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It's been four years.
Buck's not entirely sure why he still remembers the exact date. He's lived what feels like entire lifetimes since then; he's come uncomfortably close to dying more than once, has built a life he can be tentatively proud of on his better days, has moved on.
Except it's October 28th, and Eddie is sitting on the living room floor contemplating a pumpkin with a frown, and Buck has just enough alcohol in his bloodstream to consider saying it out loud: we broke up four years ago today.
Do you remember?
But, though one of the things Buck has learned in that time is that he's very good at blowing up his own life, he hasn't quite reached the point of putting everything he has at risk. He and Eddie are good, and Eddie is lighter than Buck remembers ever seeing him, happier, more himself. He probably doesn't even think about it anymore.
They had a couple of months together, that's all. It's less time than Buck spent seeing some of his friends with benefits, far less time than Eddie had with Ana, nothing compared to the years of history Shannon brought with her when she came back into Eddie's life and stamped Buck out of it.
A couple of months. Probably not enough time to fall in love.
So whatever Buck did fall in—
"I think I'm packing it up for tonight," Bobby, the last person left at the carving party that accidentally ended up happening in Eddie's living room, says. He sets his pumpkin on the coffee table, the front carved into the shape of a firefighter holding an axe. "You can keep that."
Eddie snorts, tilting his head as he draws another line on his own pumpkin, the sharpie squeaking in the quiet.
"Thanks, Cap," he says, and when he raises his head to look at Bobby, Buck averts his eyes to the empty beer bottle he's holding, the glass long gone warm in his grip. He's already done too much looking tonight, at Eddie's bare shoulders in his tank top and the soft swoop of hair falling into his forehead and the line of his throat when he and Hen laughed at something she said. "Shame I'll never get to light it, after all the horror stories you tell."
"They're cautionary tales," Bobby replies, stretching his arms over his head when he gets up. "You should be thanking me. Buck, you need a ride?"
Buck blinks. The room has gone comfortably blurry sometime in the last ten minutes, warm and familiar, and he's starting to feel the drinks he's had, a kind of dull pulsing between his eyes that threatens to knock loose things he should never say.
"Nah," Eddie says when Buck stays silent for too long. "He promised to help me clean this up."
What he actually promised was to drive Christopher to school tomorrow, which he does a couple of days a week anyway, and it's normal for him to stay here. Easier. Practical.
But then Eddie grabs a knife to finally start carving, and Buck's mouth goes dry watching the muscles in his forearm shift, softened by the low light.
"Actually, uh," he says, clumsily setting his bottle on the floor, "I think—I probably should. I'll come get Chris tomorrow morning."
Eddie frowns, his mouth opening a little like Buck caught him by surprise.
He's caught himself by surprise, if he's honest. He's felt like this a thousand times before, has mastered the role of Eddie's best friend and absolutely nothing more, pathetically grateful to be allowed in his life at all, but there's something. About today, or maybe about the fact that Eddie is ready to be with someone, even if he doesn't know it yet, and Buck still remembers what it felt like when they kissed for the last time in the doorway of this house, less than ten steps away.
"You sure?" Eddie asks in that way he has, like he's ready to push if Buck needs him to, or ready to back away. "I thought—"
"Yeah," Buck nods, convincing himself. He gets up, wipes his dry palms on his thighs, and dodges Bobby's questioning eyes. "Yeah, I—I think I had one too many, actually. Better if I sleep it off in a bed."
Eddie opens his mouth again, like he might be about to suggest that they share. Buck takes a wobbly step forward, almost knocking over the bottle he just set down, and tries not to feel like he's sinking to the floor when Bobby puts a hand on his shoulder.
"You okay to put your shoes on?" he asks, the corner of his mouth twitching. Buck shrugs him off, stepping out into the hallway to the sound of Eddie's quiet laughter, trying to remember which shoes he wore here, because there are several pairs lined up by the door.
"White ones," Eddie says from behind him. Before Buck can turn around, Bobby brushes past, saying something about getting the car warmed up that Buck completely misses. He doesn't close the door on his way out.
"Thanks," Buck says, bending down to pick up the white sneakers that, yeah, if he thinks about it, are the pair he put on in a hurry when Eddie came to pick him up earlier. "Sorry about—I'll be here at seven."
"You don't need to be sorry," Eddie says quietly.
Buck might be a little drunk, but he's not drunk enough to forget how to put his shoes on, and it's done in seconds. He has his phone in his pocket, his wallet in the other one, and anything else he forgets he can just pick back up tomorrow morning.
It's time to leave. This is what he wanted, it's what best, but—it's time to leave.
When he turns around, it's to the sight of Eddie leaning with his shoulder against the wall, his feet crossed at the ankles, all soft with his messy hair and his tank top and his terrible cutoff sweats. Buck wants to touch him, but not in any of the careful ways they're used to.
"I'll be here at seven," he repeats, trying to smile.
"Buck," Eddie replies, glancing somewhere over Buck's shoulder. At the doorway, maybe, where he'd apologized with his jaw so tense it was trembling when Buck touched it, his fingers curled tight around the doorframe.
Four years ago exactly.
"Eddie," he replies, and he thinks whatever expression is on his face might be a little too sad for the occasion, if Eddie's eyes are anything to go by. "Bobby's waiting for me."
He takes a couple of steps back. The breeze from outside raises goosebumps on the back of his neck.
Eddie makes up the distance and then keeps going, forward until his crossed arms are just shy of pressing into Buck's chest. Until he has to look up at Buck, instead of forward.
"But I'll see you tomorrow," he says, and it sounds heavy in a way Buck is too confused to decipher.
"Course you will," he says. "Seven. I can bring you something to eat?"
Eddie takes a breath.
Outside, Bobby turns on the headlights, a sliver of pale light cutting through the soft warmth of the hallway.
"Gotta go," Buck says, and he doesn't understand why he feels like he's standing ankle-deep in molasses, like taking a step back might be impossible, or might irreparably break something. "See you tomorrow."
And he goes to turn around, then, but Eddie curls a hand around his elbow.
Eddie curls a hand around his elbow, and leans in, faded cologne and a flash of warmth so devastating Buck doesn't know how he's lived without it. His other hand lands on Buck's jaw, a touch so soft it might not actually be there—
And then Eddie kisses him.
A couple of steps forward and a step to the left of where they kissed last time, both of them pretending they weren't wiping away tears. That kiss had been clawing, bitter, desperate.
This one nearly has Buck's knees giving out under him.
"Sorry," Eddie says when he pulls away, and he sounds it, but he doesn't sound unsure at all. "Sorry, I—shouldn't have done that without asking."
Buck blinks his eyes open. "Without—" but he has to swallow then, has to reach out a hand to hold on to something solid, and Eddie is closest. The crease of his hip is warm even through fabric. "Without asking?"
Eddie glances away, over Buck's shoulder again. He bites the corner of his lip, and Buck's very bones roar with the desire to put his mouth on the soft crease there, to steal more words off Eddie's tongue in case they're something Buck doesn't want to hear.
Eddie's ribs expand under Buck's fingers when he takes a breath.
"Do you remember," he starts, still staring at that spot, and with the ghost of Eddie's lips still on his own, Buck suddenly has no idea how he ever doubted.
"Yes," he cuts in.
Eddie's eyes return to his. "Yeah?"
"I spent all of tonight thinking about it," Buck says, honest, because he can't be anything else. "Four years."
"Yeah," Eddie nods. "And I've spent—I don't even know. At least three of them wanting to do that again."
Buck swallows. "Eddie."
"It's not supposed to happen that way, right?" Eddie asks, ducking his head with a soft laugh, his fingers coming up to rub at his eyebrow. "It's not supposed to take, what? Seven weeks?"
"Eddie," Buck says again, and he thinks maybe that says it all for him anyway.
"I watched you walk away, and I thought, that could have been the rest of my life," Eddie says. He brushes a hand over the side of Buck's face, his fingers lingering on the birthmark. "If I was someone who deserved that kind of thing."
"You do," Buck says, with something like awe blooming in the spaces between his ribs, making it hard to breathe. Nobody wants him this way. Nobody ever has, but Eddie—
"Yeah," Eddie says. "I think I might."
Buck looks over Eddie's shoulder, to his own jacket still hanging there from last winter, too warm to wear in October. To the pictures on the walls that have him in them, the plant they picked out together just last month.
"But there's so many things—"
"I love you," Buck interrupts, because even if a couple of months hadn't been enough, four years definitely would be. The feeling sings in his veins, shivers through him when Eddie grins, bright, unburdened.
Ready in the way he wasn't back then, in the way Buck still might not be, but—
"There's so many things I have to tell you," Eddie says, stepping even closer, until Buck has to let go of his hip and wrap an arm around his waist instead. "I love you too, and I—"
Buck closes his eyes, and he thinks he might pray, for the first time in his life.
"Buck," Eddie says, with a soft touch to the corner of his mouth. "I love you."
"And we have to talk," Buck nods, because he knows that much. He's standing right in the middle of a life they've somehow managed to build together, and it's only now that he's seeing it for what it is. They have to talk, and it'll be a good thing. It'll be good with Eddie. "But after—"
"Yeah," Eddie says, and he leans in again, for a kiss even softer than the first. It feels, inexplicably, like they never stopped doing this. "Yes, Buck. Yes."
Buck inhales, his forehead pressed to Eddie's, and wonders if he could still stay. If Eddie feels the same way, like none of this is new.
"Don't make me honk the horn," Bobby's voice comes from outside.
Eddie grins, his forehead wrinkling under Buck's.
"Go," he says, and takes a step back that puts some distance between them, already a little unbearable. "I'll tell you tomorrow."
Buck straightens up, and thinks he might be blushing, thinks he might be breathless. He feels all of twenty-six years old again.
"Seven?" he asks, watching the crinkles bloom by the corners of Eddie's eyes, just a touch deeper than they used to be.
"Seven," Eddie says, tilting his head, his eyes gentle as always. "It's a date."