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When unknown number calls TK, the last person he expected to be on the other end was Evan Buckley.
Currently he and Carlos were spending their last morning in Los Angelos laid cuddled up in bed. "Hello?" He asked and brushed a light kiss against Carlos' cheek when he raised a questioning eyes brow.
"Hey it’s Buck, I wanted to say thanks, I didn't know how but your plan worked, Eddie and I" Buck trailed off, unable to contain the smile on his face.
"Congratulations" TK was happy for his new friend, if he could consider a guy he met once and might never again his friend.
"Hey, I know from Eddie that it's your last day here in LA, and we had the day off, so how about I treat you and your boy to lunch with Eddie?"
"Yeah, that'd be great, text me the details" TK hung up the phone.
"Who was that?" Carlos asked as his lips lazily pressed against TK's neck.
"Mr. blue eyes. He's inviting us to lunch with your friend"
"Eddie?"
"Yeah, that's okay right?"
"Yeah sure; just don’t flirt with his boyfriend if you get jealous”
“I wasn’t jealous” TK pouted
“Then why were you pulling the same pool move with him?” Carlos grinned and kissed TK’s pout “The one you pulled when we first started dating?”
“Thought you’d forget about that”
“I never forget anything about you baby”
TK couldn’t help but smile, he was hopelessly in love with Carlos and he was beyond happy that he had given them the chance to get to where they were.
Several hours later, they were seated at a restaurant in Hollywood, with Eddie and Buck. It was easy to talk to others that understood the difficulties of the job you chose. They joked about calls they’d been on and TK and Buck shared the horrid injured on the job stories.
“So, I gonna ask” Buck looked between Carlos and Eddie “how did the two of you meet?”
“It’s a long story” Carlos glanced at Eddie and then shrugged. Eddie’s cheek tainted red as he tried to hide a smile behind his glass of water.
“we have the time” TK reached over to take Carlos’ hand. The look between them made him intrigued to hear their story.
“It was a long time ago, I went to spend the summer with my Tia in El Paso. I was 15” Carlos ran his thumb over TK’s knuckles as he spoke “that’s when I met Eddie”
“That was the summer before my senior year in high school, I was 17” Eddie chuckled “I didn’t even know I liked boys too until we started hanging out”
“Carlos was your sexual awaken?” Buck questioned.
“He was handsome and charming, what can I say, I have a type” Eddie smirked and looked over at Buck with so much love and adoration in his eyes.
“I remember when Eddie would sneak his dads beer into his jeep and we’d drink it in the middle of the night”
“Tia Lucy was so mad when you threw up in her guest room” Eddie laughed, for a moment he could feel the heat of the Texan summer on his skin and he’s 17 again, scared by the thought of kissing his friend.
“I lied about, said it was a bad burrito”
Carlos thinks back to that night and the many nights just like it, when they’d sneak out after everyone else had gone to bed. Sometimes they’d stay in the jeep with windows rolled down and music blaring, not saying much just existing in each other’s presence, some nights they’d drive up to the lake and cannonball off of the cliff. Those were his favorite times, when they’d lay on the hot sand and dangle their feet into the cold water.
That’s when they first kissed. He couldn’t remember how it happened, they were laughing about something Eddie had done and Carlos had turned away from the dazzling summer sky to look at him, only to find Eddie had done the same.
“We kissed by the lake” He doesn’t know why he says that out loud and he can feel TK’s hand goes tense in his “and then you didn’t talk to me for two weeks”
“I was scared” Eddie admitted “I had been on a few dates with Shannon before the school year had ended”
They had never talked about this before. Both TK and Buck felt like they were intruding on something they shouldn’t have.
“- I was confused too”
Buck looked at TK, he wasn’t sure if they should say something to break the tension.
“About me?” Carlos asked, his hand still holding on to TK’s
“About everything, I didn’t know what that meant for me. I had a plan, I was going to join the army as soon as I graduated. I didn’t know how this new part of me was supposed to fit, I fell in love with you and I was scared” Eddie smiled sadly, he had never gotten the chance to tell Carlos that, he was relieved that he didn’t have to keep that feeling a secret anymore.
“I left the night after you came over to Lucy’s house, I was so mad at you because you acted like it never happened”
“I was stupid” Eddie grinned. “I guess I didn’t want to lose a friend, so hid how I really felt. I’m happy that it took seeing you again to keep me from making that mistake again” He turned to Buck with a fond smile “thank you Carlos” he reached into his pocket and pulled out an old watch “you left this in my jeep the night after the Lake, I wanted to give it back to you for so long but I was gone before you came back to El Paso, and Lucy had moved to Austin when I returned home”
He left out the part that he had started dating Shannon again and that their relationship was turning serious.
Carlos reached for the watch but stopped “you hold on to that if you want” He smiled “I don’t ever regret that night or that summer, and I’m happy that we’ve both found the right person for us”
The rest of the lunch passed with lighter topic, both Eddie and Carlos felt like a weight they didn’t know they were carried had been lifted.
-
“Did you worry think that you’d mess us up the same way?” Buck ask as they walk back to their car after lunch.
“Yeah, I knew I liked you for so long it’s just that I didn’t know if you’d feel the same, it this would work?” Eddie takes Buck’s hand in his own “You meant the world to me from the moment we met Evan Buckley and you still do today, I wasn’t going to let a past mistake repeat itself”
“I still don’t understand a couple of things”
“You’re lucky you’re handsome and have a heart of gold Buck” Eddie shook his head and pulled Buck closer.
At the airport, TK sits with Carlos’ hand in his own. “I didn’t mean to push so hard when we first start dating” Carlos admitted “I just thought I didn’t push hard enough with Eddie”
“We don’t have to talk about it”
“Can we? I just need to say it” Carlos waited until TK nodded to continue “I blamed myself, thought I didn’t do enough to show him I liked him, so every relationship since then, I’ve always put in way more than I should. I don’t regret doing that with you though, you make me fall in love with you everyday”
“I love you too, and for what it’s worth, I’m glad it didn’t work out with you and Eddie, I don’t think I would have been able to compete with him”
“You never have to compete with anyone for my love or attention, you have every part of me baby” Carlos closes the distance between them with a soft kiss.
Often times the past should stay in the past, but sometimes you need to bump into a familiar face and say the words that had tied you to their memories, sometimes it better to face the past to get a better future.