Archive of Our Own

Buck hates being single at a wedding.

“I hate being single at a wedding,” he says to the field at large.

“What’s wrong with you?” Maddie asks around a canapé. “And it’s not a wedding.”

“They’re wearing white,” Buck hisses, gesturing at where Hen and Karen are just getting ready to dance. It’s been less than an hour since the ceremony, and he must have cried at least thrice in that time. He hates—

“Is he still being a sad sack?” Eddie asks, from somewhere to his left. Buck’s eyes snap to him – an instinct, really, one that’s been at home under Buck’s skin for years, made all the more acute by everything that happened in the past few months, but Eddie looks—good. Great, even, with some color in his cheeks and the top two buttons of his shirt undone, smiling down at Maddie.

Maddie, the worst older sister in the world, rolls her eyes. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she says, brushing crumbs off her hands. “Will you watch him for me?”

“Okay, I don’t need watching—“

“Love you,” Maddie says, already standing up, and leans in to kiss him on the cheek. “Think about your choices.”

And she’s gone, weaving into the crowd, probably in search of Chimney or champagne or both.

Buck sighs, and lets his head drop backwards until the chair back is digging into his neck. The sky is just starting to change colors, a soft suggestion of orange creeping into the blue; the air smells like summertime.

“Come on, Buck,” Eddie says, Buck’s name on his tongue soft like it always is these days. Buck knows without looking that he takes Maddie’s chair, and a second later, there’s a warm knee pressed into his, Eddie’s familiar weight. “It’s not the end of the world.”

Rationally, Buck knows that. Or at least he’s pretty sure. But it doesn’t feel good, to watch a couple of of his best friends reaffirm the love they’ve been sharing for years, and then ache about it in a way that’s impossible to pinpoint and shut down, and then feel so, so fucking guilty about aching in the first place, because none of this has anything to do with him.

“Hey,” Eddie says, and presses his knee in until it hurts. “Knock it off. Go eat something, you’ll feel better.”

“Not hungry,” Buck says to the sky. He needs to get it together, but it’s just—it’s just.

“You’re not hungry?” Eddie says, with laughter clear in his voice, and then the back of his hand is landing on Buck’s forehead. “You coming down with something?”

Buck – sue him – closes his eyes, and enjoys the weight of Eddie’s touch while it’s there.

“Yeah,” he says, his mouth suddenly dry, “terminal singleness.”

Eddie snorts. Buck turns his head to see it. He hasn’t quite had enough of it – Eddie laughing. Doesn’t see it nearly often enough.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Eddie says, but when their eyes meet it’s the same look as usual: earnest, wide-eyed, like Eddie’s a little surprised to see him there. Like Buck didn’t spend a month and a half sleeping on an air mattress in his living room, startling awake night after night at the slightest sound, getting up with Eddie at the break of dawn, making meals and catching naps in-between trying to hold them all together, then lying down to do it all over again the next day and the next day and the next.

He’d returned home to find that his key didn’t fit in the lock anymore, and honestly, that was kind of fair.

“Buck,” Eddie says, serious. Buck, who was expecting a joke, straightens up, his knee meeting Eddie’s with equal pressure. “What are you actually sulking about?”

“I’m not sulking,” Buck says, sulkily. He watches his own toes encased in dress shoes that used to be shiny and are now caked with dirt. “I’m just—I don’t know.”

“Name your feelings, Evan,” Eddie says. Buck kicks dust at him.

“Fuck you,” he says, and doesn’t even manage to make it sound half-hearted. “See if I ever go to therapy with you again.”

“Uh-huh,” Eddie replies. Buck looks up at him, all of him, alive and so well-loved by the sun, lit up in every shade of gold. There’s this brand new ache in Buck’s chest that flares every time he sees him look this way, back straight, meeting everyone’s eye like he finally understands that nothing he feels warrants shame.

Earlier, when they all lined up for congratulations, Eddie had taken Hen’s face in his hands and pressed obnoxiously loud kisses to both her cheeks until she was throwing her head back laughing and pushing him off her.

Buck had to look away, and he’s not entirely sure he’s figured out how to look again.

“I think,” he says, watching Karen pull Hen out onto the dance floor, their eyes never leaving each other’s, “I think I’m just—sad.”

Maybe. That feels like a close enough word to describe this gaping maw right in the center of his chest. It’s only really there sometimes, taking little bites out of him, easy enough to ignore, but today is worse.

“About being single at a wedding,” Eddie says, not a question.

Buck shrugs. “Sounds stupid when you put it that way.”

“It doesn’t,” says Eddie. In front of them, Hen presses her forehead to Karen’s, says something quiet enough to be lost to the music. “You were together for a long time.”

Buck snorts at that one. His hands are empty, and he wishes he’d had the foresight to grab a flute of champagne or something, just to still the way his fingers won’t stop twitching.

“Sure,” he says, because he definitely doesn’t have the words to explain this inkling he has – that he’d be feeling the same way even if Taylor was here.

Eddie sighs again. “Yeah, okay. I’m bringing in the big guns.”

And Buck has no idea how Eddie summons him without saying a thing, but the next time he looks up, Christopher is making his way to them through the dry grass, carefully leaning on his crutches on the bumpy ground.

Despite himself, Buck grins. Eddie laughs under his breath.

“I’m hungry,” Christopher announces before he’s even come to a full stop.

Eddie turns to Buck with a smile, and raises an eyebrow. “He’s hungry.”

“Food’s over there, buddy,” Buck points to the table, unusually empty because most of the attendees have joined Hen and Karen on the dance floor.

“I saw it,” Christopher grins, “but I don’t know what halloumi is.”

“Yes you do,” Buck frowns. “I made that—“

“Oh my God,” Eddie interrupts, and then he’s out of his seat, grabbing Buck’s wrists and pulling him up like he weighs nothing. That, too, makes something inside Buck tremble, because he has a never-fading image painted on the back of his eyelids of Eddie’s hands shaking so hard he couldn’t even hold a mug steady.

“Get up,” Eddie says when they’re already standing nearly toe-to-toe, his voice suddenly hushed. “I can’t believe you’d ignore a starving child.”

“Yeah, Buck,” Christopher chimes in. “A starving child.”

“Your starving child,” Buck says, so close he has to tip his chin down to look Eddie in the eye.

“He’s all yours when the bottomless stomach hits,” Eddie smiles, and pats Buck right in the middle of the chest, once, twice. The touch takes Buck’s heart for a rollercoaster ride, upside down then ride side up again, but it feels lighter when it lands.

“I know what you’re doing,” he says, trying for stern, but it’s impossible in the face of both Diazes grinning at him.

By the time they make it to the catering table – where Christopher, of course, has no interest in the halloumi whatsoever – a faster song has come on, and Buck has to step aside to get out of the way of even more people hurrying to dance. Christopher meets Denny over by the desserts, and they pile a shared plate way, way too high, scurrying off giggling to the nearest table like they just pulled off a heist.

And Buck is alone, but he feels—better. Damn Eddie for making him feel better.

“Hey,” someone says right next to his ear, and before he knows what’s happening, Buck has an armful of squirming toddler. “Hold my child, thanks,” Chim tosses over his shoulder, already shouldering his way into the crowd. Buck knows exactly who he’s looking for.

He smiles at his niece. She’s wearing a beautiful little dress, but looking a little startled, big eyes blinking at the moving crowd and the lights that are coming on, like she’s deciding whether she’s going to cry about it.

“Hey, Jee-Jee,” Buck says, smiling despite himself. She looks up at him with her mouth halfway open, and just for a second, he feels like he might fold under the weight of all the love he feels for her; the love he feels for everyone here, really, when he’s not busy feeling sorry for himself. “It’s a bit scary out there, right? You want to dance over here?”

She tilts her head, and bounces a little in his arms, which Buck supposes is good enough. He steps back from the food table and into the grass, grabs her little hand with his free one, and sways them in place, making like he’s going to drop her then catching her, making her squeal. He spins when he spots someone on the dance floor spinning, dips her a little to the side when Bobby does the same with Athena, kisses her noisily on the cheek, his heart so full it’s almost painful when she giggles in response.

He looks back to his table while the song changes, searching for Eddie to try and communicate some kind of thank you, for not letting Buck wallow, for knowing how and when to step in, for all the time he’s spent learning how to do just that.

He looks, squinting against the oncoming dusk, and then stops dead.

Eddie is still right where Buck left him, leaning back in his chair, something quietly content about the set of his face. But Buck meets his eyes, and those—those have something in them Buck has never seen before, a liquid kind of warmth that sinks its claws in and tugs somewhere below Buck’s navel, but he can’t figure it out—

“Buh,” Jee-Yun says, tugging on his collar to get his attention, and he just about has time to watch Eddie blink like he’s been caught and look away. Then she tugs again, but it’s his earlobe this time, a little spike of pain that makes him groan and makes her laugh in turn.

The next time he looks over, the chair is empty.

He busies himself for a few more songs, dancing circles around the table with Jee-Yun in his arms as night starts falling, checking on Christopher who has chocolate smeared halfway up his face, watching Hen and Karen twirl until they make him dizzy.

On every go-around, he ends up drawn to Maddie and Chim, who are dancing like they forgot anyone else exists, hand in hand even for the faster songs, private smiles on their faces.

Buck and Maddie had made tentative plans to go back to the shitty apartment they share now, get drunker still, and watch whatever terrible reality TV was on until they fell asleep, but—

“Look at them,” Eddie says, his voice overflowing with a warmth Buck has always known was there, but has never quite seen on such open display. He picks his way over the bumpy ground like he has all the time in the world, all casual with his hands in his pockets. When he reaches them, he leans his hip against the catering table and reaches out to boop Jee-Yun on the nose. “Nauseating.”

“I’ll remind you you said that when you’re crying at their wedding,” Buck says, bumping their shoulders together. It’s easier like this, in the half-dark. Everything is easier.

“I assume you’re coming home with us, then?” Eddie asks.

Buck turns his head. Takes him in, and tries to pinpoint what it is that changed about the way Eddie looks at him.

“If it’s no trouble,” he says, mostly out of habit.

Eddie snorts and tosses him the car keys.

“I just want it on the record,” Bobby says, holding up the borrowed jacket for Chimney to step into, “that after this, you agree to never bring up my wedding again.”

“That was different,” Chim says as he threads his arms through the sleeves.

“Yeah, Cap,” Hen says, sitting on Buck’s kitchen counter with a plastic champagne flute in hand, kicking at his cabinets, “you eloped. They’re just getting impulse married.”

Bobby throws his hands up. “As if there’s a difference—“

“The difference,” Chim interrupts, turning sideways to look at himself in the mirror, “is that you didn’t invite us. Maddie and I woke up with the sudden urge to get married and had the basic courtesy to send out a group text—“

“It said ‘getting hitched today, be there or be square’, Chim,” Bobby replies, his arms folded, leaning back against the fridge in an empty spot between two of Christopher’s old drawings. “I wouldn’t call that an invitation.”

“How do I look?” Chimney asks, ignoring Bobby entirely, turning in place to face Buck.

Really, considering the fact that this wedding wasn’t even a thing three hours ago, Buck thinks they’ve done pretty well: the jacket, which was somehow unearthed in the back of one of Pepa’s closets, is a touch wide in the shoulders, but it looks expensive, and Bobby appears to have a hidden talent for shining shoes, because Chim’s are gleaming. Mostly, he looks so happy it makes Buck want to do something stupid like cry, but he’s determined not to be maudlin today.

“Why are you asking me?” Buck asks, reaching out to brush a piece of lint off Chimney’s shoulder.

“Because you’re the only person here that likes men.”

“Hey now,” Hen and Bobby say in unison, and Hen takes a sip of champagne before she continues: “You know we both can—“

“Appreciate the male form, yes, whatever,” Chim shrugs with a grin in Hen’s direction. “I don’t want to just look good for my wedding. I want to look hot.”

Buck has a headache. “You do remember you’re marrying my sister,” he says, straightening Chim’s lapel. “I don’t know how I feel about you asking me this.”

“Aw, he's grumpy today,” Hen says over the rim of her glass. Buck curses the fact that he drove them here and will also have to drive them to the courthouse, because he could, actually, also use a drink.

“It’s because Eddie’s not here,” Bobby nods, all sad-eyed, but the corner of his mouth is twitching.

Buck does not enjoy that insinuation, even if it might be a little bit true.

“You can go see him as soon as you tell me if I look hot. Come on,” Chim throws his arms out wide, spinning in place. “I’ve been told I qualify as a DILF—“

“God help me,” Bobby mutters, and turns to open the fridge and pour himself a glass of Buck’s expensive green juice.

“I can’t legally call you a DILF,” Buck says, and hates that he can feel the corner of his mouth twitching. “But you look good, Chim. Except you’re about to be late to your own wedding.”

He’s not, but Buck enjoys the wide-eyed look Chimney gives him more than he probably should. It has the intended effect of getting them all in the car, at least, and by the time they pull up to the courthouse, everyone else is already there.

Buck’s eyes fall to Maddie first – she, too, is wearing a borrowed dress, a yellow so bright it hurts to look at in the sunshine, one of her hands wrapped tight around a bouquet of sunflowers. She grins when she spots them; Buck leaves the engine on to run to her across the parking lot and hug her so tight he accidentally lifts her off the ground, and her laugh turns into a squeal that rings out in the quiet street.

“You look beautiful,” Buck says once he’s set her down, and he definitely has tears in his eyes, but there’s probably no point blinking them away when they’ll just come back as soon as they start the ceremony.

“Hm,” Maddie replies, grinning still, looking him up and down, “I guess you’ll do.”

And then Hen is on her, with Bobby following and trying to keep Chimney from seeing his bride to retain some sense of tradition, as if they’re not all standing in a dusty parking lot waiting for their hastily-made appointment.

“You’re late,” Eddie says from behind Buck.

“We are not—“ Buck starts, but then he turns around, and the words evaporate off his tongue, because Eddie is—holy shit. “Um. Late. We’re not late.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow. He hasn’t shaved, and his hair is done but only just, with little messy strands that are barely holding their shape. He’s in a dark green shirt with the sleeves rolled up, top button undone, a sunflower boutonniere pinned to his chest where a lapel would sit, and Buck swallows and swallows to get his tongue unstuck from the roof of his mouth, suddenly awkward.

Since the last time they dressed up to celebrate someone, Buck has—realized some things. And he's been handling them, mostly, has learned how to push them back and down, desperately hoping that, one day, everything he feels will just retreat into the back of his mind again, settle in the same place where it grew for years, unnoticed.

Except he has the words on his tongue again, you look beautiful, and it takes everything in him not to say them out loud.

“Okay,” Eddie says, slow, considering. “So you weren't meant to be here at two thirty?”

Buck holds out his hand and realizes he's not wearing a watch. And he'll blame–whatever, his animal brain, or the fact that there's almost tangible love in the air, for what he does next - because he has his phone in his back pocket, but instead of checking the time there, he reaches out and grabs Eddie's wrist.

Eddie lets him, chuckling when Buck pulls his watch up to find that it's two thirty-seven. It's only after he's checked that the rest of it registers, the heat of Eddie's skin, Eddie's pulse thundering under his fingers.

“Fine,” Buck says, his tongue clumsy in his mouth. “We're late. I know Karen is the only reason you're not.”

“Nope, it was dad,” Christopher says, having come from where Karen is standing, fixing a mini sunflower to Harry's shirt. He slumps into Buck's side for a hug, then looks up with a grin that means trouble. “He was driving Aunt Maddie crazy. He kept saying it's bad luck to be late for your own wedding.”

“Traitor,” Eddie says, flat, but his mouth is twitching.

“You started it,” Christopher says, and then he's off again.

Eddie sighs. “Remind me to never try to convince an eleven-year-old to wear a real shirt again.”

And it's—ridiculous, really, but it smarts a little bit, that Buck couldn't be there when the two of them got ready. Athena had split them into groups when they all met at Maddie and Chimney's, and none of them were going to argue with her, but it still feels like he's missed something, the sight of Eddie leaning into the back of his closet to come up with something to wear, Christopher annoyed and huffing.

“You'll get to see plenty more tantrums,” Eddie says, placating, tuned into Buck's thoughts with perfect precision as always.

It’s not an unusual thing for Eddie to say, not after everything they’ve been through together. He assumes Buck’s future presence in their lives all casual, easy, like he believes all the promises Buck made him.

And that’s beyond enough. It has to be enough.

“I would have loved to see you stressing everyone out,” Buck grins.

Eddie sighs. “Are you seriously trying to give me shit right now?” he asks, and takes a step closer that looks almost unconscious. “For wanting your sister to be on time to get married?”

“I just didn't know you cared this much about being punctual.”

“I care,” Eddie reaches out and pokes a finger right into the middle of Buck's chest, “that my friends don't have to postpone this random wedding they decided to have just because we didn't manage to get them out of the house in time.”

Buck grabs him by the wrist to pull his hand off his chest, and then just—doesn't let go.

“Diaz,” he says instead, and breathes around the feeling that settles in his chest when Eddie squints at him all suspicious, “you romantic.”

“I swear to God,” Eddie rolls his eyes as he wrenches out of Buck's grip, but Buck's almost sure the very tops of his cheeks are flushed.

Buck follows after him laughing, with an actual spring in his step that doesn't really go away as they all file in and fill the lobby with noise, even as everyone tries to keep their voice down.

Once there, he gravitates to Eddie's side without really meaning to, always attuned to where he is in the room. They find Christopher a seat while they wait, and Buck watches Eddie's profile defined against the soft light that filters in through the windows, right up until Eddie actually smacks himself on the forehead and shoulders through people in Karen's direction.

He returns holding a boutonniere that matches everyone else's, a little sunflower with a sprig of white flowers. He doesn't hand it to Buck, or so much as ask, just reaches out and carefully pinches the fabric of Buck's shirt to lift it off his chest and poke the pin through.

Buck's not entirely sure he's still breathing.

“There,” Eddie says, and runs a flat, warm palm over Buck's pec. He's focused on making sure the flower is upright, tugging at it with a crease between his eyebrows, and Buck silently thanks God for it, because he's never wanted to kiss Eddie more than he does right then.

Maddie and Chimney get married at exactly two fifty-five, with a pair of Walmart rings that aren't quite the right size and vows they both wrote in the car on the way here. Buck cries his way through it, but so does almost everyone else, and most of it, most of it, is because of the quiet joy radiating out of every line of Maddie's face, because of the way she whoops when Chim picks her up to carry her down the courthouse stairs, because of the way both of them grin and kiss Jee-Yun on one cheek each when they pose for pictures.

But he's always aware of Eddie, and Eddie is always close. His hand hovers in the small of Buck's back when they walk down the stairs. They share an Uber to Athena and Bobby's, where everyone has to roll up their sleeves to make a party happen, and Buck spends a full hour tripping over all the people - but somehow, every time he looks up, Eddie is in his eyeline.

They put their chairs together, three around a table corner, Eddie then Buck then Christopher on the long side so it's easier for him to get up, because they all know he won't sit still through all the boring adult stuff. Eddie leans in, and his shoulder is heavy and warm against Buck's when Buck cries during the speeches, and the first dance, even when Chimney trips over one of Athena’s garden ornaments.

Most of them are tears of joy. Except when—

“Nice to see you looking less miserable,” Eddie says, returning to the table with a couple of glasses of something very fruity and dangerous-looking. His eyes are still a little puffy, the way they get even if he only cries for a minute, and Buck can't find it in him to bring up the last time they did this, Eddie grinning and calling Maddie and Chim nauseating as they twirled on the dance floor just like they are now.

“Yeah,” Buck says, accepting his drink. He is less miserable, this time. He is, because he's at least figured out why the emptiness felt so impossible to fill back then. “Who made this? It smells like vodka.”

“Don't worry about it,” Eddie grins, the corners of his eyes crinkling. His boutonniere came off a while ago, resting carefully on top of his phone on the table, and he has enough buttons undone to be indecent, if anyone here cared about that kind of thing.

Anyone other than Buck, anyway. Buck cares very much, and is finding it increasingly difficult to take his eyes off where Eddie's chest hair peeks out when he raises his arm to take a drink.

He really shouldn't be having alcohol.

“Come on,” Eddie says, waving a hand. He's already halfway done with the blue-pink monstrosity in his glass, with a flush in his cheeks that suggests this isn't his first. “Chug.”

“I'm thirty,” Buck says, but Eddie keeps grinning, swaying in place almost imperceptibly to the music, and Buck can't deny him a single thing when he looks like that. He puts the glass to his mouth, the lip of it cold on his overheated skin, and downs half the drink in one go. “There. Happy?”

Eddie tilts his head. He's so—so fucking bright that Buck struggles to keep looking at him. Flushed, smiling, so beautifully disheveled.

Happy.

“That depends,” Eddie says, and stills his swaying. His smile falls a little, a hint of something uncertain creeping in. “Are you drunk enough to dance with me?”

Buck's head fills with white noise. He knows, rationally, that the music is still on, that the backyard is still humming with conversation, that Christopher and Harry are laughing at something loud enough to make his ears ring, but the only thing that actually registers is the panicked beating of his heart, painfully loud where it echoes off the walls of his skull.

He doesn't know what song is playing, if it's fast, if Eddie will be pulling Christopher up to dance with them, or if it's something slower. Something dangerous.

Buck doesn't know, but he's suddenly too aware of his own body, the patch of sweat on his back that's definitely soaked through his shirt, his flushed cheeks and his damp hands and the spot of dirt on his elbow where he'd almost knocked over a flowerpot earlier because he doesn't know how to keep his limbs under control at the best of times.

He can't dance with Eddie, but he gets up anyway, and stumbles when Eddie beams at him, when he reaches out and wraps his fingers around Buck's wrist, loose, barely more than a suggestion of touch. Buck follows him easily, because he always follows: past Chimney and Maddie, past Bobby spinning May so fast her hair flies off her shoulders, led by the achingly familiar line of Eddie's shoulders through a sea of yellow halos from the garden lamps and into the corner of the backyard, where the light doesn't quite reach.

Eddie's smiling when he turns around, but there's something about it that Buck can't quite pinpoint, elusive, unsure. It's difficult to breathe when Eddie is touching him, but at least the insistent thrum of blood rushes away from his head and toward the spot where Eddie’s still holding his wrist. The white noise in his ears recedes, and he finally registers the song, which is—

“Shania Twain?” Eddie wrinkles his nose.

Buck laughs as he watches Eddie’s expression shift. His forehead scrunches when he frowns, and it's so familiar, so Eddie, that Buck relaxes a little without meaning to. He's in dangerous territory, but—this is his best friend. Eddie's his best friend, and they've made it through far, far worse than this. So what if they dance with Buck's feelings tangling all around their feet? Buck can be okay about it. He can be fine.

“It was Maroon 5 earlier,” he replies, and resists the urge to duck his head, pleased, when Eddie laughs. His limbs feel pleasantly loose, definitely a little drunk, but he just—won't get any drunker than this. Easy. “I would not have danced to that. Shania's much better.”

Eddie's face softens into a smile. “If you say so,” he replies, and they spend a couple of breathless seconds just standing, with space between them that feels like inches and miles at once, with Eddie's fingers still curled around Buck's wrist.

Then Eddie lets go, and puts his hand on Buck's waist instead.

Buck sucks in a breath, scrambling for something to say. He desperately wants to make a joke about Eddie assuming he's the lead, or say something about being careful because they're right around where Chimney tripped, or talk about Christopher, or the fucking weather, or just, God—

“Hey,” Eddie says. He steps closer. Holds out his free hand, and Buck stares and stares and stares like he’s never seen it before. “We’re not at junior prom. It’s just me.”

Buck has to fight to look him in the eye. Every time he tries, something inside him flinches, starts shivering, cowers and tries to hide out of fear of what Eddie might see.

But Eddie is the one standing with his hand out. His face is open, soft in the muted light, a little flushed.

We beat the odds together, says the song, just this side of distorted through the speakers, and Buck wants nothing more than to sway forward. To bat Eddie's hand away and wrap arms around his neck and press their foreheads together, to breathe together. He stumbles with it, even standing in place.

Instead, he wipes his sweaty hands on his pants, and holds his breath when he presses his palm to Eddie's. Eddie curls his fingers around Buck's, just as gentle as before, gentle like he has been all day. They're not close enough for Buck to feel him breathe, but he hears it, a long, shaky inhale with a little hitch at the very top. His mouth goes so dry it takes him a couple of tries to swallow.

They've been much closer than this. Buck has held Eddie through sobs and nightmares and emergency therapy sessions on the phone; Eddie has returned his touch, has invited Buck into his bed—but when they dance, when Eddie takes the first step and moves his feet slow, careful, waiting for Buck to catch up and move with him, it feels like nothing else they've ever done together.

Buck still can't look. He tries, but his eyes end up falling to the tip of Eddie's nose, the freckle just under his eye, the bow of his lips.

“Careful with the giant feet,” Eddie murmurs, and Buck watches as his mouth moves around the words.

“Sorry,” Buck replies, automatic. Eddie smiles, soft gold light spilling over the side of his face, chasing shadows out of the dimple that pops up in his cheek.

“Don't apologize,” he says. “You're doing great.”

The back of Buck's neck burns with something that feels like shame, except it's—not. Eddie has never, never made him feel ashamed, but he's also never made Buck feel like this, overheated and shivery, like he might liquefy and spill right through Eddie's hands.

The song changes, then, but it's another slow one, and Buck barely registers it anyway. The world is nothing but the sliver of lawn between their feet, the space between their bodies into which they exhale and breathe each other back in. Buck rests his free hand on Eddie's shoulder, light with a residual fear of causing pain if he touches too hard, but he feels Eddie everywhere. He's in the goosebumps on the back of Buck's neck, in the flush that's making the tips of Buck's ears burn, in the unsteady quiver of his knees and the dangerous, live-wire feeling in his chest and his stomach and his toes.

He smells like himself. Like the cologne he's used for years, a dark blue bottle that lives in his medicine cabinet, top right. Buck has borrowed it in a pinch, is familiar with the way it lingers. Sometimes, he wakes from a nightmare and thinks he smells it before he blinks his way back to the present.

Here, today, it makes him dizzy, and he holds his breath when Eddie steps closer, close enough that Buck could bend his head and chase the scent right in the crook of Eddie's neck, at the sharp hinge of his jaw. He could bend even lower and chase it with his lips, breathe in the softest sheen of sweat in the center of Eddie's chest, where his open buttons put it on display. Buck's close enough to taste, and the only rein he has on himself is his gaze pinned to the ground, refusing to let this sink in all the way until it's over, until he's safe.

The rest of it is easy, now, swaying in place, the rhythm agreed on without having to say anything.

It's easy, except for every step that feels like he's tumbling deeper into something he never should have discovered in the first place.

“Buck,” Eddie says, and his hand moves from Buck's hip around to his back, lands right where it dips in the middle, uncaring about the damp spot on Buck's shirt. Eddie presses it into Buck's skin, cool for a moment and then unbearably hot, stuck to him and to Eddie, keeping them together. “Relax.”

He moves his thumb, just a little, a soothing up-and-down motion Buck has seen a million times. It makes him tense, makes him want to pull away, except to pull away from the touch is to step into Eddie, and he can't do that either.

Eddie makes a sound, a soft hum along to the song Buck still can't quite hear.

“We've done this before,” he says, and sounds like he's smiling.

Buck isn't so sure it's the same. Acting silly in Eddie's kitchen with the radio on low isn't this. Letting Eddie spin him out and pull him back in by the dish towel they're both holding isn't this. That's easy, and familiar, and safe; this is burning and burning and burning.

Still—

“I know,” Buck says, and realizes that his breath is brushing over the top of Eddie's ear, that the side of his face is pressed into Eddie's temple, both of them a little sticky from the long day, the heat that hasn't had time to fade yet.

He breathes in, shivering, aching everywhere and nowhere all at once, and takes the last step in. The step that presses their chests together, that forces their thighs to brush as they move. Eddie's burning hot, is alive under Buck's hands, is lingering cologne and a little bit of the vodka they just had, is leaning into Buck like this is all he's been waiting for and bending his head so he can tuck his face into Buck's neck, right where his pulse is thudding so wildly it makes him a little sick.

He lets go of Buck's hand. Lets go, and wraps his other arm around Buck's waist too, interlacing his fingers in the small of Buck's back, pulling him close.

They move even less, then, their feet nudged together, their shoes catching. Buck closes his eyes and imagines this, but real, another dance floor, another wedding years from now, with Eddie's hands heavy on his back, pressing the weight of a wedding band into his skin. He winds his arms around Eddie's shoulders, just like he'd wanted to, and then—

Then the song ends, and the silence actually registers, a sudden absence of sound like a slap to the face. Buck keeps his eyes shut anyway, willing the moment to pass, willing it to last forever, until his eyelids start feeling gritty, and the stinging starts.

Eddie lets him go. It's slow, careful; he extricates himself out of Buck's hold like he feels it too, this feeling that's settled over them delicate like spun sugar, now cracking, crumbling as they separate.

Finally, Buck looks at him.

“Hey,” Eddie smiles, tilting his head. He's still flushed, because he's been drinking, because this is a wedding and everyone is a little looser than usual and all of this was a mistake— “You okay?”

He reaches out, holds the side of Buck's face in his palm like a precious thing, and Buck can't—can't breathe—

“I'm okay,” he replies, wobbly at best, his chest burning, somehow missing the fact that the air is full of oxygen for him to take in. “I'm just gonna—be right back.”

It takes everything in Buck to actually step away, to resist being pinned in place all butterfly-like under the gentleness of Eddie's gaze. He puts a step between them, then another one, another before he turns his back and disappears into the house.

In the guest bathroom, he soaks a couple of tissues in cold water and presses them over his eyes, and puts a freezing, dripping wet hand on the back of his neck, just to bring the heat down. The window over the sink is cracked; everything that's happening outside carries in, music and laughter and the steady clink of glasses. Buck catches himself listening for a specific voice in the din, and then presses down harder on the tissues, willing the sting to go down.

Eventually, he comes back out. He takes his seat again, and Eddie's with him in less than a minute, bumping their shoulders together just like always while they watch the boys pretend that they're not flagging. In front of them, Maddie twirls the love of her life on the dance floor, both of them messy-haired and red with laughter and tired enough to stumble over their own feet.

The love of Buck's life carefully rests his head on Buck's shoulder, looks up at him, smiles a little soft, a little drunk, entirely devastating.

And some of the tears Buck cries, in the end, are not quite tears of joy.

He was expecting the place to be fancy.

It's the wedding of a surgeon and an architect, and LA is full of glitzy venues, and Buck looked it up on Street View, so he knew the hotel was going to look like this, but the reality is—a lot.

There's an actual labyrinth of live hedges, and a little fountain on the terrace that might be made of real silver, and there's an open bar, and there's Eddie in another very tight shirt, and also, Buck is drunk.

In his defense, so is everyone else, because it's an open bar. With fancy thirty-year-old whiskey.

“You're drooping,” Eddie says, grinning a little, all—sober, or whatever. Buck hasn't asked why he's been sipping on his mocktail for long enough that all the ice has melted, because he figures it's Eddie's business, but when he turns those gentle eyes on Buck, it's difficult not to wish for him, flushed and messy-haired like he had been when they danced together a couple of months ago.

“You're drooping,” Eddie repeats.

Buck tilts his head, and the world tilts with him. “Huh?”

“Oh my God,” Eddie says, laughing, though Buck isn't sure what about, and he doesn't like that at all, doesn't like that Eddie has some kind of joke tucked just under his tongue and won't share it. “Here.”

And he reaches out, the face of his watch glinting in the low lights of the hotel garden, to push against Buck's shoulder. Which—is drooping. Oh. Maybe that's why his head had been spinning, because when he straightens up, he feels a little less dizzy.

“Buck,” Eddie says. Buck turns to look at him so fast his entire body tries to tilt with him, but Eddie's hand on his shoulder is steady. “I have bad news.”

Buck blinks. “Bad news?”

Eddie nods solemnly. He's a little blurry around the edges, what with all the drinks and the long-dried tears in the corners of Buck's eyes that he still hasn't quite managed to wipe away, but he still thinks he spots a smile hiding in the shadow of Eddie's cheek.

“Okay,” Buck says. “What is it?”

“I think you might be a lightweight,” Eddie grins. His fingers wrap around the ball of Buck's shoulder, and they feel heavy, like they're slowly sinking through Buck's skin into muscle, into bone.

Buck shakes his head. “Nuh-uh,” he says, not realizing he's shaking his entire body side to side until he bumps up against Eddie, again, like—

“We're like little boats,” he says, the lights blurring in front of his eyes. There are people dancing not too far away, Bobby and Athena tearing up the dance floor to something jazzy, and lots of very expensive-looking people Buck doesn't know. A lot of them are same-sex couples, which makes the inside of Buck's chest feel kind of soft and squishy but in a dangerous way, and he hasn't really figured out what that's about. “You and me, you know?”

“I really don't,” Eddie replies, and his voice is so light it makes Buck tear up. “Explain it to me, drunky.”

“I am not—” Buck starts, but then his shoulder bumps into Eddie's again, and he remembers what he was going to say. “Boats. Like—you know when they're in the harbor and the ocean's moving so they bump into each other all the time? That's us.”

There's a hand in Buck's hair. Eddie's hand in Buck's hair, light and careful, messing up the rest of the pomade that was starting to come out anyway. Buck closes his eyes around the feeling, and everything else fades - the music, the weird out-of-rhythm beat of his heart in his ears, the too-big, clumsy feeling pulsing through his entire body. The world is Eddie's fingers soft on his scalp and Buck's head on Eddie's shoulder. It's Eddie resting his cheek on the top of Buck's hair, folding into him.

“We always come back together, huh?” he asks, and Buck would nod, but he doesn't want to do anything to make this feeling go away.

“Yeah,” he replies instead, wondering if he could make the world silent so he can hear Eddie breathe. “Like boats. Because of the ocean.”

Quietly, Eddie laughs. It might be the thousandth laugh Buck has heard from him in the years they've known each other, but it always feels the same - like Buck has won something. Like he's done something so, so right.

“Hey,” Eddie says, into the small silence between songs, “do you think—”

“Oh God,” comes another voice, and Buck flinches, squinting his eyes open when Eddie's hand disappears from his hair. “Oh God, hide me.”

“Karen?” Eddie asks, and his voice sounds too loud, not like it did just a second ago. Like maybe he'd been in their little bubble right along with Buck, the place where it was just the two of them, and now—well, now Karen's here, stepping off the path and into the grass, wobbling on her wedge shoes with a half-full glass of champagne in hand. “What are you—”

“Hide me,” she hisses, coming around the bench they're sitting on, crouching down behind their backs. She almost loses her balance, but catches herself on Eddie's elbow, which makes him laugh, all crinkly-eyed and pretty and—

Buck is drunk. Oh no.

“Who are we hiding you from?” Eddie asks, scooting closer to Buck, closing the two inches of space between their thighs to press them right up against each other, and then leaning in, knocking their elbows and their shoulders, creating a wall for Karen to hide behind.

“An ex,” Karen says, pulling Buck's jacket back so she can hide her face behind it. Buck's pretty sure Karen is also drunk. “I didn't even know she still lived in LA, but of course I meet her at a gay wedding, she's—oh,” and she covers her entire face then, just crouching behind them until a gaggle of people passes on their way to the reception hall.

“I think you're good,” Eddie says, on the edge of a laugh, turning to watch the group disappear inside.

Karen sighs. She lets go of Buck's jacket, wobbles again, takes a gulp of her champagne that almost has her tipping too far back, except Eddie grabs her elbow and steadies her, doing that thing he always does. Keeping everything steady, safe, right side up.

“Thanks,” Karen says, blinking up at them with wide eyes. “Lesbianism is like a village, Eddie. Don't become a lesbian.”

Eddie does laugh, then. “Wasn't planning on it,” he says, but Buck's almost sure there's some kind of edge to it, something he could tease out if he was more sober and capable of being subtle.

“Good call,” Karen replies, pointing an unsteady finger at the middle of his forehead. “Because otherwise you might innocently show up at a wedding and run into the woman who broke your heart and then called you a workaholic in a Walmart parking lot—”

“Woah,” Buck says, before he knows he's saying it. “She broke your heart?”

He doesn't know why he asks it. Eddie and Karen also don't know why he asks it, judging by the matching confused looks they give him, but there's—something. Something about heartbreak that Buck doesn't know how to put into words. Maybe the way it feels like it's always hanging over his head, because he accidentally re-breaks his own heart every other day. He might be doing it right now, looking at Eddie all golden in the muted light, being out here with him like this, listening to the music mask their silences. Maybe that's what the weird feeling in his chest is.

“Yeah,” Karen says. “But she was not—” she frowns, and blinks when a hiccup comes out of her mouth, “she wasn't worth it. My wife is worth it, you know?”

She sways again, still crouching in the grass. Eddie throws a leg over the bench so he's straddling it, facing Buck, and obligingly puts a hand on her other elbow, too.

“Yeah, where is your wife?” he asks, smiling a little, his eyes so, so gentle. “Does she know you're hiding?”

Karen frowns, squinting out at the crowd dancing and drinking and talking, all of them dappled with little spots of color from the string lights.

“She's being boring and sober,” she says, betrayed. “She told me to have fun, like I'm going to have fun without her.”

Buck shouldn't—hurt, at that. It shouldn't hurt to watch Karen turn her head and search and search for Hen, but it's there, heavy like a rock lodged in-between his ribs.

But he takes a breath around the hurt, and says: “At least she didn't call you a lightweight,” because it feels like a good thing to say, in his head. “He says I'm a lightweight.”

“Poor thing,” Karen nods, solemn, turning a frown on Eddie, who—isn't really smiling anymore.

“I'm not a lightweight,” Buck says. He's almost sure he's not pouting. “I'm big.”

“Of course you are,” Karen says, patting his arm. Eddie's still holding her upright, so she pulls him with her, both of them leaning into Buck's space. Buck carefully looks at the ground, to the left of where Eddie's thighs are splayed open around the wood of the bench. “You're huge.”

Eddie makes a sound like he's choking.

“Karen?” Hen asks from somewhere behind Buck, sweeping in like the savior she is, though Buck's not really sure what he needs saving from. He blinks, and then she's on her knees in the grass, possibly ruining a suit that she specifically told Buck was very, very expensive; she's on her knees in the grass and framing Karen's face with her hands and grinning and Buck tries and fails to look away. “Baby, what are you doing?”

“Hiding,” Karen says, her pout turning into a smile.

“Telling Eddie not to become a lesbian,” Buck adds, because it seems important.

Except Hen doesn't look at him; she looks at Eddie, and a look passes between them that Buck couldn't translate even if he wasn't drooping again.

“Him too?” she asks.

Eddie gives her a small grin. “Drunk as a skunk,” he says, and Buck's pretty sure that's about him, and that's not fair—

“I'm big,” he says, because that got his point across last time. Hen looks at him with these pretty little sparks in her eyes, and Buck kind of wants to tell her how much he loves her, now that she's here, just in case she doesn't know.

“Yeah, Buck,” Eddie says, his hand brushing over Buck's knee like he meant to put it there and changed his mind. “We know.”

Hen snorts, pries Karen's glass out of her hand, sets it down,and then starts the process of getting her wife to her feet. Her shoes keep sinking into the grass, so Eddie gets up to help, propping her up on the left side while Hen takes the right, the two of them walking Karen over to where the ground is paved. She doesn't let go of Hen's hand once they get there, and pulls her to where half the guests are still dancing, calling a “thanks” over her shoulder.

Eddie stands where they left him for a while, hands in his pockets. Buck wishes he could—draw, or something, so he could keep the picture forever, Eddie bathed in light with his head tilted just so, like he's thinking about something.

Then he remembers the phone in his pocket, and pulls it out to take a photo. His hand won't stay still, and the darkness probably means it'll come out blurry, but he thinks it might be enough to remember the feeling.

Eddie looks over his shoulder when he hears the shutter sound.

“What are you doing?” he asks, raising an eyebrow, and then moves back to the bench in two long steps to put a hand on Buck's shoulder, because he's fucking drooping again.

Buck rolls his eyes, even as he pushes into the warmth of Eddie's touch. “Taking a picture.”

“Of?”

He wants to reply honestly - just say it, one syllable, one breath, you - but it won't come out. His tongue curls around the word, keeps it in his mouth. Instead, he shrugs, and Eddie looks down at him with something written all over his face that makes Buck go hot under the collar, makes him want to get up and run back inside before he allows himself to do something stupid like hope, except he's pretty sure that's not something he can outrun. Eddie isn't something he can outrun.

Buck remembers, then. He'd come out here by himself to get some air, because Eddie, who somehow knows how to waltz, had been walking Maddie through the steps and laughing with her, head-back-open-mouth laughing, a little flushed because the room was warm. He'd come out here by himself, just to breathe, before he did something he couldn't take back.

And Eddie had just appeared by his side. Buck doesn't remember when, the way it's always been with them: he just looks over his shoulder, and Eddie's there, steady and silent, like he's happy to wait until Buck notices.

In the here and now, he sits back down, right up against Buck, the line of his thigh burning hot through two pairs of dress pants. Buck doesn't look at him; he blinks out into the darkness until he can tell apart people and things, dark green hedges and the outdoor tables decorated with bright yellow flowers, a row of empty glasses on a side wall by the dance floor that a hurried waiter is trying to fit on his tray. He doesn't recognize the song playing, or whatever insect is chirping in the bushes right behind them, or the floral smell that's hanging almost sticky in the air - but he does recognize Michael and David in their shirtsleeves, hand in hand with bowties hanging undone around their necks, dancing, heads bent close together as they talk about something in-between steps. He recognizes Hen and Karen, not so much dancing as hugging and swaying from side to side, Karen's face tucked into Hen's neck, Hen with her eyes closed, smiling.

“I want that,” slips out of Buck before he can think to stop it, and he flinches from how wistful it sounds.

Eddie presses their knees together. “Don't tell me you're about to get all sad on me again.”

But his voice is—different. He doesn't sound like Eddie.

“I can be sad if I want,” Buck says, watching as David laughs so hard he throws his head back at something Michael said. “I just never imagined this for me before, and now it's—I don't know.”

“No, come on,” Eddie says, leaning in, because there apparently still is room for him to do that. Their shoulders knock together. Like fucking boats. “You never imagined what? A wedding?”

Buck shakes his head. “Someone who'd stay for that long,” he says, because Eddie asked, and Buck never did learn how to deny him anything. “It's just that—people put up with my shit, right? Abby put up with me being too much. Taylor put up with me just fucking—being the way I am, I guess, so I didn't really let myself imagine it.” He sighs into the darkness, and Eddie stays silent by his side. “I want it, I've always wanted it, but it never felt like someone could want me that way. For better or worse. It was a fantasy, just—getting married was for other people.”

“Buck,” Eddie says. Buck would have to look at him to know what his tone of voice means, and he thinks that might not end well.

“It doesn't matter,” he shrugs a shoulder, watching as Michael drags David off the dance floor and to the bar, pulling his hand up to kiss his knuckles as they walk, the movement so practiced it looks absentminded. “Just forget—”

“You said was,” Eddie interrupts. His thigh tenses against Buck's, drawing taut. “It was for other people.”

“Slip of the tongue,” Buck replies, the inside of his mouth suddenly bitter. He should have another drink, actually. The last thing he had was something Ravi handed him, made overwhelmingly sweet with some kind of syrup. Maybe it would help.

“No it wasn't,” Eddie says, unfairly sober. Their shoulders separate, the ocean tugging Eddie away, and Buck's not so sure another wave will be coming to bring him back in. “Buck. Come on.”

But what is Buck supposed to say? That he's gotten into the fucked up habit of imagining it when the ache gets bad, because once he let the idea into his head it wouldn't leave? That he looks at Michael and David now, as he's leaning against Eddie, and his entire being screams I want that to be you and me? That he'd give Eddie anything, everything, his hand in marriage and his stupid dented heart and his whole self, if only Eddie wanted it?

“Sorry,” he says, and swallows the bitterness. “I guess I am being a sad sack again.”

And he risks it, then: looking at Eddie.

He's watching Buck with a frown, just the gentlest pinch to his face, but Buck can pinpoint the way it changes him in a hundred different places, the tip of his eyebrow and the little freckle under his eye that disappears when the corners of his eyes crinkle as Eddie squints, trying to figure Buck out.

And Buck—Buck feels flushed and dizzy and so, so stupid. He feels like bumping back into Eddie and tilting his spinning head up and asking for a kiss, something to ruin him for good.

Even around a frown, Eddie smiles down at him; a small, private thing.

“What's going on, Buck?” he asks, hushed. He's close enough that the ghost of the words brushes over Buck's lips.

“Nothing,” Buck says, but his breathlessness says something different. He gives himself five seconds: permission to drink Eddie in, the light tangling in his eyelashes, the suggestion of stubble over the bow of his lips, the heavy way he swallows, a click in the back of his throat.

Then he blinks away, back to the bar, where Michael has dragged Bobby into their conversation, but his arm rests, comfortable, around David's waist.

“They're good together,” he says.

Eddie doesn't reply. He doesn't move; it feels a little like he doesn't even breathe, the steady in-and-out movement of his ribcage against Buck's side suddenly absent.

Buck can't stand it. He can't stand the flowery smell in the air and the way it feels, like it's pushing, sitting on his chest, trying to collapse his lungs. He needs to—get up. Do something. Unbutton his fancy shirt, move, so the nighttime breeze helps the flush go down, get away from Eddie or get closer to him or—

“You want to dance?” he asks, but the words kind of ask themselves, tripping out of his mouth demanding to be heard, because it felt good, last time. It felt like them, until it tripped over into something Buck couldn't handle, and he selfishly wants to stumble into that again, and he's drunk—

“Um,” Eddie says, and his voice is shaking. Buck looks back at him, and finds him all but frozen solid, his spine impossibly straight, watching Michael and David as they move around the garden. “I, uh.”

And his eyes are a little helpless when he looks at Buck, lost, like he doesn't know what to say. Buck reaches out automatically to soothe him, but even before he makes contact, Eddie moves.

Moves away.

It's nothing more than the two inches of space that were between them half an hour ago, still close enough to know how warm Eddie is, but Buck feels it anyway, like a hit right to the center of his chest: his heart, re-broken.

They're still, for a second. Eddie looks down at where their legs are no longer touching.

“Buck,” he says, his eyebrows drawing together, the set of his face upset, and he opens his mouth to say something, but Buck's suddenly suffocating in the open air.

“It's fine,” he says, desperately searching the crowd for someone he knows so he can have an excuse, but it's all strangers, so many people, none of them paying attention. “I'm just gonna—yeah. Sorry.”

He doesn't give Eddie a chance to stop him, because he doesn't want to know whether Eddie would. He just gets up, on knees that are a little wobbly but suddenly too sober-feeling, and spots Maddie and Chimney through the glass doors, leaning against the bar inside.

“Sorry,” he says again, and Eddie makes a noise, but Buck can't handle sticking around for long enough to figure it out.

He turns around, and he runs.

Eddie opens the door with the tips of his ears flushed red.

“You knocked,” he says, watching their feet, the threshold between them.

“Yeah,” Buck says, only swaying in place a little. His mouth still feels fuzzy in the worst way, and it hurts to keep his eyes open for reasons that have nothing to do with Eddie and everything to do with the angle of the midday sun. “I, um. Chris said it was important.”

He has the hangover from hell, and last night is kind of a kaleidoscope, a collection of jagged pieces that shift every time he tries to assemble them into a whole. But he remembers—well. He remembers enough.

“Oh God, he didn't—” Eddie says, looking up at Buck, wide-eyed, and Buck remembers that look, too, the brown of Eddie's eyes dappled with string light reflections. “He didn't scare you, right? I told him—”

“He said it was important, but not an emergency,” Buck replies, even as Eddie's stepping back into the house, letting him in.

Buck can't stop himself from taking him in: a little rumpled in a pair of sweats and a threadbare army t-shirt, his hair going everywhere, the flush spreading from his ears down, covering the very tops of his cheeks, the side of his neck.

He looks tired, but not like he didn't get enough sleep.

“It's,” he says, looking at the floor again, and runs a hand down his face, “it's—I don't even know how to explain this, Buck, I—”

“Finally!” Christopher says from the doorway to his room. “Come on, quick.”

Eddie sighs the most tortured sigh Buck has ever heard. It's almost enough to make him reach out, to curl a hand around Eddie's elbow where his arms are crossed and ask if he's okay, but then he remembers Eddie freezing, moving away, and Eddie's halfway to Christopher's room before Buck can decide one way or the other.

He turns last night's memories over a couple more times, hoping the pieces will settle into something new. A way for him to have misread what happened.

Because it's one thing to know that he's fooling himself, but to actually see it in front of him, tangible in the tense air between them—

“Buck, come on,” Christopher says, with laughter in his voice. At least he hasn't picked up on anything yet. “The brides are waiting.”

Buck's sure he misheard. He's sure he misheard until he comes to stand in the doorway and finds Eddie sitting on Christopher's bed, red all over. Christopher is settled on the carpet in the middle of the room, watching over a giant plastic tub with—

“Are those your new hamsters?”

“You know their names, Buck,” Christopher says, one eyebrow raised. He looks so much like Eddie it stops Buck's breath in his chest for a moment.

“Ketchup and Fry, yeah,” says Buck, taking another step into the room. He'd never admit that he can't tell them apart, because they're both off-white and look absolutely identical. Christopher says the difference is obvious. “Why are they in a tub?”

It's one of the see-through ones Christopher keeps his old toys in. It's usually tucked under the bottom shelf of the closet, but now it's all emptied out, filled with shredded toilet paper. There's an overturned book on one end, standing open to make a wonky A-shape, and Ketchup and Fry are sitting in the middle of it all, happily munching on some lettuce.

“They're getting married,” Christopher says.

“They're getting married,” Eddie repeats, considerably less enthusiastic.

Which is strange, actually, because Eddie hasn't once discouraged Christopher from doing whatever silly thing he came up with, for as long as Buck has known them. The way he looks now, with his shoulders hunched and his fingers intertwined in his lap, worrying them so tightly his skin stretches taut over his knuckles, is just—wrong.

“Okay,” Buck nods, taking another step into the room until he's standing right over the hamsters, who are too absorbed in their food to pay attention to him. It's only now that he realizes they each have a tissue tied around their neck like a cape, except if they're brides— “Are those veils?”

“Yeah,” Christopher says, beaming so wide all his teeth come out. “But they're going to get out of them really quick, so sit down.”

Eddie clears his throat. “You have a place card over here,” he says, laying his hand over Christopher's bedspread at his side, where a folded piece of paper with BUCK written on it in blue pencil sits just at his fingertips.

Just like that, Buck's tense again, whatever ease the sight of Christopher had brought him evaporating. It's the same way they were sitting last night, Eddie on his left, and it's so absolutely fucking ridiculous, because they've sat side to side a thousand times before - but that was before.

He wants to sit down and watch Christopher officiate a hamster wedding. But he wants to run, too, and that's never happened to him in this house.

“Buck,” Eddie says, and the way his voice softens probably means that Buck's feelings are showing on his face, too loud, as always. “Come sit.”

“Hurry up,” Christopher says, reaching into the tub to poke at—Fry, probably, but there's a thirty or so percent chance it's Ketchup. “I'm running out of lettuce.”

So Buck carefully steps around him and sits on the edge of the bed. He leaves room between him and Eddie, and he has to think about it, which last happened—probably never, actually.

Something that tastes suspiciously like bile nudges the back of his throat, and he can't blame all of it on the hangover, but he's here for Christopher. Christopher and his hamster wedding. Whatever goddamn crisis he needs to have, he can have it afterwards.

Out of the corner of his eye, he's aware of Eddie fidgeting with his hands.

“Okay,” Chris says, gently picking up one hamster then the other, setting them in front of the open book, which Buck now realizes is supposed to represent an arch. “I don't really know how this works. Dad?”

Eddie stills. “Yeah.”

“What do people say when they get married?”

A shiver runs down Buck's back, for no apparent reason at all.

“You were just at a wedding two months ago,” Eddie replies. Buck can, somehow, feel him tense even though they're not touching.

“Yeah,” Christopher sighs, “ages. I don't remember. Is it—in sickness and in health?”

Eddie smiles. Buck can't see him, but he knows Eddie smiles. There's something in the way he exhales.

“That comes at the end,” he says, and the bed bounces as he moves closer. Closer to Buck. “It's 'to have and to hold, from this day forward', and then, um,” he takes in a loud breath, everything about him restless. Buck holds out another two seconds before he looks at him.

Before he finds him, softened by the sunlight, watching Buck with a look in his eyes that's broken all the way open, somehow.

“I think it goes 'for better or worse',” he says. His knee knocks into Buck's, a muffled touch through two pairs of sweatpants, but Buck shivers with it, crown to heel. “'For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health'.”

Buck's own shaky, drunk voice from last night comes back to him: I want that.

“That's not all of it,” Christopher says, leaning on the tub, petting whichever hamster is closer with the tip of his finger. He's smiling at her with his canines poking out sharp like Eddie's, with his hair falling into his face. Buck's already used to his heart seizing with love when he looks at him, but today it's—more. Closer, like last night lifted some kind of veil, barred the place where he usually shoves his emotions, too loud and too much, to keep them out of sight. “Aunt Maddie said something else, too.”

Eddie's hand brushes Buck's on the bedspread, and it feels like all the air disappearing, all at once.

“A lot of people write their own vows,” he says, warm where their knees are touching, and his voice is warm, too. “If they want something more personal. But they can also repeat these, and then they usually end with something like—” he takes another loud breath, and then he's silent for what must be a second, but feels like a century, a small eternity passed between one tick of Christopher's wall clock and the next, “most of the weddings I've gone to, it was 'I will love and honor you all the days of my life'.”

And he—curls his hand over Buck's. It's clumsy, like it's the first time he's ever done it, his fingers slotting into the spaces where Buck's are splayed open, sinking into the mattress. He lays his hand over Buck's and shivers a little and then just keeps it there, deliberate.

And then he bumps their shoulders together. Buck turns his head to look at him.

“Like boats, right?” Eddie says quietly, and his smile is unsteady, wobbly at the edges.

Buck opens his mouth. It's not to say anything, because he doesn't know what, and even if he did his throat is too dry, feeling like whatever words come up next are going to spark against the walls of it and catch fire.

“I like that,” Christopher says, content. Buck holds Eddie's eyes for another heartbeat, two, trying to figure out what's happening, what any of this means, but Eddie's eyes are the same as they have been for months now, like nothing has changed.

Just before Buck looks away, Eddie does it first, gaze falling to their hands on the star-patterned bedspread like he's unsurprised to see them there. Slowly, with a touch so light it tickles and sends goosebumps racing up Buck's arm, he curls his fingers under Buck's palm, cradling his hand. His thumb runs over the bones there, the veins and the skin, slow like he's committing them to memory.

“I now pronounce you wife and wife,” Chris tells the hamsters, who've had time to wander into opposite corners of the tub, both of them digging through the toilet paper. “You may eat the Cheerio.”

And he picks up, off the carpet, a single Cheerio cut clean in half. He's careful when he sets it down, the halves close together to make it look whole. There's a flurry of movement, tiny nails scraping against plastic, a minor explosion of toilet paper into the air, and then the brides - already sans veils - meet in front of the makeshift arch at the exact same time, bumping into each other as they both grab at the Cheerio before they discover they each have a piece.

Buck is a little embarrassed at how mushy he suddenly feels about rodents.

“That's so fucking cute,” Eddie mutters, curling his fingers in tighter.

Buck squeezes his hand.

“I can't believe they're married,” Christopher says, watching lovingly as the hamsters turn their backs on each other, protectively curling around their piece of cereal as they crunch away. “Getting married is cool.”

Eddie groans. “Chris,” he says, and hides his face with his free hand.

“It's cool, right, Buck?” Christopher asks, his grin all sunny, but Buck is definitely missing something.

“Um,” he says, so, so aware of everywhere he and Eddie are touching, “sure, buddy. Can't say I've ever heard of a hamster wedding, though.”

“It's not done yet,” Chris says, picking up - Fry, Buck is almost sure that's Fry - and holding her close. “Please go prepare the wedding feast.”

Buck looks over at Eddie, and finds him frowning. “I already cut the Cheerio.”

Chris meets his eyes with an identical scrunched expression. “And now you need to cut the fruit,” he says. “Please.”

“They're going to pop,” Eddie says, but he's already leaning forward, his hand leaving Buck's behind so gently he barely feels it hit the bedspread.

“Come on, Eddie,” Buck says, nudging him in the side. “It's their wedding day.”

And the way Eddie looks at him then feels a little like the bottom dropping out of the world.

He follows when Eddie gets up, automatic, and only realizes Chris might need help here when he's already in the doorway. When he looks over his shoulder, though, he finds Christopher petting his hamster with a content smile on his face, watching Buck until he disappears in the hallway.

Eddie has his back to him when he steps into the kitchen. He's standing in the open fridge, elbow-deep in the crisper drawer, old-man muttering under his breath.

“So,” Buck says, feeling embarrassingly warm when Eddie doesn't react at the sound of his voice, already aware that Buck is in the room, “what was that about?”

“You were there,” Eddie says, finally straightening up, triumphantly holding a dented red apple in his hand. “They got married.”

There's a little bit of tension in his shoulders, probably not obvious to anyone who isn't Buck. It draws Eddie's arms up toward his ears just a little, makes the bump at the top of his spine stand out in the soft light.

“Right,” Buck says, and takes the container of strawberries Eddie hands him, reaching for a knife. “Just casually. Something he decided to do completely at random.”

Eddie sighs. He doesn't say anything when he runs the water, stays silent as he cores the apple in that insanely dangerous way he has, holding the slippery apple quarters in his fingers and pulling the knife toward his hand. Buck slices the tops off a couple of strawberries - then can't resist eating one, so he slices the top off another - and waits him out.

He's overheated and hungover and confused and—and something he can't define at all, but it encompasses everything about the way this feels, Eddie's kitchen with the mismatched dish towels and the blue ovens and the light, so much light, the same one that fills Buck's hollow, overbright apartment every morning, except it's not the same at all.

Buck's kitchen has a set of awful mosaic fruit bowls that came with the place, and a bull terrier-shaped cookie jar that Maddie left when she moved back in with Chimney. It has a block of cheese in the fridge that's been there for at least a month, unopened, and a white-gray set of IKEA knives, and all sorts of things that make it look lived-in and perfectly usable.

But none of it is Eddie's. He hasn't even touched most of it, is never there because the place is ugly and out of the way, and Buck hates that feeling: being the only thing in the room Eddie has touched.

Here, every little thing has a history. Every little thing has passed through Eddie's hands, and Buck's too, the two of them standing at the too-small sink doing dishes after a hundred family dinners, a thousand breakfasts.

“Okay,” Eddie says. The cutting board in front of him - the one Eddie got for himself a few months ago, with Many have eaten here, few have died engraved on it - is piled high with neat little apple cubes.

“Okay,” Buck echoes, and puts the knife down.

Eddie takes a heaving, shaking breath.

“So I'm gay,” he tells the apple.

Buck blinks.

“And I've been—I've been tying myself in so many fucking knots,” Eddie says, on a laugh that isn't a laugh at all, the sound shaking at the seams. “Trying to say it out loud, to get to a place where I can look at you and just say it, but I can't even—I'm saying this to my fucking kitchen counter—”

“Eddie, that's okay,” Buck interrupts, and it's instinct when he closes the space between them, stopping far enough to give Eddie room to breathe even if he wants to be closer, closer, closer. “I don't care where you're looking.”

He cares about Eddie's hands, curled around the edge of the counter so tight they shake, about the determined way he unclenches his jaw every time it seizes up on him. He cares about Eddie, the man he loves, laying this down so, so carefully; he cares that he doesn't tread on it, doesn't hold it too tight, doesn't jump to conclusions. Eddie's gay, but just because Buck is a man—

“I do,” Eddie says, through clenched teeth. He closes his eyes, the bow of his lashes trembling, and takes a breath. “Because—I feel like such a coward. Yesterday made me feel like such a fucking coward.”

Buck's throat constricts around nothing. “Yesterday?”

“Watching Michael and David get married,” Eddie says, with a self-deprecating tilt to his mouth that Buck wants to erase with his fingers. “They looked happy.”

“They were,” Buck says, almost a whisper. He's so painfully aware of Eddie's chest rising and falling a little too fast, of his own hands hovering mid-air between them, stained with strawberry juice. “They are. They love each other.”

Eddie shakes his head. “I cried before my wedding,” he says. “Shannon and I both—we were in it together, you know? We had a cry and then we got married and then we started forgetting everything we loved about each other, and the—the guys on base would go on about the ball and chain and my dad said he was proud of me for stepping up and my mother—” he shakes his head again, runs his hand over his mouth, a gesture that's become achingly familiar in the last few months. “They've always been separate things to me. Marriage, and the—the person I buried because he'd have had no chance, and being—I didn't even know what happy was. For so long, Buck. It was just get up, check off the boxes on what I'm meant to do, go to bed feeling not good enough.”

“Eddie,” Buck says, his voice hoarse. It's the kind of thing Eddie never lets him say about himself, and he always has the right words, but on this side of it, Buck can't string together anything more coherent than this, anything more than the desire to hold Eddie in whatever way he'd allow.

“I let other people use me,” Eddie says, with another grim smile. His eyes glisten with tears. “I let me use me. Just—patched up other people's shit with pieces of myself, and I'm so tired of doing that.”

And then, slowly, with a tremble in his shoulders like he's fighting himself, he looks at Buck out of the corner of his eye.

“I'm so tired of never thinking about what I want.”

Buck does touch him, then, fingers curling into the edge of Eddie's sleeve, resting cold and pink-tinged and sticky against his skin. They hold each other's eyes for a breath that Buck doesn't take, and then Eddie's watching the street again, the pavement shimmering with the heat of the day.

“We went to all these weddings,” he says. “And they were so goddamn joyful. And yesterday—yesterday I looked at Michael and David and they were—God, Buck, I don't know.”

Buck doesn't take his eyes off him, doesn't dare breathe when Eddie turns to him, so careful, tentative like he rarely is. He stands still, but Eddie is the one who moves, reaching out, his hand settling soft on Buck's waist, just like slow dancing, except they stay in place. Just breathing.

“They were me,” Eddie says.

And Buck thinks back to another piece of glass in the kaleidoscope, that strangely soft feeling in his chest, the way he couldn't take his eyes off Michael and David.

“Me too,” he breathes, without meaning to.

Eddie smiles at him, still wobbly around the edges, but no less beautiful.

“I thought,” he says, “I'm a gay man, and that's something I'm allowed to have. And that was the first time in my life—it's like it all clicked together, that I can love someone and marry them and it can be something I'm ready for. That—it can be a man,” he curls his fingers into the fabric of Buck's hoodie, tugging a little, “if I want.”

Buck's heart drums and drums away, beating so wildly he's afraid it might impale itself on one of his ribs. He knows what this sounds like, but he's been so, so wrong before, and this is too important.

“Of course it can,” is what he says instead, swaying a little under the weight of everything that starts settling in. Eddie just—came out to him. Eddie trusts him enough to break himself all the way open over his silly novelty cutting board and believe that Buck's going to hold all the pieces together.

And maybe that makes sense, given everything they've been through to get here, but he goes breathless with it anyway.

“Yeah,” Eddie nods, tipping his chin down, looking up at Buck through his eyelashes then dashing away again, biting his lip. “So I woke up this morning, and,” another heavy breath, “and I told Christopher. Before I could talk myself out of it.”

“Oh,” Buck says, as the past half hour changes meaning right in front of his eyes. “Oh. He—”

“Threw a same-sex hamster wedding,” Eddie fills in, a hysterical little laugh breaking through his lips before he can bite it back.

“Oh,” Buck says again, because Eddie's hunched shoulders make a little more sense now. “You were embarrassed.”

“Little bit,” Eddie laughs, looking at the floor, but he doesn't blush again. “But I cried about it first. He didn't even have questions, he just—he said 'okay, Dad, love you'. Like it's that easy.”

“It is,” Buck says, and isn't surprised at all to find the edges of his vision blurring. “God, we have to—”

“I was thinking the movies,” Eddie interrupts.

“And ice cream?”

Eddie nods. “Obviously. At that insanely overpriced sundae place.”

Buck sways closer to him, just—drawn, drawn in by Eddie's slowly brightening eyes, by the way tension bleeds from his face, almost tangible. Eddie's hand is still on his waist, and he grabs it instead of reaching out, intertwines their fingers.

“Maybe we can bring the brides,” he says, softer than he means to. “Throw them a reception on a napkin, or something.”

The corners of Eddie's eyes crinkle, easy, happy.

“God, I love you,” he says.

Then his face goes perfectly slack with shock, his mouth still open around the last word. Buck is—not doing any better.

Eddie's hand twitches in his, and Buck squeezes tighter. He already can't breathe, and—and if Eddie took a step back, if he pulled away, he thinks he might just never move from this spot again, frozen for eternity with his hip propped against Eddie's kitchen cabinet.

“I,” Eddie says, and swallows once, twice, his Adam's apple bobbing, “I was working up to that.”

“You were—” Buck sucks in a thin, trembling breath, “Eddie, you—”

“I love you,” Eddie says, and this time he does pull his hand out of Buck's, but it's only so he can move it upward, frame Buck's face in his hands. “I love you,” and it sounds certain that time, each syllable intentional. He's holding Buck close, and looking into his eyes. He's not seeing anyone else. “And sitting there with you yesterday, watching them dance, the only thing I could think was—”

“I want that to be us,” Buck interrupts, and then he's moving, finally, putting his hands on Eddie's hips, pulling him close. Something's fluttering behind his breastbone, like actual butterflies. “Dancing and laughing and happy and good, we'd—Eddie, we'd be so good together.”

Eddie grins at him, and he puts the light bathing the room to shame. “We already are, baby,” he says, running his thumb over Buck's cheek, a touch that makes Buck shiver. “I mean—I told my kid I was gay, and his followup question was if I was going to marry you, then. And then he didn't even wait for an answer, because he already knew.”

And Buck laughs, a sound so light he thinks he might lift right off the floor with it. He sways into Eddie's space, brushes their noses together, breathes in his air.

“Are you?” he asks, a little high on all of it, Eddie so close and so warm and so—in love with Buck, holy shit. It's not something he'd ever dream of asking, because what he told Eddie last night is true, and someone staying still feels like a fantasy, but Eddie's here. Eddie's here. “Going to marry me?”

“Are you trying to—” Eddie nudges him away with his forehead, gentle, just far enough so their eyes can meet. “Buckley.”

“Diaz,” Buck grins.

“You can't backdoor propose to me,” Eddie says, with a fake frown that he can't keep on his face for how obviously happy he is, and Buck put that expression there. Buck is the one making Eddie glow this way.

“Hm,” he says, making the exaggerated thoughtful face he knows Eddie secretly loves, “is that what I'm doing? I was just posing an innocent question. Actually, I think left the asking up to you, so—”

“Marry me,” Eddie says, quiet, serious. Buck's smile freezes on his face. “Tomorrow, if you want.”

Buck opens his mouth, but Eddie's face blurs in front of his eyes - and he's afraid, just for a split second, that he's just slipped deeper into those fantasies he never should have allowed himself, that he's going to shake himself awake and Eddie will be gone.

And then Eddie runs a hand through his hair, and pulls him back.

“We can probably still pull a Maddie and Chimney and get it done today,” he says, and Buck blinks to get his vision to clear, because he doesn't want to miss a second, doesn't want to miss a single one of Eddie's expressions ever again, if he can swing it. “Or we make it giant and perfect and plan it for a year, anything you want, but I'm serious. I can love someone and marry them and be ready for it, and this is it, Buck. I'm ready. To try to love you the way you deserve. If—”

“Eddie,” Buck says, and his eyes just keep stinging. He leans back in, so close his bottom lip brushes Eddie's when he speaks, desperately tugging Eddie closer even when there's nowhere else for him to go. “Eddie, come on, this is—you know the answer.”

“I do?” Eddie asks, his hand curling around the back of Buck's neck.

“It wasn't a slip of the tongue,” Buck says, the memory emerging from the fog that is last night clear as anything, there when he reaches for it. “Yesterday. Getting married was for other people, until it was for me. With you.”

“Just me, huh?” Eddie asks, with a smile in his voice, but—

“Just you,” Buck says, and it trembles a little with how much he means it. Just Eddie, always, always. “Just you.” And he presses it into the dip of Eddie's back with his fingertips, kisses it into the side of his neck, just a brush of lips that leaves Eddie gasping.

“So will you?” he asks, a little short of breath, and Buck already can't believe he gets to make him sound like that. “Marry me?”

Buck pulls away. Eddie's hand in his hair tightens, and he runs his thumb over Buck's bottom lip, firm in a way that leaves Buck feeling burning hot and wobbly-kneed.

“That depends, I think,” he says, his breath breaking over Eddie's fingers.

Eddie tilts his head. “On?”

He lets the silence hang, just for a moment, and imagines he can hear Eddie's heart racing as fast as his own.

“Will you be my hamster?”

And Eddie kisses him, then, all toothy for how hard he's laughing. He holds Buck's face in his hands and licks into his mouth bright and joyous and confident, like he's been doing it forever. He tastes like strawberries, somehow, and Buck loses himself in the way Eddie's hair feels between his fingers, in the press of his back against the kitchen counter, in the pink-tinged darkness on the back of his eyelids, every smell and sound.

Eddie kisses him, smiling, always smiling, and sits on the kitchen table so he can open his legs wide and draw Buck in closer, like he's just as drunk on this as Buck is.

They're going to get married, and that's not something Buck will understand as real until much, much later, but for now—

“The brides are hungry!” Christopher yells from down the hall.

For now, he'll take it one sharp-toothed, crinkly-eyed smile at a time.