Do you guys think that maybe the reason Eddie hasn't realized his feelings for Buck yet (that we know of) is because he thinks everyone feels that way around Buck? Because who wouldn't love Buck. He even told Buck that (Tommy) will learn to love him like we ALL do. And if he doesn't then he's an idiot.
But maybe Eddie is actually the idiot here because he doesn't realize he's in love with his best friend
buck isn't breathing. he doesn't have a heart beat. he was trapped under rubble and eddie is there. he's doing chest compressions. mouth to mouth. he's yelling at buck: don't do this to me. not now. not when i... buck finally sucks in a lungful, blinking up at him with his devastating blue eyes, rasping: eddie? and they are so close, eddie's forehead pressed against buck's, tears marking a path through the dust on his face. he croaks: hey bud and they are still sharing air, heaving and grabbing at each other's faces as relieved laughter bubbles up through a sob. he's not thinking when he does it. he closes the barely-there distance, capturing buck's lips with his own, a smile still pulling at his dimples
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been six months since my last confession," Eddie says, a perfect recital of the line he'd spent all morning in the bathroom rehearsing.
For a long moment, silence. Eddie has to fight the urge to check there's actually someone on the other side. Then —
"Eddie?" It's a familiar voice. One that has the tension seeping out of Eddie's shoulders all at once.
"Yeah," he breathes out. "Yeah, it's me."
"It's good to hear your voice again," Father Brian says, a hint of a smile in the words. "I wasn't sure I would."
"I wasn't sure either, but, uh." Eddie digs his left thumb into the middle of his right palm until flesh yields to bone. "I needed to talk to someone, and I wasn't sure who to go to."
Not true. Knew exactly who he'd go to. Bobby. But Bobby was gone. And Buck would have been his next choice, but Buck was hanging on by a thread, and Eddie wasn't going to be the one to break it. He'd just be the one to catch Buck when it finally snapped.
"You're always welcome here," Brian tells him, and Eddie has to squeeze his eyes shut against the tears.
"This was my captain's church, you know?" he rasps. "That's how I knew about it."
"Captain Nash."
"I, yeah. How did you —"
"He spoke about you a lot. Spoke about all his firefighters, but especially you and a... Buck?"
"Yeah." Eddie huffs a wet laugh. "That tracks." Wonders what exactly Bobby would say about him. Imagines he must have painted a pretty tragic picture.
"I was very sorry to hear of his passing. He was a good man. I find that's increasingly rare in the world right now."
"He was something else alright." Eddie takes a deep breath, gathers up all the grief and the guilt in the back of his throat. "I wasn't here when he died. I found out over the phone." His voice breaks, and Eddie takes a moment to gather himself. Father Brian lets him. "Buck told me. And, God, I've never heard him like that before."
Except that's not true, Eddie thinks. He's heard it once before. When Los Angeles was half-drowned, and Buck was dirty and bloody and soaking wet and shaking, and all he had left was Christopher's glasses.
"I moved back to Texas to be with my son," Eddie says suddenly. Can't linger in that memory for long. Not if he wants to make it out of the confessional.
"Ah, I see." Another smile creeping into his voice. There's something about the way he speaks that reminds Eddie so much of Bobby that he has to turn his thumb, so the nail digs a crescent moon into the soft flesh of his palm. "You followed your joy."
"Yeah." Eddie sighs, drags a hand down his face, laughs a broken noise. "Left a hell of a lot of it behind though." Holds his breath for a moment. "With Buck." Waits for God to smite him down.
Nothing.
"Well, you can only fit so much in a U-Haul," Brian says easily. It startles a laugh out of Eddie. A real one this time. Sharp but real. "I'm sure he took good care of it for you."
"He did," Eddie agrees, just as easily. Then averts course like a coward. "I'm just. Stuck. Now. I'm having a hard time getting myself back to Texas even though my kid's there."
He leaves out the part where Christopher keeps telling him he's not allowed to come back until he's sure Buck is okay. It feels too big for such a small space.
"And why do you think that is?"
"I wasn't here when my team needed me. I don't want to make that mistake again."
"Are you thinking about coming back?"
Eddie laughs again. Another empty thing.
"I've been thinking about coming back since I left. I just. I never thought it'd be like this. Because of this." He shakes his head. Doesn't bother fighting the tears this time. "I wanted coming home to be happy. That's the only reason Chris is still in Texas. I didn't want him coming home to another ghost."
"That makes sense," Brian says not unkindly. "But, Eddie, I have to say, it still sounds like you're denying yourself joy."
And there it is. That fucking word again. The one that's haunted him since the juice bar. Since Buck on his doorstep. Since Eddie flipped that goddamn tablet and it took his whole world with it.
"Maybe." Eddie shrugs. What right does he have to joy when Bobby's was taken from him so cruelly? "Bobby told me once. He said that I didn't have to lose everything before I allowed myself to feel something." Those words have been on his mind a lot lately. Every time he looks at Buck, and he wonders if Bobby had seen something Eddie had never been able to look too closely at. "I didn't know what he meant at the time."
"And now?"
"Now, I know I haven't quite lost everything, but I've lost a hell of a lot, and I don't want to have to lose anything else before I allow myself to feel joy." The words come out hoarse and hollow. Eddie thinks, in another world, he'd get to say this to Bobby. And he tries to imagine the smile he'd wear when Eddie said it. That thing so full of pride, so naturally paternal. It winds him a little.
"What does joy look like to you, Eddie?" Father Brian asks gently.
"Christopher." Eddie huffs a breath, looks up at Bobby wherever he may be. "Buck."
"Mm." Eddie glances at the partition, just for a second, catches Brian's smile as he ducks his head. He loses his breath a little, looks back to the doorway. "What are you gonna do about it?"
And that's the question. The one Eddie's been trying to answer since he left. Since before that maybe. Since a quiet, half-honest conversation in Buck's loft. The one he gave up for Eddie. Since the lightning strike. Since the shooting. Since the well. Since Evan Buckley.
"I've got joy right in front of me." He shrugs, smiles just slightly. "I'm not gonna walk away from it again."
"Alright then." The smile is unmistakable in Father Brian's voice now. The way Bobby's would be in the engine when he was trying to keep them all focused but, instead, found himself getting sucked in. "Your penance —" and Eddie supposed he should have expected it, bringing this into God's house, but he'd thought— "is one Hail Mary."
"Only one?" Eddie blinks. He looks back at the partition, finds Father Brian's warm eyes already there.
"Something tells me it's gonna be a big one," he murmurs. Eddie ducks his head to hide the flush of his cheeks. How terribly easy he must be to read. How many people must have read him cover to cover before Eddie could even bring it upon himself to open the fucking book. How inevitable it all seems now. It's Buck. Of course, it's Buck. "Good luck, Eddie."
It’s after the funeral. Eddie’s on Buck's couch, traded his suit for sweatpants, and he’s listening to Buck mumble to himself in the kitchen. Listens as he hums, the stream of the faucet and the clink of the dishes quiet under his gentle melody. Eddie wasn’t sure what he was expecting when Buck picked him up at the airport, but he should’ve known they’d fall right back into step with one another.
It's still just as comfortable, this silence, as it's always been.
He waits for Buck to finish doing the dishes. He offered to help, but he could tell Buck needed time to process the day on his own, so he didn’t push when Buck said he was okay.
Said Eddie could do the dishes tomorrow.
Eddie smiled and nodded and said alright.
Eventually, Buck comes to sit next to him. He’s warm, a long line of body heat, and tense. Eddie wants to reach out and doesn’t know how to. He tries anyway, puts a hand on Buck’s shoulder but it lands too close to his neck, thumb dipping into the gap of his collarbone.
“Buck,” he says. Buck looks at him. Really looks at him. His eyes are wide and red rimmed and blue, and Eddie, not for the first time, but definitely the first time he doesn’t push the thought away, gets a little taken aback by how beautiful he is.
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t fight it when Buck leans in and closes the distance between them. Quick and hurried like he’s afraid this is the one chance he’ll get to do this and he doesn’t want to miss the mark.
Maybe that’s why he lets the hand on his shoulder reach around to cup the back of Buck’s neck, holding him in place.
The press of lips is soft and urgent all at once. There’s a desperation behind it, a hunger that Eddie knows intimately. Buck shifts, brings a hand up to Eddie’s cheek, his thumb smoothing over his cheekbones. He thinks that might be what does, what breaks him, it’s so tender.
Eddie doesn’t think anyone’s ever been tender with him before.
He opens under Buck’s tongue, licks hot into his mouth, swallows Buck’s little hums and does his best to elicit as many as he can. Buck’s whining, whining. It’s Eddie’s new favorite sound; he could get high on it, drunk on it, wants to stay in this bubble forever.
Until the kiss turns salty.
“Buck, Buck. We shouldn’t.”
“Eddie,” he mumbles, pressing the word against Eddie’s pulse point. “Just once? We—we can forget about it later.”
Eddie’s nodding before the words finishing coming out of his mouth.
“Okay. Okay, yeah. Yeah, baby, whatever you need.”
Buck kisses him again, and this time it’s biting. There’s a desire behind it that Buck was holding back. Eddie gives as good as he gets, kisses Buck with fervor. It feels different, kissing a man. He never let himself imagine it, but it makes sense. Buck doesn’t hold back, doesn’t wait for him to take any lead.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“Call me baby again,” Buck replies.
“Baby. You’re shaking.”
“Just—” There’s a tremor to Buck’s hands as his fingers travel feather light over Eddie’s t-shirt. “You gotta promise me nothing will change between us if we do this.”
on another note, while almost all of the grief sex fics i've seen have been buck initiating it, there's something really juicy to me about it being eddie. eddie who makes big, irrevokable, impulsive decisions in moments of emotional turmoil, eddie who has not processed or even really looked at his sexuality OR his feelings about buck, eddie who joined a fight club the last time he was grieving someone he loved because he had to feel something, literally anything, other than the heartbreak.
eddie who is still living in texas, who is getting on a plane the next morning, maybe without even waking buck up first because what the fuck did he do, what the fuck was he thinking, all he ever seems to do is break things and this is just the most recent example.
to be clear. my insane conspiracy is not that bobby is alive. i am seriously an alivegirlbobby truther. my insane conspiracy is they killed him for buddie canon.
when buck finally takes the diaz last name it will become his roman empire. he’s monogramming all his personal belongings and prized possessions and introducing himself to everyone off the top as buck diaz. it’ll become apart of his first name. you’ll never catch him saying “i go by buck” ever again. he goes by buck diaz full stop and you’ll address him as such
2087
dededos
dailybridgerton
janainaart
kaledo-art
snowghoul
kianamaiart
vaporwave
