Work Text:
It takes less than a week of Buck quietly losing his mind before he breaks and calls Eddie.
At first, he thinks he doesn’t even need to, because Tommy is so incredibly wrong, and also incorrect, and also jealous. For no reason. So he doesn’t need to bring it up at all. The problem is when Maddie agrees with Tommy. That throws a wrench into the mix. Talking to Maddie about something makes it a Real Life Event and if Buck doesn’t tell Eddie about a Real Life Event in a reasonable amount of time, Eddie hits Buck with the eyebrows. He doesn’t want to think about how bad that would suck from eighty trillion miles away.
Still, it’s not enough to make him tell Eddie, at least not right away. It would just disturb Eddie when he’s already so stressed out about everything, including a family dinner he’s hosting later that week. Buck needs to be supporting Eddie right now, not saying crazy things to him that might make him reconsider their entire relationship. Which is fine, because there’s nothing to really say about any of it. He’ll just avoid talking about it when they’re on the phone together.
Except that doesn’t work either, because he can’t talk to Eddie at all while this whole terrible nightmare is on the tip of his tongue. Every time he tries to pick up the phone and call, or even answer one of Eddie’s calls, he feels it rising like bile in his chest, the presence of a secret, forbidden between them. Eddie probably wouldn’t freak out, Buck thinks to himself. It would just be awkward. He’d recalibrate, look for the healthy distance between them. He’d try to make it work. But it wouldn’t work, and Buck knows it. It would kill their relationship, for nothing. It’s not worth bringing up.
So he’ll just ride it out. He’ll get back to normal eventually, right?
Wrong. After three days of fully ducking all of Eddie’s calls, and their texts slowing to a trickle, he wakes up to a message that just says ‘All good?’. The only other time Buck has ever received that specific text from his best friend was right after he filed the lawsuit against the city. Buck didn’t answer that time. He knows better now.
He calls immediately, in a state of bleary-eyed panic, far too late in the day to be waking up. The phone only rings once before Eddie picks up, and Buck barely waits for a greeting before he spills everything, the whole sordid mess, from the botched drinks with Ravi, to the conversation in the bar, to the rushed drunken mistake he and Tommy made together, to the kitchen, where Buck learned later Tommy had stashed a bottle of champagne.
“And then he basically accused me of being in love with you, which was so ridiculous that I kicked him out,” Buck finally says, out of breath and flushed with terror. “Which was the right move, because that was crazy, right? Doesn’t that sound crazy?”
“What? Why?” Eddie asks over speakerphone, sounding not even a little horrified by the suggestion and in fact, more distracted than anything. “Wait, sorry, give me one second, I need to watch the recipe video.”
Buck listens, baffled, as over the phone a woman explains how exactly to marinate chicken breasts. She describes it in between maybe sixty different unnecessary anecdotes, but it actually sounds like good chicken. God, Buck wants to eat something Eddie cooked so bad. Eddie’s cooking always had a distinctive flavor to it. There's always an edge of something sharp but savory.
“Okay, I’m back, sorry about that, I thought I fucked up the ratio there,” Eddie says, sounding less harried. Buck imagines his hands, how they’d smell like rosemary and lemon and salt right about now. “You think it’s crazy for us to love each other?”
“Not love each other,” Buck says, the wind a little taken out of his sails by this whole response. “Be in love with each other.”
“Huh,” Eddie says, offering nothing else.
“You don’t think it's crazy?” Buck prods.
“Not really,” Eddie says, unconcerned. “I do love you more than most people in my life. It makes sense that he’d be picking up on that at least.”
“Yeah,” Buck says, feeling a little like he might have been injected with some kind of psychedelic earlier. His blood seems to almost fizz in his veins. “I mean. What?”
Eddie continues, “And I’m pretty sure you love me too. You lost your mind and tried to replace me with the lamest dog in the world, so I assume you do.”
“Blaze was not lame, he knew tricks and he had a really sweet pettable head,” Buck interjects, because Eddie’s vendetta against Blaze is ridiculous. Yes, Buck was trying to make him jealous, but realistically, it should not have worked.
“What kind of dog runs into a fire?” Eddie gripes, over the sound of kitchen implements being handled roughly. “Every other dog knew to not do that.”
“I’m not having this fight with you again, he’s a good dog,” Buck says, rolling his eyes.
“Whatever,” Eddie says, obviously unconvinced, “my point is, it makes sense that Tommy would be threatened by us.”
“No, of course it makes sense for Tommy to be threatened by us,” Buck says, because he said that to Maddie and meant it. “I’m saying it doesn’t make sense for him to accuse me of being hopelessly in love with you.”
“Is that what he said?” Eddie asks. “He said hopelessly?”
“Well, no, I’m paraphrasing,” Buck says, because maybe he’s been reading between the lines a little. “He basically said he was glad you left so we could have a relationship now that the competition was out of the way. He literally bought champagne about it.”
“Asshole,” Eddie says, quietly, almost under his breath. He clears his throat and his voice returns to normal. “He’s right though. I was competition for him. He didn’t know how to take care of you, so he had to keep calling me in. I ended up at half of your dates. I’d feel threatened if that was me. Did we pack my big pan? What box was that in?”
“Bigger kitchen tools,” Buck says. “I think it had a blue label on it.”
“Oh yeah, found it, thanks,” Eddie says. “I’m mostly unpacked but some stuff is still in boxes. It’s been slower going than I thought it would be.”
“Yeah, I get that. I only unpacked a week ago,” Buck says. “I guess I missed you more than I thought I would. Maybe another reason why I’m freaking out about this.”
The kitchen sounds stop and when Eddie speaks, it sounds like his voice is closer to the microphone “Listen, our relationship isn’t just one thing. We’re best friends, but we’re also partners, and family and all kinds of other things. If Tommy saw some parts of our relationship as romantic, that makes sense. He might even be right. It’s still not why your relationship failed.”
“So why did our relationship fail?” Buck asks, a little stuck on the ‘he might even be right’ of it all.
“Because he doesn’t know how to handle you,” Eddie says, like this is old news. “Obviously.”
“And you do?” Buck asks, knowing the answer, just wanting to hear it.
“Are you still freaking out about whether or not you’re in love with me?” Eddie asks.
Buck sits and thinks for a second, and realizes he’s not. Why would he freak out anymore? He and Eddie are on the same page about it, like always. “No,” Buck says. “You’re right. We love each other in a lot of ways. That’s always been true.”
“I think that counts as handling you,” Eddie says, a little smug. “What do you think?”
“I think I love you,” Buck says, feeling the tension of a week fall away from his shoulders. “Can we start saying that to each other now?”
“Yeah, why not?” Eddie says, as if it’s just that easy. “Okay, I put the chicken into the marinade. Now it has to sit for four hours, then I roast and serve.”
“What are you making for your side?” Buck asks.
“Adri’s bringing a salad so I’m making those cheesy potatoes you made that one time,” Eddie says. “After Chris got elected class president in fifth grade? We had them with the ribs?”
“God, those were so good,” Buck said, remembering that night, the three of them piled onto the couch to watch Napoleon Dynamite for the first time, because Eddie kept making Vote For Pedro jokes nobody laughed at. “Did I put that in the folder? I don’t think we had the folder at that point.”
“Yeah, but I thought we had that big day where we copied everything in,” Eddie responds.
Buck opens their shared Notes recipe folder, navigates to the Sides sub-folder.
“Yeah, you’re right, my bad. It’s under ‘Presidential Taters’,” Buck says.
“The names are supposed to be descriptive,” Eddie reminds him, but there’s a smile in his voice.
“What’s not descriptive about that?” Buck asks.
“Where should I start?” Eddie asks, and Buck can literally hear him rolling his eyes.
“How are you feeling about dinner tonight?” Buck asks, settling back into his pillows.
“Good,” Eddie lies. “Really good. I cleaned the whole house top to bottom, so it’s looking as presentable as it ever does. I tested the chicken recipe two times, which is good because now I’m familiar with the oven’s timings. Potatoes are pretty easy, not a lot of ingredients. I have red and white wine, and Soph is on dessert. My parents have an early day tomorrow so we all agreed we’re not going to stay late. It should just be two, maybe three hours of normal conversation and great food.”
“Nice,” Buck says. “So you’re scared shitless?”
Eddie lets out a long sigh. “Is it that obvious?”
“You tested the chicken recipe two times,” Buck says.
“That’s because it was terrible the first time,” Eddie says. Buck listens as he moves through his house, as he sits down with a sigh and the squeak of springs somewhere, maybe on the couch, maybe on his bed. “The house is a shitshow, and I haven’t had any time to fix it up because I’ve been applying for jobs non-stop, and nobody’s hiring. I haven’t been sleeping either, I don’t know what the hell is happening with my mattress, but I think I need to replace it, which I do not have the money for right now. I’ve only talked to Chris a few times, because he’s in the middle of a testing season at school, and he’s in so many extracurriculars, which I thought I’d be attending except I have to get a job first, so now I’m still an absent father, I’m just in the same city--”
“Hey, Eddie,” Buck says, trying to stem the inexhaustible tide of his anxiety.
“I thought I was making the right decision,” Eddie finishes with a big sigh. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. It feels like I’m right back where I started.”
“It’s because you are,” Buck says. “That’s the whole point. You’re returning to the scene of the crime.”
“Thanks, Buck,” Eddie says, his voice dry.
“I’m serious,” Buck says. “Your problems with Chris don’t start in Los Angeles, they started in El Paso. You had to go back to the start to actually address the root of these problems. That’s what Chris needs, not you pretending like you’re super stable now and you’re never going to fuck up again. You’re going to fuck up again, Eddie. You’re a parent and that’s what parents do. Just be honest with him.”
“What if that’s not enough?” Eddie asks. “If I’m not enough for him?”
“You are,” Buck says. “I know that you are. You just have to let yourself believe it.”
“How?” Eddie asks.
“I don’t know,” Buck answers. If he did, he thinks his life would look different.
They sit on the phone together, listening to each other breathe for a long time.
“Did you really not talk to me for a week, just because you were worried that Tommy thinks we’re in love?” Eddie eventually asks, something a little off about his voice.
“Uh,” Buck says, trying to figure out a way around it. “Well, not exactly. I mean, sort of, but like--”
“You know there’s nothing you could say that would change how much you matter to me, right?” Eddie asks, and now Buck realizes that he sounds hurt. If he was standing in front of Buck, he’d be looking down with that little stifled pout, turning away as if turning away from Buck could hide anything at all.
“I know, Eddie, I just didn’t want to stress you out,” Buck tries again.
“You’re my best friend, you’re supposed to stress me out,” Eddie says, and for the first time, Buck hears it, just how inadequate ‘best friend’ is when they talk about each other, how bursting at the seams it is with everything they never really talk about.
“I know, I know,” Buck says, biting his lip. “I’m sorry.”
There’s a pause where Buck hears the metal snap of the cap of a beer bottle. A pause where Eddie must be drinking. The sound of his throat working.
“Don’t be sorry,” Eddie sighs. “I’m not there, you’re busy. There’s gonna be an adjustment period.” It sounds like it’s killing him to say it. To try and believe it.
“I guess,” Buck says. More words come up inside of him like some dark poison, dredged up from a deep selfish place, the part of him that’s always hungry, that never stops wanting more. “But also, I just didn’t want to face it, ‘cause if I’m in love with you, I won’t survive this. But if we’re just really good friends, I can.”
Eddie doesn’t say anything for a really long time. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “That makes sense. I get it.” His microphone lets out some odd muffled sounds, like rustling fabric.
“Are you in bed too?” Buck asks, without thinking.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, sounding suddenly very tired. “Just lying down for a little bit.”
“Me too,” Buck says. “What side are you on?”
“Left,” Eddie says.
Buck groans. God, Eddie is so annoying. “No, I’m on the left side, you have to move.”
“My charger is on this side,” Eddie complains. “Why can’t you move?”
“This is my side. You’re always on the right.”
“Why is it such a big deal?” Eddie asks.
“I was gonna say we should close our eyes and then it’s like we’re hanging out together in the same room,” Buck says, annoyed. “But now it doesn’t work.”
“Why not?” Eddie asks. “Maybe we’re hanging out and I’m on top of you.”
A greedy flush roils through Buck’s body at the thought, Eddie’s warm body, heavy on his. That’s fine though. That doesn’t mean anything. Eddie said that was normal. Basically. “Why can’t I be on top?” Buck asks, his voice a little hoarse.
“Because I said it first,” Eddie points out. “Are your eyes even closed?”
Buck closes his eyes, places his phone on his chest. “Yeah.”
“Okay, cool,” Eddie says, the phone speaker sending the artificial rumble of Eddie’s voice into his chest. He doesn’t say anything for a little bit. “This is nice.”
“Yeah,” Buck says again. “You should nap. You sound tired.”
“Mm,” Eddie says.
“When does everyone get there?”
“Seven.”
“I’ll set an alarm for two hours then,” Buck says, navigating to his clock app and doing just that. “You can nap for a while, then we can hang out while you cook.”
“What’re you gonna do?” Eddie asks, his voice already soft and heavy with sleep.
“I’ve been reading about televangelism in America because of Bobby’s grifter mom,” Buck says.
“Oh, Chim told me about that,” Eddie says. “We’ll talk about it later, I have questions.”
“Okay,” Buck says, smiling for some reason or another. “Good night.”
“Night,” Eddie mumbles. “Love you.”
Buck lets it sink in, the surety of the words, coming from Eddie’s lips. “Love you too,” he says to the warm weight of Eddie on his chest.
It feels heavier than he thought it would.