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The ceiling fan squeaks louder than the boxy air conditioning rumbles from where it’s propped below the window. It’s louder than the semis rumbling past on the highway. It’s louder than Buck’s heartbeat, than the blood rushing through his ears.
But Eddie breathes in, and everything goes quiet. Buck doesn’t think he’s taken a breath since he woke up, sharing this tiny mattress with Eddie in a tiny room in this tiny motel, with one blind missing over the window so Buck slept with a neon Open sign flashing every other second across his face.
Well, “slept” might be generous. Between every single ache and pain Buck’s carrying in his body, and the fact he and Eddie are crammed side by side in a double-sized mattress, and because Buck can’t seem to shut his brain up enough to actually do more than doze . . . Buck is looking forward to getting home to his own bed.
He is, even if he breathed a sigh of relief the second Eddie suggested, over greasy burgers and limp fries and soda that might have been carbonated in World War II, that they crash at the motel across the street for the night. They’re only a few hours out from Los Angeles, from making this trip end, and Buck had spent every day since they left whatever the fuck town he and Eddie both nearly died in trying to come up with an excuse to make this drive last just a little longer. To find a way to exist just a few more minutes inside this liminal space, inside a blip between here and there that he’s dug his nails into, clung to with everything that he is, because it’s the only time he’s felt like he and Eddie can just be Buck and Eddie without life trying to get in the way, to tear them apart, to demand they not try to grab for joy that’s forever felt just out of reach, in whatever way they fucking can.
So when Eddie angled his thumb toward the motel and said, “Mind if we crash here tonight? Think that burger might’ve been laced with Benadryl,” Buck had had to bite back everything he’d wanted to shout (“God, yes, please, I don’t care if there’s still light in the sky, I’m not ready to keep driving for home, not ready to let life get in the way of us again, I want you to myself for just one more night, I’m sick and tired of sharing you with our friends and family and strangers at the gas station and patients on some idiotic shower sex call and beautiful women at nightclubs and at charity auctions and Chris’s parent-teacher conferences”) and instead just shrug his shoulders and say, “So long as I get to shower first.” Eddie had smirked at him, all soft and warm, and said, “I wondered where that stink was coming from,” and when the teenager playing solitaire on a desktop computer that was old enough to drink the beer she wasn’t but sipped at anyway told them, “We’ve only got singles here,” without even looking away from the screen, Buck had mentally thrown his fists into the air to hoot and holler. Eddie paid, Buck nabbed the keys, they stumbled into the dingy motel room and took turns using the lone towel in the bathroom that didn’t look like the home to a mushroom patch and crashed onto the ancient, creaking bed and said “Good night” at the exact same time.
But that was hours ago. The sun will creep up and over the horizon sooner, not later. The sky is already greying at the edges. That neon sign isn’t as bright as it was all night.
And Eddie breathed in.
Buck doesn’t turn his head, but he knows Eddie’s awake, and he knows Eddie knows that Buck is awake and knows that he is, too. This might be closer to Eddie than Buck’s been in a long time—since Buck moved out of Eddie’s house, even if he didn’t want to, because Eddie kept saying “You don’t have to leave” instead of “I want you to stay” and Buck didn’t think he could ask for it, not now, not after everything, no matter that he still feels like a coward for keeping his mouth shut—but he hasn’t forgotten what it sounds like when Eddie wakes up. The deep breaths hitching halfway to full, and then a big inhale, a full expansion of the lungs, before it smooths out into an exhale. The hand Eddie brings to his face to scrub over his forehead, then his eyes, then his mouth, before it drops to scratch his chest.
That’s where movement all stopped, when Eddie inhaled, because Eddie must have noticed how they’re pressed together—not spooning, but like they might have been at one point in the night, kneecaps tucked behind knees, hipbones bumping, elbows knocking. It’s not exactly comfortable, because this bed was probably bought around the same time as that computer at the front desk and the soda from the diner, and because he and Eddie are both still covered in bruises and scrapes from the car crash and subsequent kidnapping and latest brush with death. Buck’s pretty sure he still has some splinter under the knuckle of his left thumb, but he can’t find his tweezers and kept forgetting to ask to borrow Eddie’s pair.
God, Buck still can’t believe Eddie hotwired a car to find him. Can’t believe he rode a horse. Can’t believe he snuck out of a hospital room through a window after stealing another man’s clothes.
Can’t believe Eddie hasn’t once denied it or suggested a correction when someone mistakes him for Buck’s husband. Boyfriend. Partner. Whatever name they come up with in their head, whatever label they choose, they say it and Eddie doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t even seem to mind it. Might even look like he enjoys having someone look at the two of them, come to a conclusion, and breathe that relationship into existence.
The air conditioning rumbles back on. The ceiling fan squeaks. The desert gets cold at night—people who don’t live in a desert always get surprised when they start to shiver as soon as the sun goes down—but it’s warm here under the threadbare comforter that might have been stitched together by someone’s grandmother when the mattress was bought. The bed’s warm because Eddie’s warm, and he’s pressed so close, and Buck doesn’t try to pull away. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to, and he has never once wanted to. If he was crawling through a desert and saw two signs, one pointing toward water just a quarter mile away and the other pointing to Eddie Diaz forty-five miles away, Buck knows which direction he’d choose.
There’s a rustle, and Buck feels Eddie looking at him. So Buck turns his head to look at Eddie, too. The only light comes from that neon sign flickering its welcome into this tiny motel room, from the occasional headlight striping light across Eddie’s eyes. It’s hardly enough to make out much of anything, but it’s enough that, when Eddie rolls onto his side, Buck isn’t surprised. He isn’t surprised when Eddie’s hand brushes against his stomach, and it could tickle but it doesn’t. No, it just feels kind of good.
When Buck doesn’t speak, Eddie seems to take it for the permission it is and tucks his fingers under Buck’s shirt, calluses scratching over the warm skin of his stomach. Buck breathes in, slow and even, and Eddie’s fingers follow the happy trail of hair down toward Buck’s waistline. His fingers nudge against elastic, but don’t slip beneath. Not yet. Buck knows they will before the sun rises. He’s patient enough to wait. He’s waited eight years. What’s another few seconds?
Eddie hums, and Buck hums back, so Eddie’s fingers rise, following the trial of hair to where it ends at his belly button, and he dips his thumb in just briefly before skating up toward his sternum. His fingers spread over Buck’s chest, as if to feel the expansion of it when Buck breathes in. Buck breathes out, and Eddie’s fingers find his heartbeat and press in hard, hard enough that he must be seeking out each thump. He’ll know Buck’s heart is racing, if he doesn’t already, because Buck isn’t trying to hide it.
He’s so tired of hiding it.
Buck tips his head forward, just enough, and Eddie tilts his chin up to catch Buck’s forehead with his own, like Buck hoped he would, knew he would, and Buck sighs, and Eddie sighs, too, breaths mingling. Buck would close his eyes, but he doesn’t want to look away. Doesn’t want to stop watching Eddie’s eyes as they affix to Buck’s chest, though his hand is still hidden beneath Buck’s shirt. But Eddie can’t actually need his eyes to see—he knows Buck too well to not see him by touch alone.
Their noses nudge. Buck hums again, and Eddie does, too, and the kiss, when it happens, doesn’t feel wrong or out of place—it feels like a hello, one they’ve said three thousand times by now, every too-early morning and too-late night, on front porches and inside the station, from eight hundred miles away and so close they’re the one soul in two bodies people always seek but rarely find. The kiss feels brand new, and like something that’s happened a million times before.
Eddie’s lips are warm, his breath a little sour, but the kiss is familiar to Buck the way Buck knows it’s familiar to Eddie, and Eddie’s fingers find Buck’s neck, curl around its column, cover the cuts that have scabbed over, the bruises that haven’t yet faded, and he pulls Buck in, just a little more, just a little harder. Buck shifts in the bed, onto one hip, and feels when Eddie mirrors it, half-hard cock to half-hard cock, one knee slipping between two thighs, and Buck sighs, can’t help it, and hears Eddie breathe that sigh in, like he needs to hold even this part of Buck inside himself.
“Buck,” Eddie says on his next exhale, and this time Buck breathes in so he can say, “Eddie,” and hold Eddie inside himself, too, and his hand finds Eddie’s hip, tugs him closer, welcomes him in. Eddie sighs, that hand on Buck’s neck sliding down his spine to the small of his back, and he tugs Buck in, makes a little happy sound when Buck accepts the invitation and rocks forward, grinding his cock against Eddie’s thigh, and Eddie grinds right back, each roll slow, syrupy, heartbeats felt in his knees and his cock and behind his eyes, the rush of blood no longer loud enough to drown out a little moan, a faint gasp, the creak of the bed and the squeak of the ceiling fan.
And then Eddie moves, sliding onto Buck with a whispered “Please,” and Buck says, “Yeah,” and then his shirt is off, and Eddie’s is, too, Buck’s shorts shoved down so his cock slaps against his belly, drooling precome into the cool morning air. Eddie covers Buck’s cock with one hand, curls his fingers around its girth, their foreheads colliding with a thud that makes Buck grin and Eddie laugh, quiet here in this nonexistent space between them. Buck shoves Eddie’s shorts down, too, welcomes the slick and their sweat, covering Eddie’s hand where his hand covers them, and Eddie breathes, “Yeah,” to Buck’s “Hmm?”
Their lips meet, a slick, sweet slide of a kiss, Buck flicking his tongue over Eddie’s teeth, Eddie licking the roof of Buck’s mouth, and teeth bite at the plush of a bottom lip, and fingers curl around a cock, thumbs nudging against a crown, trace a vein to the thatch of curls, find where precome dripped a trail to learn a taste. It’s hot and it’s humid here where their hips collide and lips meet, and in the brightening dawn, where sunlight chases stars away, Buck can chase a want too—a fucking need—as desperately as he hungers for, can feel himself chased for a want and a goddamn need, too, and slake a thirst he never thought he’d taste.
Because it’s here, here in this tiny motel room on the last night before the real world finds them again, that nothing matters—nothing but them. And so they gasp, and they come, and they laugh, and they kiss, and eyes meet. Eyes meet, and Buck sees Eddie, and Eddie sees Buck, and their racing hearts slow, and they catch a breath as sweat and spend dries in the cool air and a desert wakes from a neon-bright night.
“Eddie,” Buck says, and it carries more than five letters, two syllables, and he knows Eddie hears it, because Eddie has always heard it. And Eddie says, “Yeah, Buck,” and that’s more than eight letters and two syllables, too. It’s a confession. A fucking promise.
The ceiling fan squeaks. The boxy air conditioning rumbles.
Buck says, “Home, then?” and Eddie presses his forehead to Buck’s and nudges their noses together, and he says, “Yeah,” and brushes a kiss over Buck’s lips, and then says, “Let’s go home, Buck,” on a sigh, and Buck breathes that sigh in, even if he knows this will not be the only part of Eddie he keeps inside himself.
This will not be the only part of Eddie that’s his.