Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eddie didn’t look in mirrors much anymore. Not really.

He brushed his teeth, washed his face, checked if his collar was straight—but that wasn’t looking. That was maintenance. That was necessity. That was survival. Actually looking, really seeing himself? That felt dangerous. Like catching the ghost in your own eyes before you could pretend he wasn’t there.

So he focused on the tasks. The routine. The rhythm.

It was Wednesday, which meant pasta night. Garlic, olive oil, a little lemon—Chris liked it that way. Eddie chopped the parsley like it had personally wronged him, then stirred the sauce one direction, then the other. The kitchen smelled familiar. Safe.

Behind him, the TV was on low. Christopher’s voice floated from the couch, narrating whatever game he was playing while Eddie moved through the same steps he moved through every week.

Everything was normal.

Everything was fine.

He set two plates on the table. “Dinner,” he called.

Chris bounded into the room, controller still in hand, socks sliding on the tile.

“Smells good,” he said, dropping into his chair.

Eddie smiled, tight at the edges. “Same as always.”

They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes. Chris talked between bites about a school project, something with popsicle sticks and glue. Eddie nodded along, answered where needed, but didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. Chris was used to filling the gaps by now.

“You okay, Dad?”

The question came out of nowhere, soft and curious, not heavy. But it still landed like a weight in Eddie’s chest.

He blinked. “Yeah, bud. Just tired.”

Chris nodded, satisfied. “You always say that.”

Eddie let out a quiet laugh. “That’s because it’s always true.”

After dinner, Eddie rinsed the dishes while Chris brushed his teeth. He stared at the water circling the drain, hands scrubbing mechanically, eyes unfocused. The pasta sauce came off in streaks. So did the parsley. So did the oil.

But the ache didn’t wash away with it.

Eddie lay in bed under low, amber light—the room quiet and still, as if time itself had pressed pause. He’d turned off most of the distractions, leaving only the soft hum of his phone on the nightstand for company. His eyes were half-closed, lost somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, when a subtle buzz pulled him back.

He reached out slowly, almost unconsciously, and picked up the phone. One new message glowed on the screen. It was from Buck.

BUCK: Hey. What’s your address again?

Eddie’s heart gave an unexpected lurch. The words were sparse, casual—nothing that screamed urgency. Yet, they carried the weight of years. For a moment, he remembered when texts from Buck were constant: quick check-ins squeezed between long, laugh-filled phone calls, a steady stream of banter that had bridged the gap of distance. Back then, words like this had always felt reassuring, familiar.

But things had changed the day Eddie left LA for Texas. Over the past two years, their conversations had thinned out to rare, measured bursts. At first, Buck kept the connection alive—sending selfies, or old pictures with Christopher, casual updates that showed he was doing okay. Then the messages started to taper off. Eddie let the gaps grow, convincing himself that distance was both inevitable and, perhaps, necessary. But even now, this one short message prickled at him.

He stared at the screen, the quiet of the room amplifying his racing thoughts. The absence of any follow-up word was as loud as a silence filled with unsaid things. What did Buck really need? Eddie’s mind darted between memories—the night Eddie left, Buck’s lingering gaze as the car pulled away, the unspoken words that had slowly died in the space between them.

With a hesitant breath, he typed:

EDDIE: Still the same. Everything’s the same.

Almost immediately, he added another line before second-guessing himself:

You okay?

He waited, the stillness in the room punctuated only by his shallow breaths, until the reply lit up the screen almost too quickly:

BUCK:  Yeah! Just need to send you something :)

A slow smile crept onto Eddie’s face, fragile but real. The message was innocuous enough—a hint of something coming his way without a promise of what it might be. For a brief moment, hope stirred in him. Perhaps it meant Buck was planning a visit. Maybe there was something he wanted to share—a memento, a note, even a small reminder of the old days.

Eddie set the phone down on the nightstand, not daring to reach for it again immediately, as if touching it too soon might shatter that glimmer of hope. In the quiet darkness of his room, he allowed himself to linger on the possibility of reconnection, wondering if this message might be the beginning of turning the silent gap into something more alive.

For now, he lay back, the message—a small spark in the long stillness—echoing in his mind as he tried to settle back into the rhythm of sleep, feeling just a little less alone.

~

The envelope came three days later.

It was tucked between a utility bill and a car dealership flyer, part of the morning stack Eddie pulled from the mailbox without looking. He didn’t notice it right away—not until he was halfway up the driveway, flipping through the pile with his thumb, more out of habit than curiosity.

Then he saw it.

Thick cream cardstock. Centered type. His name written in Buck’s handwriting.

Eddie Diaz
El Paso, TX

The return address was there in the corner—familiar zip code, familiar street—but Eddie didn’t need to read it to know where it came from. The moment he saw the loops in the “D,” the careful spacing of the letters, his stomach turned over.

He stopped walking.

Stood still in the middle of his driveway, sunlight burning into the back of his neck, the envelope gone heavy in his hands.

It wasn’t like Buck to send things. Not anymore.

They hadn’t exchanged letters in years—not even birthday cards. When they communicated now, it was texts, if anything. Quick, sparse. Functional.

This was… intentional.

This had weight.

He turned the envelope in his hand once. Then again. The paper felt expensive, deliberate. Like whatever was inside needed to last. Like it had been chosen for something important.

He could open it.

Right there, in the middle of the driveway, in his socks and sleep-rumpled T-shirt, sun already too bright for the hour.

But he didn’t.

He didn’t want to find out that it was something final. Or personal. Or—God forbid—honest. Because if Buck had taken the time to put words on paper, then Eddie would have to read them. And if he read them, he’d have to feel whatever they made him feel.

And he’d spent the last two years very carefully not doing that.

So instead, he slipped the envelope under his arm, walked the rest of the way to the door, and stepped inside.

He set it on the kitchen counter.

He didn’t open it right away.

He told himself it didn’t matter. That whatever it was could wait.

But hours passed. Chris was at school, the laundry was folded, the kitchen wiped down twice. The house had gone still in the way houses do when there’s no one left in them but your thoughts.

Eddie sat at the kitchen table, the envelope in front of him like it had grown heavier with time. He turned it once. Ran his thumb along the wax seal. Buck’s handwriting stared back at him—steady, unassuming, like it didn’t know what it was about to do.

For a second, he almost left it unopened. Almost let it keep breathing in that drawer like it wasn’t already rearranging something in his chest.

But eventually, he slid his thumb beneath the seal and cracked it open in one clean motion. The sound of tearing paper cut too sharp through the silence.

He pulled out the contents. Thick cardstock. Clean edges. Tactile weight, like intention could live inside paper.

He unfolded it slowly.

And then he stopped.

Stopped everything.

His heart. His breath. His thoughts.

He read the names once, then again, because he didn’t believe them the first time.

Save the Date: Evan Buckley & Tommy Kinard
May 17, 2027 — Los Angeles, CA
Formal invitation to follow.

He stared.

The letters didn’t blur, but something in his vision tunneled anyway. The room dropped into a kind of muffled quiet he hadn’t felt in years. Like standing at the edge of a blast radius.

It wasn’t a letter. It wasn’t a memory. It wasn’t an explanation or a question or an apology.

It was a declaration.

And all Buck had needed was an address.

Eddie sat with it in his hands. He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. He just… existed, like something caught between time zones—like the Eddie who had been Buck’s best friend in LA and the Eddie who had quietly stopped texting back in Texas had collided and left behind this shell, sitting at a kitchen table with something that looked like closure in his lap.

He thought, stupidly, of all the things Buck used to send him. Voice notes, memes, blurry firehouse selfies with Hen’s thumb in the frame. Back then, it had been constant. Easy.

Effortless.

This wasn’t effortless.

This had been printed. Designed. Mailed.

This had been proofed.

And it was the first thing Buck had sent him in months.

Eddie’s thumb drifted across the gold foil, catching on the corner like it might bite.

His mind flicked—too fast, too bright—through images he’d learned to keep buried: Buck laughing in his kitchen. Buck asleep on his couch, curled toward the back cushions like he belonged there. The way Buck’s eyes softened when Chris spoke. The way they softened for him, too, sometimes, like—

No.

He pushed the thought away.

Whatever it was—whatever that had been—he had left it behind. Left Buck behind. Packed his things, said goodbye, and drove out of LA with both hands clenched on the wheel like holding on would make it hurt less.

And now Buck was getting married.

Of course he was. Buck was the kind of person people married. Bright, loyal, open-hearted. Eddie always knew someone would see that and never let go.

He just hadn’t realized how much it would hurt when that person wasn’t him.

He didn’t cry. He wouldn’t.

But his chest ached in a way that felt like bruised cartilage—tender to the touch, the kind of pain that flares worse when you pretend it isn’t there.

His eyes dropped to the bottom of the card.

A URL. A little line in tasteful serif font:
Let us know if you’ll be joining us!

Eddie stared at it. Something bitter curled in his throat.

He didn’t remember standing. Just that one moment he was seated, and the next he was moving—gripping the card too tightly, his hand shaking just enough to make the foil glint.

He opened the drawer by the stove. The one full of dead pens and things he didn’t want to deal with. He set the card on top of a takeout menu, next to a key he hadn’t used in two years.

Let it rest there. Out of sight, but not out of mind.

Then he closed the drawer with both hands.

And leaned on the counter like it might hold him up.

~

Eddie wasn’t going to open the link.

That was the plan. That had been the plan since the moment he tucked the card into the drawer like it could be buried with the rest of the clutter in his life—the things he didn’t need, didn’t want to deal with, didn’t want to look at long enough to admit they meant anything.

It had been sitting there for days now. The envelope gone, but the card still sharp-edged in his memory. He could see it perfectly without even trying—the cream cardstock, the gold lettering, the way his name had looked in Buck’s handwriting again after so long.

He kept telling himself it didn’t matter. That there was nothing on the website he needed to see. That showing up to that corner of Buck’s life would only make something worse. For who, he couldn’t say. Maybe for Tommy. Maybe for Buck. Maybe for himself.

But the thought wouldn’t leave him alone.

What if Buck was waiting?

Not for some grand gesture. Not for anything bigger than a checkbox. But waiting all the same. Watching the RSVPs come in. Noticing the silence from the one name he’d had to type in manually, because there wasn’t a partner name to autofill. Wondering if Eddie had seen it. Wondering if he cared.

Buck could spiral about things like that. Always had. Said he was fine and meant it until he wasn’t. Said “no big deal” about things that broke him.

And the thought of Buck pacing his apartment, checking the guest list, rereading Eddie’s message—Still the same. Everything’s the same.—and trying to figure out what the silence meant… it made Eddie feel like a ghost in someone else’s house. Still haunting the places he no longer had a right to be.

He wasn’t ready to look directly at the screen.

He didn’t want to see the pictures, or the names, or the neat little headers with words like Our Story or From Friends to Forever. He didn’t want to know how carefully Buck and Tommy had curated their history. How much of it was shared now. How much of it had been rewritten to make room for the ending.

But he didn’t want Buck waiting on him, either.

So that’s why he did it.

Not because he wanted to.

Not because he was ready.

But because Buck might still be looking for him. Just a little.

And Eddie—stupid, loyal, unfinished Eddie—had always shown up when Buck was looking.

Even if it meant burning alive just to stand in the room.

The website loaded slowly. Or maybe it didn’t—maybe it was just Eddie’s hands that felt heavy, his cursor hovering like it needed permission.

The screen brightened, and there they were.

Buck and Tommy.

Standing on a hiking trail, wind in their hair, sun on their cheeks. Buck’s arm around Tommy’s waist, Tommy’s hand resting lightly on Buck’s chest. Buck wasn’t looking at the camera. He was looking at him.

Like he couldn’t imagine wanting to look anywhere else.

Eddie’s lungs felt tight. Not in a sharp, breaking kind of way—but dull. Compressed. Like the breath had been slowly sucked from the room without him realizing it.

The road to forever, the caption read.

The words sat beneath the photo like they belonged there. Like this had always been the story. Like Eddie had never stood in the middle of it.

He scrolled down.

More pictures—Buck and Tommy at a rooftop party, mid-laugh, a Polaroid of them holding hands in front of a neon sign that said found you. One of them in matching jackets, cold breath visible between their smiles. Another where Buck was holding a sparkler, his head thrown back, Tommy pressed into his side.

Eddie couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Buck that happy in a photo.

But worse—he couldn’t remember the last time he had made Buck laugh like that.

It was like looking into a mirror where he didn’t cast a reflection anymore.

He pressed his knuckles into the edge of the table, grounding himself. The screen in front of him kept glowing. Kept insisting. Look. Look. This is what you missed.

He clicked to the About Us tab.

There were more words now, tidy and warm:

We met on a shift neither of us were supposed to be on. Fell in love by accident and stayed there on purpose.
Sometimes love is timing. Sometimes it’s choosing each other again.
This is our again.

He remembered the first time Buck and Tommy started dating—back when he was still in LA, still pretending he didn’t care. Tommy had been nice enough. Smart, composed, kind to Chris.

But Eddie hadn’t liked him.

There was something too polished about Tommy, too easy with charm, too quick to smooth things over when Buck was spiraling instead of meeting him where he was. He always seemed like he wanted Buck to be lighter, less intense. Easier to manage.

And then he’d dumped him.

Out of nowhere.

Eddie remembered Buck showing up to his house with a tight smile, a six-pack of beer, and red eyes, saying he was fine. Saying it didn’t matter. Saying it wasn’t serious, anyway.

Eddie had believed none of it.

He remembered sitting beside Buck in the locker room after everyone had cleared out, offering a bottle of water like that could fix something. Buck hadn’t taken it. He’d just looked down at his hands and said:

“He said I was too much. That I feel everything too hard. That he was only my first, not my last.”

Eddie had said something then. Something stiff and hollow, like “you deserve better”—but what he really meant was you deserve someone who doesn’t make you apologize for being who you are.

He just hadn’t been brave enough to say it.

And now?

Now Tommy was smiling in photos and writing captions about second chances, like they were something you could just choose. Like everyone got one.

Eddie sat in his kitchen, elbows on the table, blinking hard against the pressure building behind his eyes.

He didn’t resent Tommy for getting another shot. He just couldn’t imagine anyone ever offering him one.

Not after all the things he’d run from. Not after everything he’d refused to say.

He didn’t mean to click on the “Updates” tab.

Didn’t mean to read the whole story like it mattered.

But his fingers hovered, and then they clicked, and then it was open in front of him—laid out in neat paragraphs beneath a photo of Buck and Tommy seated at a bistro table, all soft lighting and wine glasses and smiles so wide they looked rehearsed. Eddie stared at it like it had teeth.

We found our way back to each other after some time apart. Sometimes love needs distance to grow.
After reconnecting during a rescue call in May 2025, we rebuilt what we had—stronger, steadier, and more honest.
I proposed in October 2026. He said yes immediately. He still claims he blacked out.

Eddie stopped reading.

His hand dropped from the mouse. His jaw went tight.

He didn’t need to be reminded of May 2025. He could still hear the dispatch feed buzzing through his speakers, voice after voice reporting chaos from a collapsed lab in LA—some new virus, unclear exposure, possible fatalities. Bobby had been trapped. Buck had been inside.

And Eddie had been in El Paso.

He wasn’t with the 118 anymore. Not on shift. Not on the scene. He’d already left. He had sat in his kitchen in Texas, helpless, listening to the same scratchy audio from LA County dispatch over and over until it felt like punishment. When Buck’s voice finally came through—tight, controlled, terrified—he nearly collapsed.

Later, when it was over, when everyone made it out alive, Buck texted him.

Tommy was there.

That was it. No lead-up. No context.

Eddie had stared at the screen like it was a misdial.

He helped with the rescue, Buck added. We worked the second entry team together.

Tommy had always been in LA. Still worked nearby, still responded to mutual aid calls when needed. Eddie knew that. But something about the timing felt… pointed. Like the universe had made a decision on Buck’s behalf.

They’d gone to dinner. Eddie didn’t ask. Didn’t pry. Didn’t let himself wonder why his stomach turned over.

Things got quieter after that.

Buck didn’t stop calling exactly—but Eddie started answering less. Stopped initiating. Let the gap between them fill with static.

He told himself it was the distance. Their lives had diverged. Buck had LA. Eddie had El Paso. Christopher was settling in, Eddie’s job was demanding, the time zones didn’t help. Normal things. Grown-up things.

Except it didn’t feel normal, losing Buck like that. Letting him slip away one unanswered call at a time.

And if Eddie had wanted to stop it—really wanted to stop it—he would’ve.

He didn’t.

The RSVP button sat at the top of the page like a dare.

Centered in soft gold script, barely visible unless you knew where to look.

Eddie hovered over it for a long time. Maybe minutes. Maybe longer. His hand didn’t move, but his pulse did—flickering under his skin like a live wire.

He wasn’t even sure why he was still on the site. Why he hadn’t closed the laptop and gone to bed and forgotten this whole thing like he forgot to fold laundry or return calls. Why he hadn’t just chosen the safe answer—the obvious answer—and walked away from this clean.

But he knew.

Of course he knew.

Because Buck was probably waiting. Watching his inbox for a response. Wondering if Eddie had seen it, if he cared, if he’d show up.

And Eddie hated the idea of Buck spiraling over silence. Hated even more the idea that Buck had to ask.

So he clicked.

The RSVP form opened with a soft fade-in, obnoxiously elegant. More gold. More cursive. Please join us in celebrating Evan & Tommy.

He stared at it.

His name was already typed in the Guest field, like Buck had filled it out for him.

Just waiting for Eddie to say yes or no.

Christopher’s name was already typed into the field, too.

Buck hadn’t just invited him. He’d invited them.

Like nothing had changed. Like they were still a unit. Like Eddie hadn’t left.

He didn’t touch it.

Instead, his mind wandered—ripped backward like a tide.

He saw Buck on the firehouse couch, stretched out with one arm thrown over his eyes, grinning when Eddie walked in late.

He saw Buck on Eddie’s porch with beers and a grin that didn’t match the sadness in his eyes. “I think I just needed to be near someone who doesn’t ask me to be anyone else.”

He saw Buck with Chris, laughing in the sun, helping him ride a skateboard that Eddie never thought he’d be able to.

He saw Buck after the lightning strike—skin pale, body still, eyes closed in a way that made Eddie feel like the earth had stopped spinning. He remembered the way his hand hovered over Buck’s chest in the hospital, just to convince himself it was rising and falling. Just to feel the proof that Buck had come back. That Eddie hadn’t lost him. Not for good.

He saw the night he signed over the lease—Buck sitting on the floor of the living room, surrounded by boxes and empty beer bottles, joking about how he was going to replace all the lightbulbs with the “wrong” wattage just to piss Eddie off from afar. Eddie had laughed. Had let himself laugh.

He saw Buck helping him pack—folding Eddie’s clothes with way too much care, slipping photos of Chris into protective sleeves like they were made of glass.

He saw the last hug before the drive to Texas. Buck smiling like he wasn’t scared. Eddie pretending he wasn’t either. Their hands clapped each other’s backs, strong and familiar, but it lingered longer than it should’ve. The silence between them said everything their words didn’t.

He’d told himself it was just a chapter closing.

But God, it had felt like an ending.

He saw all the almosts. The brush of fingers. The late-night talks. The sleepovers that weren’t really about sleep. The way Buck’s eyes found his in a crowded room like they were orbiting something only they could see.

He remembered every time he could have said something.

Every time he didn’t.

The feelings came slow. Like fog on the highway.

They crept in around the edges, barely noticeable at first—just the chill in his spine, the sting behind his eyes, the ache in his hands from gripping too tight.

He’d spent years telling himself it was nothing.

That Buck was his best friend. His brother. His partner in all the ways that mattered. That anything else he felt was some kind of emotional bleed-over, misfiring neurons from years of trauma and war zones and firefighting adrenaline.

But sitting there now, staring at Buck’s name next to someone else’s—next to Tommy’s—he couldn’t hold the lie steady anymore.

He was in love with him.

Had been for years.

And maybe love wasn’t even the right word. It was too small. Too clean. What he felt for Buck was messier, older, haunted.

It was built from the inside out.

It was every moment he hadn’t said anything. Every second he’d chosen silence.

It was the look in Buck’s eyes the last time they hugged goodbye, the one Eddie had never been able to forget.

The look that lived under his ribs like a ghost.

~

He clicked No.

The cursor hovered for a moment—just long enough to wonder if there was still time to change his mind—then settled. A dull click, one he barely heard over the rush in his ears.

No fanfare. No pop-up. No confetti. Just a clinical little line of text at the top of the screen:

“Thank you for your response.”

That was it. A thank you. Like this was just another checkbox. Just another RSVP.

Like it wasn’t the hardest thing Eddie had done in years.

His chest felt hollow. Not broken—no, that would be something loud. This was quieter. More familiar. Like walking into a room and forgetting what you came for, only to realize it was never yours to begin with.

It was cowardly, maybe.

But it was honest.

Because the truth was—he couldn’t be there.

He couldn’t sit in a pew while Buck promised forever to someone else. Couldn’t be a name on the guest list, a handshake in a receiving line, another shadow in a room full of people who got to witness Buck’s next chapter. Couldn’t smile and clap and pretend like he didn’t feel every vow slicing through him like glass.

He couldn’t see Buck in a tux, standing at the altar, looking like a man who’d found everything he’d ever wanted—because that image had lived in Eddie’s mind for years.

Except in his version, it was him standing across from Buck.

It had never been real. He knew that. But that didn’t make it hurt less.

He closed the laptop slowly. Carefully. Like maybe if he moved too fast, the moment would shatter. Like maybe if he was gentle enough, he could pretend this wasn’t the end of something he never had the courage to name.

His fingers lingered on the lid before pulling away.

It was done.

And somehow, it still didn’t feel over.

~

The next morning, Eddie brushed his teeth with automatic motions, like muscle memory could be enough to hold him together.

The mirror had fogged up from the shower, a milky blur swallowing his reflection. Only the outline of him remained—shoulders hunched, head bowed. Half a man, lost in vapor.

He wiped the mirror with the heel of his palm.

And startled.

Just for a moment, he thought he’d see someone else. Someone younger. Someone braver. Someone who hadn’t waited too long.

But it was just him.

Eyes tired. Jaw tight. A version of himself he didn’t recognize.

There was something haunting in his expression. Something he’d seen once before.

Buck, across the rig. The hum of the engine under their feet. A quiet lull between emergencies. Buck had looked at him like he knew. Like he was about to say something that would change everything.

He hadn’t. Neither of them had.

But the look lingered.

It had lived in Buck’s eyes.

And now it lived in Eddie’s.

A ghost, staring back at him from the glass. Unspoken. Unspent.

He dropped his hand. Let the fog creep back over the mirror, swallowing the ghost with it.

Chapter Text

Sometimes Eddie wondered if a heart could echo — if the hollowness inside a ribcage remembered what used to fill it. If grief wasn’t just loss, but muscle memory. A reflex. Something that kicked in the moment your brain tried to call a person home but forgot they didn’t live there anymore.

This house didn’t carry Buck’s footprints.

He’d never been here. Not really. Not the way he’d been in the old one—shoes kicked off by the door, jacket flung over the couch, laughter echoing down the hallway like it belonged there. Like he belonged there.

But that house wasn’t Eddie’s anymore. It wasn’t Chris’s either. Buck lived there now—still in LA, still surrounded by the life Eddie left behind.

And sometimes, in the quiet, Eddie wondered if the walls missed him.

Not Buck. Buck was unforgettable. Buck was everywhere. Buck was still part of that house, probably more than Eddie had ever been. But did the walls remember Eddie’s voice? The sound of Chris’s crutches in the morning? The music that played while they made dinner, the kind Buck liked, the kind Eddie always pretended to roll his eyes at?

Did it remember the weight of almost?

Because Eddie did.

Even here, even now, in a house Buck had never touched, the ghost of it lingered. Not a haunting in the traditional sense—no slamming doors or flickering lights. Just the occasional ache behind the ribs. The sound of his name when Chris said it with too much brightness. A laugh on a voicemail that Eddie replayed sometimes, then deleted, then regretted deleting.

Two years hadn’t dulled it.

It had only made it quieter. Easier to ignore. Harder to face.

But now there was a wedding. A date set in gold foil. A future unfolding in real time.

And Eddie—he was just trying not to look directly at it. Because looking meant seeing. And seeing meant feeling. And feeling—

Feeling had always been the problem.

He heard the scrape of a chair against tile.

Eddie blinked, pulled back into the kitchen, into morning light that was a little too sharp against the counters. His coffee had gone cold.

Chris stood at the counter, pouring cereal in the same brand Eddie had been buying since he was seven. Sixteen now, broader in the shoulders but still wearing socks that didn’t match, still letting his curls dry wild.

“You okay, Dad?” Chris asked, not looking up.

Eddie cleared his throat. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

Chris poured milk, then set the carton back in the fridge. “You’ve been thinking a lot lately.”

It wasn’t an accusation. Just a gentle prod. The kind Chris had learned to give over the years—when Eddie got quiet in a specific way. Not angry, not distracted. Just… closed off.

Eddie forced a smile. “Thinking’s part of the job.”

Chris slid into his seat, spoon in hand. “You always say that when something’s wrong.”

Eddie looked at him, startled. “I do?”

Chris shrugged, nonchalant. “Pretty much every time you’re trying not to talk about something.”

There wasn’t any edge to it. No pressure. Just honesty, quiet and matter-of-fact.

Eddie exhaled. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

Chris didn’t push. He just said, “Okay.”

But he watched Eddie for a moment longer, like he was waiting for something else. Something true.

When Eddie didn’t offer it, Chris turned back to his cereal.

And Eddie sat there, sipping cold coffee, wondering how much of himself he’d been hiding—and how much Chris had already seen.

Chris had gone quiet, the way he sometimes did when he was trying to read a room that didn’t want to be read. He took another bite of cereal, slower this time, and leaned back in his chair with a familiar sort of ease—shoulders relaxed, casual, like the next words weren’t anything more than idle conversation.

“You know,” he said, “Buck used to be the only person who could get you to laugh when you were in a mood like this.”

Eddie didn’t look up.

“He’d come over with some ingredients, make a mess in the kitchen, say something dumb, and suddenly you were normal again. Like… actually happy.”

The corner of Eddie’s mouth twitched, but the smile didn’t land. It hovered somewhere behind his teeth, fragile and brief, gone before it could root.

Chris nudged him under the table, playful. “You should text him.”

The words struck deeper than they should have. Something about the way Chris said it—light and well-meaning—made the air in Eddie’s chest shift, made something ache in the space where breath was supposed to be. Chris didn’t know. Not yet. And Eddie had been planning to keep it that way, at least a little longer. But the moment was too open now. Too honest to lie in.

So he said, quietly, “He sent an invitation.”

Chris blinked. “To what?”

Eddie looked at him then—really looked. At the face that had grown up faster than Eddie could process. At the kid who still believed Buck would always be there, because he always had been. He didn’t want to be the one to take that away.

But he owed him the truth.

“His wedding.”

The words settled like dust. Chris froze mid-motion, spoon halfway to his mouth, brow furrowing as if the sentence didn’t quite compute. It wasn’t anger, not at first. Just confusion, then stillness.

“Oh,” he said after a moment. Not much more than breath.

“He invited you too,” Eddie added, the words rough around the edges. “Your name was on it.”

Chris set his spoon down slowly, gaze locked on the table. “When did it come?”

“Couple days ago.”

Eddie watched the words land, tried not to flinch when they did. Chris didn’t look at him right away, just stared at the table, his spoon turning slowly in the cereal bowl like he was waiting for more.

Eddie didn’t offer it.

The air in the kitchen shifted—stretched thinner. Not tense, exactly. Just… suspended. Like something unspoken had entered the room and made itself comfortable between them.

Chris took another bite of cereal, slower this time. The kind of movement that said he wasn’t sure what to do with the rest of the conversation, so he’d pretend there wasn’t one.

But Eddie could feel it building.

And sure enough, after a few quiet seconds, Chris glanced up with a too-casual shrug and said, “So… when is it?”

Eddie blinked. “A few months from now. May.”

Chris went on, oblivious to the storm quietly brewing in Eddie’s chest. “I should probably get a new button-down, right? I don’t think anything from last year fits right. And we’ll need to figure out flights.”

He was already planning. Already picturing it. A trip to LA, a celebration, Buck at the center of it all—smiling, glowing, still part of their lives in a way that felt permanent.

And Eddie—he almost let him believe it.

Almost.

But the words were already in his throat, and he couldn’t lie with that much weight pressing down.

“I said no,” he said quietly.

Chris paused. Spoon halfway to his mouth. “What?”

Eddie swallowed hard. “To the RSVP. I declined.”

The silence was immediate. Thick. Chris slowly set the spoon down and stared at him like he’d just spoken another language.

“You said no,” he repeated, voice flatter now.

“I didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“For who?”

Eddie didn’t answer.

Chris’s eyes narrowed. “He invited us. Me too, right?”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah.”

“Then why would you say no?” His voice cracked just a little on the last word, and it hit harder than yelling ever could.

Eddie looked down at the table. “Because I couldn’t go.”

Chris was quiet again, but it wasn’t the same as before. This was distance. Hurt.

“You didn’t even ask me,” he said, and there was no heat to it—just disappointment. Heavy and real. “You just decided.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“But you did,” Chris cut in. “You decided for both of us. You always do that when you’re scared.”

Eddie looked up, startled. “I’m not—”

“Yes, you are.” Chris wasn’t being cruel. Just honest. “And you miss him. All the time. You pretend like you don’t, but you do. I see it.”

Eddie didn’t know what to say to that. Because it was true.

Every word of it.

Chris stood, scraped his bowl into the sink, and rinsed it with practiced movements. Then, quieter:

“He’s still family. At least to me.”

Eddie nodded once, too slowly. “I know.”

But the guilt had already settled in his chest like a bruise. And it would be there for a long time.

~

Later, when Chris had gone to school and the dishes were done and the house had settled into its usual quiet hum, Eddie sat at the edge of the couch with his elbows on his knees and his mind anywhere but the present.

He hadn’t meant to start remembering. But the silence was too loud, and the morning had cracked something open.

It started, like it often did, with Buck’s laugh.

Not the loud one. Not the chaotic bark he let out after a stupid joke. The quiet one—under his breath, barely audible, almost like a secret. Eddie used to hear it when Chris did something clever or ridiculous. When Hen teased Chim. When Eddie said something dry that Buck wasn’t sure was a joke until he saw the smirk tug at the edge of his mouth.

It was never just the sound. It was the look that came with it. Head tilted, eyes warm. Like Buck was seeing something other people missed.

Eddie didn’t know when that became the look Buck gave him.

He remembered a night in the kitchen—Chris already in bed, Buck barefoot on the tile, reheating pizza like he lived there. There was a song playing, something upbeat and dumb, and Buck danced a little as he grabbed a beer from the fridge. Just a sway of his hips, nothing showy. Stupid and easy.

Eddie had leaned on the counter and rolled his eyes, but the smile had come too fast, too real.

“You’re the worst,” he’d said.

Buck just grinned. “But I’m your worst.”

Eddie had laughed. That memory stuck the sharpest—how easy the words had felt. How much he hadn’t questioned them.

Another night: Buck on the couch, head tilted back, neck exposed, mouth slightly open in sleep. The TV still on, casting soft light across the room. Eddie had come in from the garage, tired and sore, and stopped short at the sight of him.

It should’ve been nothing. Just a friend crashed after a long day. But Eddie remembered standing there for a minute too long, just watching him breathe.

He remembered thinking: He looks like he belongs here.

He remembered thinking: He looks like he’s mine.

He remembered trying not to think about it at all.

There was the time Buck showed up soaking wet on Eddie’s porch because it had started raining halfway through his run and he “felt like company.” He tracked water through the house, left puddles on the kitchen floor, made tea like it was the most natural thing in the world.

There were other moments. A hundred of them. A thousand.

The way Buck always knocked once before coming in, even when the door was unlocked.

The way Chris lit up at the sound of his voice.

The way Buck never needed instructions—just knew how to move around Eddie’s life without asking for directions.

The way his presence filled up the spaces Eddie hadn’t realized were empty.

It hadn’t been one big realization. No lightning strike. No movie scene kiss.

Just accumulation. Slow and quiet. Like water rising in a room, inch by inch, until suddenly it’s chest-deep and there’s no way out but through.

By the time Eddie realized he loved him, he’d already loved him for years.

He just hadn’t done anything about it.

And now Buck was getting married.

To someone else.

Eddie leaned forward, pressing his fingers into his temples like pressure could stop memory from pulling him under. But it was too late. The past had teeth. And it was already biting down.

But of all the memories, the one that stuck deepest wasn’t soft. It wasn’t warm.

It was heavy.

It was the quiet ache of packing boxes in a house that had once been full.

After Chris left—after the rift that left both of them too quiet for too long—Eddie sat alone in his living room, wondering if he’d already failed as a father. Wondering if Chris would ever come back. Wondering if Buck would look at him the same way once he was gone.

He’d made the decision to follow Chris to Texas like it was the only thing that made sense. Because it was. Because nothing mattered more. Not even Buck. If he wasn’t Chris’s dad, who was he?

But that didn’t make it easier.

And Buck—Buck didn’t take it well.

Not at first.

He never blamed Chris. Never even hinted at it. But something in him shifted the moment Eddie said he was leaving. At first, it was small. Just missed calls. Rescheduled hangouts. An edge in his voice that didn’t used to be there.

Then came the sabotage.

Subletter showings that mysteriously fell through. A dog adoption for a replacement best friend.

And the worst part—the thing that gutted Eddie—was that Buck had overheard him talking to a potential renter, saying “Everything that matters is in Texas.”

Eddie had meant Chris. Of course he had. And he couldn’t explain to a total stranger the weight that Buck held in his life.

But Buck hadn’t known that.

And maybe Eddie hadn’t corrected the assumption soon enough.

The final straw had been Bobby pulling him aside after a call and saying, “So you’re really going? When were you planning to tell us?”

Eddie hadn’t told anyone yet.

But Buck had.

When he got home that day, a potential renter was supposed to stop by at 6:00 p.m.

Buck showed up at 5:58.

Eddie opened the door with his jaw already tight.

He hadn’t said much at the station earlier, just given Buck the cold shoulder and kept moving. But now, with the sun low in the sky and one more renter supposedly en route, Buck was standing in the doorway with that open, tentative expression that made it hard to stay mad.

“I didn’t mean to out you in front of Cap,” Buck said, stepping inside before Eddie could answer.

Eddie crossed his arms. “Oh, you absolutely did. You got mad, so you acted out—like you always do.”

Buck’s jaw tightened. “I’m having more trouble dealing with the idea of you not being around than I’d like to admit.”

Eddie paused at that.

His voice softened, just a little. “I don’t like it any more than you do.”

A knock sounded at the door before either of them could say anything else.

Eddie glanced toward it and exhaled. “He’s here. Which means you can’t be.”

Buck frowned. “Who—”

But when Eddie opened the door, it wasn’t a potential renter.

It was Hen, Chimney, and Bobby, all standing there like they’d rehearsed this exact entrance.

Hen looked past Eddie into the living room. “You still haven’t told him?”

Eddie blinked. “Told me what?”

Buck shifted beside him, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Well, not to make it about me, but... it’s me.”

Eddie turned slowly.

Buck gave a sheepish smile. “I’m your renter.”

There was a beat of silence.

“You’re... Freddie?”

“Yep. Freddie Fakeman,” Buck said, totally deadpan.

Hen barked out a laugh. “You didn’t catch that?”

Chimney grinned. “He thought you were serious. Freddie Fakeman, man.”

Even Bobby cracked a smile.

Eddie just stared at Buck.

“What about your loft?” he asked, voice quieter now.

Buck’s gaze held steady.

“That’s not my loft anymore. Gave my notice this morning.” His shoulders rose in a soft shrug. “And now you don’t have to worry.”

All Eddie could hear was the rush in his ears.

Buck had given up his place.

For him.

For Christopher.

And for the first time, the thought came so fast and clear it startled him:

I could kiss you right now.

It passed through him like instinct. Like breath. Like inevitability.

He didn’t do it.

Of course he didn’t.

Hen, Bobby, and Chim were in the room. He reminded himself of that—held onto it like a rope.

When he finally trusted himself to speak, the words came out softer than intended.

“You really did that for me?”

Buck looked at him, all openness and no hesitation.

“For you and Christopher.”

~

The door opened with a soft thud and shut, firmer than necessary, but not quite a slam. Eddie didn’t turn right away. He stood at the stove, one hand resting lightly on the edge of the pan, the other still gripping the spatula, suspended over sautéing garlic and onions that had already started to burn.

Chris didn’t speak.

No “hey,” no “what’s for dinner,” not even a mumbled greeting tossed in the direction of the kitchen. Just the dull sounds of his backpack hitting the floor, shoes being slipped off, and the quiet shuffle of his crutches moving down the hallway toward his room.

Eddie listened as the bedroom door closed—steady, purposeful, with a finality that didn’t need to be dramatic to be devastating. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and turned off the burner, the sizzling pan suddenly deafening in the absence of everything else.

He stood there for a long time, letting the silence settle around him like dust. The kind of silence that wasn’t just quiet—it was personal. Targeted. A silence that said I’m not ready to talk to you. A silence that said I’m still hurt.

And Eddie felt it in his chest the way he always did when Chris pulled away—like something vital had slipped just out of reach, and he couldn’t get it back without breaking something.

It wasn’t the first time.

God, he hated how familiar it felt.

His mind drifted, uninvited, to the last time Chris had shut a door between them. Not angry, not screaming. Just quietly gone. That day had felt a little like this too—sharp-edged in a way he hadn’t seen coming.

Chris had come home early from a friend’s house. Eddie had been in the living room with a woman he shouldn’t have let into that space. She wasn’t Shannon. Didn’t look like her exactly, not really. But something about her smile, her hair, the slope of her cheekbone—it had struck something in Chris the moment he saw her, and Eddie had known. He’d seen it in his son’s eyes the instant she turned to look at him. Shock, then confusion, and finally, the weight of a recognition that didn’t belong in a kid’s face.

Chris had gone to his room without a word. When he came down later, he had a duffel bag in his hand, and Eddie’s parents were there.

He’d asked to stay with Grandma and Abuelo for a while.

Eddie had told him okay.

No resistance. No questions. Just a silent kind of grief, the kind you didn’t argue with because you’d already lost the right to ask for more.

He’d followed Chris to Texas months later not because it was the easiest option, not even because he was sure it was right, but because letting him go without trying to repair the damage felt unbearable. He told himself it was about rebuilding trust, about giving Chris space and safety and stability. And it was. But it was also about guilt. About choosing his son no matter the cost, even if that cost was a life he’d started to imagine in LA. Even if it meant walking away from the only person who had ever made him believe he could want something for himself.

And now, Chris was quiet again.

Not gone, not packing his things—but withholding. Guarded.

Eddie had made a decision—RSVP’d no, signed the line, clicked the button—and Chris hadn’t been given a say. That look on his face this morning, the way he’d pulled back with quiet disappointment instead of anger, had reminded Eddie all too much of that day in LA.

And maybe that was what scared him most.

The realization that even when he thought he was doing the right thing, he still ended up hurting the people he loved.

He moved away from the stove and walked to the end of the hallway, stopping outside Chris’s door without knocking. The light was on, bleeding into the hallway in a thin, fractured line beneath the frame. He could hear the faint rustle of pages turning—textbook, probably—or the muffled scrape of a pencil. The sound of someone intentionally focused, because being focused meant not having to feel.

Eddie didn’t raise a hand. Didn’t speak.

He just stood there.

Long enough to think about all the things he still didn’t know how to say. Long enough to realize how much of his life had been shaped by the fear of saying them.

Eventually, he stepped back and let the quiet have its way with the house again.

~

It was late by the time the house settled again.

The dishes had been washed. The lights dimmed. The air conditioner kicked on in steady intervals, humming through the quiet like a low, comforting static. Eddie had tried to read, to fold laundry, to give Chris space without hovering—but none of it had stuck. He kept circling the same thought: that this distance between them couldn’t last. Not again. Not like last time.

Eventually, he moved toward Chris’s room and knocked softly, more out of habit than necessity. When there was no answer, he pushed the door open and found him already asleep—one leg kicked out from under the covers, curls flattened on one side from the pillow.

Eddie hesitated at the threshold.

Then crossed the room and sat down gently on the edge of the bed.

For a long time, he just watched him breathe.

Chris was older now. Not a kid anymore, not really. But somehow, asleep like this, Eddie could still see the boy who used to sneak into his bed during thunderstorms, the one who asked a thousand questions about the firehouse, the one who had once looked at Buck like he hung the stars himself.

Maybe he still did.

But before he could sit, Chris shifted.

“I’m awake,” he murmured.

Eddie nodded, even though Chris couldn’t see it. “Just checking on you.”

Chris rolled onto his back, blinking slowly as his eyes adjusted to the light. “I’m fine.”

He wasn’t angry anymore. Not exactly. But there was something tight in the way he said it. Something too controlled for a sixteen-year-old. Eddie had taught him that—how to hold back instead of blow up. He regretted it sometimes.

“I shouldn’t have made that decision without talking to you,” Eddie said, keeping his voice low. “I should’ve told you when it came.”

Chris didn’t respond.

“I was selfish,” Eddie added. “It just... it caught me off guard.”

Still, Chris said nothing.

And Eddie knew that if he left the room now, it would stay like this between them for days. Maybe longer. So he sat carefully on the edge of the bed, rubbing his palms together to keep them busy.

“I didn’t mean to shut you out,” he said.

Chris’s voice was quiet when it finally came. “I just don’t get it.”

Eddie looked at him. “Get what?”

“Why it hurts to see him.”

That landed like a weight on his chest. Heavy. Slow.

He searched for words—ones that would make sense, ones that wouldn’t open too much, wouldn’t give too much away.

“It’s complicated,” he said, and hated how empty that sounded.

Chris frowned at the ceiling. “I know you were close.”

“We were,” Eddie said.

“Still are?”

Eddie didn’t answer.

He could feel Chris watching him, even in the dark.

“I don’t need to know everything,” Chris said after a while. “But it’s weird to miss someone that much and not get to see them.”

“I know,” he said. It was the only thing he could offer. The truth, diluted.

Chris shifted again, tugging the blanket up. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain it.”

But Eddie could see the disappointment, even in profile. The way Chris’s mouth was set. The way his eyes didn’t close right away.

He didn’t push. He didn’t ask if they could still go. But Eddie saw the question sitting there, unspoken, carefully folded away to keep from making things worse.

Eddie sat with that for a while.

Eventually, Chris said, “I’m gonna try to sleep.”

“Okay,” Eddie whispered, rising.

He paused at the door.

“I love you,” he said, and didn’t wait for the response.

He already knew.

~

The hallway was dim, lit only by the low spill of the bathroom nightlight and the soft blue glow bleeding from beneath Eddie’s bedroom door. The house had quieted again, but not in the way Eddie had hoped. Not in the way that meant things were okay.

Chris had let him off the hook. That was the worst part. He hadn’t argued. Hadn’t pushed. He’d just turned his face toward the wall and said, “It’s okay,” with a voice so even it made Eddie’s chest ache.

It wasn’t okay.

But it wasn’t Chris’s job to say that.

Eddie stepped into his room and closed the door behind him, slow and careful, as if the sound might wake something he couldn’t put back to sleep.

He crossed to the desk in the corner where his laptop still sat open, the RSVP tab glowing quietly in the dark like it was waiting for him.

It still said no.

Thank you for your response.

That was all.

No judgment. No questions. Just a polite, final line of text, like the decision hadn’t broken anything.

Eddie hovered the cursor over the button to edit.

He wasn’t sure why he’d opened it again.

Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was Chris’s voice, small and soft behind him in the dark. Maybe it was the look on his face that Eddie couldn’t stop seeing—that subtle sag of disappointment he’d tried to mask with kindness.

He told himself it wasn’t about Buck.

He told himself that changing the answer would just be for his son. That he could stomach a few hours in a room full of reminders. That he could shake Buck’s hand and watch him promise forever to someone else without breaking in half.

But his hand hovered over the mouse and wouldn’t move.

Because the truth was—he didn’t know how to show up and not feel everything at once.

He didn’t know how to be in the same room as Buck without wanting something he had no right to want.

And that made him selfish. Or weak. Or maybe just tired of pretending.

The phone rang before he could decide.

Not a text. Not a notification. A call.

Eddie’s chest tightened as he glanced at the screen.

BUCK
1:12 a.m.

His first thought was that something had happened. Someone was hurt. The hour alone made it ominous.

But then he answered—and it wasn’t panic on the other end. It was silence. Breath. And then:

“You really said no.”

Buck’s voice was quiet, slurred at the edges, but clear enough to slice through everything else.

Eddie sat down hard on the edge of the bed. “Buck…”

“I didn’t think it would matter,” Buck said, like he hadn’t heard him. “The wedding. The invite. I didn’t think it would matter unless you said no.”

Eddie rubbed a hand down his face. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m fucking wrecked, Eddie.”

He could hear it now—the weight behind the words, the unraveling under the surface.

“I’ve been wrecked since the second you left and I’ve been pretending it’s fine and then I get a no like I’m just—just some guy you used to work with. Some guy you used to know.”

Eddie swallowed, throat dry. “It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it?” Buck laughed, but it cracked halfway out of him. “You didn’t even tell me. You just clicked a button. Like we were nothing.”

Eddie pressed his thumb to the bridge of his nose. “You’re getting married.”

Buck went quiet for a second.

“I asked for your address because I didn’t know how else to ask if you still gave a shit,” he said, voice low now. Frayed. “I didn’t know how else to ask if I still mattered.”

“You do,” Eddie said immediately, the words slipping out before he could stop them.

A pause.

“Then why does it feel like you were the one walking away again?”

Eddie’s voice cracked. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t mean to,” Buck echoed, bitter now. “But you did. You could’ve said anything, Ed. Anything. But all I got was a checkbox.”

Eddie’s chest was too tight to breathe.

“What did you want me to say?” he asked, barely above a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Buck said. “Something. Anything. Just… not nothing.”

Another long silence stretched between them. And for a moment, Eddie thought that might be it—that the conversation had finally unraveled into silence, stretched too thin to hold anything more. But then Buck spoke, and the words sounded scraped from somewhere deep, like they’d been sitting in his throat too long, gathering dust and sharp edges.

“You said goodbye,” Buck said, “and then you never came back.”

Eddie stared at the floor, at the ridges in the wood grain that didn’t look anything like the ones in their old house. He could still feel that house like phantom pain—muscle memory in the bones, the way his hand would reach for a light switch that didn’t exist anymore. The way the air used to feel thicker when Buck was in a room, charged and warm and impossible to ignore.

He closed his eyes and saw it like it was happening again—the sun sinking low in the sky, the U-Haul hitched and waiting. Buck standing in the road with his hands in his pockets, trying not to look like he was breaking. The way his arms had wrapped around Eddie and held tight, like he wasn’t sure when—or if—he’d get to do it again. The words Eddie had forced out: You do matter to me.

The way Buck had smiled like he believed it. The way Eddie had looked back just once before turning onto the highway, Buck getting smaller in the rearview mirror until there was nothing left but sky and ache.

It haunted him. Not in the obvious ways—no dreams of wreckage or fire or gunshots. Just the quiet grief of a future unlived. The ghost of a life that might’ve been. That last hug had stayed with him, echoing in his chest like footsteps down an empty hallway.

“You think I didn’t want to come back?” Eddie said, more to himself than to Buck. “I did. I still do.”

Silence hung heavy on the line. It wasn’t peaceful. It was a weight pressing down on both of them, thick with all the things they’d never said. Eddie ran a hand over his face, trying to push the feeling down, shove it back into the box where he kept everything else he couldn’t afford to name.

Then Buck’s voice came again, quieter this time. Like it was costing him something.

“Was it really that easy to just… forget me?”

The question landed like a punch, blunt and honest and brutal. It cracked something open inside Eddie—something old and fragile and already worn thin. His throat tightened, but he didn’t answer right away.

Eddie’s throat tightened. His fingers gripped the edge of the table like that could tether him to the present, like the weight of Buck’s voice wouldn’t drag him under if he stayed still enough.

“I could never forget you,” he said, barely getting it out.

He didn’t say I thought about you every day, or I hated myself for the silence, or I left to protect what I couldn’t admit I wanted. He just let those truths sit unspoken, thick in the air between them.

On the other end of the line, Buck exhaled, soft and shaky.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

The line went quiet, and for a moment, Eddie thought Buck might say something else. Might take it back. But there was only static — the kind that lived between two people who used to know everything about each other.

Then a click.

And the call was over.

The silence afterward wasn’t the quiet of relief. It was the kind that echoed. The kind that filled the room like smoke, curling around the corners and settling in his lungs.

Eddie lowered the phone slowly, the weight of it suddenly too much in his hand. His fingers hovered over the screen like they wanted to call back, to say more. To say I miss you, or you were never the thing I needed to leave, or do you remember that last hug too?

But he didn’t.

He just sat there in the dark, surrounded by ghosts he couldn’t bring himself to name, and listened to the echo of a goodbye he never really meant.

Chapter Text

Sometimes Eddie caught his own reflection and didn’t recognize it. A flicker of a stranger in a passing window, a face he didn’t expect in the bathroom mirror. Like the mirror was showing him someone else. Or maybe just showing him the parts of himself he’d trained not to see.

That morning, it was the laptop screen. His own blank stare caught in the glare as the RSVP page loaded. One click to change it. One click to undo a decision he’d made out of fear.

The cursor hovered over Edit Response. Just a button. Just a website.

But his hands didn’t move.

He hadn’t meant to come back to this. Not after the call. Not after hearing Buck’s voice again, slurred and sharp around the edges like broken glass. Not after everything Eddie had spent two years trying to bury. But Chris—God, Chris. He was still quiet about it. Still disappointed. Still waiting, in that soft way he always had, where hope never quite gave up.

And Eddie couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said that night. The way he’d looked at him and asked, like it was the simplest thing in the world, “Why does it hurt to see him?”

Eddie had lied. He’d said he didn’t know. But the truth was louder than any silence.

He exhaled. Clicked.

Yes. 
He clicked yes.

When he told Chris, it wasn’t dramatic. Just over cereal.

“I changed my mind,” Eddie said, reaching for the orange juice. “We’re going to the wedding.”

Chris’s spoon paused midair. “Wait—really?”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah. I figured… it’s the right thing.”

Chris lit up. He didn’t smile big—he was older now, and he didn’t beam like he used to—but Eddie saw it in his eyes. The light came back, like someone had opened a window in a room that had been locked for months.

“Thanks, Dad,” Chris said, and kept eating. Casual, like it was normal. Like it didn’t feel like Eddie had just cracked open the fault line he’d been walking for years.

He sat with it for a second. Let himself look at Chris—his son, his reason for everything—and said, without quite meaning to, “I’m scared to go back.”

Chris looked up. “Why?”

“Because I’m not sure I belong there anymore.”

Chris set his spoon down. Thought about it. “I think you’re braver than you think,” he said. “You left because you needed to. But you can go back for the same reason.”

Eddie nodded slowly. Then Chris, offhand, like it was nothing, said:

“You love him.”

Eddie froze.

It wasn’t a question. Chris didn’t say it like he was testing a theory—just stating a fact, like he’d connected dots Eddie didn’t know were visible.

Eddie let out a breath, shaky and uneven.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I think I always have.”

He didn’t look at Chris when he said it. Didn’t think he could. He stared down at the condensation on his glass, watched it drip like it was marking time.

“It’s like there’s this pressure inside me,” Eddie continued, voice low. “Like if I start talking about it, I’ll either explode or crumble. I don’t know which. Maybe both.”

Chris didn’t say anything right away. He just nodded, thoughtful in that way that always made Eddie forget how young he still was.

"You should talk to someone," Chris said finally. "Like… someone who’s not part of your life already. Someone you don’t have to be strong for."

Eddie looked up. Met his eyes.

“A therapist?” he asked, and it didn’t come out defensive the way it might’ve a year ago. It just came out tired. Curious.

Chris shrugged. “You always tell me I don’t have to carry things alone.”

Eddie huffed a breath—almost a laugh, almost a sob.

“Guess it’s time I started listening to my own advice.”

Chris gave him a small, crooked smile. And Eddie, for the first time in a long time, felt the echo of something shift—like a reflection straightening out after years of warping under the weight.

~

The stillness of the office felt like a mirror—flat, reflective, and unforgiving. Everything Eddie brought into the room bounced right back at him, sharper at the edges, impossible to ignore.

It wasn’t the silence that unnerved him, not really. It was the clarity.

In the background, Eddie could hear the hum of the central air, the muted ticking of a clock, the soft creak of leather under his weight—but quiet in that way that made a person’s thoughts get louder. Echo louder. Loop.

He sat stiffly on the couch, one foot crossed over the other, arms folded so tight across his chest it probably looked like he was cold. He wasn’t. He just didn’t know what else to do with his hands.

The therapist was kind-faced, mid-50s maybe, dark glasses perched low on her nose, pen resting idle on a yellow legal pad. Her name was Dr. Lee. She had one of those voices that didn’t try too hard to sound like it cared—which, for Eddie, was a relief. He wasn’t good with softness when it felt like a trap.

“So, why now?” she asked after the basic intake stuff. Voice steady. Unjudging.

Eddie shrugged, eyes on the bookshelf across from him. “Chris thought it was a good idea.”

“Do you think it’s a good idea?”

Another shrug. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

He hated how defensive that came out. Like he needed her to know he wasn’t one of those guys dragged in kicking and screaming. He came willingly. Just… not eagerly.

Dr. Lee didn’t react. Just wrote something down.

Eddie exhaled and tried again. “I think I’ve been putting a lot of stuff off. For a while. Years, maybe. Things I don’t talk about.”

“Like what?”

He rolled the words around in his mouth for a minute, like they might bite. “Loss, mostly.”

“Loss of what?”

Eddie hesitated. “People. Places. Parts of myself.”

That made her pause. “What part of yourself do you feel you’ve lost?”

He blinked. “I guess I wouldn’t say I lost it. I stopped talking about it. I buried it.”

Dr. Lee tilted her head slightly, letting the distinction land.

He sighed. “I guess… I don’t know. It’s like—I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize the guy anymore. Not because I’ve changed, but because I’ve finally stopped lying about who I’ve always been.”

She was quiet, letting the echo hang. Letting him fill it.

“I used to think I had it all figured out,” he said, voice low. “That being a good dad, a good soldier, a good son—that was enough. That I could build a life around those roles and call it peace.”

“Is it?”

“It was survival,” Eddie said. “But it wasn’t living.”

That earned a small nod. Encouragement, not praise.

“I think—” He faltered. “I think the roles started to feel like masks. Like I didn’t know where I ended and the expectations began.”

Dr. Lee let that breathe. Then, gently: “So who are you, underneath?”

He bristled. Not at her, but at the question. At how much it felt like an ambush even though she’d walked him straight to it.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’m starting to think I’ve been avoiding the answer on purpose.”

She made another note. “Avoiding something specific?”

Eddie swallowed. “Someone.”

Her gaze flicked up. “You don’t have to say more than you want to. But I’m listening if you do.”

He looked down at his hands. They were tense in his lap, fingers dug into fists. “There’s this person. My best friend. Or… he used to be.”

“A falling out?”

“Not exactly.” His voice went quieter. “I left.”

Her pen stilled.

“I moved away. Put a thousand miles between us. Told myself it was the right call—for my son. And it was. Chris needed me. But—”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. Not yet.

Dr. Lee waited.

Eddie licked his lips. “He was more than a friend. Not officially. Not out loud. But I think—I think I loved him.”

He didn’t realize he was shaking until he said it.

The room didn’t react. The plants didn’t wither. The books didn’t fall off the shelf. Dr. Lee didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

It was like saying it out loud didn’t destroy the world after all.

“You think?” she asked gently.

“I know,” Eddie admitted. “I just—I didn’t know what to do with it.”

“What made it hard to face?”

He stared at the space just beyond her shoulder. “Everything. I was married once. To a woman. We had a kid. I had a picture in my head of who I was supposed to be. That picture didn’t have room for…” He shook his head. “For him.”

“Do you think he felt the same way?”

Eddie’s heart did a weird skip. “Sometimes it felt like it. Sometimes it felt like we were orbiting the same secret.”

“But?”

“But I never said anything. I couldn’t.”

“Why?”

His laugh was bitter. “Because what if I was wrong? What if I ruined the best thing in my life chasing something that only lived in my head?”

She didn’t fill the silence. Just let it settle.

“And then I left,” he said. “Ran away, basically. Told myself it was for my son—and it was—but it was also because I was a coward.”

He couldn’t look at her.

“I told him goodbye. And he let me go.”

“Do you wish he hadn’t?”

Eddie blinked hard. “I wish I’d given him a reason not to.”

Dr. Lee waited another beat before asking, “Do you still talk?”

“We did. A little. Not so much anymore.” His voice softened. “He’s getting married.”

The air felt colder suddenly. Not really, but something shifted.

“Is that hard for you?”

He looked up at her, and for the first time, there was no mask. “It’s killing me.”

There it was. The thing beneath the thing. The tectonic shift.

“It’s like I’m watching someone else live the life I didn’t let myself want,” he said. “And I know I made the choices I had to. But I’m still haunted by what I could’ve had. What I still—”

He stopped.

Dr. Lee didn’t push.

“I feel like I’m cracking open,” he said after a while. “Like the ground is moving under me, and I’ve spent so long holding everything together that I don’t know what I’ll be if I finally let myself fall apart.”

She gave him a small smile. “Sometimes you have to fall apart to make space for something new. The cracks let the light in.”

Eddie didn’t speak again. But he let that sit. Let it echo.

And when the session ended, he didn’t bolt for the door. He sat a moment longer, breathing through the shift.

It wasn’t peace yet. But it was pressure turned progress.

And maybe, just maybe, that was a start.

~

Reflections bend, distort. But under the right light—pressure, time, stillness—they start to align. Beneath that, deeper still, tectonic plates shift. Not all quakes come with a warning. Sometimes you only realize something’s moved when the walls stop creaking.

Eddie kept going back.

Not always willingly. Not always bravely. Some weeks, he considered canceling—rationalized it with work or parenting or the gnawing voice in his head that insisted he should be over it by now. But he showed up anyway—slouched on Dr. Lee’s couch, fingers knotted around the hem of his sleeve, jaw set like concrete.

And each time, he let a little more go.

They didn’t have to name him anymore. Dr. Lee already knew. Buck lived at the edges of every sentence Eddie spoke—sometimes blurry, sometimes sharp enough to cut. What remained unspoken weighed just as much as what he managed to say aloud.

He didn’t tell her everything. Not yet. But he’d stopped pretending it hadn’t mattered. Stopped pretending Buck had only been a friend. Stopped pretending that moving to Texas had only ever been about Chris.

“I left because I was scared,” he admitted once. “And because I didn’t trust myself to stay.”

Dr. Lee hadn’t flinched. She’d nodded, quiet and thoughtful. “You don’t have to hate the part of you that was scared.”

He’d thought about that for a long time.

Some days, he said the word gay. Some days, it still dragged behind his teeth like it didn’t belong to him, like he was borrowing someone else’s language. But some days, it fit—on his tongue, in his chest, in the mirror.

They talked about shame. About silence. About the difference between choosing solitude and surviving it.

They talked about Buck.

Not just the guilt. Not just the timing. Not just the ache of almost—but the real thing. The kind of love that had never asked for anything and still bloomed, still lingered.

“It’s okay if your love doesn’t have a home,” Dr. Lee told him. “It still deserves to exist.”

He hadn’t cried when she said it. Not then.

But he’d thought about it every night after.

And when he finally told her he was planning to go to the wedding, she’d simply asked, “Is that what you want?”

He’d hesitated.

“No,” he’d said eventually. “But I want to see him. One last time. I need to know I can handle that.”

She had nodded. “Then that’s your reason. You’re allowed to have one.”

Eddie hadn’t said anything else. Just nodded too, quiet. Like maybe if he held still long enough, the rest of him would catch up with the part that finally believed her.

Something had settled after that session. Not peace, exactly—but a shift. The pressure eased, just enough to breathe.

He hadn’t told Chris everything. Just that he was trying. That he’d been talking to someone. That maybe it helped.

Chris hadn’t said much in return, but Eddie could tell he’d heard him. Because something shifted in the house—not suddenly, not dramatically, but in ways that felt real.

The air felt lighter. The silence less sharp.

Eddie had started sleeping a little better. He cooked more. Forgot to fake a smile less often.

And Chris had begun testing the waters, bringing up Buck in passing—like he was waiting to see if it still hurt.

“Remember that year Buck insisted on making the whole Thanksgiving dinner himself?” Chris had asked one night over tacos. “And the smoke alarm went off three times?”

Eddie had huffed out a laugh before he could think to stop it. “Yeah. He kept calling it a ‘controlled burn.’”

Chris had grinned, pleased, and let himself keep going.

“Or that time he fell off the ladder trying to hang that skeleton pirate before your Halloween party?”

Eddie had snorted into his drink. “Still says he meant to do it.”

They didn’t talk about missing him.

But they hadn’t needed to.

The music around the house had shifted, too. Some of it had been Buck’s old favorites—the kind he used to claim he hated. Some were new, but Chris caught him standing still when certain songs came on. Songs that sounded like memories. Like what-ifs.

He didn’t turn them off.

Chris noticed when Eddie stopped talking in past tense so much. Not always—but sometimes.

“I think I might take a trip after the summer,” Eddie said one evening, like it was no big deal.
Or, “I’ve been trying to be more upfront lately. About… things.”

He didn’t explain further, and Chris didn’t ask. But the look he gave his dad had been gentle. Proud, even.

It wasn’t like Eddie had woken up one morning and felt new.
 More like—he’d stopped bracing for the mirror to crack every time he looked at it.
 Stopped avoiding the ghost of the man he used to be.
 Started wondering who he might still become.

It wasn’t that he had it all figured out.

Some days, he still caught himself looking over his shoulder like the past might drag him back.

But he kept moving forward—step by step, breath by breath.

By April, the RSVP had long been submitted. The suitcase sat waiting in the corner of his bedroom. The flight confirmation was buried in his inbox.

And it all felt real in a way it hadn’t before.
Close enough to touch. Close enough to bruise.

Then, a text.

BUCK: Thanks for saying yes. I really didn’t think you would change your mind.

It was the first message since that night. Since the phone call Eddie pretended he didn’t still think about.

He read it once. Then again. Fingers hovered over the screen like it might burn him.

He could’ve ignored it. Could’ve pretended it didn’t shift something in his chest, hearing from Buck first.

But he didn’t.

EDDIE: Didn’t know if I could. But I’m glad I did.

Simple. Honest.
Not everything he felt—but enough.
 A peace offering, maybe. Or the beginning of one.

He didn’t expect a reply.
 None came.

But the silence felt different this time.
Not angry. Not final.
Just… waiting.

His last session before the trip was quieter than usual.
Not tense, exactly—but charged.
 Like a wire humming with things unsaid.

“I think I’m scared,” Eddie admitted eventually, his voice low. “Not just of seeing him. But of what happens next.”

Dr. Lee waited.

“I left. And for a while, that felt right. But now… I don’t know where I fit. Not in LA. Not really here, either. What if I don’t belong anywhere anymore?”

She nodded, letting the words settle. “That’s not a failure,” she said. “It’s a question. And you’re allowed to live inside that question for a while.”

Eddie stared at a spot on the rug near the chair leg. “It feels like I’m going back to a life that moved on without me.”

“You don’t have to prove anything by going,” Dr. Lee said gently. “You don’t owe anyone that. Not even him.”

Eddie let out a breath, shaky. Nodded.

“But if you’re going,” she added, “go for you. Not the version of you who left, not the one who might’ve stayed. Just you. The person you’ve been trying to meet for a long time.”

He thought about that the whole way home.
 The traffic lights blurred a little as he drove, but he didn’t wipe at his eyes.

He let it come.
Whatever this was—grief, growth, clarity—he let it rise.

He let himself feel it.

~

They arrived just after noon.

The LA sunlight hit different than El Paso—it always had. Brighter, harsher, like it saw too much.

Chris had been all chatter in the backseat, buzzing about Jee, asking what they’d eat that night, wondering if Athena’s house still had the same guest room.
 Eddie had ridden shotgun, quiet, one hand gripping the fabric of his jeans like a tether.

Bobby drove with ease—one hand on the wheel, the other resting comfortably, like nothing had changed.
But everything had.

It had been over two years since Eddie left.
Long enough for the streets to feel like echoes.
 Short enough that the ache still lived just beneath his ribs.

The city looked the same, but something inside Eddie didn’t line up anymore.
Like a puzzle piece turned backwards—still part of the picture, but no longer fitting where it used to.

When they turned the final corner, Eddie caught sight of the house.
Not the one he remembered. That one was long gone—burned to the ground after the fire.
This one was newer. Taller windows. Different brick.
Warmth radiated from the porch light, and a hand-painted welcome sign hung on the door.

Eddie’s breath caught.

“It’s not the same,” he murmured.

“No,” Bobby agreed. “But it’s still ours.”

He parked and got out, grabbing a suitcase from the trunk before Eddie could stop him.
 Chris barreled past them both, eager to see his room.

Eddie lingered. Just for a second.

The house felt like a mirror warped by heat—recognizable, but not quite real.
He stepped inside anyway.

Athena appeared with a knowing smile. “You made it. Come in.”

It was strange—how easy it was to slip into old rhythms in a place that was completely new.

The inside of the house was open and bright, still full of Athena’s style and Bobby’s steadiness.
 There was a new couch, new floors, different photos on the wall.
Chris raced off to find their room, and Eddie trailed behind more slowly, eyes catching on a photo of Buck on the fridge.
From a dinner a year ago, maybe more. Still smiling. Still here.

“You okay?” Bobby asked gently.

Eddie nodded, though he wasn’t sure.
“I don’t recognize anything,” he admitted. “But it still feels like… home.”

Bobby clapped him on the back. “That’s what matters.”

Chris claimed the guest room, tossing his bag onto the bed like he’d never left.
 Eddie stepped into the hallway and exhaled. His hands trembled as he unpacked.
 He told himself it was just the flight. The traffic. The nerves.

He caught his own reflection in the guest room mirror—hair shorter, lines deeper, eyes tired.
 He didn’t look like the Eddie who had left.
 He didn’t look like the Eddie who had kissed Buck in dreams he never admitted having.
 He looked like someone caught between what was and what might’ve been.
 He looked like someone unfinished.

The afternoon drifted by. Bobby invited him to run errands and Eddie agreed.

They drove in companionable quiet—LA traffic buzzing around them like background static.

At the hardware store, at the market, Bobby didn’t press.
He only said, “You don’t have to know where you fit yet. Just showing up counts.”

It was meant to be comforting. It was.

But Eddie still found himself gripping the cart handle like it was the only thing keeping him steady.

Evening rolled in with a warm breeze and a gathering of ghosts.

The pre-wedding dinner was at Bobby and Athena’s—low-key, just close friends and family.

Hen and Karen were the first to arrive. Denny and Mara spilled into the living room like they owned it.
 Chimney and Maddie came with little Kevin holding onto Maddie’s side like a little koala and Jee-Yun bouncing at their feet.

Eddie laughed. It felt almost normal, though everyone looked so much older than he remembered.

Even Maddie’s polite stiffness didn’t sting as much as he thought it would. There was a lot she didn’t say, but he knew it was coming.

Then the front door opened.

And Buck walked in.

For a second, Eddie forgot how to stand.

The room tilted—not with drama, but with memory.

Buck looked… more beautiful than he remembered.
His hand was clasped loosely in Tommy’s, but it dropped when his gaze found Eddie.

They just looked at each other.

“I wasn’t if you’d actually come,” Buck said, walking towards him.

Eddie forced his breath to steady. “I had to show up for my best friend.”

Buck’s smile flickered. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Thank you.”

The moment stretched. Broke.

Chris pulled Eddie away with a question. Someone called Buck over to the kitchen.
Life resumed.

But Eddie still felt it—that pause in the room, that shift in gravity.

Something had cracked open the second Buck walked through the door.
And Eddie didn’t know how to close it again.

~

The dinner that followed settled into a strange rhythm—comfortable on the surface, tense beneath it. Eddie sat between Chris and Hen, let himself nod along to conversations without saying much. The food was good, the kind that tasted like memory: grilled carne asada, roasted vegetables, mac and cheese from Athena’s family recipe. Chris loaded his plate like he hadn’t eaten in days. Eddie mostly pushed things around with his fork.

Across the room, Buck moved with practiced ease, pausing to chat with Chim and Karen, offering to refill drinks, laughing too brightly when someone told a joke. Eddie couldn’t stop watching him.

And it wasn’t just habit. It was gravity. Buck looked older—more solid somehow, like something had settled in his bones. But there was softness, too. Around the eyes, in the way he tugged at his collar when he got overwhelmed. He looked like someone who was loved.

Eddie’s stomach twisted.

As plates cleared and glasses refilled, Buck stood and tapped his fork to the rim. “Hey,” he said, a little bashful. “Hope everyone’s had enough to eat, because I was told I only get one sentimental speech before the big day, and I’m cashing it in now.”

Laughter rippled through the group.

He cleared his throat, eyes scanning the room until they briefly landed on Eddie. “I just… wanted to say thanks. For being here. For being my family. I know it’s not always easy showing up, but every single one of you has, in one way or another, and I wouldn’t be the man I am without that. Without you.”

There were a few soft awws, a few sniffles. Buck ducked his head with a grin. “Alright. That’s the mushy part. You’re welcome.”

Tommy stood next, raising his glass. “Don’t worry. Mine has more jokes.”

It did—he teased Buck for being “a feral Golden Retriever with abandonment issues,” made fun of the long proposal story, thanked Bobby and Athena for hosting, and said something heartfelt about loving a man who always gave his whole heart even when it scared him.

Eddie sipped his water too fast and nearly choked.

Then Bobby rose.

No notes. No toast glass. Just a calm, steady voice that cut through the chatter like wind before a storm.

“It’s been a long time since I ever thought I’d get to walk someone down the aisle,” Bobby said, looking directly at Buck. “And I definitely didn’t expect it to be someone like Evan Buckley.”

The room stilled.

“I’ve watched this man grow up. Seen him make more mistakes than I can count. But I’ve also seen him put himself back together—stronger, softer, better every time. He’s not just a member of my team. He’s my son. Not by blood. Not by name. But by choice. And I’m proud of him. I’m proud of the man he’s become. And I’m honored to walk him down the aisle tomorrow, toward this next chapter.”

Buck blinked fast. Tommy put a hand on his back. Athena brushed a tear from her cheek.

Eddie stared down at his plate, something clawing beneath his ribs.

He didn’t know what to do with the ache—how to name it, or where to put it. But it sat heavy, unmoving.

He clapped with everyone else, forced a smile, nodded along when someone said the speeches were beautiful. But all he could think about was Buck—standing in the glow of family, of promises, of a life that had kept going without him.

And him—just a guest. A footnote. A chapter already closed.

But still, he stayed.

Because sometimes just being there was the bravest thing you could do.

~

The dinner crowd thinned slowly, like fog pulling back from the shore.

Chris had started yawning halfway through dessert, slumped against Eddie’s side on the couch as Bobby told a story about Buck’s first Thanksgiving in LA—how he nearly burned down the kitchen trying to fry a turkey. The laughter had been soft, warm. Familiar.

Eddie ruffled Chris’s curls and murmured, “Go get ready for bed, mijo.”
 Chris nodded sleepily and padded down the hallway, his crutches clicking gently against the hardwood.

Eddie drifted toward the kitchen, hands busy stacking empty glasses and plates. He didn’t mind cleaning up. It gave him something to do, something to focus on besides the ache curling low in his stomach since Buck walked through the door.

He reached for a glass to fill with water when a quiet voice cut through the hush of the house.

“He looks good. Chris,” Maddie said from behind him.

Eddie turned. She stood just outside the doorway, arms folded, eyes steady. Not cold, not unkind—just… measured.

“Yeah,” Eddie said softly. “He’s doing okay. Settling in.”

“That’s good.” She paused. “You too, maybe?”

Eddie hesitated. “Trying.”

Maddie nodded like that was all she expected. Like she wasn’t here for pleasantries, not really.

Then—gently, almost like she didn’t want to say it but couldn’t not:
 “He was really hurt when you left, you know. Buck.”

The words landed with no warning. No malice. Just… weight.

Maddie didn’t look angry. Her voice didn’t rise. But the honesty in it made Eddie feel like she’d taken a scalpel to his ribs.

“I know you had your reasons,” she added. “I’m not asking for them. But I was the one who had to pick up the pieces.”

Eddie opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

She didn’t wait for a response. Just looked at him with something halfway between understanding and quiet reproach.

“He doesn’t talk about it much anymore,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t leave a mark.”

Then she gave a small nod, tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, and walked out of the kitchen.

Not angry.

Just honest.

Eddie stood there for a long moment, hand still curled around the glass. The water ran too long before he remembered to turn it off.

He exhaled slowly, pressing his fingers to the edge of the sink, and dragged a hand through his hair. His chest felt tight—not like it was caving in, but like something had been knocked loose and was shifting into place.

He hadn’t known what he was expecting tonight. But it wasn’t that.

And it wasn’t untrue.

That was what made it worse.

The hum of conversation had faded, soon replaced by the hush that came only after everyone had said what they were going to say.

Most of the guests had trickled out—Hen and Karen with sleepy kids in tow, Chimney and Maddie whispering goodbyes around a finally-dozing baby. Tommy had migrated to the porch with Bobby and Athena, a beer in hand and a relaxed sprawl Eddie hadn’t seen on him earlier in the night.

Chris was asleep. Eddie had checked twice—once to say goodnight, and again just to see him breathing steady in the unfamiliar bed.

That left the kitchen.

Buck was already there, sleeves rolled up, stacking plates beside the sink like it was any other Tuesday night. Like they weren’t standing in a house Eddie had never lived in, on the eve of Buck’s wedding.

Eddie grabbed a dishrag and joined him.

They moved side by side in a rhythm they hadn’t practiced in years—but somehow hadn’t lost. Soap, rinse, dry. The silence didn’t stretch awkward; it folded in, comfortable, familiar.

Buck nudged him with an elbow. “You still scrub like you’re prepping for surgery.”

Eddie huffed a laugh. “And you still rinse with one hand and miss half the soap.”

“Hey, some of us embrace the joy of imperfection.”

“Some of us like not getting salmonella.”

Buck grinned, and for a second, it was just them again. Like nothing had ever cracked between them. Like Buck wasn’t about to put on a tux tomorrow and promise forever to someone else.

The quiet stretched again, this time softer. Eddie stared at the plate in his hands, then set it down carefully.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not looking up. “For disappearing. I shouldn’t have just… left like that and not come back.”

Buck’s hands stilled under the water.

“I know you had to, for Chris,” he said eventually. No bite. No blame.

Eddie nodded. “I didn’t trust myself to come back. I thought I’d mess everything up again.”

That was as much as he could give. But Buck didn’t push. Just turned to look at him, eyes searching.

“I’ve been working on it,” Eddie added. “Trying to stop running. I think… you’d like the new me.”

A beat. Then Buck smiled—quiet, fond, with something like grief behind it.

“I never disliked the old one.”

Eddie’s throat tightened.

Buck turned back to the sink, rinsed one last glass, then set it on the rack with care. “Actually,” he said, almost too casually, “we were talking earlier—me and Tommy.”

He wiped his hands on a towel. “One of his brothers can’t come. Got sick last minute.”

Eddie frowned, not following.

Buck gestured toward the porch, where Tommy was laughing at something Athena said. “Come with me?”

Eddie hesitated. Then nodded.

Outside, the night air was cooler than he expected. Tommy turned as they stepped onto the porch, already wearing a smile that felt rehearsed.

“We were wondering,” Buck said, “if you’d be willing to step in. As a groomsman.”

Tommy’s smile stayed polite, but there was no edge to it. “You’re important to him,” he said. “It’d mean a lot to both of us.”

Eddie swallowed. Hard.

The words were kind. Sincere, even. But they hit with the force of something heavier—like a brick to the gut wrapped in velvet.
 Important to him.
Past tense or present? He didn’t ask. Couldn’t.

He didn’t trust his voice not to crack, so he just nodded first. Then, quieter: “Sure. Yeah. I can do that.”

Buck clapped a hand on his shoulder—gentle, almost too gentle. Like he knew. Like he felt the tremor beneath Eddie’s skin and was trying to ground him. And for a second, Eddie froze. It was the first time they’d touched in two years. A simple gesture, but it hit like a fault line cracking open.

“Thanks, man,” Buck said, smiling.

Eddie nodded again, blinking toward the darkened yard. The stars were out. Or maybe those were just streetlights through watery eyes.
 He couldn’t tell the difference right now.

And tried not to notice the ache blooming in his chest.

Because it was blooming—spreading like wildfire behind his ribs. Sharp and sudden, and so familiar he could’ve laughed if it didn’t feel like he was choking. It wasn’t supposed to hurt this much. It was just a favor. A small thing. Standing up there with the man he loved while he married someone else. Easy.

God.

His stomach turned. Not violently—just that slow, sinking feeling, like he’d missed a step in the dark and was still waiting to hit the ground.

He wanted to say no. Just for a second. He wanted to excuse himself, to breathe, to run.
 But Buck had asked him.
 Buck had looked at him like that again. Warm. Grateful. Trusting.
 And Eddie—he owed him. Two years of distance, of silence, of showing up too late and still expecting to be let in. 
He owed him this sliver of happiness.
 Even if it gutted him.

At least he’d be up there with him. Facing him.
 Close enough to see the way Buck’s eyes crinkled when he laughed. Close enough to hear his vows.
 Close enough to watch his own heart break in real time and pretend it wasn’t happening.

He could handle that.

He had to.

Eddie inhaled once. Shallow. Controlled. And shoved the rest down, down, down.

Smiled like it didn’t cost him.
 Let Buck walk away like it didn’t matter. 
And told himself—again, always—that being near him was enough.

Even if it never would be.

Buck had stepped off the porch, heading back toward Bobby and Athena with an easy smile—like the heaviness of the night had never touched him at all.

Eddie stayed behind.

Tommy lingered next to him, both of them nursing what was left of their drinks. The night had grown quieter, the kind of hush that only came after a long day of pretending everything was fine. The air smelled like honeysuckle and old wood. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once. Then nothing.

They stood there for a while—just the two of them—watching the city breathe.

Then, without looking over, Tommy spoke. His voice was low, casual, almost kind.
“This wedding probably wouldn’t be happening if you hadn’t gone to Texas.”
 A beat. 
“So… thank your son for me.”

Eddie went still.

It wasn’t the words exactly. It was the way they slid under his skin—sharp and smooth and practiced. The way Tommy said your son like a blade tucked behind civility. The way the gratitude sounded like gloating dressed in polite tones.

He didn’t respond. Couldn’t.

Every part of him clenched—jaw tight, fingers curled too hard around his glass, breath caught somewhere between disbelief and fury.

Tommy smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
Didn’t linger for a reaction.
 Just gave a small, satisfied nod and walked back into the house, leaving Eddie standing there like the punchline to a joke he didn’t know he’d been telling.

Eddie didn’t move.

Just stood there on the porch, heart hammering behind his ribs, mind reeling, body frozen.

He looked out across the yard.

Buck was laughing with Bobby, relaxed and bright, his hands moving as he talked, like they always did. He looked happy. Unaware. Safe.

Eddie’s eyes shifted—drawn to the window behind Buck, where the porch light caught on glass.
 And there it was.
 His own reflection, faint and fractured, superimposed across Buck’s shoulder.
 A face he barely recognized. Faded at the edges. Out of sync with the moment in front of him.

He looked like someone who’d arrived too late to his own life.

The ache hit then—deep and sudden.
Not just grief, but the sharp outline of everything he’d surrendered.
 What he’d left behind.
 What he’d never let himself reach for.

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

Just stood still and watched Buck laugh—so effortlessly at ease, lit up in the glow of a future Eddie couldn’t touch.
 Not anymore.

It could’ve been him.
 If he’d stayed. 
If he’d tried.
 If he’d let himself believe he was allowed.

But instead, he stood in the doorway of a life he used to know, staring at a version of it that had kept going without him.

The man in the glass didn’t belong here.

Not in the laughter. Not in the warmth.

Just a ghost on the threshold—

A beat too late.

A breath too far.

Chapter Text

Eddie lay still for a long time, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling of Bobby and Athena’s guest room. The house was different now — rebuilt, reimagined — but somehow still held echoes of what it had been. Or maybe he was just projecting. Seeing ghosts in drywall. In polished fixtures. In the way light bent across the floor like it used to back home.

He’d dreamt of Los Angeles again. Not the city — not really. Just the feeling of it. A heat at his back. A voice down the hall. A hand brushing his wrist.

And every time he reached for something in that dream, it shimmered out of view. Replaced by absence. By glass. By the soft echo of his own name said too late.

He sat up slowly.

Chris was still asleep, curled on his side with one arm cradling his pillow like a shield. Eddie reached over and adjusted the blanket, then dressed quietly, moving like a man trying not to disturb the ghosts still settling in his bloodstream.

Downstairs, the house was awake but hushed — Athena sipping coffee, Bobby already dressed, keys in hand.

“You ready?” Bobby asked, like it was a normal morning. Like this wasn’t the day everything might break.

Eddie just nodded.

They drove in silence for a while.

Eddie watched the city pass by outside the window, every street both familiar and distant. Places that had once felt like home, now feeling like they belonged to someone else. Like he’d been cut out of a photograph, and no one had noticed the hole.

When Bobby finally spoke, it was quiet. “You don’t have to go through with today if it’s too hard.”

“I know,” Eddie said.

But he didn’t mean the wedding. Not exactly.

Bobby didn’t press.

And Eddie didn’t explain that he wasn’t afraid of showing up today. He was afraid of being seen.

Afraid of what might flicker across his face if Buck looked at him too long.
Afraid of what he might say if no one stopped him.
Afraid of how badly he still wanted something he could never ask for.

By the time they pulled into the venue’s lot, Eddie had his game face back on. Tucked in tight. Buttoned down.

Just another groomsman. Just another friend.

Just another man standing quietly in the wings of a life he’d never claimed.

~

The knock was quiet, but Buck still jumped.

Eddie stepped inside before he could second-guess it, catching Buck halfway into his suit — shirt unbuttoned, sleeves rolled to the elbow, his tie slung haphazardly over one shoulder. He looked up, startled, then grinned.

“You’re early,” Buck said, like it was a joke. Like it didn’t feel like they were both stepping into something electric and unspeakable.

Eddie shrugged, letting the door click softly shut behind him. “Wanted to make sure you didn’t trip on your own cufflinks.”

Buck snorted. “You think I’m not a responsible adult just because I can’t figure out French knots?”

“I think you’re not a responsible adult because you think ‘French knots’ are a real thing.”

That earned a laugh—soft and familiar. For a second, they were just… them again. Two friends. Sharing a moment before a wedding.

Except the room around them was all wrong.

The dressing room was tucked inside an old garden estate nestled in the hills above LA—stone walls draped in ivy, windows looking out over blooming terraces and polished wood balconies. It smelled faintly of roses and aged linen, with echoes of string quartet music from somewhere distant and below. A place made for fairy tales. For promises.

Not for whatever this was.

And not for Eddie, who hadn’t felt like he belonged in Buck’s world for a long time.

He crossed to the table, hands stuffed in his pockets to keep them from shaking. The boutonnières were lined up in tidy rows—sprigs of rosemary and pale yellow ranunculus, delicate and clean and hopeful. It made his throat tighten.

Buck turned back to the mirror, adjusting his collar like it had personally offended him.

“You’re calm,” Eddie said finally.

Buck glanced at him in the reflection. “What?”

“You’re calm,” Eddie repeated. “No nerves. No last-minute panic. No deep existential spiral.”

Buck smiled—but it was the kind of smile that knew how to lie. “Guess I’m just ready.”

Eddie didn’t answer.

Because Buck didn’t look ready.

He looked like someone bracing for something. Someone trying to convince himself it was fine. That he was fine. Eddie had worn that same expression a hundred times before. He knew exactly what it cost to maintain.

The silence stretched. Tightened. Stuck in his lungs like smoke.

Buck noticed. He always noticed. “So… you seeing anyone out there in El Paso?”

Eddie huffed a soft laugh, caught off guard. “What, like a girl?”

Buck shrugged without turning around. “Yeah. I mean—just curious.”

Eddie’s heart twisted. Something sharp and restless curled in his gut.

And then, before he could stop himself, he said it—quietly, but clearly.

“I’m gay.”

Buck froze. One hand still hovering at his collar, as if the air had thickened around him.

He turned slowly. “Wait… what?”

Eddie nodded, keeping his gaze level even though his pulse was screaming. “I figured it out after I left. When things got quiet enough to hear myself.”

He hadn’t meant to say it here. Not today. Not like this.

But maybe it had been waiting in his chest too long. Maybe being this close to Buck, after everything—maybe it cracked something open.

Buck stared—eyes wide, searching, full of something Eddie didn’t want to name. Or couldn’t let himself name.

“For how long?” Buck asked. “I mean like… when did you know?”

Eddie shook his head. “It wasn’t a moment. It was… a million quiet ones. Ones I ignored for years.”

Buck looked down. Then back up.

“Was it someone?” he asked, softer now. “Or… who made you realize?”

The question split him open.

Eddie didn’t answer.

Didn’t say you. Didn’t say this. Didn’t say me, every time I looked at you and thought, not him, not like that, not out loud.

Instead, he stepped forward, adjusted Buck’s tie with steady hands. Fingers brushing over the fabric like it might unravel the tension between them if he pulled the knot just right.

The air between them hummed—familiar, dangerous.

“It’s time,” he murmured. “I should go.”

Eddie finished straightening Buck’s tie, fingers lingering a beat too long.

Then he stepped back, the silence pressing in again, full of things unsaid.

Eddie felt it all over: in his ribs, in his throat, in the place where restraint sat like stone.

“We’ve still got time,” Buck said quietly. Almost like a question. Like he might be asking something else. Eddie’s hands felt cold.

“Yeah,” he said, eyes already drifting toward the door. “I just… I should give you space to finish getting ready. Gotta go join Tommy and his other groomsmen, I guess.”

Buck didn’t stop him. Didn’t move.

And Eddie didn’t look back as he slipped out the door—leaving Buck alone in the dressing room, still half-buttoned and suddenly not calm at all.

~

Eddie didn’t remember walking out of the venue. Didn’t remember crossing the courtyard or finding Bobby to ask for the keys in a panic or making it to his car. But somehow he was behind the wheel, hands shaking, breath catching hard in his throat as he pulled away from the venue.

He should’ve gone to Tommy’s dressing room. That was what a good groomsman would do—what a normal person would do after quietly coming out to the groom.

He was supposed to help with last-minute prep, straighten lapels, maybe double-check the cufflinks or give some rehearsed reassurance about how Tommy was the right choice.

But Eddie couldn’t walk into that room. Couldn’t look Tommy in the eye, not when his hands still remembered the feel of Buck’s collar. Not when the air still felt full of everything he hadn’t said.

He wouldn’t be able to breathe in there.

He thought about going back to Bobby’s instead. The house had been quiet this morning, grounded by the smell of coffee and the low hum of Bobby’s voice. Athena and Chris had still been in pajamas when he left. Maybe he could go back and act like none of this was happening. Maybe he could hide there for a while.

But then he remembered—Athena had already left for the venue. And Chris would be with her.

Which meant there was nowhere else to go.

So he drove. Without thinking. Without choosing.

And somewhere between the silence and the static, his vision blurred.

The tears came hot and sudden—no ceremony, no warning. Just spilled-over grief as the world smeared past him. Street signs warped. Trees flickered. His jaw clenched against a sob that still cracked down the middle as it escaped.

He wiped at his face uselessly.

Get it together, he thought. You’re the one who left. You’re the one who couldn’t say it when it mattered.

But the ache in his chest didn’t care about timing.

And then, before he even realized where he was going, his turn signal clicked and he was pulling into a driveway he no longer had the right to call his own.

The house sat quiet in the sunlight. Familiar, unchanged.

Except, of course, it was changed.

The windchimes on the porch were new—different from the ones Christopher had picked out with his abuela. The doormat was gone, replaced by something bright and corny and definitely Buck. A plant Eddie didn’t recognize drooped slightly from the edge of the windowsill.

He parked. Let the engine idle. His hands didn’t move.

He stared at the front door like it might open on its own. Like the past might spill out and welcome him back inside.

But it didn’t.

It stayed closed. The curtains didn’t flutter. The house didn’t blink.

Eddie’s throat burned.

This used to be mine, he thought. He used to be mine.

The words echoed. Hollow. Too big for the space inside his ribs.

Because the truth was, Buck had never really been his—not in the way Eddie wanted. Not in the way that let him hold on. But there had been moments. Glimpses. The way Buck used to look at him when Chris was laughing. The way his voice softened when he said Eddie’s name.

And then the day Eddie left.

He remembered the weight of the U-Haul ramp clanking into place. The sun beating down on the sidewalk. The way he kept forcing his face into something steady, something sure, even though his chest was unraveling from the inside out.

Christopher had already gone ahead with his grandparents.

The goodbye should’ve been simple.

It wasn’t.

Buck had helped him pack. Had carried box after box out the door like it didn’t cost him anything. Like it didn’t matter that every trip down the walkway brought them closer to goodbye.

Eddie had stood there, keys in hand, every word in his throat knotted too tight to say. But then, just before he climbed into the car, he turned back.

Caught Buck’s eyes and said, low and rough, “You do matter to me.”

Buck had just nodded, blinking fast. “I know.”

They’d hugged—tight, unspoken, final.

And then Eddie had walked to the driver’s side, legs heavier than they’d ever been in combat boots. Buck followed him as far as the curb, standing there in the middle of the road like a monument.

Eddie had looked back once. Just once.

Caught the way Buck’s arms dropped slowly to his sides. The way his mouth opened like he had something to say—and didn’t.

Eddie’s heart had stuttered in his chest. But he didn’t let it show. Not until he was ten miles outside the LA county line, when the horizon blurred and his hands started to shake.

And now he was here. Back again. But it wasn’t his anymore. None of it was.

He pressed the heel of his hand to his mouth. Took a breath. Tried to stop the shaking.

And then—

The screech of tires.

Eddie’s head snapped up.

Buck’s car whipped into the driveway, gravel kicking up under the tires. The door flung open before the engine even died.

Buck was out of the car and storming toward him in a blink, eyes wild, mouth already moving.

“Are you fucking serious?” he barked, slamming a hand against the window.

Eddie flinched. Fuck.

“You don’t get to drop that on me and leave.” Buck’s voice cracked through the thick silence. “You can’t say all that an hour before my wedding and then vanish. What the hell, man?”

Eddie’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “I didn’t say anything,” he said, staring straight ahead. “I told you I’m gay. That’s about me, not you.”

“Bullshit.” Buck’s hand slammed against the hood, sharp and loud. “You RSVP’d no, then changed it. You didn’t answer me when I asked what made you realize. You showed up anyway, and then you ran. You think that’s nothing?”

Eddie flinched but held still. “I didn’t know what I was coming here to do.”

“Liar,” Buck snapped, voice ragged. “You knew exactly what you were doing. You just couldn’t say it out loud.”

Eddie turned toward him finally. Eyes red. Voice wrecked. “I couldn’t, Buck.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s your wedding day.”

Buck blinked. Eddie went on—words tumbling faster, rougher, like they’d been building up for months.

“I talked about this in therapy. I talked about it with Chris. I told them I was going because I needed to make peace with the life I didn’t choose.” He exhaled, hands still clenched in his lap. “Because I couldn’t live with the idea that you might think I don’t care about you.”

That stunned Buck into silence.

“I wanted to see you happy,” Eddie added quietly. “Even if...”

Buck stepped closer, still reeling. “So that is it? You just show up, look at me like that, and leave me to figure out the rest?”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Eddie said. “I meant to come, sit in the back, keep my head down, and watch you marry someone who’s good for you.”

“You think I’m not seeing what this is?” Buck asked, voice low now. “You think I don’t know?”

Eddie looked up at him, eyes glassy. “It doesn’t matter what you know.”

Buck’s jaw clenched. “Say it.”

Eddie shook his head. “No.”

“Say it.”

“I can’t be the guy who ruins this for you.”

“Why not?” Buck’s voice broke again, but he didn’t back down.

“Because you deserve something steady. Something sure. Someone who doesn’t bring chaos into your life every time they walk in a room.”

“You don’t bring chaos,” Buck said.

Eddie laughed—quiet, self-loathing. “You think this isn’t chaos?”

And then, softer: “You deserve to be chosen. Without hesitation. Without fear. I couldn’t do that for so long, Buck. I didn’t do that. And now it’s too late.”

Buck’s face crumpled, just for a second.

“Tommy’s in there,” Eddie said. “The man who stayed. The one who shows up and never flinches. That’s who you’re supposed to be with.”

The silence that followed was razor-thin.

Then, gentler, Eddie added, “But you’re shaking. And I don’t want you to go back in there like this.”

He unlocked the doors. “Come on. I’ll drive you.”

Buck didn’t move at first. Just stared at him, like Eddie had turned to smoke.

Then he walked around the car and slid into the passenger seat.

The door shut.

The ache didn’t.

The drive back to the venue passed in silence, but it wasn’t the easy kind. It was the kind that pressed down on Eddie’s chest until it ached. The kind that made the world blur at the edges, not from speed but from the weight of everything unsaid.

He kept his eyes on the road, jaw clenched tight. Buck didn’t speak, didn’t look at him. Just sat still in the passenger seat, hands folded in his lap, his profile lit faintly by the midday sun filtering through the windshield.

It wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t angry.
It was worse.
It was familiar.

This was what they'd become—two people with a thousand shared moments between them and still no idea how to reach each other without falling apart.

Eddie wanted to say something.
He wanted to apologize, or explain, or maybe just ask if Buck was okay.
But every version of it got stuck in his throat.

And the longer the silence stretched, the more he could hear the echo of his therapist’s voice from a few weeks ago.
What would it cost you to say what you feel?
What would it save you?

He didn’t know the answer then. He wasn’t sure he did now.

By the time they pulled into the venue lot, his palms were damp on the steering wheel. His mouth was dry. The ceremony was less than an hour away, and everything felt like it was spiraling, but slower this time—like gravity had taken its time just to make it hurt more.

He put the car in park but didn’t move.

Buck finally looked over, his voice quiet but steady. “Please come.”

Eddie’s eyes stayed on the dashboard. “I shouldn’t.”

There was a pause. A shift in the air between them.

“Why not?” Buck asked, still soft, like anything louder might break him.

Eddie swallowed hard. “Because it’s not my place. It hasn’t been for a long time.”

Buck didn’t flinch, but something in his expression darkened.

“You think I wanted it that way?” he asked.

Eddie didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His grip on the wheel tightened again, knuckles gone pale.

“I can’t do this without you,” Buck said, firmer now.

Eddie let out a breath, sharp and bitter. “You’ve been doing it without me for two years, Buck. You’re getting married without me.”

Buck didn’t respond right away. When he did, it wasn’t with anger. It wasn’t even with frustration.

It was just honesty. Bruised and unguarded.

“I never wanted to.”

That landed like a punch—precise and deep.

Eddie blinked at the windshield, eyes burning. He couldn’t tell if it was exhaustion or grief or something worse—something he hadn’t dared to name.

“I came back because I thought I could handle it,” he said finally, voice thin. “Because I thought maybe showing up for you meant I was doing the right thing. Being a good friend. Letting you have your happiness, even if it was the last place I wanted to be.”

His hands were shaking.

“But I walked into that dressing room,” he continued, barely above a whisper, “and I saw you standing there, calm like the world wasn’t ending. Like it wasn’t mine. And I thought—what the hell am I doing?”

Buck didn’t speak. Just watched him.

Eddie shook his head. “You should go in. You should get married.”

“I will,” Buck said, voice low. “But not without you.”

He opened his door and stepped out. Didn’t wait for a response. Just stood there beside the car, quiet and still.

Eddie stared at the wheel a moment longer, heart pounding in his ears.

Then he shut off the ignition, unbuckled his seatbelt, and climbed out of the car.

Buck didn’t smile. Didn’t say thank you. He just nodded once, like it meant something bigger than words could reach.

And Eddie followed him into the venue, pulled toward the altar like gravity itself had turned cruel—like love had become a fault line, and he was already mid-collapse.

~

The ceremony space was beautiful—almost cruelly so.

Golden light spilled through arched windows, painting the room in warm honey. It touched every petal in the carefully arranged flower bundles, caught on the polished chairs, and shimmered against the glass of the centerpiece vases. The aisle stretched long and white like a surrender flag, soft music playing as the crowd hushed and settled. Phones silenced. Programs folded. Guests whispered with the breathless excitement of witnessing something final, something sacred.

Eddie stood behind and to the left of Tommy, among the groomsmen. His posture was composed, rehearsed. A straight line drawn in a room full of curves and softness. He clasped his hands in front of him and focused on a fixed point on the wall behind the officiant, keeping his face unreadable. He hadn’t met Buck’s eyes once since stepping into the space and didn’t plan to. Not until he absolutely had to.

He was supposed to be here. That’s what he’d told himself. That’s what he’d told his therapist, what he’d whispered to Chris before they left Bobby and Athena’s. He was doing the right thing—showing up, supporting the man who’d always meant more than he should have. That was love, wasn’t it? Wanting someone to be happy even if it cost you everything?

Still, his pulse thundered in his ears like a warning. And when Buck walked past to take his place at the altar—shoulders squared, smile tight—Eddie felt it. Not just the presence of him, but the gravity. The way the whole room tilted just slightly when Buck stepped into it. Like it always had.

He didn't look. But he felt the moment Buck turned to face the crowd, just a few feet away, close enough to hear him breathe. Every part of Eddie wanted to run, to unravel—but he didn’t. He anchored himself in the sound of the music, the distant rustle of tulle and linen. If he fell apart now, it would be for nothing.

The officiant began. A few quiet jokes. Some sweet reflections about love and patience. Eddie barely heard any of it. He only knew the rhythm of the words. How they seemed to echo in his chest without meaning. How each sentence felt like a thread being pulled tighter.

He thought of Buck’s hands, fidgeting as they always did when he was trying too hard to stay still. He imagined them curling at his sides, clutching the corner of his vows like a lifeline. And still, Eddie didn’t look.

Until Buck did.

It was subtle—just a glance from the corner of his eye—but Eddie felt it like a jolt. His body betrayed him. He looked back.

Their eyes locked for a single second, maybe two, and Eddie’s lungs forgot how to draw air. His stomach flipped, low and slow and sick. There was something in Buck’s expression, something quiet and searching, like he hadn’t stopped asking questions since Eddie walked out of the dressing room.

Eddie turned away first.

He focused on the floor, on the tight line of his shoes against the polished wood. But Buck kept glancing. Again. Again. Longer each time. Tommy shifted beside him, picking up the tremors in the air. And in the front row, Bobby’s gaze sharpened.

Then, finally, the vows.

The officiant’s voice softened, inviting Buck to step forward.

He did. Hesitant. Hands trembling slightly as he unfolded the slip of paper.

Silence stretched between the pews like tension wire.

Buck opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

He tried again. “Tommy, you… you’ve been—”

His voice faltered. The silence that followed wasn’t ceremonial anymore—it was unnerving.

He cleared his throat, eyes darting out to the crowd. Then back to Tommy. Then, finally, one more time—back to Eddie.

That one landed. Hard. Held.

Eddie felt the bottom drop out of his chest.

He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. But something inside him came untethered.

Tommy turned slowly, followed Buck’s gaze. When his eyes landed on Eddie, his expression didn’t change at first. Just a flicker. Just enough to confirm what he already knew.

He stepped forward, deliberate and calm, and pressed a hand to Buck’s chest. Not angry. Not even hurt, exactly. Just… finished.

“You don’t want to do this, Evan,” he said quietly.

Buck didn’t argue. Didn’t even blink. He just stood there, eyes wide and stunned, like someone who'd been running toward something and hadn’t realized until now he was lost.

Tommy turned to face the crowd. His voice, when it came, was louder than it needed to be.

“The wedding’s off. Go home.”

The words cracked the air open like thunder.

There was a stunned pause—collective, suspended—before the chaos started. Gasps. Whispers. Chairs scraping. Feet shifting. Athena sat motionless. Bobby leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, trying to catch Buck’s eye. Hen said something to Karen under her breath. The flower girl—Jee-Yun—started crying.

People stood slowly, like moving too fast might break the room even more.

But neither Buck nor Eddie moved.

Buck was still at the altar, his vows crumpled in one fist, shoulders rising and falling like he’d just run a marathon.

And Eddie—Eddie was still in line with the groomsmen, but everything in him had collapsed inward. His heart was doing something strange and painful in his chest. Like an old house finally giving up under years of weight.

Everything swirled around them—motion, murmurs, blurred colors and footsteps.

But between them, there was only stillness.

A moment stretched thin across time. Taut as a violin string, aching with the things neither of them had said.

It felt like the breath before an earthquake.

Like standing in the eye of the storm, watching everything else bend and buckle, but somehow—impossibly—staying on your feet.

Like the final heartbeat before something breaks wide open.

And in the middle of it—just this.

Just them.

Chapter Text

Time didn’t restart all at once.

It stuttered back in slow, aching pulses—the kind you feel after an impact, when your ears are still ringing and your lungs forget how to expand. The ceremony space had emptied, but the echo of it all still hung in the air. Scraped chairs. Scattered petals. Ghosts of music that never played.

Eddie stood frozen at the edge of the altar, throat tight, hands curled into fists at his sides. The silence wasn’t peace—it was pressure. The kind that comes right before something splits wide open.

Buck hadn’t moved either. Still in the same spot Tommy left him, tux half-clumsy on his frame, like it didn’t fit right anymore. His boutonnière was crooked. His hands were shaking.

And when their eyes met, it wasn’t cautious. It was a freefall.

Eddie’s voice came out low and stunned.
“What the hell just happened?”

Buck blinked—once, slow—like he was just now catching up to the moment.
“Do you remember when I called you?” he said, voice rough. “Drunk. Upset.”

Eddie’s brow furrowed.
“Yeah. After I RSVP’d no.”

Buck gave the smallest shake of his head.
“Partly, yeah. But really? I called because I was terrified.”

He stepped forward, one footfall at a time like the ground still wasn’t steady.
“Because this relationship with Tommy—it was supposed to be enough. It made sense. It was solid. Everyone thought we were good together.” A pause. “But I kept counting the days until the wedding, not because I wanted to marry him…” He looked up, eyes glassy. “But because it meant I’d see you again.”

Eddie flinched like he’d been hit.
“Buck, that’s not fair. You love him.”

“I thought it was love,” Buck said quietly.
He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t yelling. He was breaking open—carefully. Completely.

“I thought love was supposed to be calm. Easy. Something you grow into if you try hard enough. Something that doesn’t consume you. Something that makes sense on paper.”

He looked down at his own hands, like they belonged to someone else.
“But the only love I ever felt that burned—really burned—was for someone I couldn’t have.”

Eddie’s whole body went still.
 Not calm. Not easy. 
Just still. Like the eye of the storm. Like the moment before the earth gives way beneath you.

“I spent years,” Buck continued, “trying to convince myself I couldn't ever want you—that you were straight. That I was imagining it. That I was just... grasping for something I couldn’t name. I told myself I made it all up, that none of it was real.”

His voice cracked.
“I tried to let you go. But nothing else has ever felt like you.”

The words landed with a weight Eddie didn’t know how to carry.
 They settled into the cracks he’d spent years pretending weren’t there.

“Come on Buck, that can’t be true,” Eddie said, voice low. Fractured. “You deserve better than someone who ghosted you for two years.”

His hands were still in his pockets, fists balled, like if he let go—if he reached, if he let his fingers curl around something real—they’d start to shake. And if they shook, if he trembled now, the whole damn foundation might come down with him.

Buck didn’t flinch.

“Who cares what I ‘deserve?’ Or what anyone deserves? This is about what I want.”

It shouldn’t have landed like a declaration. Not with Buck still standing in a crumpled tux and the aftermath of a wedding-that-wasn’t pulsing in the air like an open wound.

But it did.

Eddie shook his head. Just once. Barely.

And still, it felt like a fault line giving way.

“You’re just saying all this because Tommy left,” he said, even as the words scraped against something raw in his chest. “Because I ruined your wedding and you want it to be worth it. That’s not clarity, Buck. That’s a consolation prize. That’s chaos.”

Buck took a single step forward.

Into the quiet. Into the ache.

“No,” he said. “Chaos was trying to love someone safe, trying to reshape myself into someone who could settle without shaking.” His voice didn’t waver this time. “And doing it while carrying a heart that wasn’t mine to give.”

His eyes never left Eddie’s.

“You had it already.”

There were no echoes in the room—but Eddie swore he could hear the sentence reverberate inside him like a dropped stone in still water.

It didn’t matter that it was quiet. That the chairs were empty. That the crowd was gone. He felt it like a crowd anyway. Felt it like a spotlight on every lie he’d told himself just to survive.

He didn’t move, but inside—he buckled.

His breath hitched. His hands shook.

He shoved them deeper into his pockets, like maybe he could bury the tremor. Like maybe he could outrun the quake.

“I didn’t come back to stop the wedding,” he whispered. “I swear. I would never try to do something so selfish. I told my therapist I’d made peace with losing you. If that’s what it took for you to be happy, then I’d survive it. I’d survive anything if it meant you were okay. I have to be selfless. For you.”

“Fuck it—be selfish, Eddie. Please.”

The words hung between them, cracked and electric.

“Because what you thought was selflessness—this whole time—it was killing me.”

He took another step forward, drawn like gravity.

“Eddie,” he said, voice wrecked. “When I was standing up there, trying to say my vows…”

He looked down, shaking his head, a hollow kind of laugh slipping from his chest.

“I couldn’t even see Tommy. Not really. Everything in front of me just blurred. All I could see—all I could feel—was you.”

His voice trembled, but he kept going, eyes locked to Eddie’s like he needed him to understand—really understand.

“You were right there, and all I wanted to know was… Do you love me? Not as a friend. Not as a memory. But here. Now. Real.”

He breathed out like the words had been trapped for years.

“Because I spent so long convincing myself it wasn’t possible. That I had to bury it. That loving you out loud was something I wasn’t allowed to want.”

A pause. A breath.

“But I couldn’t stop hoping for it. Not then. Not now. Not even when I was about to marry someone else.”

The silence that followed was thick and trembling. The kind that dares you to answer.

Buck took another step—just a breath away from him now.

“I need to know,” he said quietly, the words stripped bare of anything but need.
“Do you love me, Eddie?”

Eddie froze.

It hit like a fault line cracking down the center of his chest.

For a split second, every instinct screamed to run—to look away, to make a joke, to hide behind silence or logic or some deflection he’d used a hundred times before.

But this time—this time—he didn’t move.

Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe.

He stood exactly where he was and felt every inch of it—the ache, the hope, the fear.

And then something shifted. Something tectonic.

Because he was tired of running. Tired of being haunted by what he didn’t say.
Tired of choking on ghosts and echoes and the quiet space between almost and never.

He looked at Buck and let every part of himself show.

The longing. The guilt. The truth.

“Yes,” he said, voice raw. “God, Buck. Yes.”

Buck’s breath caught.

But Eddie wasn’t done. Not this time.

“I love you so much—fuck, I’ve loved you for years,” he said, voice rough around the edges, like the words had been clawing their way out of him for far too long. “And I ran. Over and over again. I told myself I was protecting you and our friendship, but really—I was just protecting myself.”

He stepped forward, hands no longer fists, no longer hiding. Just open. Sure.

“I thought you never felt this way about me,” Eddie said, voice low and shaking with truth. “So I buried it. I tried to move on. And when I saw you with him—with Tommy—I told myself I’d missed my chance. That I was too late. That I had to let you go.”

His hands trembled at his sides, but he didn’t look away.

“I told myself I was okay with that,” he whispered. “But I wasn’t. I’m not.”

A breath. Then—

“I thought I was going to die a coward,” he said, the words ripped from somewhere deep. “Carrying this love to the grave—silent and unspoken. I pictured myself telling you on my deathbed, in some hazy dream, that I could never not love you.”

It hung between them like smoke, like something holy and damning all at once.

For a second, Buck just stared at him. Didn’t speak. Didn’t smile. Didn’t soften the moment with a joke or offer an easy out. He just looked at Eddie like he was something he’d never let himself believe in until now.

And then, gently—softly—Buck said, “It’s never too late to let yourself be loved back.”

Something cracked wide open inside Eddie.

He didn’t hesitate.

He stepped forward—one, two, three strides—and cupped Buck’s face in both hands like he was grounding himself in something real for the first time in years. His thumbs brushed the curve of Buck’s cheekbones, reverent, steady, trembling just a little.

And then he kissed him.

No halfway. No flinching.

Just full, aching honesty.

He leaned in like the weight of his confession had turned into momentum—like everything he’d held back had finally found direction. His mouth met Buck’s with the desperate relief of a man who’d been lost in the dark and suddenly found the light, and this time, he didn’t hold back. Didn’t temper it.

Eddie kissed like he was choosing.

Like he was done running.

Like he meant every word he hadn’t said until now—and was saying all of them in the space between their mouths.

Buck gasped against his mouth, hands flying to Eddie’s waist, gripping tight like he couldn’t believe this was real. Eddie’s fingers threaded into Buck’s hair, tugging just enough to make them both gasp, just enough to remind them they were still here, still alive, still theirs.

It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t perfect. It was everything they had never let themselves feel. All the years of almosts and what-ifs and locked jaws and unsent messages—all of it spilling out in the way Eddie’s mouth moved against his, desperate and sure and trembling all at once.

Eddie kissed like he was drowning and this was the air. Buck kissed like he was waking up for the first time in years.

It was teeth and heat and breath and tears neither of them had meant to cry. It was a hand fisting in the fabric of a ruined tux, another threading into too-short hair, the soft thud of someone being pressed back against the edge of the altar because standing still just wasn’t enough.

The world narrowed down to this: mouths and hands and breath, the thrum of a pulse beneath someone’s skin, the dizzying warmth of being known, seen, wanted.

And still, somehow, it felt quiet. Not silent—but sacred. Like the cathedral of every moment they’d survived apart had finally given way to this one, where they could stop pretending, stop performing, just be.

When they finally broke apart, the air between them still thrummed like a struck chord—vibrating with everything they'd just undone. The silence wasn't heavy anymore. It wasn't haunted.

It was breathless.

Eddie’s chest rose and fell like he was remembering how to feel everything at once. His lips were kiss-wrecked, eyes wide, and then—

He laughed.

It started small, almost shocked—like he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. Then Buck laughed too, sharp and disbelieving, shaking his head as he pulled Eddie back in by the lapel of his suit.

“What the fuck just happened,” Eddie said, breathless and grinning.

Buck wheezed a laugh. “I think… I got left at the altar?”

Eddie blinked, then let out a full-bodied laugh—messy, startled, helpless. He doubled over, forehead pressed to Buck’s shoulder, his whole body shaking with it.

“Jesus Christ,” he gasped, still laughing. “This is insane.”

“Insanely overdue,” Buck muttered into his hair, grinning like he couldn’t stop.

And Eddie—

Eddie couldn’t remember the last time he felt this light.

No ghosts. No echoes. No flickering reflections of the life he almost lived.

Just this.

Just Buck, alive and real and ridiculous in his wrinkled tux, grinning like they were seventeen and about to do something stupid, and for once—Eddie wasn’t afraid.

His laughter faded into something quieter, more reverent. His hand lingered at Buck’s jaw like he still couldn’t quite believe he was allowed to touch him like this. His voice came soft.

“I didn’t know it could feel like this.”

Buck’s eyes flicked over him, equal parts reverence and mischief. “Yeah?”

Eddie nodded. “Like… joy. Actual, stupid joy.”

And Buck smiled. Soft and whole.

~

They stepped out into the late afternoon sun, side by side.

The golden light hit different now—softer somehow. Less like a spotlight, more like a welcome.

The courtyard was quiet except for the murmur of voices just ahead. Bobby and Athena stood off to one side, hands clasped. Maddie was holding baby Kevin, who squirmed in her arms to wave, while Chim tried to keep Jee from stepping into a fountain. The chaos was familiar. Safe.

And right in the center of it all—Christopher.

As soon as he saw them, he crossed the courtyard in three fast strides, crutches swinging, determination written all over his face.

He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t hold back.

He threw his arms around Buck like he’d been holding that hug in for years.

“I’m so sorry that happened,” Chris said, voice cracking. “Are you okay? Oh, Buck, I missed you so much. I’m sorry I didn’t say it. I’m sorry I pretended I didn’t.”

Buck’s eyes closed, arms pulling Chris in tight. “Hey. You don’t have to be sorry. I missed you too. I missed you so much.”

Eddie stood beside them, hands tucked into his jacket pockets, eyes bright.

“He gets it from his dad,” he said softly.

Buck looked over at him, smile pulling at his mouth like he didn’t quite know how to stop it anymore.

Chris pulled back then, still holding onto Buck’s sleeve, and turned to Eddie. His brow furrowed like he was trying to read something deeper than words.

“Are you okay?”

Eddie didn’t hesitate.

He didn’t check over his shoulder. Didn’t bite his tongue. Didn’t hide.

He just smiled.

“I’m more than okay,” he said. “I’m happy.”

Chris blinked—then grinned like it made perfect sense. Like this was the version of his dad he’d been waiting to see again.

They lingered there for a few minutes—laughing, talking, wrapping each other in the comfort of what was real and earned and still possible.

Eventually, the others gave them space, walking ahead toward the cars.

Eddie hung back, Buck at his side, as the weight of it all settled into something quiet and solid between them.

“I’ve been thinking,” Eddie said, gaze fixed on the horizon. “About moving back this summer. Really moving back.”

Buck turned to look at him, eyes wide. Hopeful. “Yeah?”

Eddie nodded. “I’m done hiding from the from the truth, done running from myself. I want to run toward something this time.”

He looked over, and Buck was already looking at him like he’d never stopped.

“Toward joy?” Buck asked, a small, teasing smile playing at his lips.

Eddie smiled back. “Yeah. Toward you.”

They stood there as the sky dimmed around them, shadows stretching long and soft across the pavement. The world had cracked open and let the light in. And for once, Eddie wasn’t chasing ghosts or echoes or reflections in the glass.

He was standing in it.

In something real.

In something his.

And when he reached out—Buck’s hand met his halfway.

Like it had always been waiting there.