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On Sunday, Eddie goes to church for the first time since leaving Texas. Here, he meets a priest with sandy blond hair and blue eyes and a smile that could put God's light to shame. This promptly sends Eddie spiralling into the confession booth, and Eddie splits himself open to bleed out over holy stone floors.
He speaks Shannon's name into the darkness, and it doesn't bring her back to life, but it might revive Eddie. Because he says her name, whispers the two dreaded D words—death and divorce—and the world keeps on spinning for the first time since she'd written an apology into her eyes over the table at that rooftop restaurant.
The world keeps on spinning before stopping all over again. Because Eddie goes to the cemetery, and he lets Shannon go. He lets her rest. And he shaves his moustache off. And he sits on his couch in his empty house and looks at a picture of Christopher and thinks I'm going to get him back.
And then Buck texts him.
Broke up with Tommy
Beer?
It's hard to tell from the five words he sends, but Eddie can't parse out exactly what it means. Did they break up? Well, of course they did. But did Tommy break up with Buck? Or did Buck break up with Tommy? Or was it a mutual calling off of things after whatever revelation had sent Buck ping-ponging between Maddie and Bobby?
(And Eddie was fine about that, thanks. He knew Buck hadn't come to him because he'd seen the struggle etched into every inch of him. But still. Still. If Buck needed to break himself open somewhere, needed someone to drink the sorrow from his bones and bandage him back up again, why wouldn't he come to Eddie?)
Difficult, too, to parse was how exactly he was feeling about the whole thing. Beer question mark wasn't exactly an unusual text from either of them. In fact, it'd probably make up at least twenty per cent of their text chain seeing as they were sat right next to each other most of the time. So, beer could mean anything from bored - come over? to heartbroken - help me forget or even talk to me, man, I know you've been struggling - sorry I wasn't there.
Eddie shakes his head. Maybe if he stopped thinking and started moving, he might actually get some answers. He typed out his ETA, adding an extra ten minutes to stop by the store for Buck's favourite beers Eddie knew he'd just run out of, shoved his feet into his shoes, grabbed his keys and headed out to the truck.
He's at Buck's door a moment later, fist hovering above the door. He doesn't knock. Can't. Something feels different. He thinks about the key sandwiched between his housekey and the truck keys, but he doesn't use it. Hasn't used it in years. Since another grave where he'd let someone he loved go.
Oh.
Oh .
Fuck.
Because here's the thing. Eddie has spent his whole life struggling with things that seemed to come easy to everyone else.
Commitment. Faith.
He's struggled committing to the wife he fell for like she was the deep blue waters of the lake he saw her across, he's struggled committing to his son who cried in the arms of a stranger every time his father held him, he's struggled committing to perfectly nice girlfriends and the readymade families they were suddenly packaged into the moment he asked them out.
And he's struggled having faith in a god that allows wars to take innocent men and women, that lets little boys lose their mothers and get swept away by tsunamis, that sends lightning bolts down to take and take and take. But Eddie has never struggled with Buck. He'd tied Buck to their family like he was simply tying a bow on a gift, and Eddie realises then that that gift box had contained within it his beating and bloody heart. And he'd done this because his faith in Buck was blinding and instant overwhelmingly easy. Always.
If there was one thing Eddie believed in—
But Buck wasn't a religion to Eddie. Religion was too trivial a thing. All giving. Giving and giving and giving. And God taking and taking and taking. But Buck only ever took what Eddie gave him freely. Most of the time, Buck was giving and giving and giving right back. Eddie didn't need to go somewhere specific to seek out Buck's presence. He found him everywhere. In everything. The way you were supposed to find God in everything. But more often than not, Eddie looked and only ever found an absence. And then that absence was filled with a warmth that could have made even those most atheistic man believe.
Of course Eddie felt nothing in that church. Of course Eddie couldn't commit to people. He'd already given everything he had to Buck. And everything he had now, well, that was all Buck's. He wouldn't give that away for anything.
Eddie knocks like it's a trauma response, quick and sharp and before all those thoughts can start to eat away at him. The door swings open like Buck had just been stood there with a hand hovering over the handle. Maybe he had been. Maybe he'd been pacing up and down whilst Eddie's whole brain had rewritten itself into something that finally made some goddamn fucking sense. Maybe they were always just waiting for each other on the other side of the door.
"Hey," Buck breathes. It sounds like... Well, it sounds like—he'd walked in on Buck crying once, and his heart had thrown itself into his throat before Buck had sat him down and made him watch a video of a little boy getting hearing aids and hearing his mother's voice for the first time. Eddie had cried with him, even whilst poking fun at him for being a big softie.
Buck's hey sounds like the first word Eddie has ever heard, and he kind of wants to cry a little now.
"Hey," Eddie murmurs back. And it sounds like, Christ. It sounds like his last ever Amen. He lifts his six pack up and gives it an awkward little wiggle. "Brought provisions."
"I have beer," Buck says, turning and walking into the loft without thought to invite Eddie in because Buck knows he'll follow. He slips inside and closes the door behind himself.
"You have Tommy's shitty beer." Eddie sets the sixpack of Genuine beers down on the island. "That gross hoppy IPA that tastes like feet. You don't have our good stuff. Genuine good stuff." And then, just to hear Buck's laugh, "Tommy's stuff is downright insincere."
And Buck does laugh, huffs a little breath as he shakes his head the way he does whenever Eddie's being a bit too dad about his jokes. And Eddie lets it fill the space, takes the moment to study Buck. He doesn't look bad. He never looks bad - and, wow, okay, what a thought. But he doesn't look too torn up about anything. His skin is clear, not splotched with pink like it gets whenever he cries, and his eyes are clear, his smile as genuine as their beers, if a little smaller than usual.
"How're you doing?" he asks. Buck lifts a shoulder in a shrug and leans back against the sink. Eddie stays where he is, perches on the dining table behind his thighs after sliding a beer over the counter to Buck.
"I'm honestly, like, okay." Buck looks at him with a confused purse to his lips. "I think the novelty off it just wore off, you know? Like, I liked Tommy, sure. But I was so convinced he was the one after that kiss because it seemed like. Well, I mean, you realise you've been missing this huge part of yourself for so long, and then someone helps you find it. You kind of want to imagine them in your future, right?"
"Right," Eddie croaks. He drains half his beer in three pulls.
"And I'm grateful that he helped me find it and that he was my first, really. He was a good first, but that's all he was. And suddenly, I realised that. We wanted different things, had different priorities. So, I ended it." Buck finally looks at him then. Has this proud little smile on his face and a question in his eyes like he's hoping Eddie can answer it.
"That's good, Buck," he says, hopes it's the right answer. "That you could recognise that and do the right thing for you both. I'm proud of you."
Buck straightens up a little when he says this, cheeks flooding with a pink that makes Eddie think of a cartoon heart on his kitchen table, and his bright eyes light up in the shadows of the kitchen.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, Buck." Eddie smiles down at his own beer, turns it wry when he looks up at Buck. "So, I don't have to challenge him to a Muay Thai duel for your honour?" Buck snorts.
"No. No, nothing like that necessary."
"Mm," Eddie hums.
"How're, um, you-you doing?" Buck asks, picking at the label of his beer. He gestures the neck of the bottle at Eddie's top lip before running it over his own. "Moustache is gone, I see. Good or bad thing?"
"Good, I think." Eddie nods even as his cheeks heat. "I think I was trying to change things, and it felt infinitely easier to change something on the surface than it did something in here." He knocks the rim of his bottle against his temple. "But I think I'm starting to put it together now."
"Yeah?" Buck smiles again. Brighter. Prouder. Prettier than anything Eddie's ever seen. If Jesus' body could be likened to bread and his blood wine, Eddie didn't know what could have come close to Buck's smile. Honey. Whiskey. Oranges. Anything Eddie loved, but didn't allow himself because he hadn't thought he'd deserved something as sweet, as smooth, as soft.
"Yeah, Buck," Eddie says. And it's gentle enough that he feels like he's back in that confessional. He wants to kneel.
"Hey, I'm teaching Jee-Yun to bake on Friday."
"Oh, yeah?" Eddie loves him.
"Yeah!" Buck bounces on his toes a little, forgets all about the bottle in his hands as he starts to speak. "I'm going to the store tomorrow to get her all her own little utensils. And I ordered her the most adorable little apron. Seriously, Eddie, it's so cute. I might die."
And Eddie listens to Buck ramble about aprons and stools and techniques for baking with little kids. And he thinks briefly why anyone would ever waste their time with sermons when there's this—Buck recounting that the tradition of afternoon tea originated from a Duchess who would get a little bummed out around 4 o'clock and found tea, bread and butter really brought her spirits back up. And Eddie can't breathe. His next exhale bursts out of him.
"Where did he kiss you exactly?" Buck flinches a little, blinking, mouth still open on the Duchess' name. "Tommy," Eddie clarifies.
"Uhhh." Something flashes across Buck's face. In the widening of his eyes, Eddie catches the splash of fear like turbulent waters foaming as they crash together. But Buck wipes it away, plasters on one of his confused little smiles and cocks his head to the side like a puppy. "O-on the lips?"
Eddie ducks his head and huffs a laugh and oh, oh, there's only one way this ends.
"No." He sighs, still smiling. "Where in the loft did he kiss you?"
"W-well, I mean." Buck rubs a hand over the back of his neck, lips twitching cheekily. "He kissed me all over the loft, Eddie, that's—"
"Buck." It's harsher than he intends, something sharp and sickening sinking its teeth into him. "The first time."
"Oh." Buck's eyes flash and skitter away from him like a wild deer cornered. "W-where you, um, are actually."
Eddie nods, feels this like he felt the first proper blow Tommy ever landed on him during a spar.
"And it changed everything for you?"
"Everything and nothing, really," Buck confesses. "Turned the world upside down, except I think it had been upside down all along, so he just." He makes some kind of clumsy flipping gesture with his hands. "Turned it right way up."
Eddie laughs. The hollowness of it fills the emptiness of the loft.
"Wonder what that feels like." For a moment, he wants to clap a hand over his mouth and suck the words back in, but Buck is grasping for his next inhale. He opens his mouth, snaps it shut on words he managed to keep in before they could turn the world upside down all over again. But Eddie wants to turn it upside down—right way up—he thinks. Eddie wants.
"I'm sorry you broke up," Eddie mutters, and it sounds as Ingenuine as Tommy's beers taste. He looks up at Buck from under his lashes, drinks in the smile he's desperately trying to smother as he shakes his head at Eddie.
"I'm not." He grins, a little bashful. "He was my first, but he wasn't my last."
Eddie feels this like a lightning bolt coming down a ladder, like the floor rushing up to meet him.
He takes a deep breath, drags what feels like every molecule of air in the loft into his lungs, and looks at Buck—really looks at him—for the first time since they'd started talking.
"I think." He chokes on the words as they come up, clears his throat. "Buck, you're my first, my last." Sucks the rest of the air out of the entire building. "My only. You're it, Buck."
"Eddie." It whooshes out of Buck's mouth. The holiest sound he's ever fucking heard.
For a moment, they just stare at each other, always following each other wherever, but especially now to wide eyes and pink cheeks. Then, Buck pushes off the counter, and Eddie freezes. The world stops spinning. Like it's getting ready to flip. Buck sidles up to him, slots himself between Eddie's legs which he hadn't even known were open, but of course they'd just fallen open to let Buck in. He sets his beer down on the table by Eddie's hip, and Eddie fumbles to do the same, almost knocking it over. Buck just bites his lip to keep his smile from growing. Eddie's eyes fix on the white and pink. He's so enamoured by it that he flinches when Buck's hand cups his cheek, eyes jumping up and away like he'd been caught. Buck just soothes the hand down Eddie's shoulder, his bicep, back up to his shoulder and to his cheek again. This time, he doesn't flinch.
"Can I turn your world right way up?" Buck asks. And it's so fucking cheesy, and Eddie loves him.
"What?" He grins, teasing. "Same place as yours?" Buck's eyes set into something serious. He nods and their noses drag against each other. Eddie grabs at Buck's hips, fisting the material of his t-shirt tight enough it might rip.
"Makes sense, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," Eddie rasps, eyes fluttering shut. "Yeah, it does."
Buck falls into him then, bit by bit. Their foreheads come together like a pair of magnets or two puzzle pieces, and Eddie thinks nothing has ever felt this right in his whole life apart from maybe the first time he'd held Christopher.
"Buck," he breathes. "If we do this, there's no going back."
"Wouldn't want to," he vows. Eddie smiles despite himself, and Buck presses their cheeks together like he wants to absorb it right from Eddie's face.
"Good to know, but not what I meant." He pulls back, just ever so slightly, to catch Buck's eye. "If you need a bit of time, after—"
"Eddie, I've had six years of time." He huffs a half-annoyed laugh. "Do you know all I could think about when I realised I was in love with you was how much time I'd wasted not knowing?"
"Buck, I think I've loved you my whole life."
"Eddie—"
"No, I know how that sounds, but." The words pour out of him then, easy as water from a faucet. "I'd had this love in me since I was born, and it always felt far too big. And they told me it was for God, but it wasn't. It wasn't for God, Buck. But I didn't know what it was. And when I met Shannon, I thought maybe it could be for her, but it wasn't for her either. Some of it was, but there was still so much of it. And it felt like it was eating me alive. And then, I held Chris for the first time, and it was like his little body swallowed it all up. But there was still some of it left. But then, I met you. And you were too scared to take it from me, so I fed it to you bit by bit for the last six years. And I'll keep feeding you it every day for the rest of our lives, Buck, I swear—"
Buck drags the love right out of his chest in a clash of lips and tongues and teeth. He devours it with a single-minded focus that leaves Eddie grasping at anything he can reach as his world turns right way up. And oh. Oh. This is what it's supposed to feel like. This is what it feels like. Because, as Buck drinks from the bottomless depths of Eddie's love for him, Eddie drowns in the well at the centre of Buck's chest too.
Buck's hand is in his hair, nails scratching lightly at his scalp with every other swipe of his tongue over the roof of Eddie's mouth, his other hand still on Eddie's cheek, thumb swiping back and forth over his cheekbone. It's a touch so achingly gentle Eddie thinks his skeleton might jump right out of his skin and run away. But he's too busy holding onto Buck like he's the last lifeline Eddie will ever see.
He manages to untangle his hands from the back of Buck's shirt, shoves one of them up under the fabric to press his touch into Buck's bare skin, gasps against Buck's mouth, and Buck swallows the sound before drifting down his jaw to work a mark into his neck. He snakes another hand between the crush of their chests where their ribcages are trying to tangle together, sets it right against Buck's sternum and sinks his nails in, the only way he can think of to say I'd live here if I could. And Buck makes a pained noise like he can hear it, like he understands, like he wants to live right there with Eddie.
And there's so much still to do, but things are finally starting to make sense.