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"Why did I let you talk me into this?”
“We didn't,” Hen says, taking a slow sip of her margarita.
Chimney nods. “You just came.”
Eddie leans back, the fake leather of the booth squeaking with the movement. It's hot in the bar, and he's pretty sure that if he tried to stand up, he'd find his jeans sticking to his seat. He wants nothing more than to get up and go home, where the beer is actually chilled and not eye-wateringly overpriced and he can drink it in peace and silence, but—but.
“Buck's here,” he says. Hen and Chim raise their eyebrows in perfect coordination. “Have to make sure he doesn't get himself into trouble.”
“He's been getting himself into trouble since 1992,” Chimney says, pulling out his phone, probably to make fun of Eddie in his and Maddie's text thread. “And I'm pretty sure he's right at home in a bar.”
The unfortunate thing is, Eddie really can't argue with that. It's easy to see Buck, somehow, even through the throngs of people crowding around tables and flagging down the lone bartender for drinks: one elbow on the bartop, head tilted, leaning down with half-lidded eyes as he says something to the short blonde he's been talking to. She replies, animated, and leans forward to squeeze his forearm; when he laughs at her joke, it's not the laugh Eddie's used to seeing, head back and unrestrained, but something completely different. A long, slow smile that spills over Buck's face syrupy slow, one corner of his mouth higher than the other, so heavy with intent Eddie feels it like a weight on his chest from across the room.
Buck's here, but he's not really here with them - and by the looks of it, it won't be long until he's not here at all.
“Eddie,” Hen says, trying to nudge his foot under the table, but she's just tipsy enough that she misses and thunks into the bottom of the booth instead, “stop staring.”
“I'm not staring,” Eddie says, peeling his gaze away from Buck to eye his mostly undrunk beer. He's hot and sweaty and so fucking uncomfortable in his skin and his favorite t-shirt, and he's pretty sure that the sight of Buck flirting with someone shouldn't make him ache, but here he is. In all his stupid, lovesick, miserable glory.
“Do you think they'll be going back to her place?” Chimney asks, stroking his chin, fake thoughtful. “Since you two live together now.”
Hen tries to kick him too, and gets the table leg.
“We don't live together,” Eddie says, a line so practiced by now it basically says itself. “He's staying on my couch for a bit.”
“Four months,” Hen says. “He has an air mattress in your living room.”
Eddie shrugs, and reaches out to take a sip of his disgusting warm beer. He's pretty sure they all see right through him, including the people on B and C shift, who have stopped doing double takes when they see them arrive to work together. Hen's looking at him with big, sympathetic eyes, and Chimney's making that face he makes when he has something to say and is just biding his time, and Eddie—
Eddie doesn't want Buck to leave. His house, or this place with someone he met twenty minutes ago.
Over by the bar, Buck shifts a little closer. Their knuckles brush when they both reach for their drink at the same time, and the woman sweeps her hair over one shoulder, exposing the side of her neck.
Eddie might, actually, be sick.
“It's kind of cute,” Hen says. “He's having fun again.”
Eddie almost says I'm fun, like Hen's attacking him somehow, but his mouth is still full of beer, and he manages to swallow the words with it.
“Doesn't answer the question of where they're going to go,” Chim says.
“Not my house,” Eddie replies, and he doesn't realize how harsh it sounds until Chimney's eyes widen across the table. “I mean—”
“You know you could just go over there,” Hen says, tilting her head. “Literally just tap him on the shoulder, and he'll forget she exists.”
Eddie puts a hand over his eyes and just—leaves it there.
“So, uh,” he says, swallowing to get the taste of hops off his tongue, “we all know I'm in love with him, then.”
“Yeah,” Hen and Chim say in unison.
“Cool,” Eddie says, and puts his head on the table. “That's great.”
The wood is cold against his skin, at least, even if it is sticky. Slowly, he takes a breath that stutters on its way in, stubborn, because Eddie's lungs haven't really felt right since they walked in here.
Chimney sighs. “I mean, for what it's worth—”
“Chim,” Hen interrupts. “Don't.”
“Yeah, don't,” Eddie agrees, ignoring the dull pain in the middle of his forehead. The music in the bar isn't loud, but it's loud enough to make the floor vibrate, and it travels up through the table to reverberate inside Eddie's skull, sowing the seeds of yet another Bad Decisions Headache for whenever he has the guts to get out of here. “I'm fine. Might as well get some practice in watching him walk away from me.”
It's Hen that sighs, this time. Eddie doesn't realize she's reaching across the table until he feels her hand on the back of his head, patting him clumsily, and he hates that it actually feels comforting.
He should probably apologize for bringing the mood down. He will, as soon as he gets unstuck from the table and makes sure the sting in his eyes isn't tears, because that would be actually pathetic—
“Hey,” Buck says, sliding into his spot by Eddie's side, the one he vacated over half an hour ago. “You okay?”
For a second, Eddie thinks he's hallucinating. Then he registers the heat, Buck searing as always all along his side, their thighs pressed together, their hips touching.
“Uh,” Eddie says, straightening up. He definitely has the grain of the table printed into his forehead, and he rubs at it self-consciously in the face of Buck's wide-eyed concern. “Yeah, fine. What are you doing here?”
Buck tilts his head like a puppy. He looks alert, not flushed like he usually gets when he's had a few.
“I came here with you,” he says, frowning, and reaches out to press the back of his hand to Eddie's forehead like Eddie's running a fucking fever instead of just chronically pining in a random bar on a Wednesday night. “Are you sure you're feeling okay?”
Eddie just—blinks at him.
“He meant your lady friend,” Chimney says, elbows on the table, grinning.
Buck looks over his shoulder and shrugs.
“We were just talking,” he says. He takes his hand back, but he's still leaning into Eddie's side, and Eddie's so—he's so—
“Looked very friendly,” he says, in a tone he's pretty sure passes for casual until Hen makes a face, mouths yikes at him, and tugs on Chimney's sleeve.
“We're getting more drinks,” she says, “isn't that right, Chim?”
Chimney's beer is still half full, but he doesn't even look at it when he follows her, the two of them getting lost in the crowd.
And then it's just him and Buck. Buck, who's still frowning, like Eddie said something incomprehensible.
“I mean, she was nice,” he says. “Been forever since I flirted with a stranger in a bar.”
Eddie looks at the two empty stools where Buck and the woman were sitting not two minutes ago.
“And you're,” he starts, then has to wait for his mouth to get less dry, “you're not going home with her?”
Buck tilts his head back when he laughs. He reaches for Eddie's beer, takes a sip, the line of his throat sharpened by the lights of the neon signs above the bar.
“Eddie, I live in your living room,” he says, leaning in until their shoulders touch. “I'm going home with you.”
Eddie shivers. He's almost sure they weren't sitting this close before, that Buck wasn't this warm. He definitely didn't feel his heart beating under every inch of his skin, in the tip of his tongue, the way he does right now.
Buck doesn't mean it that way. Eddie repeats it on a loop in his head, because they've been going places together and coming home together for months and months on end, and—
“You know,” Buck says, looking up at the ceiling. Eddie, somehow, can hear it when he swallows. “It kind of used to be the same thing every time. Back when I picked up strangers in bars.”
And he turns his head toward Eddie, then, the full force of his eyes that look dark blue with lack of light.
“I would, uh,” he smiles, ducking his head for a second like he's embarrassed, as if Eddie isn't breathless just from them being pressed together in a booth. “I would see someone who was interested, go over there, make a joke.”
He raises his head with a grin, and Eddie doesn't really think about it when he answers it with a smile of his own. It's an automatic reaction when faced with Buck's joy.
“They'd smile,” Buck says. He shifts so he's sitting sideways, pulling his thigh away from Eddie's, pressing his knee into the spot instead. Carefully, like he's trying to make sure he gets it right, he reaches up and traces the spot where Eddie's cheek has creased with his smile. “We'd both laugh, if I managed to come up with a really good joke.”
Eddie doesn't laugh. Eddie can't move, can't see anything past Buck, the soft lines of his face, the familiar shape of him in the half-dark.
“Our shoulders would touch,” Buck says, and he does just that, bumping the side of Eddie's shoulder with the front of his own. He has to move in to do it, brace one hand on the table and curl around Eddie a little bit, blocking out the light. From this close, Eddie can smell him, the achingly familiar cologne in the crook of his neck, the orange-scented body wash they share at home. “We'd have a moment.”
Eddie, suddenly, realizes that he has to lift his chin to keep looking Buck in the eye, that his other arm has slid along the back of the booth, is radiating heat right behind Eddie's neck.
“I'd lean in closer,” Buck says, smiling again, his eyes gentle, but his pupils are so wide they almost crowd out the blue. “They'd let me.”
His fingers ghost over Eddie's nape, a touch so light he might have imagined it, but it makes him shiver anyway. Buck feels it, so close he could press their chests together if he turned just so, and the next touch is firmer, deliberate. His fingers slide into the hair on the back of Eddie's head, careful but so, so heavy. Eddie feels the goosebumps all the way in the tips of his ears, in the backs of his knees.
“And then I'd usually get them a drink,” Buck says. His words break against Eddie's lips. “But I already got you one and you barely touched it, so—”
“Buck,” Eddie says, and his voice gives everything away. He can't breathe, can't think, because the air smells like oranges and cheap liquor and Buck, Buck so close Eddie can't even look at him properly anymore.
Their foreheads touch.
“Yeah,” Buck says. His bottom lip brushes Eddie's, and Eddie whines, a small, desperate sound that tears out of his throat without him noticing. Buck's breath hitches in response.
“I'm not some random person you picked up in a bar,” Eddie says, out of breath. He tilts his chin just so, just enough that their lips ghost over each other again, but then Buck's hands are on the sides of his face, and he's pulling away until they can see each other.
“No,” he shakes his head, smiling. “No you're not. You just happen to be in a bar,” one corner of his mouth twitches higher, “and I happen to be picking you up.”
Eddie puts a shaking hand on Buck's chest, afraid that he might find it calm, unaffected, the exact opposite of his own, but Buck's heart meets his touch racing.
“Are you sure?” he asks, because nothing about this night seems real, the thrum of the music under his feet and the heat gathering low in his stomach and Buck, wide-eyed and messy-haired and magnetic, dragging Eddie along with every little movement. “Because I—I'm not going to do casual, or one-time-only, or—”
“Eddie,” Buck says, and he laughs this time, lifting Eddie's face up with his hands. “Baby. I told you I'm coming home with you. I want to come home with you.”
Quietly, something in Eddie's chest cracks open. He almost misses it for the rush of blood in his ears, but then Buck runs a thumb over his cheekbone and the whole thing breaks into pieces, sharp for a second with everything Eddie feels for this impossible, ridiculous man, before it settles into place, warm and solid and right.
“Only if you stay,” he says, raising his own hand to Buck's face, seeing him brand new and the same as always. “Stay, once we get there.”
In response, Buck slides an effortless hand to the back of Eddie's neck and pulls him in. Eddie expects him to kiss just this side of filthy, as dizzyingly intense as everything else about him, but the way he fits their lips together is almost careful, a little shaky, like he's nervous.
Eddie puts a hand on his thigh, squeezes. He goes a little breathless with the strength coiled there, with how small his hand feels; Buck takes it for the encouragement it's meant to be, a little firmer, licking over Eddie's bottom lip.
He leans back in his sticky, squeaky seat, and pulls Buck with him. Buck grins, breaking the kiss for a breath, long enough for them to look at each other, blinking like they're surprised to find the other there.
“I love you,” Buck says then, his mouth glistening with what they've just done. “Just to be, like, perfectly clear.”
Eddie grins. “I'm already a sure thing, Buckley,” he says, wrapping his arms around Buck's shoulders. “Lay off the moves.”
“Never,” Buck grins back, and doesn't have time to dive in for the next kiss, because Eddie beats him to it.
Eddie doesn't check his phone until they're ready to leave, both of them flushed and a little embarrassed at all the eyes that follow them out. Even then, he only checks because Buck reaches behind him to put a hand in his back pocket, finds the phone there, and presses it into Eddie's hand with a kiss to Eddie's neck that makes him stumble.
He finds his screen full of notifications, most of them keysmashes from Hen that start out looking like words and get increasingly more incoherent. And underneath:
Got an Uber to the eye bleaching place, is Chimney's first text.
The second one, sent immediately after, is a winky face emoji and a single red heart.