When It Comes Back to You

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/56857483.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: 9-1-1 (TV)
Relationship: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Characters: Evan "Buck" Buckley, Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Christopher Diaz (9-1-1
TV), Howie "Chimney" Han, Henrietta "Hen" Wilson, Bobby Nash,
Eddie Diaz's Parents (9-1-1 TV), Shannon Diaz
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different
First Meeting, First Love, Falling In Love, Break Up, Angst, Fluff and
Angst, Second Chances, Internalized Homophobia, Implied/Referenced
Homophobia, Eddie Diaz Has Bad Parents (9-1-1 TV), Emotional
Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Self-Hatred, Eddie Diaz is a Mess
(9-1-1 TV), Eddie Diaz Is Not Okay (9-1-1 TV), Made For Each Other,
Angst with a Happy Ending, Eddie Diaz Needs a Hug (9-1-1 TV),
Mentioned Shannon Diaz, Mentioned Abby Clark, Past Evan "Buck"
Buckley/Abby Clark, Regret, Forgiveness, Catholic Guilt, Evan "Buck"
Buckley Loves Eddie Diaz, Soft Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Soft Evan
"Buck" Buckley, Soft Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, Fear, Love
Confessions, Getting Back Together, Shame, Boys In Love, POV Eddie
Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Crying, Lots of Crying, emotional boys in love, Past
and Present Timelines, Eddie And Shannon Are Not Married, 9-1-1 (TV)
Season 2
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2024-06-23 Words: 21,128 Chapters: 1/1
 When It Comes Back to You
by giselleslash

Summary

Eddie falls in love with Evan when he’s nineteen. He falls in love with Buck when he’s
twenty-seven.

And he loves him all the years in between.

(or the one where Eddie and Buck meet when they work together on Eddie’s uncle’s ranch,
and again when Eddie walks into the 118 eight years later.)

Notes

I’ve messed with the timeline on this one, folks. I’ve bumped up Buck’s leaving home by a
couple years (from 2012 to 2010) so I can fit Christopher being born into their timelines, and
Eddie still showing up at the 118 in 2018. Also, the fandom wiki has both of them being the
same age. I was always operating under the assumption Eddie was older than Buck by a
couple years, but, whatever. Here we are. I've decided to make them both be born in 1991.
And I’m sure no one cares in the least because I know I don’t when I read fics (I'm just all,
yayyy, clappy hands, fics!!), but apparently I care a lot when I’m writing them. WHO
KNEW??

**Eddie is messed up in this - internalized homophobia, self-shame/hatred, fear, his parents

🩷
are shitty, so if that is something you want to avoid or tread lightly around I just wanted
everyone to be aware of it.

See the end of the work for more notes

Eddie falls in love for the first time when he’s nineteen.

He falls hard and fast for a beautiful boy with long legs and blue eyes.

He’s a little over a year out of high school and still lost, still working for his uncle on his
ranch outside of El Paso. He doesn’t know what he’s doing or who he is because he’s been
trying to be everything for everyone else his entire life. There are things in his heart he’s kept
hidden, that terrify him if he lets himself think about them. There’s so much he wants but he’s
never been able to allow himself to be selfish enough to want those things out loud. He
knows he’s wound too tightly, and all those things will eventually break him into jagged
pieces, but he hasn’t been able to let go.

But then that beautiful boy shows up looking for work not knowing anything about ranching,
but willing to work and learn, who’s just as lost and alone as him. Eddie takes one look at
him and knows he’ll love him with every piece of his fragile, confused heart and that he’ll
change everything.

Everything.

~*~

Eddie clenches his fist over the steering wheel and takes a deep breath.

He can do this. He’s got this. It’s just a new job.

And a new city.

And a new life.

And about a thousand miles from everything that’s familiar.

But this is what he needed to do, for himself, and for Christopher.

Especially for Christopher. He needs a father who’s whole, who’s good in his soul, and he
wasn’t that back in El Paso. Too much happened there, too many bad memories. He’d never
felt like he could move forward there, or be the person he’s supposed to be. He’d only felt
stifled, sad.

He needs to start over and LA is the place to do it. He’ll be one of thousands who do the
same thing every year, but he’s okay with that. He’s going to make this work. He has to,
because if he can’t start over here where the hell is he supposed to go?

He takes another deep breath and gets out of his truck. It’s now or never.

His new captain greets him when he steps into the station. Captain Bobby Nash. From their
first meeting Eddie had a good feeling about him and he’s the reason he decided to choose
the 118. He hopes it’s the right decision. It feels right though, something about Bobby and
this station makes him feel good, and he’s trying to go with what his gut is telling him rather
than overthinking every little thing until he inevitably makes the wrong choice.

He made the worst choice in his life by overthinking, by letting his self-doubt and fear ruin
him, he can’t let that happen again.

He’s introduced to Chimney, no explanation for the nickname, and Hen, short for Henrietta -
but don’t call her that if you expect her to answer, and Eddie likes them.

He likes them.

There’s an easiness to all three of them that feels like relief to Eddie. Chim cracks a joke and
Hen rolls her eyes and tells Eddie to ignore him while Bobby just chuckles.

Eddie can do this. He can belong here.

Then Bobby says, “You haven’t met Buck, I can’t wait to introduce you. I think the two of
you will be good partners.”

Partners.

He likes the sound of that. He’s missed having a team, having back-up, like he did in the
army. There are a thousand and one things he doesn’t miss about the army, but the bonds of
partnership isn’t one of them. And if Bobby thinks they’ll work well together he can’t wait to
meet him.

Bobby asks Hen and Chim if they’ve seen Buck yet this morning. Hen says that he was still
in his jeep, talking to Abby, she says with a raised eyebrow and a look. Chim just shakes his
head, and Bobby frowns, obviously there’s a story there. Eddie’s not going to ask, he doesn’t
want to come off as a gossip right from the start, even though he’s inherited his abuela’s flair
for nosiness.

Before the conversation can go further someone tall runs by him and into the locker room
calling out, “I’m not late, Bobby! I’m right on time!”

“That was Buck,” Bobby laughs, then calls out to him, “Come back here!”

The guy drops his bag on the bench and then turns around to come out of the locker room.

“I’m not late.”

All the air leaves Eddie’s body in a painful rush when he sees Buck’s face.

No, not Buck.

“Evan?”

Evan stops in his tracks and stares at him. Those eyes. Those blue blue eyes. They stare at
him and Eddie is nineteen again falling through that bright blue. Falling and falling and
falling.
“Buck,” Evan says. “It’s Buck now.”

“Buck?”

“There were three other Evans at the academy, so–”

His voice is so modulated. Cold. It isn’t the voice Eddie knows.

The voice he loved.

“Buck.”

“Yeah.”

Eddie can’t stop looking at Evan, Buck, can’t stop looking for the gangly, long-limbed boy he
fell in love with. Who he still loves despite all of his best efforts. Whose memory he’s been
chasing and trying to get over at the same time.

“Eddie–”

“You two know each other?”

Bobby’s voice accidentally trips over Buck’s and his eyes move away from Eddie to Bobby,
leaving Eddie momentarily untethered, cut loose from his hold.

“Yeah,” Buck says. “Yeah. We used to work together.”

Work together.

Work.

But Eddie can’t expect him to answer the way he would have.

Yeah, we know each other. His lips were the first ones I kissed that meant anything. His hands
were the first ones to touch me with the love I ached for and a gentleness that made me cry.
His body was the only one I mapped with my lips, my fingertips, until I knew it better than my
own. His love is what brought me to life.

“Evan worked at my uncle’s ranch.”

“I thought the ranch was in Montana,” Chim says, confused.

“It was. I worked at both.”

“Couldn’t get enough of those cows, huh?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Eddie can’t stop looking at Evan, at how he’s grown into himself, but how there’s still the
ghost of his Evan staring back at him. He had always overwhelmed Eddie when they were
together. He could never make himself look away, but looking at him had also made him
ache. He was always breathless when he was near, and filled with wild, crazy love for him.

And looking at him now, all these years later, it’s still there pulsing inside of him as frantic
and unbearable as ever.

“The cows loved him,” Eddie says inanely.

“A real cow whisperer, huh?” Hen teases, and Buck gives her a small grin.

“Not at first,” Eddie says. “He nearly got kicked in the balls on his first day.”

Eddie hadn’t meant to share that, but Evan bursts out in loud laughter and he’s instantly
happy he did. He’s missed that bright, goofy laugh so so much.

“Eddie pulled me out of the way and literally saved my balls.”

“And your future children,” Chim throws in.

“My uncle put me in charge of the gringo, I wasn’t about to get my ass chewed out for letting
him be an idiot.”

For the first time Evan looks at him and smiles, truly smiles, and Eddie’s heart thumps in his
chest as he smiles back. Maybe Evan doesn’t hate him. The idea that he did has terrified him,
and broken his heart, for nearly eight years.

Maybe there’s hope.

“This is perfect then,” Bobby says kindly. “You’re already used to working together, the
transition to partners will be easy.”

Eddie only wishes that were true.

“Sure, Cap,” Evan says, voice anything but sure.

“So, Abby, huh?” Chim asks.

“What?”

Evan’s eyes haven’t left Eddie’s, like he can’t believe he’s really here in front of him, like
he’s not sure he wants him to be, so when Chim asks him a question he has to blink and look
away from Eddie before he can answer him.

“Abby? On the phone? Hen said she heard you talking to her through your open window on
her way into the station. Any news on when she’ll be back?”

“Oh. Uh, no,” Evan says. “She’s in Morocco, I guess.”

“Who’s Abby?” Eddie blurts out.

It’s honestly none of his business, but he needs to know.

“She’s my–”

Evan just stops talking when he looks back over at Eddie and catches his eye again, so Chim
answers for him.

“His girlfriend? Life partner? Cohabitation buddy?”

Evan scowls in Chim’s general direction.

“She’s my girlfriend,” he finally says.

“Oh.” Is all Eddie can say before Chim’s words catch up with him. “You live with her?”

“Uh. Yeah. Well, I live at her place while she’s traveling. Her mom recently died and she’s
been taking some time for herself.”

“For six months,” Hen says under her breath.

Eddie looks over at her and she just shakes her head and frowns.

Six months. Gone for six months and Evan’s held on? She must really be something for him
to hold onto her for so long, so tightly. He’d let Eddie go so easily. Eddie had said no, and the
next day he was gone.

And Eddie’s been missing him ever since. Grieving the loss of him.

“Must be serious.”

“Yeah, I love her.”

“Baby’s first real relationship,” Chim adds.

Eddie swallows, the pain in his chest overwhelming. When he looks away from Chim and
back to Evan he sees something in his eyes - shame, maybe? Embarrassment that Chim
thinks it’s his first real relationship, that Eddie knows now that he obviously never mentioned
the two of them to his co-workers if Chim thinks this is his first– his first love?

Well, maybe it is. Maybe Eddie wasn’t Evan’s first love like he thought he was. Maybe it was
all just in his head.

“Abby’s not my first relationship,” Evan says. “I’ve had other relationships.”

“If you define relationship as an hour in a stolen engine, then sure.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Bobby cuts in. “We don’t need to rehash Buck’s past misadventures.”

Evan glances over at Eddie then turns away to head back into the locker room.

“I’ve gotta get ready,” he says over his shoulder.

Eddie wants to follow him. He has no idea what he’d even say to him, but he doesn’t want to
let him out of his sight. He’s afraid he’ll disappear and he’ll be lost to him again.

He doesn’t want to lose him all over again.

But Bobby puts his hand on Eddie’s arm and tells him he’ll walk him through the station,
give him a more thorough tour than he did the day Eddie came in to interview with him.
Eddie can only follow, but before he gets too far away he looks back and finds Evan staring
at him through the glass of the locker room wall.

Eddie’s not sure how he’s going to do this.

~*~

2010

“Why do I have to babysit him?”

“Because no one else wants to do it, and you don’t have any say in the matter.”

Eddie just huffs and mounts his horse. Of course he gets the grunt work, everyone else has
years of experience and he’s just the dumb kid who only got hired because his uncle owns the
ranch. Now he’s got to spend all his time teaching some random inexperienced idiot. He has
no idea why his uncle even hired him in the first place.

He rides over to the north holding pen where his uncle apparently left the guy. When he gets
close enough he finds the moron coming up behind one of the cattle, trying to pet it of all
things.

Jesus Christ.

Eddie kicks his heels and gets over to the guy in time to reach down and yank him back just
as the cow kicks out with one of her back legs.

“Don’t come up behind them, you’ll get kicked in the balls. Or worse.”

“Or worse? What’s worse than getting my balls kicked off?”

The guy sounds horrified at the prospect and Eddie’s about to tell him death by a swift kick to
the head is what’s worse, but when he looks down the guy's looking up at him and Eddie
loses all ability to speak.

All he can think is blue.

A beautiful sky blue.

And a mouth. A full red mouth.

Eddie draws in a quick gasp of air at the thought that comes screaming through his head next.
He’s never felt such an instant white hot bolt of want before. He has no idea what he even
wants, he just knows he wants it. He wants it with a desperation he doesn’t know what to do
with. He can feel his face heating up, and he’s finding it hard to breathe.

“Forget it, I don’t want to know,” the guy says. “Thanks for saving my balls though, I
appreciate it. You must be Eddie, right? Your uncle said Eddie would come for me.”

“Uh yeah, that’s me. I’m Eddie.”

“Hey, Eddie, I’m Evan.”

Evan shoves his hand towards Eddie and he finds himself reaching out for it. He doesn’t want
to be rude. When he touches Evan’s hand to shake it he feels a shock of electricity run up his
arm and he snatches his hand back almost immediately. Evan looks at him funny and he feels
like a complete fucking idiot.

“Sorry,” he says as he rubs his hand on his thigh. “Sweaty hand.”

“Okay,” Evan shrugs. “So, what’re we gonna do first?”

Eddie concentrates on getting down from his horse to give himself some time to compose
himself. He doesn’t want to say anything else stupid if he can help it. But once he’s on his
feet he realizes that’s a mistake too because he finds he has to look up a little at Evan, see him
smiling down at him, and to take in his bright, eager face. He’s tall and gangly, all long limbs,
and so beautiful Eddie is having trouble breathing again.

He’s never felt so scattered, so unraveled.

He’s always had so much control over himself, he’s always kept a tight hold on everything so
he can be there for his mother and his sisters, so he can be the man his father wants him to be.
But he feels fucking shattered right now looking at a beautiful boy with blue eyes and a
sunshine smile. He can taste the want on his tongue. It’s a wholly unfamiliar feeling.

Evan is looking at him expectantly so he tries to gather his thoughts.

“Well, first things first. Have you ever been on a horse before?” Eddie finally manages to ask.

“Nope,” Evan says happily.

“Are you serious?”

“As a cow kick.”

It takes a second, but then Eddie starts to laugh. Evan just grins at him, clearly pleased with
himself at the sound.

“Okay, funny guy. You don’t know a thing about cattle, you can’t ride a horse, and my uncle
hired you why?”

“I’m charming?”
“I highly doubt that.”

“I’ll just have to change your mind then.”

The sentence itself isn’t particularly flirty, but the way Evan says it makes it feel flirty, and
Eddie feels himself blush.

“I guess you will.”

He says it almost belligerently, like a challenge. It makes Evan blink, like he’s surprised he’s
been called out, but he laughs about it and Eddie suddenly wants to hear that laughter all the
time.

“We better get to work then,” Evan says, smile wide.

Eddie spends the rest of the day showing Evan around the ranch and doing his best to keep
him from getting injured. He’s pretty much a disaster, and he still has no idea why his uncle
hired him, but he hasn’t laughed, or had this much fun, in a long time. Maybe ever.

Evan does everything wrong, but he tries. He really tries. And he’s eager to please and get
Eddie’s approval, which he will not admit does something to his stomach when it happens.
He’s willing to learn, and he’s strong, despite his skinny frame.

And he talks.

He talks and talks and talks.

Eddie’s never met someone who talks as much as him. His family is rather taciturn overall,
Adriana is the chattiest one of them all and even she isn’t as bad as Evan. At first he thought
he’d find it annoying, but as the day goes by he realizes he kind of really likes the sound of
Evan’s voice. Half the time he’s not really even listening, he’s just letting the words wash
over him. It’s soothing, in a way.

And Evan doesn’t seem one bit deterred by Eddie’s half-listening and mumbled replies, some
of which only consist of a, ‘mhm’ or a grunt. He just smiles and keeps talking.

Eddie is fascinated.

There was one point where he had to shove his hands in his pockets to keep himself from
reaching out and touching Evan’s mouth with his fingertips. He wanted to feel his words
vibrate over his skin, to find out if the words would sink down into his bones.

He has no idea what made him think that. Or want that. But he’s glad he’s the one who’s
supposed to be showing Evan the ropes, leading him around, because at least he has an
excuse to be near him. If he weren’t training him he’s afraid he’d be following Evan like a
helpless puppy wanting nothing more than his attention.

He’s dizzy with it. So fucking dizzy.

After Eddie says goodnight to Evan and leaves him in the bunk house to head home, he’s not
staying at the ranch like the other guys do, he drives home in a complete daze. He’s not sure
how he gets home without driving himself into a ditch, actually, but he does it. His confusion
and wonder must show on his face because his mom asks him what’s wrong, and Sophie
greets him with a scrunched nose and a, ‘what happened to you?’

And Eddie doesn’t know. He has no idea. He woke up this morning to another monotonous
day of just doing the same thing over and over, and now here he is, twelve hours later, in a
world turned fucking upside down.

So maybe he does know what happened.

Evan Buckley happened.

~*~

2018

“So, you’ve worked with Buck before?” Bobby asks as he leads him through the bunkroom.

“Uh, yeah. Years ago. We were so young.”

“”Was it a good experience?”

Bobby’s looking at him hopefully and Eddie doesn’t exactly want to dash that hope in his
very first hour on shift by saying, well, define ‘good’. Does it mean falling so in love with
him he’s never been able to love like that again? Or maybe feeling so out of control and wild
and reckless that it made him breathless and so so alive? If it means leaving him shattered
with a heart broken and pulverized into a bloody pulp, then yeah. Sure. It was a good
experience.

It was fucking fantastic.

Eddie just nods instead.

“It was. We were good friends, we worked well together.”

“That’s great to hear. I’ve been wanting to get a partner for Buck for a while. I think this is
going to work out. You’ll fit right in here, Eddie.”

Eddie feels warmth bloom inside his chest at Bobby’s confidence in him.

“Thanks, Cap. I really hope so.”

He hopes Evan will allow it, will let them be partners again in some capacity.

He never thought he’d see him again, he can’t let him slip away a second time.

*
When Bobby finishes up with the tour of the station they head up to the loft where everyone
is sitting down to breakfast. Eddie takes an empty seat across from Evan and lets himself
look at him. He’s doing his best to ignore looking at Eddie so he’s free to look his fill.

His throat clogs up as he notices the changes in the face he once knew better than his own
because he’d spent endless hours staring at it, kissing those lips, the birthmark, running his
fingers over every inch of it, and memorizing it all. He aches for the loss of it, for all that he's
missed. If only he hadn’t been so scared he could’ve grown up with that face, could’ve been
witness to every change.

Now he’s left staring, trying to take in every change and memorize it all over again.

They’re passing platters of food around the table and Eddie uses the distraction to try to draw
Evan’s attention.

“How long have you been with the 118, Evan?”

“Buck. I told you, it’s Buck now.”

Eddie closes his eyes, sighs. He’s going to screw this all up, he knows it, and then he’ll have
nothing.

“Buck,” he corrects. “I’m sorry. It’ll take some getting used to, I promise I’ll try harder to
remember.”

“You promise a lot of things.”

It’s said under his breath, but the whole table hears it. It rings out like a church bell and Eddie
can feel everyone’s eyes on them, can feel the heat of embarrassment rush through him.

“So, Eddie,” Hen says into the tense silence. “El Paso, right? Cap said you just moved here.”

“Yeah. Um. I did. My son and I, actually. We needed a change. Plus his mom is here taking
care of her mother. It felt like a good place to go.”

Eddie keeps his eyes on Evan– Buck. He expects him to react to the mention of Christopher
and Shannon, but he doesn’t, instead he focuses his eyes on Eddie, face blank.

“I thought you’d never leave El Paso.”

“I finally got the courage to do what I should’ve done years ago.”

Bobby looks over at him with concern.

“Did you not have a good situation there?” He asks, but then quickly realizes he might be
overstepping by asking such a personal question. “I’m sorry, I’m prying. Ignore that.”

“No, don’t apologize.” Eddie shrugs. “It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t where I was meant to be,
and it took me far too long to realize it.”
He can feel Buck’s eyes on him, he always could.

“Well we’re glad you’re here now,” Bobby says kindly.

“Thanks,” Eddie says. “I am too.”

Buck pushes his chair back from the table with a loud screech. Eddie watches as he gathers
up his plate and glass and heads into the kitchen. He looks around to see if anyone else thinks
it was as abrupt as Eddie did, but they’re all eating and talking and nothing seems amiss.
Eddie can’t eat the rest of his food though. He just quietly sits at the table and hopes the
alarm goes off.

~*~

2010

“You’re hopeless,” Eddie laughs.

Evan looks over his shoulder at him and smiles, lasso held loosely in his hand.

“Just you wait, I’ll be in the next rodeo before you know it.”

“You can barely stay on your horse, how are you gonna rope cattle on top of that?”

Evan turns around and tosses the lasso in Eddie’s general direction. He somehow manages to
get it looped around Eddie’s shoulders and he laughs in delight as he pulls to tighten the rope
around him and yank Eddie towards him.

“I’ve got a good teacher,” he says when Eddie stumbles forward into him. Evan’s arms go
around him to keep him from falling on his face. Eddie shivers at the touch.

“I’m not a miracle worker,” Eddie says quietly, his face far too close to Evan’s.

Evan takes a moment to answer, he’s staring at Eddie’s lips and it’s driving him mad.

“I dunno, I think you might be.”

“No, I’m pretty sure I’m not,” Eddie mumbles as he steps back from him. He can’t breathe
very well and getting some space between them might help.

He’s finding himself breathless a lot in the past couple of weeks.

Breathless and dizzy.

And horny as fuck, if he’s being honest with himself. Not like he wasn’t constantly jerking
off already, he’s nineteen after all. But now? Constantly thinking about Evan? And his lips,
and his long legs, and his absolutely fucking stupid laugh? It’s making him nearly crazy. He’s
pretty sure he’s close to breaking his own damn dick off with how often he’s jerking off.

He thinks Evan knows it too.

He’s always looking at him, always saying really lame things that Eddie suspects are his idea
of flirting, and he hates that it’s working. It’s all working.

But he doesn’t want it to, it fucking terrifies him. He’s tried so hard to push back against what
he feels when he’s near Evan. He can’t feel those feelings, he isn’t allowed. He thinks about
what his abuelo would say, or his father and uncle, and about the way everyone at school
treated the one boy who dared to be himself.

Alex Martin.

Eddie remembers his soft brown eyes and kind smile, the way talking to him in chemistry
class made his stomach dip and fall in a thrilling kind of way. But he also remembers the
scorn, the jokes, the way they bullied and harassed him until one day he was gone. Moved
away. Eddie had gone home and cried the day he heard.

He remembers wanting to hold his hand.

And now there’s Evan, and he wants to hold his hand too - and kiss his mouth, and slip his
hand up under the back of his shirt to feel the warm smooth skin of his lower back. The way
his stomach dips and falls now is so much worse than in chemistry class.

He’s constantly pulling back his hand from reaching out, holding his lips back from a smile,
looking away from Evan’s bright laughing face, trying to block out Evan’s silly flirting and
the way his eyes bore straight into Eddie’s.

He’s trying so hard.

And Evan’s doing his best to make all of Eddie’s desperate trying as difficult as possible.

He stands too close, laughs too loud, smiles too much. He reaches out and grabs Eddie’s
shoulder, he bumps into them when they walk side by side, he ruffles Eddie’s hair because he
knows it bugs him.

He’s slowly dying from want.

The lasso is still around him so Evan steps closer to him, back into his space, and when he
leans in and reaches around him to slip the rope off his lips briefly brush against Eddie’s ear.
It feels like an electrical shock, and before he knows what he’s doing he’s shoving Evan away
from him, hard enough to send him flying back onto his ass.

“Oh god. I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting–”

Eddie holds his hands to his chest to keep himself from reaching out a hand to Evan. He just
stands there and looks down at him, expects to find anger and scorn, but only finds him
looking up at him with something knowing in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, he doesn’t know what else to do.

Evan just gets up from the ground and brushes himself off. He calmly walks over to Eddie
and hands him the lasso.
“Maybe one day you won’t push so hard.”

That’s it. That’s all he says before he turns and walks away from him.

Eddie feels tears prickling his eyes and he doesn’t know why. He feels caught out, seen, and
he doesn’t like it. He wishes Evan had pushed back, yelled, anything but what he just did. He
throws the lasso at Evan’s retreating back like a child having a tantrum. He can’t help it. He
wants to fling himself to the ground along with it, sink into the goddamn dirt and maybe then
he wouldn’t be filled with this vibrating something he can’t calm.

Maybe then he’d have a bit of peace.

They come to a sort of silent compromise - Evan keeps his distance, and Eddie pretends like
he doesn’t ache from the loss.

He does his best to keep teaching him the ropes, but now that Evan’s stopped flirting with
Eddie, has stopped goofing around, he’s picked up everything far too quickly for Eddie’s
liking because it means he’ll soon have no excuse for being close to him. He suspects Evan’s
much smarter than he’s let on, that he’s caught onto everything pretty much from the start,
and was only pretending he hadn’t to annoy the fuck out of Eddie. There’s no other reason for
why he’s suddenly far more competent than he has any right to be for someone so new to the
job.

Something tells Eddie that annoying him wasn’t the only reason Evan acted the way he did,
he feels like he hides himself away from others, the bright brilliance of him, and it makes
Eddie impossibly sad.

And feel not so alone.

The both of them hiding pieces of themselves away from the world. Big, huge pieces that
make them who they are, their true selves.

It makes something inside of Eddie yearn to tell Evan everything, and to beg him to tell
Eddie everything in return. He wants to know all the dark corners of Evan, along with all the
bright beautiful ones too.

He thinks- maybe.

Maybe he can have what he wants.

Maybe he can let go.

Maybe.

So now Eddie’s doing exactly what he feared from the start - following Evan around like a
puppy. His uncle has assigned the both of them more duties since clearly Evan is more than
capable and willing to do the work, and Eddie just wants to be wherever he is.
Slowly Evan starts to smile at him again, starts to say things that make Eddie blush, and
instead of looking away he looks him straight in the eye and smiles back, lets Evan see his
blush and hear his laugh.

His chest feels light, like butterflies are fluttering around inside it about to lift him up off his
feet.

He feels like he could take flight.

And that’s only from Evan smiling at him.

One day they’re hauling hay bales out to one of the far fields, Eddie’s driving the truck and
Evan is leaning out the open window holding out his arm and letting it catch the wind.
Eddie’s glad they’re just driving through a field and not on a road because he knows he
spends more time staring at Evan than he does at the stretch of land in front of him. The sun
is shining on him and Eddie wants to look at him forever.

“The first time I kissed a boy I cried.”

Eddie jerks the wheel and the truck swerves to the right. Evan just laughs to himself as he
reaches out with his hand to grab the wheel and straighten it out.

“What?”

Evan lets his hand drag over Eddie’s before he lets the wheel go and sits back against the
seat.

“The first time I kissed a boy I cried,” he repeats. “I kissed him and got so scared I ran away
from him. When I got home I cried.”

“You kissed a boy?”

Eddie’s stopped looking at Evan and is now doggedly staring straight ahead, but he can feel
Evan’s eyes on him.

“Does that bother you?”

“No,” he splutters. “Why would it? Why would it bother me? I don’t care.”

“Okay.”

The amusement in Evan’s voice rings in Eddie’s ears.

“I’m not homophobic,” Eddie says as he finally looks over at Evan. “I had a gay friend in
high school.”

This time, instead of replying, Evan just laughs.

“Why is that funny?”

He can see Evan shrug out of the corner of his eye.

“I dunno, it just is.”

“I’m not homophobic,” he insists again.

“I didn’t say you were.”

“But you’re laughing at me.”

“Only a little.”

Eddie presses down on the brakes and puts the truck in park as soon as it stops. He turns in
his seat so he’s fully facing Evan.

“Why are we even having this conversation anyway?”

“I just wanted you to know.”

“What? That you kissed a boy? I don’t care. Why would I care about that?”

“I think you care about it a whole lot.”

Eddie doesn’t know how to respond to that, because he does care. He cares a whole lot, just
like Evan said. He cares that he’s kissed someone other than him, that he was brave and bold
even though he cried afterward. He still did it, he still had the courage to do it, to know what
it was like.

He kissed a boy and Eddie thinks he’d have done anything to be that boy.

“Whatever, Evan,” he mumbles.

He turns back to put the truck back into drive, but before he can Evan slides across the length
of seat separating them and presses a kiss to the side of Eddie’s jaw.

“Please don’t cry,” he whispers against Eddie’s skin.

He wants to though, he wants to burst into tears, but more than anything he wants Evan’s lips
on his own, so he turns his head and shoves his lips against Evan’s.

It’s the worst kiss imaginable.

It’s a rough smashing of mouths together, nothing more, and he wants to die and melt away,
especially when Evan’s laughter skates across his lips. The shame sets his face on fire and he
starts to pull away, angry and hurt, but Evan grabs him by the face and holds him in place.

“Don’t go,” he says, a smile bright on his face. “That was perfect.”

“That was awful. God. Let me go.”

He can feel himself starting to sweat from the heat of embarrassment, and he reaches up to
wrap his fingers around Evan’s wrists so he can pull his hands away from his face. He wants
to fling himself out of the truck and get as far away from him as he can, but Evan holds on
tight.

“No, it wasn’t,” he insists.

“I just slammed our mouths together, how was that perfect?”

“Because it’s exactly what I did when I first kissed Noah. It was awful, but I kissed a boy,
and it was kind of the most wonderful thing ever.”

“But you cried after it.”

“I was scared, but I was happy too - happier than I’d ever been. All I wanted to do was to kiss
him again, and I’m really hoping that’s all you want to do too.”

Eddie’s heart is pounding in his chest and he’s scared too, he’s petrified, and wants to cry and
run away and also kiss Evan again and never, ever stop.

“I do. I want that too.”

“Good,” Evan smiles. “Because this is the one that counts.”

He holds Eddie’s face steady as he leans in to kiss him again. It’s a soft, slow press of lips, so
gentle compared to Eddie’s attempt. Evan’s lips melt into his and this one is perfect. It’s the
first kiss that’s ever felt right to him, has made him feel aglow, and like he’s about to burst
into a million pieces of light, instead of just mild flutters of something vague and kind of
nice.

He didn’t know it could be like this.

He didn’t know.

And he does start to cry then. He feels the tears roll down his cheeks. When Evan pulls away
his eyes go big and wide, and he sighs and says, ‘Eddie,’ all soft and sweet as he wipes the
tears away with his thumbs, his hands still cradling Eddie’s face.

“I said please don’t cry.”

“I know.” Eddie laughs. He has no idea what emotion is going to win out, he feels like
they’re all scrambling to explode out of him. “I’m sorry,” he says as he wipes at his nose. “I
don’t know what I’m doing.”

“You’re being kissed by a boy.”

He was. And the world didn’t end. God didn’t strike him down. He’s still sitting in his uncle’s
truck in the middle of a field looking at the most beautiful boy he’s ever seen.

And being kissed.

“Is that okay?” Evan asks when Eddie doesn’t say anything.

Eddie can only nod.

“Good, cos I’m gonna do it again.”

This time it’s Eddie who takes Evan’s face in his hands, drags him closer until their lips touch
and he’s set on fire again.

Again and again and again.

He grabs and pulls at Evan, presses closer to him until he’s practically in Evan’s lap and his
hands are up the back of Eddie’s shirt and their lips are almost numb from it all. Eddie’s
panting and grabbing every piece of Evan he can reach, tugging at his shirt and digging his
fingers in like claws in the hopes he’ll never have to let him go.

Eddie’s so lost in Evan’s mouth that he doesn’t even realize what’s happening until Evan
laughs against his lips and he pulls back, flustered and breathing hard, to see one of the cattle
has stuck its head in through Evan’s open window and is attempting to eat Evan’s rolled up
shirt sleeve.

Evan’s laugh is loud and clear and Eddie’s own bursts out of him, louder and happier than it’s
ever been.

“Fucking cockblocker,” Evan says as he tries to shove the cow’s head back out of the
window. Eddie just leans against him, his face pressed into his shoulder, and still laughing.

“Now that cow is homophobic,” Eddie says, and is rewarded with a loud snort of laughter.

Evan slouches down in the seat and lets his head rest on top of Eddie’s.

“What an asshole,” he says, laughter still warm in his voice.

“Mhm,” Eddie hums in agreement as he tangles his fingers with Evan’s.

They just sit quietly for a few minutes while Eddie tries to calm down his rapidly beating
heart, and Evan runs the fingers of his free hand up and down Eddie’s bare forearm. The
touch makes him shiver, and it’s so fucking good.

Eddie wonders if this is what falling in love feels like.

~*~

2018

They work well together, they always did, even when they were both so desperate for one
another they could barely look at each other, they managed to get their work done. Now Buck
won’t even look at him if he doesn’t have to and Eddie’s trying to be okay with it.

But he’s not.

He’s tried over and over again to get Buck to talk to him, to let him explain, but he clearly
doesn’t want to hear it and Eddie doesn’t want to push him. He doesn’t want Buck to hate
him even more than he already does.

He just wishes Buck didn’t give him a horrible kind of hope every once in a while.

Like when Eddie volunteered on his first shift to be the one to take the live grenade out of
Charlie’s leg, Buck had sat beside him in the ambulance and never left his side. Eddie could
feel his stare then, his eyes boring into the side of his face, just when he couldn’t look back at
him. When it was all over he risked it, he’d looked back, and found Buck still looking at him
with such profound sadness in his eyes that Eddie felt his knees give just the littlest bit.

“You were in the military?” he’d asked, like he couldn’t believe it.

And he probably couldn’t. When Buck knew him he was softer, kinder, someone who would
never have wanted to hold a gun in his hand for any reason.

But then things changed.

“I was a medic.”

“Still,” Buck said quietly. “You were always so–”

“Soft? Always such a coward?”

The bitterness had been clear in his voice and Buck flinched. Eddie had truly hated himself in
that moment because Buck kept looking at him with those fathomless blue eyes and broke
him with a handful of words.

“No,” Buck shook his head. “Gentle. You were gentle and sweet. And so beautiful.”

“Yeah. Well. I was also a coward.”

He’d had to walk away from Buck because he couldn’t stand him being disappointed that the
boy he knew was long gone. But as he walked away he could’ve sworn he heard Buck say–

“I was a coward too.”

And there are all kinds of other small moments when Buck will forget he hates him and will
smile or laugh at something he’s said, or throw out a casual, ‘oh, Eddie tells me that too,’
when Hen complains about Karen telling her she does the dishes wrong, or a, ‘Eddie doesn’t
like walnuts,’ when Cap makes a salad with them and Buck picks them out of Eddie’s bowl
and puts them in his own before handing the bowl to Eddie. All these things he used to know
about Eddie and the way they used to be, like they’re still there in the foreground of his mind
just waiting to pop out.

Eddie loves being known by Buck like that, he always has, but now he’s not entirely sure
Buck even wants to know him like that anymore. Those things just pop out without him
knowing he’s even doing it because Eddie thinks if he did know he’d stop himself, and Eddie
doesn’t want him to stop because it proves they were real. That it wasn’t just some beautiful
dream Eddie once had that he’s never been able to wake up from.

He knows the rest of the team notices Buck’s coolness towards him because it’s in complete
opposition to the way he is with them. He’s effusive with his love for them, none of them are
in any doubt of their place in his heart. With Eddie he’s perfectly polite, which, when you
know Buck, is damning. They’ll look at him with sympathy when Buck pulls out that polite
coolness, but they’re kind enough not to ask him about it.

Sometimes Eddie wishes they would just so he could spill his guts out on the floor in front of
them. Tell them how he let Buck go even though he was the only real thing in his life, tell
them how he still loves him, and beg them to help him figure out what he can do to make
Buck toss that politeness aside. He wants them to ask so he can ask them to tell him every
single thing they know about Buck now, who he is now, so maybe Eddie can at least get his
friend back.

He just wants his friend back.

It turns out all he needed to make that happen is Christopher and a little earthquake.

Eddie spends the day worrying about Christopher, and Buck spends the day reassuring him
about the safety of LA schools and how Chris is in the best, safest place possible. At the end
of their shift, late into the evening, Buck looks at him rushing to get ready to leave so he can
pick up Chris.

“Let me drive you.”

Eddie stops shoving his uniform into his duffle and looks up at him.

“I can drive.”

“I know, but let me. You’re a mess right now.”

“Are you sure?”

“I wouldn’t have offered otherwise.”

Eddie feels his heart settle inside his chest.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

He follows Buck to his jeep and gets into the passenger seat. They’re quiet as Buck
maneuvers them through the chaos of the city towards Christopher’s school.

“We’re almost there.”

“I know,” Eddie says as he glances over at him, sees him concentrating on the road. “Thanks
again.”
“No problem.”

“You were right, I was a mess. I’d probably have gotten myself into an accident.”

“You were a mess?”

Buck looks over at him and Eddie tells him the truth.

“Being with you calms me. It always has.”

Buck doesn’t say anything, just turns his eyes back to the road, but Eddie thinks he sees his
face soften a bit. They go back to their quiet driving and it reminds Eddie of when they’d go
out on those hot Texas nights and just drive and drive and drive. Eddie would hold Buck’s
hand across the stretch of the truck seat and smile to himself as he looked out his window and
let the wind rush over his face. He’d loved him so wildly, so fiercely, that he imagined even
the big Texas sky couldn’t hold all of his love.

In a moment of pure happiness he’d said it to Buck, and he’d smiled and laughed and asked,
“You love me more than all the stars in the sky, Eddie Diaz?” and Eddie had told him he did.

That same night Buck drove them to a tattoo parlor in El Paso and they each got a star
tattooed low on their right hip where no one else knew it lived but them.

“I wanted to meet Christopher.”

Eddie’s pulled out of the memory of the way that star looked on the deep v of Buck’s hip, and
how many times his lips had kissed it, by Buck’s words.

“What?”

“I wanted to meet Christopher and I didn’t know how to ask you, so I figured this was the
easiest way.”

“I’d never have said no to you if you’d asked.”

“Yeah. Well.” Buck shrugs. “I wasn’t sure. I haven’t been very– I haven’t been kind to you,
Eddie.”

“It’s okay, I get it. You have every right to hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” Buck’s voice is loud in the small confines of the jeep. “I don’t hate you,”
he repeats more quietly.

“But I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I hated me, for a really really long time. I still do.”

“Well, you shouldn’t. It was a long time ago, it’s all in the past.”

Eddie wants to tell him it’s not in the past for him, that he’s tried, but he hasn’t been able to
let Buck go - doesn’t think he ever will. The love he has for him has shaped him in every
way, the only thing that compares is being Christopher’s dad.
Buck and Christopher, his very foundations.

“I have a lot of regrets, Buck.”

“But you have Christopher. He’s worth all of those regrets, isn’t he?”

Eddie wants to reach out and take Buck’s hand just like they used to do, because of course he
understands that. He hasn’t even met Christopher, but he knows. Christopher makes it all
worth it.

“I joined the army for him.”

Buck looks over at him.

“Why?”

“There were complications with his birth, he has cerebral palsy.”

“Oh god, Eddie. You must’ve been so scared.”

“I was terrified. There were so many medical expenses and I didn’t know what to do. You
know how lost I was, I had no direction, and I thought that was the only way I could get him
the care he needed. So I joined the army. I left him with his mom and shipped out, and I
regret it every day.”

Buck’s pulled over to the side of the road, Eddie didn’t even realize they stopped. And Buck
reaches out to him, takes his hand, and Eddie closes his eyes so all he can do is feel Buck’s
hand warm around his own.

“You did what you thought you needed to do.”

“I did all the wrong things, Buck. Every choice I made was the wrong one - at least all of the
important ones. I think the only right one I ever made was coming here. It led me back to
you.”

Eddie’s voice must be too earnest, a little too needy, because Buck clears his throat and pulls
his hand out of Eddie’s grasp.

“We should get to Christopher,” he says as he puts the jeep back into gear and pulls back onto
the road.

Eddie curls his hands into fists, the loss of Buck’s touch makes his bones ache.

When they finally get to the school Eddie rushes inside, and just like Buck said, Chris is
perfectly fine. He’s the last one there, but he’s safe. Eddie thanks the teacher for staying with
Chris after he’s pulled him into a tight hug and has felt his smile against his shoulder.

He can finally breathe.

Until he gets back outside and sees the way Buck looks at Christopher when he sees him for
the first time. He sees the sharp inhale of breath and the way he blinks like he used to when
he was trying not to cry, and then the soft smile that spreads across his face when Chris
shouts, ‘hi!’ to him.

He’s standing next to his jeep waiting for them, and when they get closer he opens the back
door for Christopher.

“Chris, this is my– this is Buck.”

“You work with my dad, he talks about you all the time.”

Busted by his seven year old.

A surprised little burst of laughter slips past Buck’s lips as he looks up at Eddie with a raised
eyebrow.

“He does, huh?” he asks as he reaches out to Chris for a fist bump.

“Yeah,” Chris says, taking up the invite and bumping his fist against Buck’s. “You’re his best
friend from when he was a kid.”

The grin that’s been on Buck’s face since he saw Chris slips away, and when he looks up at
Eddie it feels like his eyes are glowing in the goddamn dark the way they slice into him. For
a second he can’t tell what Buck’s thinking and he feels unbalanced.

“You told him about me?” Buck asks, his voice quiet.

“I told him the truth.”

“You’re the best friend Dad’s ever had,” Chris helpfully supplies, and Eddie really wishes his
kid wasn’t so damn friendly. Or chatty.

He’s about to apologize to Buck before he sinks down into the ground from embarrassment
when Buck says–

“He was mine too. The best I ever had.”

Eddie ushers Chris into the backseat to keep himself from reaching out for Buck. He wants to
kiss him and tell him he was his best everything.

He’s quiet the entire ride home, partly because he has no idea how to be normal right now,
but mostly because Chris and Buck won’t shut up. Apparently it only takes thirty minutes to
become best friends.

“I feel like I’ve been replaced,” Eddie finally says when they get home and he lingers in the
open door of the jeep. Chris is already on his way to the front door after having gotten Buck
to promise to go with him to the library so he can check out all of his favorite books.
Buck’s been watching Chris walk to the front door and smiling so when he turns to Eddie the
brightness of that smile coming at him through the dark almost blinds him.

“Replaced?”

“As your best friend.”

Eddie knows it’s a risk to bring the conversation back up, Buck had probably only said what
he did because he had the grace to not want Chris to realize what a friendless loser his father
is, but Buck surprises him.

“Well I think you’re definitely going to end up in second place in the best friend competition
but you’re still in the running at least.”

“I hope so, Buck. I–”

“I want to figure out how to be friends again,” Buck interrupts him. “I’ve missed you.”

Eddie wants to fall to his knees right there in his driveway, but he grips the door instead.

“I’ve missed you too, Buck. So much.”

“Okay, well. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”

The library. Eddie has to admire his kid’s fast work.

“If the library’s still standing.”

Buck laughs and then points at the house.

“Go let your kid in, he’s been standing at the door glaring daggers at you.”

Eddie smiles.

“See you tomorrow.”

~*~

2010

If Eddie thought it was hard to be around Evan before it’s a thousand times worse now that he
knows what it’s like to kiss him. He knows how he feels, how he tastes, and he wants him
constantly.

They spend every waking moment together. Eddie always lingers after work until Evan looks
at him and smiles and asks him if he wants to go for a drive. He gets home in the middle of
the night, or not at all, and his parents keep asking him where he is, what he’s doing, and for
the first time in his entire life he lies to them.

He tells them there’s a girl named Alice, that he met her at a friend’s party, and they like
spending time together. He hates that he’s lying to them, he hates that he feels like his has to,
and above all he hates that he’s too fucking scared to just tell the truth.

Evan thrills him. Everything about him is amazing, and Eddie can’t believe he seems to want
him too, that he’s even the tiniest bit interested in him.

He thinks he’s falling in love.

No, he knows it.

He’s in love with Evan.

There’s no other way to explain what he feels - the hunger for Evan, the need to be with him
every minute, to know his every thought and everything that’s ever happened to him in his
life. The way he feels truly alive for the first time in his life. He’s been walking through a
fog, but now he’s found Evan, a bright burning sun pushing through all that fog and showing
him what his life can be if only he follows his heart.

If he follows Evan.

But still he lies to his parents. Day after day after day. He lies to them, and he lies to himself
that he can keep doing this. He wants to believe he’s strong enough to tell them the truth one
day, because he wants to, more than anything. He wants them to know he loves a boy who is
kind and sweet and who he thinks might just love him too. He wants them to know how
lucky he is, how happy.

Instead he keeps sneaking off with Evan, keeps asking his uncle to send them out together on
chores so he can be alone with him.

He’s never laughed so much, or known someone so completely. It’s only been a little over a
month since they first kissed and yet he feels like if he were asked anything about Evan he
could answer. There’s nothing they haven’t said to each other, whispered to one another as
they laid together in the bed of his uncle's truck under the night sky. The things he’s said to
Evan in the darkness he’s never said to anyone else, never thought he would, and it’s so
freeing to let all of his secrets go. Somehow he knows there’s nothing he could say to Evan
that would surprise him, or shock him, or make him turn away.

Evan is there, right beside him, wanting to know every piece of Eddie in the exact same way
he wants to know everything about him.

And god, the way he makes him feel, the way he touches him, kisses him, lays himself over
him, drives Eddie mad. They kiss until their lips are numb, they’ve run their hands over every
inch of the other, and when Eddie takes Evan’s cock in his mouth or kisses the inside of his
thigh, it’s like a kind of worship in his mind. Evan is a religion he has faith in, one he’ll
believe in its every teaching.

They’ve done things that have blown Eddie’s mind, but they’ve yet to have penetrative sex
because Eddie knows that Evan can sense he’s not ready. Evan’s told him how he’s been with
a couple of guys already - one in high school, one in his brief stint in junior college, one on
his long drive to Texas - and Eddie hates the idea that anyone else has known Evan in that
way. But he’s terrified. He doesn’t want to disappoint Evan, he feels like he’ll be a complete
disaster, but more than anything he knows that once he’s been with Evan in that way he’ll
never be able to want anyone else, that he’ll be so far gone there’ll be no hope for him.

So he’s scared.

Even though he wants.

He wants to give himself to Evan, he wants Evan to know him in every single way, wants
him to know the very core of him. There are times when he wants to open up his own chest
and drag Evan inside of him, why would taking him inside his body in a real way be any
different? He wants to live inside of Evan and have him live inside of him, one of those four
legged, four armed creatures he read about when he was obsessed with Greek mythology in
middle school. The way they lived as one being until they were ripped apart.

Maybe that’s what he’s the most afraid of - being ripped apart from Evan.

Because he knows it’ll happen, they can’t live the rest of their lives in this bubble Eddie’s
made for them. He knows it, and he fears it, and he wishes over and over he were more like
Evan - unafraid to live in his own skin. Eddie knows there are things Evan’s hates about
himself, things he’s whispered into Eddie’s ear at night, but he’s unafraid of who he loves.

He’s loud and free with his affection, and he’s won over all the men at the ranch, including
his uncle. Even Eddie’s father had laughed at his stories when he and his mom had come for
Sunday lunch and Eddie’s uncle invited Evan to join them. Eddie had been terrified for them
to meet, even though he had no doubt in his mind that Evan would keep their secret, he
trusted him completely, but the fear was still there. And maybe it had been partly justified
because even though his father had called Evan a nice young man at the end of the afternoon
as they got in their car to drive home Eddie’s mom had smiled faintly as she agreed and
looked at him with knowing eyes.

Eddie knew then she’d seen everything, how he couldn’t hide his starstruck eyes when he
looked at Evan, or how he smiled too brightly and laughed too loudly at everything he said.

His mom saw.

And he could tell she didn’t like what she saw.

She never said anything straight out to him, but she started to suggest to him more and more
he was needed at home and shouldn’t be out all night with his girl, all while looking through
him with her laser eyes.

“My mom knows,” he finally tells Evan not long after.

“Knows what?”

“About us.”

Evan looks around to make sure they’re alone then pushes him into the stable they just
finished mucking. He takes Eddie’s face in his hands.
“Would that be the worst thing?” he asked gently.

Eddie feels his heartbeat instantly racket up at the thought. It nearly paralyzes him. Evan feels
him tense up and he immediately tries to calm him.

“Okay, okay,” he shushes. “It’s okay. We’ll be more careful.”

Eddie presses his face into the crook of Evan’s neck.

“I don’t want you to have to be more careful. You shouldn’t have to do that.”

“It’s okay, Eddie.”

“It’s not,” he argues.

Evan just wraps his arms around him and holds him so so tight until he can breathe again. He
promises it will be okay, that they’ll be okay, and Eddie really wishes he believed him.

~*~

2018

Slowly, day by day, Buck gets more comfortable being around him. It helps that he’s head
over heels for Eddie’s kid. If Eddie believed in fate at all he’d believe that everything
happened the way it did so that one day Chris could be in Buck’s life. Like they were meant
to find one another even though Eddie had screwed everything up. There’s no other way to
describe how quickly they bond, how they’re so instantly enamored with one another.

Eddie loves every second of watching it unfold in front of him.

Christopher’s instant trust in Buck makes Eddie’s heart sing. His son saw Buck’s goodness
from the start, just like he did all those years ago. His joy every time he sees him is
infectious, the way he shouts his name and flings out his arms in anticipation of being swung
up into Buck’s the moment they get close enough to each other. The way he hangs on Buck’s
every word, and repeats them all back to Eddie later on that day, or even weeks later, even
though Eddie was right there and heard it all.

And Buck. God. The way Buck looks at Christopher, the way his face softens and his eyes
glow with love turns Eddie inside out. It makes him think about what he could’ve had, the
beautiful little family he could’ve had if only he’d gone after Buck when he had the chance.
He could’ve seen Buck hold a tiny Christopher in his hands, hold him against his chest, and
love him just as much as Eddie did. He could’ve leaned on Buck, had him by his side, and he
would’ve never once thought about joining the army and all those miserable years would’ve
never been.

But he can’t think about all of that. What’s past is past, and Buck’s here now. He’s here and
Eddie can watch the love bloom between him and his son and every moment of it is a
beautiful treasure.
He takes those moments and keeps them inside his heart for safe-keeping. And he lets Buck
take all the time he needs to trust Eddie again, to let himself feel safe with him again. Each
time Buck shows that trust to him is like injecting goddamn starlight into his veins. It feels
like some kind of miracle. Every story he shares of his life in the seven years they’ve been
apart is a gift, and Eddie hoards every single one.

There’s also a horrible part of Eddie that listens to the stories of Buck’s various jobs, the
places he’s traveled, and thinks, good, he was just as lost without me as I was without him.
It’s a bitter, ugly thought, and he hates himself every time he has it because he knows he’s
twisting the truth of the matter to suit his own terrible thoughts. Buck was probably fine
without him, he was just a young kid finding his place in the world. He was always stronger
than Eddie, it was something Eddie always admired about him. He was angry at Eddie, he
wasn’t pining for him as Eddie was for him. It’s only wishful thinking on Eddie’s part, and a
cruel wish at that. Why would he have ever wanted Buck to wander lost through the years
like he did? He’d only ever wanted him to be happy.

At least that’s what he told himself when Buck had asked him to leave with him and he’d said
no. He’d tried to trick himself into thinking he did what he did for Buck’s own good - how he
never would’ve been happy with Eddie, that Eddie would’ve failed him in every way. He
rewrote their story to try to justify hurting him even though deep down he knew they
could’ve been happy. It was possible, if he’d given them a chance.

So Eddie takes what he’s given now, and lets that happiness grow day by day. He does his
best to be what he should’ve been all those years ago. He does his best to be Buck’s friend.

They’ve started to have Friday movie nights together if they don’t have a shift that day. Chris
asked Buck over one night for pizza and a movie with them, and then it just became a thing.

Eddie loves Friday nights.

Especially when Buck starts to linger after Chris goes to bed. Eddie coaxed him one night
with a beer and the offer of a second round of pizza. He can’t keep the smile off of his face
when Buck says yes.

After that it just becomes a thing.

Buck stays.

And Eddie is elated.

That’s when they start to really talk - like they did on those nights in Texas. Now they’re in
Eddie’s living room, only a single lamp turned on and the tv humming low in the
background, whatever’s playing on it forgotten as they talk.

Eddie talks about the army, how scared he was, how he still has nightmares. The night he
tells Buck about the helicopter crash and how he got shot, Buck makes a strangled sort of
sound, gets up from the couch and closes himself in the bathroom. Eddie’s not sure what to
do at first, it was so abrupt, and Buck left without a word. Eddie sits and waits for several
minutes before getting up to walk down the hall and quietly knock on the bathroom door.

“Buck? Are you okay?”

It takes a few seconds before Buck answers.

“No.”

Eddie doesn’t know if he should, but he asks anyway, “Can I come in?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Eddie turns the knob and slowly opens the door. Buck is sitting on the floor with his back
resting against the bathtub and his knees pulled up to his chest. Eddie steps inside and sits
down as well, he crosses his legs and leans against the sink vanity. Their feet are almost
touching and Eddie wants to lean forward a little so he can hook his index finger with one of
Buck’s where they’re wrapped around his knees.

He sits with Buck in silence for a while before he speaks again.

“What’s going on? Do you want to tell me?”

Buck still hasn’t looked at him and Eddie isn’t sure he’s going to answer him, but he does.

“You could’ve died, Eddie.”

Buck’s voice is so broken that Eddie has to take a deep breath.

“But I didn’t.”

“You could’ve though. You could’ve died and I never would’ve known. You could’ve been
gone from the world and I’d be living in it without you completely unaware.”

Eddie can’t stop himself from saying what he says next.

“You would’ve known.”

Buck finally looks at him then, his eyes haunted and confused.

“You would’ve known,” Eddie repeats. “Just like I would’ve known if you had died. I
would’ve felt it, the world would’ve shifted. Felt wrong.”

“Eddie.”

“I know we’re far away from what we used to be, and that’s my fault, but you would’ve
known.”

Buck doesn’t say anything for a while, he just keeps his eyes focused on Eddie and Eddie
doesn’t look away. He can’t.
“I would’ve known,” he finally whispers.

Eddie does reach out then, he leans forward and hooks his index finger with Buck’s left one.
His heart flutters when Buck tightens the hook of his finger around Eddie’s and smiles in
what Eddie knows is remembrance. He thinks back to the night Buck had told him how he
and his sister would always pinkie swear on important things, so Eddie had hooked his index
finger with Buck’s and told him that could be theirs.

He tugs on Buck’s finger a little and his smile grows.

“I’m here now. We both are, and we’re both okay. That’s all that matters.”

He watches as Buck takes a deep breath and nods.

“I’m so happy you’re here, Eddie. That we get a second chance to be friends again.”

“Me too,” Eddie says. “Chris and I have been in sad need of a best friend.”

“I think I have been too.”

“But you have everyone at the 118.”

“I do,” Buck agrees. “But they’re not you.”

Eddie wants to say, I love you. No one has ever been you, no one ever could be, but he just
tells him he’s here now, both him and Chris, who will definitely take his job as best friend
extremely seriously.

When Buck laughs Eddie knows they can do this, they can be the friends they’ve both been
needing.

~*~

2010

“I’ve never had a friend like you,” Eddie confesses as he and Evan lay in the tall grass to dry
off.

They’ve been swimming in a pond on the far corner of the ranch. The day was scorching and
they were both hot and sweaty and exhausted, so Eddie drove them out to the pond. They
spent the early evening splashing around, and making out, in the water.

The second they got to the pond, and Edie put the truck in park, Evan had leapt out his door
and started running for the water, shedding his clothes as he went. Eddie had laughed out
loud when Evan’s jeans tripped him up and he went falling to the ground. He laughed even
louder when Evan turned it into a roll down to the water’s edge as he tried, unsuccessfully, to
kick his jeans off the rest of the way. He was so ridiculous squirming around on the ground
and stripping, but when he finished and stood up, naked and beautiful, and had turned to look
at Eddie over his shoulder, the laughter died in Eddie’s throat and all he wanted to do was tell
him he loved him.
But they haven’t done that yet, said they loved each other, even though Eddie knew his love
was in his every touch, his every kiss, and that Evan must know. His love for Evan was so
loud, he felt sometimes that everyone else must hear it too. Instead of saying it though, Eddie
just shed his clothes too and followed Evan into the water, wrapped himself around him and
kissed him as they both sank down into the water.

When their fingertips started to wrinkle, and they were exhausted from laughing and kissing,
from Eddie wrapping his legs around Evan’s waist and grinding all wet and slippery until
they both came, they crawled out of the water and collapsed side-by-side onto the grass.

“Me neither,” Evan says, his fingers tangled with Eddie’s.

“I don’t believe that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re– you.”

“That’s not an answer,” Evan laughs. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It makes sense to me.”

“Yeah, well, it’s true. I had a lot of friends, but I kind of floated between groups and never
really had a place in any of them. I was friendly, but never a friend. I never belonged
anywhere.”

Eddie turns to his side so he can look into Evan’s eyes, can reach out and touch his lips.

“You belong to me.”

Evan smiles against Eddie’s fingertips then leans in to kiss him. His lips are still a little cold
from the water and Eddie keeps kissing them until they’re warm again.

“We belong to each other.”

Eddie wants to swear forever to him, promise him that they always will, but he doesn’t know
how. He knows they’re nineteen and stupid and can’t possibly know what’s going to happen,
but he wants so desperately to believe they do. Instead he curls up into Evan’s chest, makes
himself small so he can tuck himself up under his chin and feel Evan’s arms come around
him and hold him tight.

“I love you, Eddie.”

Evan whispers it as his arms hold Eddie impossibly closer. He can feel the truth of it vibrate
through Evan’s chest where his face is pressed against it, and it’s like the words seep out of
Evan’s skin and into him.

He feels a calm, a relief, come over him. He’d been so scared he’d hidden himself so deeply,
so thoroughly, that no one would ever find him. No one would ever know him, or love him.
He’d always thought he might be unlovable, that he was too broken, but Evan loves him.
He loves him.

This bright, burning sun loves him, and the joy of it surges through him.

“I love you too.”

He kisses Evan, feels like he could devour him as he moves on top of him. He straddles
Evan’s hips and holds him down with his weight as he keeps kissing him and finally asks for
all the things he’s been too afraid to want. He asks Evan to fuck him, to sink inside him, and
when he asks him if he’s sure he tells him, yes, he’s never been more sure. He laughs in
delight when Evan scrambles for his jeans to dig for his wallet and pulls out a condom. Evan
is laughing too, telling him he’s been carrying it around like a creep just waiting for Eddie to
be ready. He apologizes and Eddie laughs even harder.

“Why are you apologizing?”

“I don’t know,” Evan says happily. “I just feel like a pervert, all, hey hey, I got a condom in
my wallet.”

“A pervert, or just a really horny nineteen year old?”

“Both?” Evan draws out, and Eddie has to kiss his stupid mouth.

It’s all messy and embarrassing, and everything and nothing like Eddie had imagined it’d be.
They fumble and laugh and even though Eddie thinks they might be slightly terrible at it, it’s
everything.

Everything.

Lying beneath Evan on the blanket they pulled from the backseat of the truck, one they
always keep there for when they lay out under the stars in the truck bed, he wraps his legs
around Evan’s slim hips to try so desperately to keep him as deep inside of him as he possibly
can, it’s perfect.

He’s in love and he’s overwhelmed and he’s found exactly where he belongs.

He welcomes Evan’s weight when he collapses on top of him, sticky with sweat and come,
Evan’s breath hot on his neck.

“Are you okay?”

Evan’s voice is quiet as he wipes away the tears from Eddie’s cheeks with his thumb.

“I’m good.”

“You’re crying.”

Evan presses his forehead to Eddie’s and holds his face in his hand, keeps gently rubbing his
thumb over Eddie’s cheek.
“I’m good, I’m happy,” Eddie reassures him. “I just– I love you.”

“I love you too, even if you’re really sweaty and gross right now.”

Eddie growls against Evan’s neck and bites him as he rolls them around until he’s on top. He
gets up and straddles Evan’s chest as he holds his arms above his head.

“I’m gross? You’re filthy.”

“I can be super filthy if you want me to,” Evan says as he raises an eyebrow.

Eddie laughs, so loud and happy.

“You’re so stupid.”

“What? I thought that was good.”

“Let’s just say it’s a good thing you’re hot.”

Evan pretends to be pissed, but he’s losing the fight not to laugh as he pushes up and
manages to flip Eddie off of him. They tussle and fight, slapping at each other until Evan
wiggles free and scrambles to his feet. He jogs down to the water, but looks back at Eddie
before jumping back in, his face and voice earnest, serious.

“I’ve never loved anyone before you.”

Evan holds his gaze for a couple of seconds before flinging himself into the water to wash
off. Eddie just sits and watches him in the setting sun.

And I hope you don’t love anyone after me.

~*~

2018

Eddie finally gathers up the nerve to ask Buck about Abby. He and Christopher have been
over to visit Buck a few times, which he finds out isn’t even his place, but Abby’s, and he
learns that fact from Chim. Buck never mentions it, and Eddie never asks. But after Buck
introduces him to Carla when he finds out Eddie is finding it impossible to figure out
Christopher’s care and schooling and solves almost all of his problems in one fell swoop, he
decides now’s the time to ask about her.

“Can I ask about Abby?”

They’re sitting on the couch watching a Rangers game even though Eddie knows Buck
doesn’t really give a shit about baseball he still invited him over anyway because he
remembered what a Rangers fan Eddie is. It’s another one of those things Buck does that
turns Eddie’s heart over - when he remembers little things about Eddie, about the two of
them, that he should’ve long since forgotten.
Buck looks over at him and shrugs.

“What do you want to know?”

There are a thousand and one things Eddie wants to ask - How serious is it? How long have
you been with her? Is she good to you? Do you love her?

Do you love her more than you loved me?

Instead he blurts out–

“Are you happy?”

Buck lets out a huff of exhausted laughter.

“Way to start out with a loaded question.”

“I know, I’m sorry. It’s just that nobody will talk about it, you won’t talk about it, yet it must
be serious since you live here with her and I just–”

I need to know if you love her. I need to know if I can hope.

“But I don’t live here with her, she left and now I’m just here. Waiting.”

“Is she coming back?”

Buck just shrugs.

“Do you want her to come back?” Eddie asks, fearful of the answer.

“I don’t know.” Buck sighs. “I think we had something special. I was a mess when I met her.
I’ve been a mess since–”

Buck stops and looks away from Eddie. He sort of hunches in on himself so Eddie finishes
the sentence he knows Buck was going to say.

“Since I let you go?”

Buck shakes his head. “It’s not your fault, I made my own choices, but yeah. I haven’t been
good with myself since I left El Paso. Since I left you.”

Eddie wants to tell him he hasn’t been either. He’s been lost without him.

“I know Chim and Hen have filled you in on probie Buck, Buck 1.0. I wasn’t in a great place,
then I met Abby, and she liked me. She wanted to know me, she wanted me to stay, and it
was everything I’ve ever wanted - just someone who wanted me to stay.”

Unlike me, Eddie thinks.

“And she was so amazing, she’s done so much in her life, but her mom was sick for so long
and she cared for her, made her mom her whole life, so when she passed she just. She just
had to get out, and I don’t blame her.”

Buck stops again and Eddie knows he wants to say more, that it’s not the end of the story.

“But?” he asks.

“But I do blame her for leaving me here. I blame her for not making it clear, for not just
calling it off the night I dropped her off at the airport. I blame her for giving me hope.”

“What has she said?”

“Nothing,” Bucks says. “That’s the thing. I haven’t even had a text from her in like a month.
At first we talked and texted every day. That’s actually how we started our relationship, we
talked on the phone for weeks before we even met face to face. I really loved talking to her.
She made all the chaos in my head calm down, she made everything good.”

Each word Buck says about Abby chips away at Eddie’s heart. She sounds like she was good
for Buck, made him feel safe. He hates her now for what she’s doing to him, ghosting him
with no explanation or goodbye, but he can’t hate her entirely because she gave Buck so
much, all the things he so desperately needed in his life. He’ll always be thankful to her for
that kindness, that care of Buck, but he’s never going to forget how it all ended - because it
needs to end, Buck needs to know it’s ended - and Eddie’s never going to forgive her.

He’s never forgiven himself in seven years, why would he forgive her?

“You love her.”

“Yeah, I do.”

Not, I did.

I do.

Eddie wants to ask him how he can still love her after all of this, but he knows Buck. He
knows how he holds on and loves with everything inside of him, how he craves love even in
its most imperfect form.

He loved Eddie at one point, after all.

But he deserves so much more, he deserves the whole goddamn world and all the love in it.
He needs someone to put him first - Abby’s not doing it, Eddie couldn’t do it.

The difference is Eddie wants to now. He wants to love Buck in all the ways he loved him
when they were nineteen, and in all the ways he wasn’t ready for then but is ready for now
that he knows what is to love and to have the courage to do it out loud.

Abby had her chance.

“Still?”
“What?” Buck asks, confused.

“You still love her? You said, I do.”

Buck rubs his hands over his face and takes a deep breath.

“I think I still do. I know I shouldn’t, but I really liked being with her, Eddie.”

“But she’s not here anymore, she hasn’t been for a long time. I think what you had, what
you’re holding onto, is gone.”

“In my head I know that, but she made me a better person. I can’t let go of that so easily.”

“You were already a good person.”

“You weren’t here to know that, Eddie. That was the person I was, I haven’t been that person
in a long time. You don’t know me now like you used to, and you definitely don’t know
Abby.”

“But I know what it’s like to hurt you, to be the person who failed you, so yeah, I do know
Abby. I know the part of her who’s like me, the same part of me I can’t forgive.”

Buck gets up from the couch and starts to gather their empty beer bottles and leftover food.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“That’s fine,” Eddie says as he gets up and follows him into the kitchen. “I’ll never bring it
up again if that’s what you want, but I want you to think about where you want to be, and
what you deserve, because it’s more than this empty, leftover apartment. It’s so much more.”

Eddie sets his half-empty beer bottle on the counter and gives Buck’s shoulder a quick
squeeze.

“I’ll see you at work, Buck.”

At the beginning of his next shift Eddie heads up to the loft and finds Hen and Chim hovering
behind Buck who’s sitting at the table with an open laptop in front of him.

“That one looks nice,” Hen says, as she points at the screen.

“Mine was better,” Chim says.

“Of course it was,” Buck sighs. “It was a thousand more a month than this one.”

“What’s going on?” Eddie asks as he walks over to get a cup of coffee.

“Buck’s looking for a new apartment,” Chim says.

Eddie hears Hen mumble, finally, under her breath and he looks over just in time to see Buck
huff and half-heartedly reach back to swipe at her arm with the back of his hand. He barely
grazes her and Hen laughs as she taps the back of his head then ruffles his hair.

“Hen, dammit,” Buck scowls as he ducks away from her, which only makes her mess up his
hair even more.

He’s so goddamn adorable Eddie wants to kiss his stupid, disgruntled face.

He sits down across from them at the table. He can tell Buck is intentionally ignoring him,
but he can’t stop himself from smiling. He tries to hide it behind his mug of coffee.

“Oh, this one is close to Eddie’s place,” Hen says.

“I don’t like that one,” Buck says belligerently, Eddie just smiles more.

They keep looking and arguing with each other, and while he knows Buck was almost there
himself, Eddie’s still happy he said what he said the last time they saw each other. He can’t
wait until Buck finally cuts ties with Abby and finds some sort of peace on his own.

His heart also flutters a little when, later on in the engine on the way to a call, Buck bumps
Eddie’s shoulder to get his attention and shows him a listing on his phone. Eddie gives him a
nod of approval and that shy, secret smile of his that Eddie remembers so well crosses his
face.

“It’s a good apartment,” Eddie says. “I like it.”

“I like it too.” Buck nods.

Eddie gives Buck’s shoulder a bump in return and smiles to himself as he turns to look out
the window.

The apartment Buck chose is even closer to his house than the one Hen pointed out earlier.

He can’t keep the smile off of his face for the rest of the day.

Eddie wastes no time installing himself into Buck’s moving process.

He helps him pack up what little he has at Abby’s, and doesn’t that break his heart every time
he thinks about how little Buck actually has that he holds dear. He helps him shop for
furniture and pots and pans and all the while he knows exactly what he’s doing, how he’s
helping him build the home the two of them never had the chance to build together.

The life he could’ve had, but gave up.

Except now they have Christopher, and they have shared laughter and rolled eyes when he
orders them around and tells them what color to paint the walls in all of his seven year old
wisdom.
The thing is, though, Buck listens to him. He buys the blue sheets that Chris picks out, he
buys the giant television Chris tells him will be so cool to play video games on, and Eddie’s
heart nearly goddamn bursts every single time.

They’re overlapping their lives and Eddie feels like they’re knitting themselves back together
in a way, because one day he looks around and sees his kid’s drawings on Buck’s refrigerator,
his video games in a wonky pile next to the tv, and Eddie’s favorite hot sauce in the kitchen
because he’s ridiculously picky and obstinate about what constitutes good hot sauce. It’s all
there, in Buck’s home, and when he and Chris go home the evening of that revelation, Eddie
sees Buck scattered everywhere in his own home.

Which is how he finds himself sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor clutching a truly
smelly old hoodie of Buck’s he found on the top of his laundry basket and letting tears of
pure relief and happiness stream down his cheeks. He hopes it means something, he hopes it
means everything he wants it to mean.

The hope beats steady and alive in his chest, like a pulsating light.

Eddie also decides it’s time to tell Buck about Shannon.

Buck hasn’t asked, and Eddie hasn’t offered. He hasn’t wanted to push Buck, and he also
wanted to wait until they were on more stable ground, and they have been, for months, but
Eddie has been scared to tell Buck everything. He knows bits and pieces, like Eddie joining
the army in a misguided attempt to take care of Chris, and he knows the weekends Chris is
gone he’s with Shannon, but Buck pretends those weekends don’t exist. It’s always the
weekends when they have a forty-eight so it’s easy to ignore the fact Chris is spending the
days with his mom amidst the chaos of work.

But Eddie knows Buck can count, can figure out how soon after he left that Christopher was
born, and he needs to explain it to him. He needs him to know it wasn’t Eddie forgetting him,
it was Eddie’s inability to forget him that brought on all of his bad decisions.

They’re packing up at the end of a shift when Eddie finally starts the conversation.

“Are you free?” he asks Buck as he’s zipping up his duffle.

“Yeah, sure,” Buck smiles at him. “No plans.”

“Could I come over?”

He wants to talk at Buck’s place so it’s his decision whether or not he wants to hear it, or
wants to kick Eddie out if he chooses. He doesn’t want him to feel cornered.

“Of course.”

He’s giving Eddie a curious look like he knows something’s up. Eddie’s being too stiff and
awkward with him.

“I wanted to talk to you about something, if that’s okay. Something heavy.”

“You’re making me nervous.”

“I don’t want you to be, but it’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about for a while.
If you don’t want to, or it gets to be too much, I’ll leave and we can drop it.”

“Eddie, what’s this about?”

“Shannon.”

Eddie sees the way Buck flinches when he says her name, and then how he schools his
features into what he thinks is cool nonchalance.

“Oh. Yeah, okay. We can do that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I am, follow me home,” he says.

He swings his bag over his shoulder and is out the door before Eddie can even respond.

He’s dreading every minute of what’s coming.

~*~

2010

Everything with Evan is perfect. Eddie’s never been so happy.

So, of course, everything collapses around him.

He gets home early one morning, the sun’s about an hour from coming up yet as he sneaks
back into the house. He’s just passing by the kitchen when his mother’s voice scares the shit
out of him. She’s sitting at the kitchen table in a robe drinking coffee.

“What are you doing up?” Eddie asks.

“I think I should be asking you that question.”

“I was out with Amy.”

“I thought her name was Alice.”

Shit. Fuck. Eddie can’t remember what he’s been telling them, he can’t keep track of the lies.

“Um. I stopped seeing Alice, we broke up. I’m dating Amy now.”

His mom just hums and takes a drink of coffee. Eddie should just tell her goodnight, well not
even goodnight, he’s got to be up in a couple hours to get back to the ranch. He was just
going to stay with Evan, but he’s on day three of his clothes and it’s not exactly attractive at
this point. Evan had laughed and told him to go home, that he stopped being cute about a day
ago, and Eddie had pulled him in for a kiss, that turned into another hour, until he finally left
well after three in the morning. So yeah, he should just say goodnight and go, but his feet
seem to be stuck to the kitchen floor.

“How’s Evan?”

Eddie feels his face immediately heat up, and his stomach drop. The question sounds
innocent enough, but he knows it’s not. He knows.

It’s all over.

“I dunno,” he tries to keep his voice normal, uninterested. “Fine, I guess. I barely see him at
work anymore. Tio Emilio has him working with a different crew than mine.”

Eddie’s saying too much, telling her lies she can easily find the truth about, he’s just digging
a deeper hole for himself. His mom stays silent, just stares at him with sad eyes, and he tries
to leave, he tries, but he can’t. He drops down in the chair closest to him and feels the tears
start to come.

“Mama,” he whispers, voice cracking.

“Eddie, sweetheart.” She reaches out and takes his hand and he clings to it far too tightly.
“You need to be careful there.”

A sob breaks free and he wipes at his eyes with his other hand as he tries to catch his breath.

“I don’t want to be careful.”

“But you need to be, you don’t want your father finding out.”

“Would it be so bad if he did? I’m not doing anything wrong, I’m not ashamed.”

“Then why have you been lying to us?”

And she’s right. He’s ashamed of how much he loves Evan, how much he needs him, how it’s
making him crazy, and he’s terrified of anyone finding out.

He’s ashamed of his shame too, ashamed of his ugly thoughts. Why is he like this? Filled
with this self-loathing and shame and ugliness, especially when everything about Evan is
beautiful and good.

Evan deserves so much more than him.

He’s not nearly good enough.

His mom lays her other hand on top of their clasped hands.

“Eddie, I love you. You’ve always been such a good boy, you’ve always done what’s right. I
know you’ll figure this out and make the right choice.”

He nods, he can’t do anything else. He can’t speak, his throat is clogged with heartache.
Because he knows what he has to do.

“I don’t understand.”

Evan is sitting on a hay bale looking up at him. Eddie can’t make himself look back at him,
his eyes are too big and confused, lost, and Eddie can’t help him because he’s drowning.

“We were just kissing,” Evan says. “You were kissing me.”

“I know.”

“You love me.”

Eddie has to turn away, put some distance between them, he feels sick to his stomach.

“Eddie, what happened? Why are you saying these things?”

“It’s just too much. We’re nineteen, that’s all it is. It was never going to be more than this.”

“More than everything?” Evan asks as he gets up and steps in front of Eddie so he’s forced to
look at him. “Because that’s what this is. I know you, Eddie. I know you right here.” Evan
shoves at the center of his chest and he has to take a step back from the force of it. “And I
know you’re lying to me.”

“I’m not lying,” Eddie lies. “You just don’t want to hear what I’m saying.”

Evan shoves him again.

“Stop lying!”

“I’m not!”

Eddie shoves back at him, he wants him angry, wants him to fight back. He wants Evan to
punch him and kick him and break all his bones because that would hurt less than this.

But instead of pushing back, Evan grabs his wrists and pulls him in and smashes their chests
together. Eddie tries to twist out of his grip, but Evan holds on, and when he finally yanks his
wrists free it’s only because Evan let go to wrap his arms around Eddie in an iron hold.

“I love you,” he whispers in Eddie’s ear. “Stop lying to me.”

Eddie’s panting, he can hardly catch his breath, the panic is rising in him. He wants to run
away, but he wants Evan to keep holding onto him too because he’s only ever felt safe
exactly where he is right now, in Evan’s arms.

He claws his fingers into Evan’s shirt and presses his face into the warmth of his neck. It’s
only then, when he pushes everything else out of his head except, Evan Evan Evan, can he
finally breathe again.
Evan runs his hands up and down his back, soothing him, and helping him draw in more air.

“Who found out?” he asks quietly, his hands still warm and gentle on Eddie’s back.

Eddie takes a few more breaths before he whispers the answer into Evan’s skin.

“My mom.”

“Okay, it’ll be okay, Eddie. We’ll figure it out. I promise.”

And that, Eddie knows, isn’t true.

Because Eddie’s not okay, he’s never been okay, and he doesn’t think he ever will be, and he
can’t drag Evan down with him.

He can’t.

“No,” he shakes his head and clings to Evan even more tightly. “I can’t do this. You don’t
understand.”

“I do, though. I know you’re scared, and I know there are so many walls you’ve built up
inside of yourself trying to block out who you really are. You keep trying to be who you think
you’re supposed to be, but Eddie? Right here? This is who you are, and I love you.”

“I can’t tell my parents, I can’t come out. I’m not like you. I’m not brave enough.”

“You can be.”

He can’t, is the thing. He wishes he could be, he wishes he could be everything for Evan, and
for himself, but there’s a lifetime of pressure and secrets and shame weighing down on him.
A lifetime of his parents trying to mold him into the perfect son. He knows Evan’s suffered
his whole life from the lack of love and attention from his parents, that it’s broken him in
ways that make Eddie sick with the desire to help him heal, but in the ugliest part of his heart
he wishes for the same. For parents who didn’t care, who ignored him, and just let him be
because maybe then he could just walk away like Evan did. He could leave and never look
back.

But he doesn’t know how to do that.

He doesn’t know how to break free of the burden of the need to please his parents, to not be
absolutely fucking crippled by the fear of disappointing them.

“I can’t. I can’t tell him.”

“Okay then,” Evan says as he leans back to look at him, to take Eddie’s face in his hands and
hold his gaze. “We’ll leave, the two of us. We’ll just pack up and go. I want to see so many
places, Eddie, so many. And we can do it together. I was only ever going to spend a few
weeks here, get some money, and head off again. But then you happened. We can do this all
together now.”
Evan looks so happy at the thought, his eyes shining, and Eddie knows he’s going to kill all
that bright, beautiful light. That shameful, ugly monster inside of him is going to ruin the
most wonderful thing he’s ever known.

“No.”

It’s all he can get out.

“No?”

And there goes the light.

“Eddie, come on.”

“I ca– I can’t.”

His brittle voice cracks on each word.

Evan lets go of his face, steps back from him.

“Eddie.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, be brave. Come on.”

The anger is seeping into Evan’s voice, the frustration.

Eddie is too much; too much work, too much effort, too much damage. But he has to do this,
he has to say no. Evan will figure it out eventually, that he’s better off without him, that it’ll
all be easier without him. Eddie just hopes he doesn’t hate him forever.

“I can’t,” he repeats.

“You can, you just won’t.”

“I’m not leaving with you.”

Please don’t hate me.

“You’re being a coward, Eddie.”

I know. God, I know. And I hate it.

“This isn’t you,” Evan continues. “I know you think it is, but you’re stronger than this.
You’re letting them win, letting them dictate who you are.”

“I’m sorry I can’t be who you want me to be.”

“It’s not who I want you to be, it’s who you are. I just wish you’d realize it.”
Eddie can’t stand to look at Evan’s face, heartbroken and aching for the person Eddie just
can’t be, so, like the coward he is, he turns and walks away.

The next morning when he comes to work and his uncle tells him Evan’s gone he manages to
make it out of his uncle’s sight before he staggers to a stop as his knees give out on him and
he presses his hands over his mouth to muffle the cry that tries to escape.

If he had known it was the last time he’d ever get to look at Evan he’d have stayed for hours,
even through the pain.

~*~

2018

Eddie stops on the way over to Buck’s at his favorite diner to pick up some breakfast for
them. He wants to fill him with good food before dropping the Shannon bomb on him.

When he lets himself in, Buck's just coming downstairs. He looks cozy in a hoodie, cut-off
sweats, and fuzzy socks. It makes him smile, he loves that Buck’s always got warm socks and
sweatshirts on with shorts. He claims his legs get hot, which Eddie always tells him is not a
thing, and which Buck always argues absolutely is a thing.

“Nice shorts.”

“Shut up,” Buck says as he passes by him and grabs the bag of food. “There better be
massive amounts of carbs and bacon in here.”

“It’s just a bag of bran muffins, is that not what you wanted?”

“Fuck off,” Buck laughs.

Eddie goes to get them silverware and something to drink as Buck starts pulling the food out
of the bag. When Eddie looks over he sees Buck shoving a piece of bacon in his mouth with
one hand and opening up a container with the other. He makes a happy little noise when he
finds it filled with waffles. He’s so fucking adorable and Eddie is instantly overcome with
love for him.

He needs this conversation to go well. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to bear it if he pushes
Buck away for a second time.

Once everything’s laid out they spend a few minutes eating. Well, Eddie eats, Buck shovels
food into his mouth. It shouldn’t be endearing, but it is, and Eddie keeps pushing more food
towards Buck.

But soon they’re done eating and Eddie needs to start the conversation he’s been dreading.

“Can we talk now?”

Buck stops gathering up their trash and looks over at Eddie.

“Of course we can.”

Buck looks like he wants to do anything but talk. He slumps back in his chair and wraps his
arms around himself, like he’s preparing for the worst.

“I was wondering when you’d tell me about her.”

“I didn’t want to push, or talk about it if you’re not ready. And you can still back out, I can
still leave if you want me to go.”

Buck hunches into himself, makes himself look small, but he shakes his head.

“No, tell me. I want to know. I’ve wanted to know for years.”

“Years? What do you mean? How could it be years?”

Eddie’s heart starts pounding in his chest so hard the sound of it is pulsing in his ears.

“I came back.”

Buck’s words echo around in his head.

“What?”

“I came back for you, about five months later. I missed you so much I could hardly breathe.”

Eddie feels that same howl of pain that ripped through him the day Buck left fill his throat.
He tries to swallow it down because if he lets it go he’s not sure it’ll stop.

“No–”

“I couldn’t stand being apart from you anymore, so I came back. I went to your house and
your mom answered the door. She seemed pretty happy to tell me–”

“No,” Eddie says again, only far too loud this time as he pushes back from the table and
stands up, his chair tipping to the floor behind him.

He can’t get air, his chest feels tight. He doesn’t know what to do so he looks around, wild-
eyed, and just starts heading toward Buck’s balcony thinking fresh air might help. Distantly
he hears Buck saying his name and it just keeps ringing in his ears.

The next thing he knows he’s hunched over with Buck’s arms wrapped around him from
behind.

“It’s okay,” Buck’s voice is quiet and calm in his ear. “Just take a breath for me, Eddie.
Breathe.”

Buck rubs the center of Eddie’s chest and he focuses on that, on the feel of Buck surrounding
him, and finally he can take a proper breath.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He just keeps repeating it, and Buck keeps quietly shushing him as he rubs his chest.

“You came back for me.”

Buck stops rubbing his chest and just holds him tight. Eddie feels him rest his forehead
against the back of his head, his breath warm on his neck.

“I loved you so much, Eddie. I had to.”

“I just kept thinking over and over, if I make it through today maybe he’ll come back
tomorrow. It was the only way I could stand it.”

“And I did. I came back.”

“My mom had no right to– she had no right.”

“No, she didn’t,” Buck says. “But I should’ve stayed, should’ve actually talked to you, and I
didn’t. I was so fucking hurt. I thought I was going to die from the pain right there on your
doorstep, so I walked away again and I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Eddie.”

“I can’t believe what you must’ve thought of me.”

Eddie pulls away from Buck, out of his arms. He runs his hands over his face. He tries to take
a few more deep breaths to settle himself.

“Nothing good,” Buck admits. “But I’ve had time, a lot of time, to think about it and I know
it wasn’t as simple as I made it in my mind. At the time though all I could think about was
how you never loved me, how you ran off with the first girl you found to prove you weren’t
like that, that you were normal, and I hated you. I hated you so much, Eddie.”

“I hated myself,” Eddie cuts in. “After you left I couldn’t stand being alone with myself.”

“You needed time, and I didn’t let you have it. I was so in love and I wanted you right then. I
wanted you to figure everything out according to my schedule and that wasn’t fair to you,
Eddie. There was so much you were dealing with, and I pushed too hard, and I’m so sorry for
that. I’m sorry I failed you.”

“Buck, you didn’t. I promise.”

“No, I did. We failed each other, and ourselves.” Buck steps closer to him and takes his hand.
“We were a mess, even if you’d come with me we would’ve kept messing up. We were
nineteen, Eddie. We were kids.”

“I’ve been trying so hard to forgive myself - for failing us, for failing Christopher, for failing
myself, but I don’t think I've been very successful.”

“Eddie,” Buck’s voice is so soft and aching. “You’ve always been too hard on yourself. You
need to be kinder. You’ve always tried to be so tough, so hard, and you don’t realize how
gentle you are, and how fragile your heart truly is. I really wish you knew that, and treated
yourself with the kindness you deserve.”
Buck always could see straight into him, and he loved every part of that broken boy.

He hopes he can learn to love the man who’s still broken, but is starting to figure things out
and mend.

“I’m trying.” Eddie huffs out a small laugh and Buck smiles at him.

“Now tell me about Shannon,” he says as he gently pulls Eddie back inside.

Buck leads him over to the couch. Eddie sits down and Buck pulls his legs up and crosses
them so he can fully face Eddie. He’s close enough that his knees press into Eddie’s thigh.

“I have to be within hand-holding distance,” he says as he presses even closer.

Another small laugh escapes Eddie’s lips, and he’s just so thankful for Buck, for everything
that he is. He reaches out for his hand.

“I think I’d like to hold hands right from the start.”

“I’m okay with that.”

Buck smiles at him, his face so soft and open to whatever Eddie is going to say, as he slides
his fingers between Eddie’s and locks their hands together. Eddie’s instantly filled with a
perfect calm and he knows he can do this, that Buck will listen to every word, and they’ll be
even better on the other side.

He doesn’t know why he was so scared because Buck’s got him, he’s always had him.
Eddie’s always been safe in Buck’s care.

So Eddie turns to him and tells him everything.

He tells him how lonely and depressed he was, that he hadn’t lied when he said he hated
everything he’d become and couldn’t stand himself, couldn’t sit with his own thoughts. He
tells him how he went to the bar every night where they used to play darts and have a couple
beers from time to time because they never carded them and didn’t give a fuck who they
served. He went there every night and drank himself drunk so he’d just become numb, so he
could just stop– feeling so fucking much.

He tells him how, on one of those nights, he ran into Shannon, who also just broke up with
someone she loved. They talked and drank, and drank some more, until they ended up in the
backseat of her car. He tells him all the ugly parts too - how he was sick to his stomach, and
how she cried as she rode him, how she called him her ex-boyfriend’s name, and how he’d
stumbled out of her car the second they were done, his zipper still undone, and vomited in the
gravel of the parking lot.

He tells him about how Shannon wanted to kiss him as she cried and called him Jamie, how
she just wanted to pretend for a while, and how he thought maybe everything he was doing
would be okay because he wouldn’t, couldn’t, kiss her.
“She leaned in, but I turned away because all I could think was that my kisses were yours.
They belonged to you and at least I could give you that, that even though I was failing you in
every way I could save those kisses. They were yours. And somehow I felt that would
absolve me in some small way. It was all so stupid, and wrong, and I was so drunk everything
was spinning.”

Eddie stops for a moment to take a few breaths, and Buck stays quiet beside him, just
squeezes his hand tighter.

“And how can I ever tell Christopher, the greatest thing I’ve ever done, the most miraculous
gift I’ve ever been given, that his story started with such awful misery and sadness from both
of us? Everything about that night was horrible, there wasn’t a trace of love involved.”

“Of course there was,” Buck says.

Eddie shakes his head. “How? Everything was sad and ugly.”

“Eddie, look at me.” Buck reaches out to touch Eddie’s cheek. “There was love there because
it was you. And there was love in Shannon, there must’ve been because how else can you
explain Christopher, how amazing he is? You didn’t love each other but you still had love in
you both. You two made him, so yeah, there was love there, and you can tell him that.”

“But we’ve both made so many mistakes as parents. I left him to go to Afghanistan, Shannon
left him because of the pressure me being gone put her under from my parents and from her
own issues. We’ve both been such a mess.”

“You’re doing good now though, right?” Buck asks. “Chris loves you both so much. He’s told
me so much about Shannon, how much he loves her. And god, Eddie, you’ve gotta know how
much he loves you. He idolizes you. He thinks you’re the coolest.”

“He’s told you about Shannon?”

“He’s told me a lot about her, enough to know I’d like to meet her if it’s okay with you?”

“You want to meet her?”

“Of course I do, she’s Christopher’s mom.”

Eddie doesn’t know what to say. He’s gone so long without having Buck in his life, and now
he has him back and he wants to be involved in every part of Eddie’s life. It’s kind of
unbelievable. He never thought he’d have him back, much less have him accept the dark
truths he’s held inside for so long. He could’ve so easily kept hating him, but here he is
asking for more of Eddie’s life and he’s going to give him everything he asks for.

“I’d really like for you to know her.”

“Yeah?”

Buck looks so happy, so hopeful that Eddie’s heart beats with love for him.
“She gives me shit every time she sees me, you’ll love her.”

“So, you think she’ll help me gang up on you?”

“You sound way too happy about that.”

“I’m just picturing a future of Chris, Shannon, and me ragging on you constantly. It’ll be
amazing”

A future.

With Buck in it.

Hope has simmered inside of him for so long, but he’s never allowed it to flare up into a
flame so bright and alive as it is right now. Buck wants to be in his future, he’s said it out
loud and Eddie no longer has to guess.

He has Buck back.

And even if it’s only ever as friends, he still has him in his life, and that’s enough for him.

Buck is more than enough.

“God, I hope so,” Eddie says, “It sounds perfect.”

His voice is probably too soft, too wistful and fond, but he doesn’t care, it’s the truth, and
Buck just smiles at him like he knows exactly what Eddie is feeling. And he probably does,
he always knew the very heart of him.

“You’ll come to regret those words,” Buck teases.

“I don’t think I will.”

Buck gives his hand another squeeze, and it’s only then he realizes they’re still holding hands
- that they have been this entire time, and it feels just like it did when they were nineteen and
looking up at the stars.

“Is it really as easy as this?” he asks suddenly.

“As easy as what?”

“This. All of this. I’ve been so scared to tell you everything and you’re just– you. You hold
my hand and take it all in, and then ask to meet Shannon. God, Buck. I don’t think you even
know what you’ve done.”

“I’m tired of being angry, tired of living in the past. When you first showed up at the 118 I
realized how much I was still clinging to the hurt and the heartache and how nothing good
ever came of the holding on. All it ever did was make me miserable. I don’t want to be
miserable, Eddie, especially not when I know that I can choose to be your friend again, when
I can have the happiness of knowing you back.”
“So this is us starting over?” Eddie asks. “I can have my best friend back?”

“You’ve had me back for a long time.”

“I hoped I did, but I wasn’t sure.”

“Yeah, well, now you know,” Buck says.

They just stare at each other for a little too long, he feels a little giddy with it all. Buck just
shakes his head and huffs out a little laugh.

“Okay, whatever. Enough of that,” he says as he waves his hand around. “Now that that’s out
of the way, tell me more about Shannon. What’s she like?”

Eddie smiles, heart warm in his chest.

“We had the worst start possible, but eventually we remembered we were friends before it all
and that’s kept us going. She raised Chris through my tours and somehow managed to survive
my parents, not entirely intact, but she’s strong as hell and has still been my rock.”

“She sounds like a true friend.”

“We’ve been to hell and back, and have caused each other a lot of pain along the way while
we tried to figure it out, but I think we’ve finally made it to a really good place. She’s gotten
me through a lot of shit.”

“I love her already.”

And Eddie knows Buck truly means it.

“I know she’ll love you.”

“I’m glad you had her,” Buck says. “I wish I could’ve been there for you too, but it makes me
feel a little bit better to know you had someone like her to be there looking out for you.”

“I’m so thankful I had her too, that we came out the other side as friends, and even better co-
parents.” Eddie stops and takes a second because he still can’t believe he can say what he’s
going to say next. “And now I have you too.”

“I’m not letting go of you this time, Eds.”

“I know. And I’m not letting go either.”

Buck’s face flushes a perfect pink as he tucks his head down and smiles.

“Good,” he nods. “Good.”

Things are so much lighter after that day.

They can’t stay away from one another. They’re always at each other’s sides, laughing and
poking at one another like they did when they were nineteen. Bobby smiles fondly at them,
Chim gives them shit and asks them if they plan on going to the Homecoming dance next
Friday, and Hen of course gives Eddie the stare-down on the daily because she’s far too
perceptive and knows exactly why he beams every time Buck so much as looks in his
direction. He just shrugs at her, but files away the knowledge that she’s someone he can go to
if his love for Buck gets too unbearable. The way she talks about Karen, and how she fell in
love with her best friend, makes Eddie think she could relate to what’s pounding through his
heart on a daily basis.

Because the thing is, even though he has his best friend back, truly back, he still wants to tell
Buck he loves him.

Some days he can handle it. Some days he knows he’s the luckiest person in the whole
fucking world to be exactly where he is - a goddamn perfect son, and a best friend who
knows him inside and out and loves him anyway.

But then there are days when the love threatens to burst out of him in technicolor sparks
because Buck is just–

Buck.

Like when he meets Shannon and instantly pulls out his phone to get her contact info so they
can text shit about Eddie and makes her cackle with laughter as she smiles and looks over at
Eddie with a knowing gleam in her eyes.

Or when he invites himself over to Eddie’s not to see him, but to see Christopher, just to sit in
the middle of his bedroom floor with him and put together elaborate Lego creations as he
makes Chris giggle uncontrollably, Eddie only allowed in the room to bring them snacks.

Or when he brings over a tres leches cake that’s so similar to his abuela’s that he almost
weeps when the taste hits his tongue, and when Eddie compliments him he blushes pink and
admits he spent the afternoon at Abuela’s baking the cake together.

Because that’s a thing now. Buck knows his abuela, knows Pepa, and has become a part of
their lives too. Eddie can show him off to them, can blush when Pepa teases him and when
Abuela calls Buck muy guapo. They love Buck and see Eddie’s happiness when he’s with
them, and they never make him feel anything other than accepted.

Eddie holds it together until Buck leaves that day and he calls his abuela to ask about their
baking session.

“He’s a lovely boy, Eddito. Such a lovely boy with a big beautiful heart. Just like you told me
all those years ago.”

Eddie quietly cries into the phone as he remembers a night not long after Buck left Texas
when Abuela came to stay with them for a few weeks. He couldn’t stand the loneliness and
pain any longer so he quietly crept into the guest room that had always really been her’s and
crawled into bed beside her. She’d held him close as he wept and told her about the boy he
loved and lost, and how sometimes he thought he’d die from the heartache. He apologized
over and over for not being the person they all wanted him to be and she had shushed him as
she carded her fingers through his hair and told him he was perfect just as he was, just as he’d
always been, that he’d always be her conejito.

She had been his only peace in the storm of that miserable time, and now she knew that boy
he’d told her about that night, and she loved him too, just like he knew she would.

“I think you’ll make a beautiful family when you’re ready to reach for more. Don’t be scared,
mi amore. The time for fear is well past.”

And it is past.

It’s past time he throws away all that fear he’s lived with his entire life.

It’s time to reach out and grab onto what he wants, even if Buck doesn’t want him back he
deserves to know that Eddie still loves him, that he’s always loved him, even through the
darkest times of his life. Loving Buck is what’s kept him from drowning and he owes it to
Buck to tell him what he means to him.

He doesn’t know how he’s going to do it, he wants to find the perfect moment, but he knows
that doesn’t exist. He just needs to do it, get everything out in the open. He just had no idea
he’d end up doing it in front of half of the 118.

They’re hanging out on the roof after a long, tough call - a young couple in a car accident
after prom. The car was crushed, the girl stuck inside and the boy holding her hand and
crying out for help. It was a difficult extraction, worries about a piece of metal embedded in
her thigh and possibly piercing her femoral artery, the boyfriend begging them to help her. He
and Buck managed to get her out, and Hen and Chim got her safely to the hospital. Seeing
them though, young and scared, whispering ‘I love you’s, made Eddie remember too many
things.

And it must’ve struck a chord with the rest of the team because when they got back no one
could really sleep so they headed up to the roof to decompress as the sun just started to peek
above the horizon.

“Ugh, that was a rough one,” Chim says as he stretches his hands over his head then slumps
down in his chair.

“I remember being young and in love like that,” Hen says.

“Me too,” Buck says quietly.

When Eddie looks over at him he finds him looking right back and his heart starts to pound in
his chest.

“Oh yeah, who was your first love?” Chim asks.

Without missing a beat Buck says, “Beyonce.”

Eddie bursts out laughing while Chim huffs at him and Hen smiles.

“What? It’s true,” Buck says. “Destiny’s Child was very important in my formative years.”

“Gross,” Chim groans. “I don’t need any more information than that.”

Hen chuckles. “What about you, Eddie?”

“Me? Definitely Shakira.”

Buck’s snorting laugh is worth Chim throwing his apple core at his head.

“Fine,” Eddie says as he brushes the apple off of his lap where it landed after bouncing off
his forehead. “Maybe it wasn’t Shakira.”

“Who was it then?” Chim asks.

Eddie turns back to Buck, meets his eyes again, and feels a wave of calm wash over him.
Everything settles inside of him, and somehow he knows it’ll be alright - just like he knew it
would be the day he told Buck about Shannon.

“A blue-eyed boy who worked on my uncle’s ranch even though he knew shit about ranching
and nearly got his balls kicked off by one of the cattle, but he was beautiful and I fell in love
with him on the spot.”

Buck smiles at him, bright as the rising sun behind him, and Eddie sees him as he is now;
ridiculous and kind, too beautiful for words, his best friend, and he sees Evan too, the boy
who opened up his world and taught him what it was to love someone even though it hurt,
and who held his hand under a starlit sky.

Loving them both is the simplest and most heartbreaking thing he’s ever done, and he’s
grateful for every second of it.

“Actually,” he adds. “I never stopped falling in love with him. I just keep doing it day after
day after day. Pretty sure he’s my first, and my last love.”

“Hey Chim,” Bucks says, voice quiet and steady. “Ask me again about my first love.”

“Who was your first love, Evan?” Eddie asks instead before Chim can.

A small, perfect smile quirks up the corner of Buck’s mouth at the ‘Evan’ and all Eddie wants
to do is kiss it.

“A boy who taught me how to ride a horse on his uncle’s ranch, held my hand under the stars,
and promised me I belonged to him when I’d never belonged to anyone else before.”

“You still belong to him. You belong to him and his son, if that’s something you would
want.”
Eddie vaguely notices Hen getting up from her chair and pulling a reluctant Chim behind her
as he complains about wanting to find out, ‘what they’re gonna say next.’

“I want that,” Buck says. “More than anything.”

Eddie gets up from his chair, he has to kiss Buck now. Before it was just an ache, now it’s a
need. Thankfully Buck meets him halfway and then he’s in Buck’s arms, kissing the only lips
he’s ever wanted, the only ones that ever felt right. The memory of his taste rushes through
Eddie’s body, so familiar and loved, even all these years later. Buck’s kisses though? They’re
different, better, or maybe it’s just that they’re so much more than Eddie could ever have held
in his memory - the reality stunning him.

“I love you, Buck,” Eddie says as he kisses the curve of his jaw, the corner of his lips.

“I love you too. I always have. Even when I thought I hated you I loved you.”

“I can’t believe we get to try again.”

“I think we just finally found each other when we were meant to,” Buck says. “We weren’t
ready for us back then, and now we are. Now we can be us.”

Eddie wraps his arms around Buck’s waist and tucks himself into him, presses his nose into
the crook of Buck’s neck, and when Buck’s arms come around him the world quiets and it's
just them now, with their whole entire future stretched out in front of them, bright and
hopeful.

A world, and a lifetime, away from Texas and the pain of their past.

Eddie falls in love when he’s nineteen, and twenty-seven, and all the years in between, with a
beautiful blue-eyed boy with long legs and a heart that holds him tight.

He lost him, but was lucky enough to find him again, and now they both have time to fall in
love over and over for all the rest of their years.
End Notes

conejito - little bunny

(also, omg, writing Evan instead of Buck in the 2010 timeline did me in, so if you saw any
Bucks where there shouldn't be please let me know...and sorry!)

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