on the way out,” she said, pulling her date up from where he was trying to shovel a forkful of pasta into his mouth.

Buck watched them go and then turned back to Eddie. “She was being kind of weird,” he said, glancing back down at the menu. “Maybe I should avoid the pesto after all.”

“Buck, she thought you were a psycho.”

“What?”

“When you were in the bathroom, I told her this was a first date. And then you came back and asked me if I wanted kids and when you should move in.”

“I—oh,” said Buck. “Okay yeah, I can see how some of what I said might have come off badly.”

“Well, it’s a good story.”

“For her,” qualified Buck.

“Yeah,” said Eddie, and underneath the table, his foot found Buck’s. “And for the grandkids.”

“Grandkids,” said Buck raising his eyebrows. “Look who’s coming on strong, now.”

“I said you didn’t have to cling,” said Eddie, his foot tracing up Buck’s calf muscle. “Not that I didn’t want you to.”

----

“You’re kind of sending mixed messages here, Eds.”

Buck had gotten far worse reactions to his maybe-we-should-move-in-together speech—Taylor accusing him of trapping her, Tommy straight-up dumping him. Eddie was still here, looking at him with his stupidly brown doe-eyes, and his leg was still rubbing Buck’s under the table.

“No, I just—” Eddie started, but then the waiter came over to take their order. Eddie got a Bolognese that Buck was definitely going to steal some of. Buck panicked and ordered the pesto gnocchi.

When the waiter finally stepped away, he thought about changing the subject. Hadn’t Maddie’s first reaction to the thought of having these types of first date conversations been hell no? Why hadn’t Buck listened to her?

Because Buck was a clinger, that was why. Even Eddie knew it. Especially Eddie. After all, Buck had practically moved in after Eddie’s gunshot wound; had spiraled and tried to quit when Eddie left the 118; had nearly adopted three dogs when Eddie left for Texas. It occurred to Buck that if this thing between them didn’t end well, Buck was probably going to go clinically insane.

You can’t scare him off, Maddie had said. God, he hoped that was true. In for a penny, he thought.

“You just . . . what?” he asked, picking up on Eddie’s dropped conversation from two full minutes ago. While he waited for Eddie to respond, he took a sip of his water, and then another. The ice got stuck at the bottom of his glass, so when he lifted it up a second time, it all fell onto his face, and Buck coughed while ice water leaked down his chin and onto his shirt.

After he finished coughing and wiping his face off with his sleeve, he finally looked across the table where Eddie was grinning at him.

“This turning you on?” Buck asked.

“That was so hot,” agreed Eddie, and his cheeks barely pinked when he said it. “I totally see how you used to be a player.”

“Oh, you don’t think I have game anymore?”

“Buck, your game is so bad you ruined a date you weren’t even on,” said Eddie, nodding at the abandoned pasta dishes on the table next to theirs.

“Collateral damage,” said Buck, with a shrug. He lowered his voice and quirked his eyebrow at Eddie. “It’s all about the person you’re trying to pull.”

“You’ve already pulled me,” Eddie pointed out. “It’s too late for us. I’ve seen you floss.”

“You don’t think I could seduce you?” Buck asked, affronted. “If we just met somewhere?”

“I probably wouldn’t have even realized you were hitting on me.”

And oh, Buck couldn’t let that stand. It almost felt like he had something to prove. He knew he and Eddie worked as best friends, that much was obvious. They had seven years’ worth of evidence. And they’d flirted with more tonight—holding hands, making eyes, leaning into each other on purpose. But it was suddenly imperative that he turn up the tension, that he got proof that what was between them was more than platonic.

It was a confusing inverse of all of the fears he had with other people: that they only wanted him for his body. He knew Eddie liked his personality, wildly enough; but he was the one who asked Eddie out. And maybe Eddie wasn’t as stoic as he liked to pretend he was—Buck had seen him be silly, and pissed off, and lonely, and proud—but he’d never seen Eddie the way he desperately wanted to see him, now: turned on. Flustered and punch-drunk and gagging for it. He wanted Eddie to feel the same way Buck felt looking at him, like only the thinnest veneer of self-control was stopping him from dragging him somewhere they could lock the door and be alone. He wanted to see Eddie want him.

“I’m going to grab us drinks from the bar,” he said; and his plan must have shown on his face, because Eddie looked aggrieved.

“Buck—are you—Buck, I want to go on a date with you, not pretend I’m on a date with—you—” Eddie griped after him, but Buck was halfway across the restaurant by then. If he and Eddie confused anyone other couples into leaving, then that was their problem.

He picked two cocktails off the bar menu at random—something with limoncello and bourbon and a dark and stormy. He made himself watch the bartender concocting their drinks so he didn’t look back at their table, and he thought back to all of the people he’d pulled from either side of bars just like this. It felt like it had all been practice. Years of dry runs leading to this make-or-break moment.   

When the bartender passed him the drinks, Buck picked both up and took a deep breath before turning back around.

He strolled over to where Eddie was sitting, looking at his phone.

“Hey, man,” said Buck, letting some extra affection curl into his words. “They just gave me two drinks at the bar, want one?”

Eddie tucked his phone back into his pocket and leaned back, crossing his arms and looking up at Buck, expectantly. Buck didn’t smile at him; he made the face he’d perfected over years—it was a look that said, I want to be talking to you, but I’d be fine leaving, too.

“Sure,” said Eddie. Buck could tell it was taking him a lot of restraint to not roll his eyes.  

Buck weighed both drinks in his hands. “Feels like you’d be expecting the dark and stormy,” he said, holding up the rum drink. “With everything you’ve got going on. But I peg you for a Fool’s Gold.” He put the lighter drink down and pushed it across the table cloth towards him. “Little sweet, little sour, a bit of an edge. Is someone sitting here?”

Eddie looked where Buck gestured to his own seat and then flicked his eyes up again at him. “An idiot was there,” he deadpanned. “But he left.”

“His loss,” said Buck, refusing to give up the game. He slid into his own seat and held his drink up to cheers Eddie. “To new beginnings,” he said.

Eddie clinked his glass with his own, and Buck thought he was getting somewhere. He watched as Eddie took a sip and made a face.

“Wasn’t expecting that,” he said. Then, after a moment, he took a second sip.

“It’s good though, right?” Buck said, leaning forward in his chair. “I used to bartend, so I have an instinct for these things.”

“These things?”

“Drink preferences. Knowing when a person is worth paying attention to,” he listed, his eyes scanning up and down Eddie’s body. “Sensing when someone might be looking for a little company,” he finished, and he pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth for a second, just enough to draw Eddie’s eyes.

“I just came here for dinner,” said Eddie, but Buck detected a slight wobble in his voice. He was making progress.

“So, you’re hungry,” said Buck, keeping his voice low so Eddie had to lean in to hear. He took a sip of his drink and pulled an ice cube into his mouth, sucking on it. After a moment, he made a show of swallowing and said, “tell me, what’s the best thing you’ve ever eaten?”

Eddie’s eyes were bouncing between Buck’s lips and his eyes and the empty table next to them. “Uh,” he said, and then he cleared his throat. “Uh, my abuela’s tamales,” he said.

Buck meant to keep the heated look on his face, but it was just so—cute, hearing Eddie talk about abuela. It made it all feel real; like the kind of thing Eddie would say if he really had tried to flirt with him at a bar.

“Yeah? Tell me about her,” he said, setting his drink down and leaning both elbows on the table.

“Really? This is your seduction technique? Getting me to talk about my grandma?”

Eddie may have no sense of theatrics, but it was going to take more than that to break Buck. “Yeah,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I want to hear about what you love.”

Eddie coughed and kept his eyes on the table—maybe on where Buck’s hands were. “Fine—she’s—she’s the best,” he said, glancing up at Buck and then back around the restaurant. He was rattled. Good. “She used to live here but now she’s back in Texas.”

“Texas, huh?” Buck’s smirk was back—this was too easy. Eddie was handing it to him. “Are you a cowboy, then? Ropes, a saddle . . . chaps? You know your way around all that?”

“Uh—no.”

“You know, I’m not one for actual bull riding, but I’m really good at mechanical bulls.”

“Are you?” Eddie’s voice sounded strangled. Buck was having the time of his life.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, cockily. “See, it’s all about loosening up your hips, going with the motion. Some people want to tense their thighs, but that just makes it harder. Once you get into the rhythm, it can actually feel good.”

“It-it can?”

“Yeah,” said Buck, leaning in even closer. “The way it moves you up and down, up and down . . . sometimes it feels like I could go on for hours. I could show you?”

“We don’t—this is—we’re at an Italian restaurant,” Eddie said, trying to shake his way out of this stupor, and that was no good.

“I’m sure we could find something else to work with.” Buck leaned so close that he was practically whispering; across the table from him, Eddie’s brown eyes were sparkling in the candlelight on their table, and Buck felt like maybe he could die from want.

“The pesto?”

The waiter was back with their meals. Buck blinked once, twice, tried to make himself remember that things besides Eddie existed in the world.

“That’s mine,” he said.

“Actually, we’ll take ours to go,” said Eddie.

Buck snapped his eyes towards Eddie, who looked away from the waiter to stare back at Buck.

“Yep,” Buck echoed. “To go would be great. Thanks.”

The waiter glanced at the two full bowls of pasta in his hands, then to the abandoned table next to them. “Is there something wrong in this corner? If there’s an issue, I can talk to my manager—?”

“No, no,” Buck assured him, because he didn’t know if Eddie would be able to respond without laughing. Buck, on the other hand, had absolutely no qualms about clearing out two tables—he’d done way more damage trying to get Eddie’s attention before.

The waiter was now glancing around the area of the restaurant, like he was expecting to find a leaky vent or a dead mouse.

“Just, this one’s not feeling well,” he said, gesturing to where Eddie sat, and instead of finding him grinning, he realized Eddie still had that serious look on his face; the one he’d given him in the back of the engine that morning. Buck cleared his throat and went on, “Might be a fever. He got all hot out of nowhere, and now he’s flushed and short of breath,” he said, eyes roving over Eddie, hungrily. “Pupils are even dilated,” he cataloged, like he was documenting his victory.

“Oh, uh—”

Buck glanced back up at the waiter, and said, “don’t worry, we’re first responders, I’ll take good care of him once we get out of here.” Buck shifted under the guise of pulling out his wallet, but under the table he rearranged his legs so they were both between Eddie’s and then pushed them open. Across from him, Eddie made a noise that he tried to pass off as a cough, but Buck could hear the whimper underneath it.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” said the waiter, accepting Buck’s card. “I’ll be right back with the check and to go boxes.”

“Appreciate it,” said Buck. When they were alone, he turned back to Eddie, whose eyes had glazed over. “Admit it,” he whispered.

He slowly pulsed his knees in and out, causing Eddie’s legs to open and close; he got away with it four times before Eddie shifted in his chair, pulling his hips further back from Buck’s reach.

“Admit what?” Eddie asked, blinking slowly. Buck was sure this was the best date of his entire life.

“That I’ve got game.”

He must have been smirking too much to keep up the mood, because Eddie finally shook himself out of his stupor. He leaned even further back in his chair and fixed Buck with a glare. “That was—that was not fair.”

“You’re just mad because you folded like a horny teenager.”

Eddie opened his mouth to say something and then snapped it shut again. Buck waited him out, gloating. Finally, Eddie pointed up and down at him and said, “you’re not allowed to do that. You have some sort of freakish, unnatural advantage.”

“So you don’t want me to take care of you when we leave?”

“I just—you can’t do that in public,” Eddie ground out. He started counting off on his fingers, “not around our friends, not if Chris is in the vicinity, definitely not at the firehouse—”

“Aw, come on, you’re telling me you wouldn’t consider sneaking into a storage closet with me?”

“Obviously, I would!” Eddie was whisper-yelling now, and Buck wasn’t sure exactly what point he was trying to make, but he was enjoying every second of this. “But one of us is going to have to have restraint and it has to be the—the one with the most experience.”

Buck felt his mouth drop open in delight. “Eddie,” he admonished. “Are you calling me a whore?”

“No!” said Eddie, looking increasingly flustered. “I just mean—clearly you have the power to do—” he gestured at Buck, “that, so you have the—the responsibility to, like, use it. Responsibly.”

“Did you just quote Spiderman?”

Eddie propped his elbows on the table and dropped his head into his hands, groaning dramatically. “I’m going to die. The first date, and I’m going to die.”

“Been there, wouldn’t recommend it,” said Buck, spotting the waiter heading back with their check and a bag with the restaurant’s logo stamped on it. “Thanks, man,” he added to the waiter, who was watching Eddie with an entirely undeserved look of concern. “Don’t worry, he’ll pull through.”

“Come on, Uncle Ben,” Buck said to Eddie, picking up the leftovers in one hand and holding out his other to Eddie. “Let’s get you to the car.”

“Jesus Christ,” muttered Eddie, as he let himself be led out of the restaurant.

They only made it one block—the street right next to the park was full of commercial buildings with support beams that held up an overhang, and when Buck passed the third one, he felt Eddie tugging him backwards.

“What—”

And then Eddie was kissing him. Buck felt his back push up against the concrete, felt the brown paper bag slip through his fingers, felt the world tilt on its access.

Eddie was kissing him.

He was good at it, too. For all that Eddie insisted Buck had the upper hand with experience, he already knew how to play Buck like a fiddle. Eddie’s hand was wrapped gently around Buck’s throat, his thumb rubbing into Buck’s jaw; and Eddie’s stubble was scraping against Buck’s face, causing a friction that gave him goosebumps; and Eddie’s tongue was shoving its way into Buck’s mouth, like he was starving and he wanted to swallow him whole. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

If Buck had enough oxygen left in his brain, he would have marveled at the way kissing felt both entirely earth-shattering and also incredibly normal. Like, of course Eddie’s mouth fit exactly over his; of course they could already move in sync. Of course his best friend could intuit the way Buck wanted to be held gently and pushed firmly; of course scratching his fingers across the back of Eddie’s head elicited a full-body shiver. It made no sense at all, and it made total, complete, perfect sense.  

----

Eventually, Eddie had to breathe. There were several times in his life when he’d found that biological requirement inconvenient—when he was trapped forty feet underground, and when he was having his first panic attack, when his tank ran low during fires. But there was something extra maddening about it this time; he and Buck had already wasted seven years not doing this, why was his body getting in the way now that they were catching up?

He pulled back an inch, panting. At the restaurant, Buck had pointed out his shortness of breath, and he still hadn’t had a chance to catch it. Buck used the free space to duck his head and kiss his way down Eddie’s neck, and the feeling of Buck’s lips on him, of his best friend so far up in his space—closer than he’d ever been without a life-or-death emergency—had Eddie feeling feral. He wanted to groan and push; he wanted to get his hands over every inch of Buck, wanted to tangle their legs together, wanted to feel skin on skin and hard thrusting and Buck’s body so close to his that they couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

“Buck,” he said, though it came out as barely a moan. “God, Buck,” he said again, just because he could. Because he needed to remind himself that he had Buck. An impossibility. An inevitability.

As if answering his call, Buck abandoned the spot he was working on Eddie’s collar bone and put his lips back over Eddie’s in a hot, open-mouthed kiss. There was a whining noise that might have been coming from him—but it was just that he couldn’t get close enough; his tongue was so far back in Buck’s mouth that he was practically down Buck’s throat, and still he wanted more.

He tried a different tactic to get closer—he grabbed Buck’s shirt and yanked it upwards, freeing the button-down from where it was tucked into his pants. It was suddenly urgent that he get his hands on Buck’s stomach, though he couldn’t decide if he wanted to slide his hand up or down or back—there was so much of Buck’s hot skin to explore, the kind of vast possibilities that could drive a man to madness, so Eddie just squeezed instead, digging his fingers into Buck’s side and using it to pull Buck firmly, until he was flush against his body.

He could feel Buck, hard, against the lower part of his belly, and another noise slipped out, this one closer to a growl. But Eddie felt like a wild animal, driven entirely by instinct and need, and if he could just get Buck's hips under his, he could just—

“Eddie. Eddie.” Buck was saying his name, which was good, except he was saying it with purpose, and he was rubbing his hands up Eddie’s biceps in a move that served to both soothe and push Eddie away from him and—oh. Eddie had just been about to commit an act of public indecency, hadn’t he?

He let out a groan—pained this time, not sexy—and dropped his head onto Buck’s shoulder as he caught his breath. Buck should probably stop rubbing his arms, if he was actually trying to kill the mood.

After he had a minute to breathe, Buck said, “you with me?” And even though Buck seemed unfairly lucid, Eddie took consolation in the fact that his voice sounded as wrecked as he felt.

“Sorry,” he said, though it came out muffled into Buck’s chest. It was a good place to be—Buck was warm and solid and he smelled good, and if Eddie never looked up, he wouldn’t have to acknowledge how he had just tried to maul his best friend in public.

“What on earth are you apologizing for?” Buck asked, still tracing patterns up and down Eddie’s arms.

“For attacking you on the street like a rabid dog?”

Buck chuckled, and his chest rumbled underneath Eddie. Eddie swallowed the urge to bite.

“You really don’t have to apologize for that,” Buck said, low in Eddie’s ear.

“I’m not usually this . . .”

“Horny?” Buck guessed.

Eddie finally risked a glance up at Buck. “I was going to say out of control.”

“Well, that’s probably the 33 years of repressed homosexuality,” Buck offered.

Eddie let out a laugh, and then realized Buck was being serious. “Uh, I think it’s just you, actually,” he said, because it was true, and because it was the kind of admission that he knew Buck would appreciate. And he did—he melted a little, the way he had when Eddie told him he was badass under pressure, all those years ago, the first time that Eddie realized Buck softened under praise and attention and kind words. “How are you so coherent right now?” he asked, trying to redirect his yearning into annoyance.

“Years and years of being a degenerate,” Buck answered, finally stepping back and leaning down to grab their bag of leftovers, “have given me superhuman powers of self-control. That and the spider bite.”

“You’re not funny.”

“You are,” said Buck, putting his hands back on Eddie’s shoulders and directing him back into the park, the way they’d come earlier. “You think I’m a superhero for like, managing to keep my clothes on in public. No one has ever been impressed with me for my restraint before.”

“No one has ever been as obsessed with you as I am,” said Eddie.

“Flatterer,” said Buck, still pushing Eddie ahead of him, frog-marching him through the grass. “Don’t worry, the minute—”

“Help!”

Buck let go of Eddie’s shoulders, and both of them whirled around, trying to find where the voice was coming from.

“Over here, somebody, please!”

“Help!”

The calls were coming from the far end of the park; Buck and Eddie both started sprinting towards the voices without even having to look at each other.

As they neared the southeast corner of the park, they realized the call was coming from two teenagers who were hovering around the lake pit, where an art installation made it look like a family of elephants were losing a member to the tar. It was, in Eddie’s opinion, a little dark.

As they drew closer, he could see splashing coming from the lake pit. Buck turned to look at him, but he was already slowing down to pull out his phone and dial 9-1-1.

“LAFD,” shouted Buck, in that booming voice he loved to use on calls. “What’s going on?”

Eddie could half-hear the teens explaining something about a dare and their friend getting stuck as he was connected to an operator and gave them their location. The operator offered to stay on the line until help arrived, but Eddie explained that they were both off-duty firefighters and would be fine to handle the scene until a station could arrive.

Which he felt confident in, until he hung up and turned around to see Buck scaling the ten-foot fence that surrounded the pit—the one they’d put up to keep idiots like the half-drowning teenager out.

“Buck!”  

“What?” Buck called back, sounding all too innocent as he lifted his leg over the fence and began climbing down the other side. Eddie scanned the scene—the two teenagers in their baggy hoodies and ripped jeans pacing anxiously near the infographic that explained the dangers of tar; Buck, nearly off the fence; and beyond the sinking elephant, increasingly faint splashes in the tar.

“Please, you have to help him,” one of the kids yelled. It was a girl, with long dark hair. She was wrapping her fingers around the fence like she was thinking about following after Buck.

“Don’t worry,” said Eddie, stepping closer to where she and the other kid were watching the scene with pale faces. “We’re firefighters. What’s your friend’s name?”

“Sam,” the girl said. “He was just supposed to—to get a picture on the elephant’s back but he slipped—it was a stupid dare—”

It was, but saying that now wouldn’t help anything. Eddie stepped closer to the fence, where he could see that the look on Buck’s face meant he was considering wading into the tar pit.

“Buck!” he called again, and this time Buck turned to look at him. “Kid’s name is Sam. What’s going on over there?”

“He’s got a grip on the back, but it’s slipping. I’m not seeing anything we can use to reach him,” he shouted, jogging up and down the shoreline.

Eddie looked up at one of the palm trees near the edge of the pit. “Could use an axe right about now—got one on you?”  

Buck patted his pockets and yelled back, “nope, just condoms!” Which would have been highly inappropriate except Eddie could tell he was also studying the area, looking for something they could use. Also, they were off the clock.

“Are you flirting?”

One of the teenagers clearly didn’t agree. But her words jogged something in Eddie’s memory.

“Wait right there!” He called, already sprinting back into the park. Buck could find a way to keep the kid above the tar for a few minutes; Eddie could find him an axe.

Three minutes later, he burst through the doors of Molly Malone’s Irish Pub for the second time that night. He probably looked insane, red-faced and out of breath, so he didn’t fault the bartender for giving him a dubious look when he only managed to get out, “give me—the axe,” in between pants.  

“Dude, I definitely can’t give you an axe,” said the bartender. And Eddie could appreciate that he was making the right call, in most circumstances, but that didn’t stop him from vaulting over the bar and wrenching it off the wall.

“Firefighter. Kid’s drowning,” he huffed out, “in tar.” He gave another yank on the sturdiest looking display axe and hoped this explanation would be enough. He didn’t care if they called the cops—the more, the merrier, at this point—but if the kid actually tried to stop him, it would slow him down. “I’ll bring it back,” he said, axe in hand.

He hopped back over the bar, eyeing the dish of peanuts as he went—god, he was hungry—but the thought of Buck trying to tread tar water was enough incentive to pass them by. He rushed past the patrons who had all frozen to watch him, and took off again, across the park.

By the time he got back to the lake pit, Buck was knee-deep in the tar water. It looked like he had tied together his belt, a backpack, and a jacket, and rigged it to loop around the elephant tusk so that Sam could hang onto it to keep from slipping farther down into the muck.

“Buck!” He called out once he was in range. He held up the axe and pointed to it.

“From the pub!” Buck shouted back, delighted. “You were so fast!” The two teenagers gave him a dirty look, which Eddie took offense to—they were the morons who dared their friend to get into a tar pit. Sue Buck for being supportive.

“Throw it to him already,” yelled the one of them—the one who had given up his coat for the makeshift rope, given the way he was shivering.

“You don’t throw an axe,” said Eddie, irritated. He tucked it under his arm and started climbing the fence closest to where Buck was. “Heads up,” he said, lowering it down over the top of the other side. Buck waited until the axe hit the dirt to rush forward and grab it. And then, since he was halfway there, Eddie kept climbing—there was no point in leaving Buck alone on the other side of the fence.

“Actually, axe-throwing places have gotten really popular,” said Buck, who had started taking the axe to the nearest palm tree with gusto. Eddie barely even stopped to watch his form before going to check on Sam. “People have like, birthday parties there,” he said, in between swings. “We should go some time.”

“You serious?” Eddie asked. “I can’t believe we haven’t gotten called to one of those. How are you holding up, Sam?”

“Uh,” came Sam’s garbled voice from somewhere behind the elephant. “I really—don’t want to be—fossilized.”

Eddie thought he should have thought about that before willingly getting into a pit full of asphalt famous for doing exactly that, but he figured the lecture could wait until Sam was back on land.

“Hang on kid,” he said instead.

“I’m—I’m slipping,” said Sam, and Eddie started to worry that he’d work himself into a panic.

“Stay calm, we’ll get you out of there.”

“Eddie, could use some help,” Buck called. Eddie looked to where Buck had gotten three quarters of the way through the trunk and was moving around to continue his assault from the other side. He gestured towards the top. “Can you make sure it falls where we need it?”

Eddie circled around, bracing himself against the tree while Buck finished the job, and together they felled it, creating a perfect lifeline to the other side of the elephant.

Buck carefully stepped onto the tree trunk. “Sam, can you—” he started, but then stopped. “Shit, Eddie—he slipped under,” he said.

Fuck. Buck was going into the tar, wasn’t he?

A splash confirmed Eddie’s worst fear. He swung his legs over the tree trunk and started inching himself towards where Buck and Sam had gone under—the degrading effort was worth the stability—and he let out a shaky breath when he heard sirens drawing closer.

After a painfully long moment, during which Eddie reminded himself that Buck had weirdly high lung capacity, Buck’s head finally broke the surface. The tar was watery enough near Eddie that he could reach down and pull Buck towards him with little resistance. Buck was dragging Sam, who wasn’t moving at that point, so Eddie scooted until he could stand. Behind him, he could hear the emergency responders pull up and pile out, only yards away.

“Over here,” he yelled, needlessly. They were clipping through the fence by the time he and Buck could stand well enough to Sam onto the shore.  

Two paramedics raced by them and intercepted Sam, checking him over and—it was Hen and Chim.

Of fucking course the responding house was the 118.

“What the—” said Chim, realizing who had hauled out their patient.

Hen was quicker on the update. “Status?” she asked, starting a sternal rub.

“Name’s Sam, a teenager,” said Buck. He was coated head-to-toe in tar and was trying to wipe his eyes clean, which was not going well, given his hands were also covered in watery asphalt. “Was under for about two minutes. Might need CPR.”

“Not getting a pulse,” Hen agreed.

“Starting compressions,” said Chim.

Bobby appeared next to them, producing a rag for Buck, and the three of them stood and watched as Hen and Chim worked to revive their patient. Uncharitably, Eddie wondered if Buck would consider it a bad omen if someone died on their first date.

He didn’t have to find out—after less than a minute of compressions, Sam came to, gasping and coughing up concerningly dark liquid.

After ensuring that Sam was fine—except for whatever the hell he might have ingested from the pit—Hen and Chim stood back while two other members of the B shift stepped forward to load him onto a gurney and wheel him to the ambulance. The two idiot teenagers followed, leaving Eddie and Buck standing next to the tree stump, covered in varying amounts of tar, being gawked at by Hen, Chimney, and Bobby.

“How—” Bobby gestured, looking at a loss. “I don’t even know what to ask.”

“We were just walking through the park,” Buck complained. “And heard them shouting. I guess they dared him to go in.”

“Did they dare you, too?” Chim asked.

Eddie didn’t appreciate the sass—his ideal date night didn’t include watching Buck slip under the closest thing to quicksand in LA, and it definitely didn’t include being heckled by the 118. “Buck cut down a whole tree to avoid going in,” Eddie said, defensively. “But then the kid slipped under, and—” he gestured to Buck.

“You did good, kid,” said Bobby. He lifted his hand to pat Buck on the back but then thought better of it. “There are spare uniforms in the engine if you want to get changed.”

Buck nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “let me just grab our food.” And Eddie, whose stomach was about to eat itself, fell just a little more in love with him.

“What were you guys doing all the way out here?” Hen asked, watching Buck pick up their bag of pasta.

“Oh, uh,” Buck hedged, passing the bag from hand to hand. Eddie prayed the to go containers could withstand any tar that might be dripping in. He was so fucking hungry. “We were, uh, just—”

Eddie realized Buck was stammering, and suddenly, he knew exactly where this was going.

“We were, uh, picking—”

“Buck, if you say we were picking up chicks, I swear to god—”

“Sorry!” He balked, his cheeks pinking even under the dark muck, and then pointed a finger at Eddie. “You can’t leave!”

“You don’t even talk like that,” Eddie said incredulously. “Why is that your first excuse?”

“It’s believable!”  

“It’s really not,” said Chim, which Eddie agreed with, even if he didn’t appreciate the interruption. Any of them, really.

“We’re on a date,” Eddie said, before Buck could dig himself any deeper into that hole. Pit. Whatever. “I’m gay, Buck and I are on a first date, and it was going really well until a kid almost drowned and Buck had to jump into a tar pit.”  

Eddie skimmed over Hen, Chim, and Bobby’s shocked faces and landed on Buck. His teeth looked extra white as he grinned at Eddie, given that the rest of his face was still darkened with tar water. “Going well, huh?”

“Shut up, you know it was,” said Eddie. He stepped over to where Buck was standing, so he could bump his shoulder—he wanted to touch him again after seeing him slip under the tar water. “Except for the fact that we still haven’t eaten.”

“You were the one who wanted to leave the restaurant.”

“And good thing too, or that kid would’ve died,” Eddie pointed out.

Buck elbowed him and looked delighted. “Our love saves lives,” he bragged.

“Is this really happening?” Hen asked, pointing between the two of them and looking at Bobby. “I’m not hallucinating, right? It’s been a long shift.”

“Oh, it’s happening,” said Buck. “Hey, Chim,” Buck called to where his brother-in-law was pulling out his phone. “Don’t bother—Athena won.”

“Dammit,” said Chimney, putting the phone back in his pocket.  

Eddie cut Buck a confused look. “I’ll explain later,” he said, sounding annoyed. “Bobby—you said there were spare clothes?”

“Yeah,” said Bobby, leading the way towards the engine. He was managing to keep his expression neutral, but Eddie thought he looked a little teary-eyed. “You boys need a lift anywhere?”

“Actually,” said Eddie. “I would love for our entire extended family to be less involved in our date, but thanks.”

“Don’t mind him,” said Buck, who was stripping out of his clothes, absolutely not in the context Eddie had been hoping for. “He’s hangry.”

-----

“Are you disappointed in me?”

Buck stared at Eddie, where he sat across from him and waited for him to answer. Eddie finished swallowing a mouthful of spaghetti—the restaurant had miraculously included disposable utensils—and said, “for what?”

Honestly, Buck could think of a few answers. It kind of was his fault they hadn’t eaten earlier, even though he couldn’t regret that now. And he knew the date had been going well—Eddie had said so—but his original plan for the rest of their night included a little more ice cream and tongue action, and significantly less tar and fewer members of the A shift.

Also, it turned out that neither Buck nor Eddie drove their cars to the pub earlier, because they both assumed they would be driving home with the other. So. There was that.

“Turns out I couldn’t keep my clothes on in public after all,” he said, instead.

Eddie snorted out a laugh and then started coughing on it. Next to him in the backseat of the engine truck, Hen smacked him on the back. “Do not choke on us right now Eddie,” she said. “You’ve had enough excitement for one night.”

Buck shifted in his spare uniform, which was a size too small, and resisted making a joke about how much excitement was still in store for Eddie tonight, and how choking may or may not be involved, even though Hen really set him up for it. But he still felt a little bad about the way Eddie came out to everyone back at the tar pit, and he figured he could show some restraint.

“I kind of want to know all the details,” Chim mused aloud. “But I also kind of don’t want to know any details. You know?”

“No one was offering details, Chimney,” Buck reminded him.

“Yeah, but I need to—wait, does Maddie already know?”

“Of course Maddie knows,” said Buck. Then he realized what that meant. “Sorry, Eddie,” he added, ignoring Chim’s offended look. “She was sworn to secrecy, I promise.”

Eddie was still shoveling spaghetti Bolognese in his face, unbothered. “Fas ‘kay,” he said, still chewing. He paused before eating another forkful of noodles. “Figured everyone would find out. Maybe tomorrow, and not, you know, mid-date,” he added, but then shrugged. “Should have known, with us.”

Buck speared a piece of gnocchi and tried not to smile at that. Something about the inevitability in Eddie’s tone was making his insides feel pleasantly squirmy.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Totally.” And then Hen gave him a knowing glance and Buck’s eyes dropped back to his pesto pasta, which was safe and not at all invested in his personal life.

“Where are we dropping you boys?” Bobby twisted around in the captain’s seat to ask.

Eddie grunted to get his attention and when he swallowed his food, he said, “Buck’s place.” When Buck met his eyes, he added, “might as well enjoy it before he moves out.”

Bobby raised his eyebrows, glancing between where Eddie was sitting, scooping up more of his pasta, and where Buck was sitting, having an internal freakout. “What number date is this again?”

“First,” answered Eddie. “Why?” he asked, and then cut his eyes to Buck, smirking. There was some sauce on his lip, and Buck was so attracted to him he couldn’t stand it.

“No reason,” answered Bobby, turning back around to face forward.

“You guys are going to be the worst, aren’t you?” Chim asked, sounding tired.

Buck scrunched up his face and looked back at Eddie, and neither of them answered. He could see Hen looking between them both, and after a moment she said, “I’m happy for you guys.” And then to Chim, “but yeah, they’re definitely going to be the worst.”

“Leave them alone,” Bobby called from the front seat, which Buck appreciated. And even though he hadn’t come up with anything as disastrous as this during his hours of overthinking that day, this little preview of what it would be like to work on shift with Eddie was soothing something in him. He’d get to have this, now. All the time.

“Oh shit,” said Eddie, after a minute. “I forgot to return the axe.”

The engine truck left the both of them standing on the sidewalk outside Buck’s loft, where Buck spent three minutes digging around in the bag of his tar-drenched clothes before Eddie remembered he also had a key to Buck’s apartment and let them both in.

It wasn’t quite the triumphant reentry Buck had been imagining when he left for his date—though, at that point he had mostly been thinking about how he hoped Eddie never found out he left two full hours earlier than he needed to. Another ship, sailed.

He’d pictured them stumbling back into his building, unable to keep their hands off each other. Or maybe sharing a dreamy kiss on Eddie’s front stoop.

Instead, he waddled into the loft behind Eddie, wet, chafing, and smelling like hot pavement and woolly mammoth.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he said, so eager to be out of the damp, wet clothes that he didn’t even bother inviting Eddie to join. Eddie had remained mostly unscathed, though he had been up to his thighs in tar; but he knew his way around Buck’s downstairs shower if he wanted to clean off.

By the time Buck emerged from his shower, wearing sweats and feeling less like an excavated fossil, it was to the sight of Eddie, reclined in his bed, waiting for him. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but the rest of him was tucked under Buck’s comforter, so Buck didn’t know what was going on down there. It sent a thrill through him, and he thought: this was normal, now.

Except—there was just one small thing to sort out.

He kneeled on the bed, and crawled up Eddie’s body, until he was face to face; after a moment of staring into Eddie’s ridiculous brown eyes, he leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, and then collapsed onto the bed next to him.

“So,” he said, gracelessly arranging himself under the covers while still trying to stare directly at Eddie’s face. “I’m moving, am I?”

Eddie reached out and turned the light switch off and then shuffled further down the bed so he was mirroring Buck. They’d never done this before; shared Buck’s bed, had pillow talk—but it felt so normal. “I heard your lease is up in August,” said Eddie.

“Hm,” said Buck, thinking it over. “I heard bringing that up made me seem clingy.”

Eddie slid his hand under the blanket, probing until he reached Buck’s hand and took it. “That’s not what I said,” he repeated, and his voice was so low it was barely a whisper; but it was quiet in the loft, and Buck was only a few inches away, and he’d never been so attuned to one person’s movements in his life.

“It’s okay,” Buck said, watching as Eddie brought his other hand up and used both of his thumbs to knead a massage into Buck’s palm, where the axe handle had agitated his callouses. “I know what I am.”

“Would you let me finish?” Eddie raised their hands and pressed a soft kiss onto Buck’s fingers, and it was so tender that Buck kind of felt like he wanted to cry. “Why do you cling?”

Buck furrowed his brows at Eddie, but he seemed to be waiting for an actual answer, so eventually he said, “uh, because I don’t want people to leave me.”

Eddie nodded, like he was quizzing Buck and he got an answer right. “And when do you cling?”

Buck thought back to his worst moments, the times in which his unreciprocated instinct to grab hold tightly and never let go reared its ugly head. Watching Maddie leave for Boston, both times; standing outside the airport doors as Abby walked away; looking at Taylor and knowing he’d have to say the words I kissed someone else; noticing when Tommy started looking at him differently.

“When I think people are going to leave me,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. He didn’t want to think about all of that hurt, here in his bed, with Eddie. He didn’t want the sadness to reach his happy place. But Eddie’s words were so gentle, and Buck would follow him anywhere, even down this line.  

“Right,” said Eddie, shuffling closer to Buck under the covers. “So, if I say you don’t have to cling, it’s because . . .” He raised his eyebrows, waiting for Buck to finish the sentence.

Eddie’s legs tangled with Buck’s, like he was using his limbs to tie them together, and it gave Buck the courage to answer.

“Because . . . you’re not going to leave me?” he guessed.

Eddie nodded his head up and down. “Bingo,” he whispered, like a dork. Like the love of his life.

“Hey,” said Buck, scrunching up his face. “I think I love you.”

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

“You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think we should go pick up chicks.”

Buck used their interlocked hands to shove Eddie back on the bed, where he slumped flat onto the pillow, laughing.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Buck declared. “Just for that I am going to go pick up chicks. Or dudes. Someone who’s nice to me.”

“God help us all,” said Eddie. “You have the worst taste in dates.”

“We’re on a date,” Buck reminded him. “I’m literally in bed with you right now.” He meant to sound annoyed about it but his voice didn’t cooperate.

“I’m an anomaly. Everyone else you’ve dated has been terrible.”

“You were friends with Tommy.”

“Not anymore.”

“You barely knew Natalia,” Buck added.

“She was way too happy about you dying,” Eddie griped.

“Taylor and I—”

“You were never going to make it after she pissed Bobby off.”

“Well, Abby—”

“Don’t even get me started on that vieja.”

“What about Fred?”

“Who the fuck is Fred?” Eddie asked. He rolled back over to face Buck and found him smirking.

Eddie shoved Buck’s arm, but he didn’t apologize. “Come on, like your dating history is any better?”

“I never said it was,” Eddie conceded.

“What about with men?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, now you’ve been on your first date with a guy. How’d it go? How did it rank?” He rolled onto his side again, too. It was so fun having Eddie there—he felt like a kid having his best friend sleepover. “Would you do it again?” And then a moment later, added, “I mean, like, with me, specifically. Not would you, like, download Grindr.”

“Buck.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

Under the covers, Buck kicked Eddie’s leg. And then he just left it on there, resting on him. “You’re planning the next date,” he told Eddie. “This shit is hard.”

“Is it?” Eddie asked, waggling his eyebrows. “Are you trying to start something?” The space under the covers, between their bodies, had gotten considerably warmer.

And Buck didn’t have to be the responsible one anymore.

He inched closer to Eddie. “I can’t believe you’re such a horndog.”

“I can’t believe I’ve been naked in your bed for this long and you haven’t done anything about it.”

And oh, okay. Buck rolled over until he was half on top of Eddie, so could grind into him, his lips finding Eddie’s neck.

After all, the date wasn’t over. They had all night.

And neither of them were going to leave.