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Eddie hasn’t answered two texts and a call since this morning, which Buck has decided not to take personally even though he is, a little, because Eddie’s been a little hard to pin down lately.
Ever since he started talking about choosing joy — a phrase he said with total sincerity, telling Buck a confusing story about juice and a priest, which Buck still doesn’t understand — he’s been off doing whatever it is joy requires, and Buck supports this in the abstract while privately resenting that joy apparently doesn’t involve texting him back.
So he drives over, because radio silence has never once stopped him and they’re not really an RSVP kind of friendship. He has a toothbrush at Eddie’s and a key to the front door, which Eddie gave him years ago without making it a thing, and which Buck has always taken as a standing invitation rather than a logistical convenience, because the alternative is reading less into it than that, and Buck would rather not.
He’s had a long day and he wants the couch and a beer and the specific relief of sitting next to someone who likes him while Eddie says almost nothing and somehow makes everything a little quieter in Buck’s head.
There’s a Tommy-shaped problem he’s been carefully not looking at for the last four hours, and the plan, such as it is, involves not looking at it for several more.
He pulls up behind Eddie’s truck and gets out, already complaining, but the complaint dries up in his throat. Because Eddie is bent over the open hood. In half a shirt.
Like, half.
Buck’s first thought is that something’s wrong with the shirt. That it shrank, or there’s been an accident, because the white tee Eddie’s wearing ends abruptly several inches north of where normal shirts end, the hem cut clean across so the whole lower half of his back is bare and shining with sweat in the mid-day sun.
Then, Eddie straightens up and turns around, and Buck revises his assessment, because the front is cropped too. Evenly, which means a person did this on purpose.
The express purpose being to ruin Buck’s day and possibly his life.
The shirt stops right under his ribs. His stomach is just — out, the whole deliciously muscular span of it. A bead of sweat tracks down past his navel and into the waistband of gray sweatpants slung low enough that Buck’s eyes follow the line of it before he can install any kind of brake. There are blue stripes on the sleeves of the shirt and a number across the chest that Buck registers as a blurred shape and not a digit, because Eddie’s bare abdomen is out and numbers don’t exist anymore.
“Hey,” Eddie says, a crooked, boyish grin splitting across his face, as if he isn’t standing in his own driveway basically naked. He pulls the rag from his back pocket and wipes the grease off his hands, unhurried. The motion does nothing good for the situation happening below his ribs, the muscles flexing with the movement. “Wasn’t expecting you.”
“I-I, uh, texted. You weren’t answering.” It comes out surprisingly level, which Buck supposes he’s grateful for.
“Phone’s inside.” Eddie tips his head at the engine. “She’s leaking somewhere. Been out here since this morning trying to find it.” He swipes the back of his wrist across his forehead, and the gesture pulls the hem up another half inch, which Buck makes the tactical error of following with rapt attention.
Which is how he ends up looking at the sweatpants again. And the sweatpants, it turns out, are keeping no secrets. There is nothing on under there. Buck knows this the way he knows the sun is up, immediately and without wanting to, because thin gray cotton over a hot afternoon hides exactly nothing.
So now he’s standing on Eddie’s front lawn, stone-cold sober, at four in the afternoon, looking at the unmistakable outline of his best friend going commando.
Neat.
He wrenches his eyes away to look at the engine.
Buck doesn’t really know cars, not the way Eddie does — he can change a tire and jump a battery and that’s about where his expertise taps out — but the engine is at least a problem in the general category of things he understands. Fluid going where fluid shouldn’t, and staring into it is a vast improvement over the conversation his eyes are currently having with the front of Eddie’s pants.
He’d honestly rather lie down on the hot concrete and slide under the truck himself than keep having a staring contest with the outline of Eddie’s dick.
"Didn't have plans with Tommy tonight?" Eddie asks, ducking back under the hood, and Buck's stomach does an unpleasant little fold, because no, as it happens, he did not have plans with Tommy tonight. Possibly won’t be having plans with Tommy any night going forward, and is not getting into that in this driveway while Eddie's dressed like a mechanic in a porno Buck would definitely watch.
"Nah." Technically true and conversationally a brick wall. "Wanted to see what you were up to."
"This." Eddie gestures vaguely at the engine without looking up, like this explains the shirt, like the leak demanded he expose six inches of stomach to the neighborhood. "Hand me the light? On the fender."
There's a work light sitting on the fender. Buck picks it up and passes it over, the handoff meaning he has to step in close, close enough to get a lungful of Eddie — sweat and motor oil and underneath it the specific warm smell that's just him, the one Buck has spent an unreasonable amount of energy over the years pretending not to notice.
Eddie takes the light and their fingers brush and Buck retreats to a safe distance, which he establishes at roughly five feet, which he holds firmly, not moving an inch.
"You okay?" Eddie says into the engine. "You're being weird."
"I'm not being weird." He is being extremely weird. "Long day."
Eddie hums, the noncommittal one that means he's going to circle back to it later, then straightens, wiping his hands again, and crouching down beside the front wheel where one of those flat rolling boards is waiting — a creeper, Buck's pretty sure it's called, though he's only sure because Eddie told him once and Buck retains an alarming percentage of things Eddie tells him.
Eddie sits on it, lies back, and Buck watches him do it with the same focus as if he were watching a slow-motion car accident, because lying down does things to the shirt situation that standing up did not.
With Eddie flat on his back the cropped shirt slides toward his chest, abandons the last pretense of coverage, and now there's just an unbroken stretch of him from the waistband up, the lines of his stomach catching the light, his ribs, the hair low on his belly.
Buck stands there holding nothing, having forgotten he was supposed to be doing something with his hands.
"Buck. The light. Can you— can you angle it down here, I can't see the—"
"R-Right. Yeah." He crouches and aims the light somewhere under the truck and absolutely does not aim his eyes there, aims them instead at the long line of Eddie laid out on the concrete, the sweatpants pulled tight across his hips now that he's reclined. With that change, the outline he'd been trying to forget about is right back, more committed than ever, and Buck has a genuine out-of-body moment where he watches himself kneel in a driveway gaping at his best friend and thinks, with great clarity, what is wrong with you?
Nothing's wrong with him. He's fine. He's a grown man who's seen Eddie shirtless a hundred times, in the locker room, at the beach, peeling off a sweat-soaked shirt after a bad call, and survived every single one. This shouldn't be different.
It's more clothes than the beach. It's a guy fixing a truck. People fix trucks. The fact that this particular guy is fixing this particular truck while seventy percent nude and saying Buck's name in that low scraped-up voice he gets when he's concentrating is a coincidence, a meaningless alignment of circumstances, and Buck is choosing to experience it as such.
"You with me?" Eddie's voice floats up from under the chassis.
"Mm."
"Because you've gone quiet, and you don't do quiet."
This is, infuriatingly, true. Buck does not do quiet. Buck is the person who narrates road trips and explains the plot of movies nobody asked about and once gave Chimney a full rundown on the migratory range of monarch butterflies because the silence in the rig was bothering him.
Quiet is not in his toolkit. And Eddie knows that, has built an entire mental profile of Buck around the fact that he doesn't shut up, which means every second Buck spends saying nothing is a flare going up over his position.
"I'm listening," Buck says. "Keep— just do your thing. Find the leak."
Eddie reaches up into the underside of the truck and something shifts in his arms and shoulders, the muscle in his forearm jumping as he works a wrench against something Buck can't see. He holds the light at an angle that helps no one and instead watches the rise and fall of Eddie's stomach as he breathes.
Here's the thing about the beach, which Buck is thinking about now: at the beach there's context. There's sand and waves and other people and a whole field of stuff to look at, so if Buck's eyes happen to see Eddie coming out of the water, it's incidental, one item in a crowd, easily lost in the noise.
The locker room's the same — there's a function to it, everybody's changing, nudity's the cost of doing business, and Buck can look away because there's somewhere else to look.
The driveway has none of that.
The driveway is just concrete and a truck and Eddie laid out across the bottom of Buck's whole field of vision with his shirt up around his chest, and there's nowhere else to look, no crowd to lose him in, nothing to water it down, and that, Buck decides, is the real problem here.
Not Eddie, but the lack of distractions.
If there were a volleyball net set up in the driveway, none of this would be happening.
"You can put the light down if your arm's tired," Eddie says.
"My arm's fine." His arm is killing him. He's been holding it at the same useless angle for three minutes because lowering it would mean picking a new place to aim his eyes and every option is dick or abs.
Somewhere in the quiet Buck starts doing math he has no business doing, which goes: Eddie put this shirt on this morning, on purpose, knowing what it looked like, and Eddie's not an idiot, Eddie owns a mirror, which means at some point today Eddie stood in front of that mirror in a shirt cut up to his ribs and sweatpants with nothing underneath, looked at the result, thought yeah, this, and walked outside.
Which could just be a guy being comfortable in his own home on a hot day, allowed, normal, and Buck's the one making it weird by reading anything into it.
Or — and he's only floating this, internally, to himself — maybe choosing joy looks like this now. Maybe Father Brian, the priest Eddie told Buck about, told Eddie to chase whatever makes him happy and Eddie's version of happy is a cut-up shirt and a truck and no underwear, and Buck is somehow both deeply confused and fully on board, and isn't that a hell of a thing to find out about yourself at four in the afternoon.
So, really, what’s wrong with him?
Nothing's wrong with him. He’s an adult. He can stand in a driveway holding a work light without coming apart over a sliver of his best friend's hip. He's fine.
"So Tommy's good?" Eddie asks, and Buck's stomach folds again, harder.
"Tommy's—" He doesn't finish, because the honest end of that sentence is not great and the dishonest end is a lie he'd have to keep standing up, and he's got nothing with Eddie's stomach right there. "It's fine. We don't have to talk about Tommy."
Something about how he says it must sound wrong, because Eddie goes still under the truck for a second, his hand pausing on the wrench for a few seconds before it starts moving again.
"Okay," Eddie says, carefully. "We don't have to talk about Tommy."
Buck should feel relieved at the dodge, except it cost him, because now Eddie's quiet too, and the two of them quiet together in a driveway is unprecedented, a violation of the natural order. Buck would rather be talking, would rather be doing anything other than crouching here with his pulse in his ears watching a bead of sweat slide down Eddie's side and disappear into the sweatpants he's already spent far too long thinking about.
The wrench clatters. "Found it," Eddie says, satisfied, and rolls the creeper out, surfacing sweat-slick and grease-streaked and squinting up into the sun. Buck has a second, maybe less, to look somewhere respectable before Eddie's eyes open all the way.
He spends it looking at the sweatpants. He's not proud of it.
Eddie sits up, and as he does he tracks where Buck's looking, follows it down to where it's been pointed for a while now (see: Eddie’s penis).
Buck watches the understanding arrive, watches him cycle through options and come to a conclusion.
"Buck."
"Yep." His voice cracks. One syllable and he still couldn't hold it together.
Get ahold of yourself.
Eddie stands in no particular hurry, inside the five feet now and then some. He lifts the hem of the cropped shirt to wipe his jaw, which means more stomach, which Buck strongly suspects he knows.
"See something you like, Buckley?"
There's a version of this where Buck laughs and says something back and they both pretend, and he knows that version, they've done it a hundred times, and he's holding it right there, ready to go.
"No," Buck says, to Eddie's chest, where the number on the shirt is a ten, a detail he can now read, his comprehension having chosen this exact moment to come back.
"No," Eddie repeats.
"I don't— I-I wasn't. I don't know what you mean." He gets his eyes up to Eddie's face, which is worse, because Eddie's looking at him with his head tipped and his mouth drawn into a smirk, the exact look Buck's watched him aim at strangers and never once had turned on himself. He can’t look for more than a second before his eyes drift south again.
"Ya know… you're cute when you're flustered."
Buck blinks. Eddie doesn’t call him cute. Idiot, menace, bud, Buck in forty different tones, but never cute. It cuts through everything else and snaps his attention straight to Eddie's face.
"You don't say that."
"Say what?”
"Cute. That's— no.” Buck shakes his head. “You've never once said cute."
"Maybe that was a mistake." Eddie shrugs, still smirking, but there's a crack in it now, like he's gotten a little ahead of himself and is deciding whether to own it. He doesn't step back, though, deciding to come closer instead of letting Buck off the hook.
The cicadas chirp rhythmically. The leak's found. Buck came over to hang out, which is a real and normal reason to be standing in this driveway, except that's plainly not what's holding him here now, and Eddie knows it, and he's not going to say it for him, he's just waiting with that eyebrow raised.
Buck looks at him, and whatever's on his own face must say enough, because Eddie holds his eyes for a beat, his expression shifting into something warmer and a great deal more dangerous, and instead of closing the distance he tips his head and asks, so fucking casually, "So. What do you want to do now?"
Which is unfair, because it puts it on Buck, makes him the one who has to say it, and Eddie knows exactly what he's doing, standing there with his shirt cut to his ribs and grease on his hands and that patient look, like he's got all afternoon to wait Buck out.
"I—" Buck's mouth has gone dry. "I want to, uh. Hang out."
"Hang out," Eddie repeats, the smirk pulling at his lips once again.
"Yeah."
"Sure." He takes a step closer, until he's near enough that Buck has to tip his chin slightly to keep his eyes on Eddie's face, which he's barely managing. "Just hang out?"
"I—" There's no good end to the sentence. Every honest version of it has Buck on his knees and every dishonest version requires him to step back and get in his truck and drive home and live the rest of his life as a coward, and he's already used up all his cowardice on the part where he didn't say anything for eight years. "No," he admits, quietly. "Not just hang out."
"No?" Eddie hums, pleased. "Then what?"
"I think you know what." It comes out lower than Buck means it to, steadier than he feels, and it's maybe the most direct thing he's managed to say all afternoon, the closest he's come to just laying it on the concrete between them.
There's a beat where neither of them moves, where the only sound is Eddie's breathing, where Buck watches him take it in and decide. Then Eddie nods, slow and certain.
Buck is on his knees before the nod's even finished, before he's decided to be, the concrete biting through his jeans, and from down here the situation in the sweatpants is no longer an outline or a theory or a problem he's been quietly managing, it's right in front of his face. He gets a hand on the back of Eddie's thigh to steady himself and hears the breath punch out of Eddie above him.
Eddie's hand lands in his hair, not pulling yet, resting there, a heavy but welcome presence. "Hey. We should— inside. We can—" His fingers tighten anyway, which does nothing for the credibility of the sentence. "The neighbors, Buck."
Buck leans in and mouths messily at him through the cotton, and whatever Eddie meant to say about the neighbors doesn’t make it past his lips. The fabric's thin and hot from the sun and Buck can feel the shape of Eddie’s cock through it, can feel him hardening against his mouth.
Buck has wanted to be exactly here for so long, and worked so hard at pretending he hasn't, that actually arriving makes him a little stupid with it, single-minded, deaf to anything that isn't finally.
"We have a perfectly good house," Eddie says, strained, making no move at all toward the perfectly good house.
"Mm." Buck doesn't stop, both hands at Eddie's hips now, holding him there as he drags his mouth up the length of him and feels Eddie shiver above him.
"You're not even— Buck." Eddie abandons the sentence, and when he finds his voice again it's rougher, lower. "God, you're desperate. Couldn't even wait to get inside."
Buck looks up at him, mouth still pressed where it is, and doesn't bother denying it, mostly because he can't and mostly because it's true.
Eddie's jaw works as he glances toward the street, at one neighbor's window and the open stretch of driveway where anyone could see, then his hand slides from Buck's hair to his shoulder and he steers them both backward, Buck shuffling on his knees, until they're tucked into the gap between the bed of the truck and the side of the house where the wall and the bulk of the truck close them off from the road.
"Better?" Eddie says dryly, looking down at him.
Buck rolls his eyes. "You're the one who came outside dressed like that."
"And you drove over here for it."
"I drove over here to hang out."
"Sure." Eddie's thumb traces the shell of Buck's ear, almost fond and fully smug. "That's why you've had your mouth on me for two minutes."
“Shut up.” Buck starts tugging for his waistband but Eddie’s hand catches his wrist, stopping him.
“Hey,” Eddie says, questioning. “What about Tommy?”
Buck looks up at him through his lashes, panting. “I don’t want to talk about Tommy right now. Just you.”
Eddie searches his face for a second, looking for the catch, and whatever he finds must satisfy him because his grip on Buck's wrist loosens and turns into something more like holding his hand. "Okay,” he says, softly but not all that gentle. “Okay, if that’s what you want.”
"Eddie. I've wanted to do this since before I even knew Tommy existed. I'm sure."
Eddie's breath goes uneven at that, his eyes gone soft and a little stunned, his mouth parting like he wants to say something back and can't find it, and then his hand slides into Buck's hair, thumb stroking once along his temple. "Then go ahead," he says, rough. "Since you've been dying to."
Permission granted, Buck pulls the waistband down and Eddie's cock springs free against his cheek, hard already, thick enough that Buck's earlier survey through the sweatpants turns out to have undersold it by a lot. He wraps a hand around the base and feels Eddie's whole body tighten, hears the careful breath he lets out through his teeth, and for a second Buck just looks at it, at him, half in disbelief he's actually here.
"You gonna do something," Eddie says, his smile audible, "or just stare?"
"Both." Buck leans in and licks a slow stripe up the underside, base to tip. Whatever smart thing Eddie was building collapses into a rumbling groan that Buck feels in his own chest. He takes the head into his mouth, tongue working into the slit. Eddie's hand fists in his hair, and Eddie uses it to his advantage, tilting Buck's head exactly how he wants it, guiding him down a little further. Buck lets him, goes pliant and open and lets Eddie set the pace.
Buck didn't see it coming — how good it feels to hand it over. He spends his whole life pushing, filling the silence, never able to sit still, and down here with Eddie above him, guiding him, all of that goes quiet. There's nothing left but the heaviness of Eddie on his tongue and whatever Eddie decides to do next.
"There you go," Eddie murmurs, rolling his hips forward in shallow pushes, feeding it to him and watching Buck take it. "Knew you wanted this. Couldn't look at anything else from the second you got out of your truck." His thumb drags along the stretched corner of Buck's mouth. "Got on your knees in my driveway. Couldn't even wait till we got inside."
Buck moans around him. It's true, every word, and being seen that plainly should mortify him but instead lights him up. He takes Eddie deeper in answer. Eddie's hand grips tighter, holding him there longer than Buck would've dared on his own before easing him back, reading exactly how much Buck can take and giving him just past it.
It goes on like that, unhurried, Eddie in no rush either now that he's got Buck where he wants him, working him with a patience that's somehow filthier than urgency would be. Buck loses the thread of time. His jaw aches and his eyes sting and he doesn't care, would happily stay down here until the sun sets. His own arousal has built to something insistent and ignored, trapped against the seam of his jeans, but he doesn't touch it, doesn't want to, doesn't want anything that isn't this.
"Look at you." Eddie's voice has frayed now, the control finally slipping. "Could've had this any time you wanted. All you ever had to do was ask."
Buck tries to say something back — he had a retort, he's sure of it — but his mouth's full and his head's pleasantly empty, every thought he's ever had draining out the back of his skull until there's only this, only Eddie, the taste of him and the fist in his hair and the deep voice telling him how good he's doing.
He's still there, in his head, making a conscious choice to move and flick his tongue and moan around Eddie’s cock, but that’s all there is. Other than the thoughts scattering in his brain to please, it’s blissfully, stupidly quiet of any of the usual things bumbling around in there.
"Yeah, there it is,” Eddie says fondly, like he can see exactly where Buck is and likes him there. His thumb sweeps Buck's cheekbone. "Got real quiet on me. That's better, isn't it? Let me help. I know it's hard."
It's so unfair, that line, filthy and tender at once, and Buck whines around him and lets his eyes fall shut and lets Eddie do the work, lets Eddie hold his head steady and feed into him at the pace he wants, taking what Buck's offering and giving Buck the exact version of this he never knew how to ask for. Buck's hands have gone slack on Eddie's hips, just holding on for the sake of it.
In reality, if he wanted to, he could snap to attention and show Eddie exactly how skilled he is in this department. He could flick his wrist and take him all the way down, swallowing around him. But there’s something about letting Eddie take control, letting Eddie use him, that’s intoxicating.
Maybe it’s because Buck knows Eddie will always take care of him. That Eddie knows exactly how much he can take. But nevertheless, Buck is buzzing with it, eager to show Eddie just how good he is, that he can sit still and follow orders.
Tommy never does this. Has never liked the fact that Buck is so keen on being used. That Buck would all but beg to get face-fucked if it meant his partner was taking what they wanted from him. But Eddie — perfect, beautiful Eddie — was made for Buck, and seems to be getting off on this as much as Buck is.
Eddie doesn't rush, and it undoes Buck completely. Even now, even groaning and trembling under Buck's palms, Eddie keeps it measured, dragging it out like he's in no hurry to let this end. He pets through Buck's hair, murmurs a steady stream of nonsense and praise, that's it, just like that, you're doing so good for me, knew that pretty mouth would be like this — and Buck is drunk on it, his whole world narrowed to the next push of Eddie’s cock and the next grounding touch.
"Could honestly stay like this all day," Eddie says, laughing, thumb tracing the stretched line of Buck's lips where they're wrapped around his cock.
And he proves it — eases his hips back, pulls himself nearly all the way out until Buck's only got the head between his lips, holds him right there and won't give him the rest. Buck chases it, tries to sink forward and take more, but Eddie's grip in his hair tightens just enough to stop him, keeping him exactly where he wants him.
"Nuh-uh." Eddie's grinning down at him, insufferable, delighted. "Maybe I'll just keep you here. All afternoon. Right like this." His thumb pets along Buck's cheek, mock-thoughtful. "You wouldn't even complain, would you? You'd kneel here and let me hold you on my cock till the sun goes down.”
Buck whines and nods as much as the grip allows, eyes rolling up to meet Eddie's, and he means it, that's the worst part, he'd genuinely take that deal and sign it in blood. The noise he makes is so plainly yes please that there's no pretending otherwise.
Eddie’s eyes go even darker, if that’s possible. Heat and hunger crossing his face. "Yeah," he whispers, almost wondering. "Yeah, I knew it."
The teasing’s done as quick as it started — Eddie's patience snaps clean and he pushes back in, giving Buck all of it this time, his rhythm picking up with real intent, the control he'd been so smug about finally burning off. "Okay," he breathes, hand fisting tight in Buck's hair, hips snapping forward. "Okay, c'mere, take it."
Buck takes it, gladly, greedily, and Eddie's breath comes out in bursts, his thighs drawing tight under Buck's palms as Buck puts his all into taking Eddie apart.
"You keep doing that and I'm not gonna last," Eddie warns, ragged, the savoring gone now, replaced with something he can't govern.
The pace is bordering on brutal toward the end, breaking into a dirty grind as Eddie groans above him. Buck can feel the way he starts to tense, the way Eddie’s cock twitches on his tongue.
“F-Fuck, Buck. I’m— I’m gonna— shit.”
He tries to ease Buck off, a tug at his hair, giving him the out — but Buck stays, hums and takes him deeper.
Eddie comes with Buck's name caught in his throat and his hand clenching against Buck's scalp, his spine arching off the wall. Buck swallows eagerly around him, savoring the taste, working him through the aftershocks, and only eases off when Eddie goes loose and pliant and tugs him up by the hair with a shaky, overwhelmed laugh.
The second Buck's on his feet Eddie's mouth is on his, hauling him in by the hand still fisted in his hair, kissing him deep like he's got something to prove, as Buck groans against his lips. Eddie licks into his mouth thoroughly, and it occurs to Buck somewhere in the back of his scrambled head that Eddie can taste himself there, is chasing it on purpose, is kissing Buck through the evidence of what Buck just did to him and clearly into it — and that thought nearly has Buck dropping to his knees a second time.
He fists both hands in the front of Eddie’s too-short shirt and hangs on, kissing back like his life depends on it.
When Eddie finally pulls back he stays close, foreheads nearly touching, both of them panting into each other.
Once he catches his breath, the first coherent thought Buck has is: what the hell just happened? The second, hot on its heels, is: how soon can I make it happen again?
Because he’s nothing if not a man with priorities.
He just blew his best friend against the side of a house in broad daylight and the dominant feeling, edging out shock, edging out the ache in his knees, edging out the eight years of longing that just exploded on Eddie's lawn, is a deep and uncomplicated desire to do it again immediately.
He stands there blinking in the afternoon sun like a man who's been struck by something. Not lightning this time, though he thinks it may be a close second. His jaw aches. There's grease on his shirt and probably in his hair from Eddie's hands and he has no memory of when that happened. And his dick — well, let’s just say he hopes that’s a thing that will be remedied soon.
"So," Buck says, hoarsely, feeling the scratch in his throat as he tries to speak. "That was—"
"Yeah." Eddie's leaning against the house, flushed, fixing the cut-up shirt that started this whole catastrophe, looking obnoxiously pleased with himself and also a little dazed, like maybe he's having his own version of the what just happened moment.
"I came over to hang out," Buck says.
"I know."
"I had a whole— I was gonna sit on your couch. Drink a beer. Be normal."
"I know." Eddie smirks. The bastard. "How'd that work out?"
"Shut up." Buck scrubs a hand over his face. "Genuinely, what— okay. Okay. I have a lot of questions. About the shirt, mostly."
"The shirt was clean." Eddie shrugs, which is an outrageous thing to claim ownership of after what the shirt just caused. "Wasn't thinking about it."
"You weren't thinking about it." Buck stares at him. "I have aged ten years in the last thirty minutes."
"Uh-huh."
"I'm serious. I came here in a totally normal state of mind and you've— look at me. Look what you did."
"I'm looking." Eddie's grinning. "Not seeing a downside."
Buck scoffs. “Unbelievable.”
Eddie chuckles, pushing off the wall and stepping in close, his hand comes up to cradle Buck's cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of Buck's wrecked mouth, his expression shifting into something that makes butterflies go crazy in Buck’s stomach. "Come inside," Eddie says. "Let me take care of you." His eyes flick down and back up, pointed. "You're a little— you've got a situation of your own going on, and I'd like to do something about it. Somewhere that isn't visible from the street this time."
Buck's whole body answers that before his mouth can. "Inside. Yes. Inside is good. I'm extremely on board with inside."
"And then," Eddie says, steering him by the small of his back toward the door, not letting him bolt ahead, keeping him close, "we talk. About… Tommy. About all of it. The stuff neither of us have been saying for a while." He says it lightly, but there's weight underneath, years of it. "Deal?"
"Deal," Buck says, and he means it. Then, because he can't help himself, because his brain has already circled back around to the only item left on its agenda: "How long do we have to talk before we can do that again?"
Eddie snorts, opening the door, ushering him through. "Inside, Buckley."
"That's not a no."
Eddie sighs. "It's not a no."