Word Count: 6,257
Warnings/Spoilers: None in particular for this chapter.

"What's all this?" said Bobby in confused amazement as Buck unloaded various containers from a bag.

"Leftovers from dinner last night. We made too much," he admitted, flashing a grin at Eddie who rolled his eyes and shook his head. They'd debated making less but after Christopher had gotten involved in the question about what to make and said "everything" with his cheesy, hopeful grin, there'd ended up being a lot of food made with plenty eaten and plenty leftover. After numerous complaints of being overstuffed, they'd teamed up to make many, many containers of leftover food until Eddie's fridge couldn't take anymore and it had been clear they needed to offload some of the food to the 118. Eddie took several of the containers from the top of the stack Buck had made to start fitting them onto stocked shelves in the fridge.

"'We'? So now you're house-husbands as well as work-husbands and just casually hanging out on Valentine's Day?" Chimney said, peering at the containers with undisguised curiosity. Buck's cooking hadn't exactly been the best of the house when he'd arrived but all the time he'd spent cooking with Eddie the past few months seemed to be helping him burn less things.

"Aww, you almost sound jealous, Chim," Buck teased, slapping Chimney's hand away and tugging the containers closer to him to keep prying fingers from stealing bites.

"Jealous? Hell yeah. You think maybe I can convince Maddie to work dispatch from here?"

"It's a centralised system for a reason," Hen pointed out from the table, sipping her coffee while reading the newspaper.

"Yeah but I could find a way to make it work. Like what if-"

Buck tuned Chimney's inane thoughts out and handed another container towards Eddie without really looking, then turned his attention to folding the bags into a bundle to shove in his car later.

Except Eddie apparently wasn't paying much attention and failed to grasp the container from Buck's hand. It exploded in a scatter of food around their feet, startling everyone and making Buck leap into the air with a hand on his chest as he looked at Eddie.

Eddie, whose wide eyes looked spooked as he surveyed the damage. Eddie, whose wide eyes were slightly unfocused at the edges like Buck had seen after the call where the family were murdered by the would-be burglar.

"I'll get a broom," Hen said, drawing Buck's frown towards her as he started trying to work out what to say to Eddie. Before he could say anything though, the older man had left the kitchen area, skipping down the stairs two at a time before Buck could even react and ask where he was going.

"Typical. He makes the mess and then leaves others to clean it up," Chimney muttered as he pitched in to continue filling the fridge with the remaining containers.

"No, that's not-"

"I'll talk to him," Bobby said, nodding at Buck with an expression he didn't understand, like Buck was meant to grasp some deeper meaning that went flying over his head.

And then Bobby was jogging down the stairs after Eddie and Buck was left with a deep frown and no answers.

Hen had barely swept the food into a pile and Chimney had barely gotten it into the trash when the alarms rang and they all scurried to their assigned trucks. Even if Buck had wanted to ask Bobby what the look was about or nudge Eddie to find out why he was so quiet, he couldn't have because the rundown from dispatch made it sound like they were approaching the sort of call they all dreaded: a fire alarm had gone off in a multi-storey building downtoqn, with vague reports of smoke, and they needed to help evacuate the workers.

Chim's crackled groan over the microphone was an echo of the groan in Buck's soul. It was going to be a long shift.

Buck was ready to excise his muscles and bones by the time he was done with the shift he had started to affectionately think of as 'Armageddon'. He'd lost count of the number of times he'd gone up and down the stairs with equipment, or how many people he'd guided from various burning floors once the smoke had turned out to be actual flames, or how many victims he'd found on the twenty-fourth floor that he'd had to triage and help carry – at least as far as the stairwell – before handing off to other crews. He was utterly exhausted and the brief nap he'd managed at the house after the call hadn't even made a dent in his fatigue, which was obvious when it had taken several attempts to get his key in the ignition. He'd almost wondered if he should be driving but his apartment was only fifteen minutes away. And once he was home, he'd managed to make enough of an effort to remove his shoes and then he'd slumped onto the couch because the thought of climbing even more stairs to his bed was horrifying.

He awoke with a jolt like he'd been electrocuted, limbs flailing in fright before he realised he was on the couch and precariously balanced too close to the edge. He grew still, silently assessing the aching muscles before he stretched his arms and rolled his neck with a moan. Everything had painfully stiffened during his time on the couch he'd once thought of as comfortable but now that he was awake, he really should move to the bed. He glanced at his watch and calculated he'd been out for a few hours but his eyes still hurt and his-

There was another knock at the door and he frowned, slowly sitting up and kneading his fingers into his thighs to loosen and limber them. He supposed there must have been another knock earlier which had woken him because he couldn't recall any sort of nightmare. It meant whoever was waiting might have been trying to rouse him for a while. He rotated his ankles, the joints popping beneath his skin, before he stood. Everything ached – he'd swear even the nails on his toes hurt – and he could hear the swish of his dragging feet across the floor. He stifled a yawn behind his hand as he grasped at the door handle with the other.

"Eddie?"

Eddie's dimmed eyes and slumped shoulders reflected his exhaustion but his twisting hands and shuffling feet were obvious signs of discomfort and fretting that put Buck on edge. It was barely a month ago that Eddie had looked like this, resisting the urge to fight by showing up on Buck's doorstep. If the urge to fight continued to be so strong, Buck really needed to figure out a more permanent recommendation than cuddling on his couch.

"Hi- I- Um- Can I-?"

Buck stood aside and Eddie entered his apartment, but he paced back and forth like a restless animal and Buck closed the door slowly, trying to determine the best course of action. Eddie had seemed reasonably okay during the shift but the call had been massive, an all-hands-on-desk situation once the flames had started spreading, and he had to admit he'd done a poor job of checking whether his partner was functioning at optimum performance after the vanishing act at the start of the shift.

"Do you want a drink?" he said, because that seemed as good a place as any to break the ice.

"No, I-" Eddie shook his head, scratching at his hair, moving all over the place but with no discernible rhythm. For someone that liked control, it was unnerving for Buck to witness.

"Do you need to scream and rage and throw things?"

Eddie's eyebrows wriggled into an uneven frown before he stopped, visibly hesitating as his eyes flicked between Buck and away again.

"What?" said Buck, eyebrows rising in expectation as Eddie kept looking at him intermittently.

"Weren't you…bothered by being called work or house-husbands?" Eddie burst out and Buck could only blink rapidly for several seconds.

"No?"

Eddie's expression morphed into something even more confused. "Why?"

Buck's raised eyebrows gradually lowered back to something neutral, knowing he was missing something critical to the entire conversation. Maybe it was because he was so utterly exhausted that his thinking was more sluggish than usual. Maybe it was because Michael and Carla had pointed out his feelings and, though it terrified him, he'd accepted his role in Eddie's life and the lack of opportunity to progress further. "It's just…not something I really thought much about?" he said with a shrug.

"But you…you let Chim tease you like that and you- you responded and it- You're not even gay and I-"

"Whoa, why does anyone have to be gay?" Buck said, growing more and more confused.

"Because it- I mean- Usually you call a guy gay and he gets all pissed off about it," Eddie said, still looking wide-eyed and panicked. And Buck…sort of felt like he was looking through a broken piece of glass at something which he couldn't quite put his finger on because Eddie freaking out about this was…weird. So he played dumb because that usually gave him some sort of answer.

"Then I guess it's lucky for us I'm very secure in my sexuality?"

Eddie rolled his eyes, a small huff escaping his lips as he pivoted in the direction of the door. "Right. Great. Okay. Wonderful," he muttered under his breath as Buck grabbed at Eddie's arm, tugging him into stopping. If he ensured his grip was secure enough around Eddie's wrist so the other man couldn't just pull away and flee, then… Well…

"What the hell is galloping through that worry-wart head of yours, Eddie?" he said, gentling his tone when he realised Eddie seemed to be on the verge of hyperventilating and that… Honestly, that was usually Buck's thing when he woke up at night. It freaked him out more than he was willing to admit. "Come on. Talk to me?"

"I was- I'm-" Eddie couldn't meet his eyes as Buck inched closer, rubbing his thumb in slow circles against the racing pulse he could feel in Eddie's wrist. "I was Shannon's husband," he eventually said, and Buck tried not to frown too deeply because yes? He knew that already? Everyone in the 118 knew that already? "But I- We- I didn't know what that meant for her, or us. We married because she fell pregnant with Christopher. But then I was deployed and I- We weren't the same afterwards and-"

Buck grasped at Eddie's other shaking wrist, wondering what tricks he had to try to get Eddie to breathe slowly and calmly rather than the unsteady puffs that were passing his lips. If Eddie was made of nuts and bolts and metal, Buck could clearly envisage him rattling apart into pieces. "Okay…?"

"But then- Chim- And- We- I- I don't- I don't understand what-"

"Okay, okay." Buck tentatively pulled Eddie towards the couch, forcing him to sit and then wrapping an arm around his trembling shoulders. "So what Chimney said made you think about Shannon?" he prompted, searching for some sort of clarity, while Eddie's spine remained as straight and rigid as a steel beam.

"Y-Yeah, but I- I realised- What we do is- Is that- Should I have been like that with her?" Eddie said, in a small and lost sort of voice.

Buck could only blink and then he started lightly rubbing his fingertips into Eddie's shoulder. "I really don't know, man. I've never been married."

"No, it- I know that but- I mean-" Eddie propped his elbows on his knees and threaded his fingers through his hair, heaving a shuddering breath as he stared at the floor. "I never- We were never able to…to just…be there for each other. You and I- We- I never cooked with her like we do, and we'd sleep together but it-"

"I really don't need to hear about your sex life," Buck interrupted and Eddie huffed something that almost sounded like a laugh.

"I just mean- She and I- It was- It was different and- What Chimney said- It- I- It…twisted me up."

Buck rubbed his hand between Eddie's shoulder blades, searching for ways to get Eddie to calm down and breathe evenly although he felt like he was starting to make more sense of this situation. It hadn't even been a year since Shannon died, after all, so Buck couldn't deny that Eddie's wounds could still be fresh and raw. "If him teasing us like that made you uncomfortable, I'll tell him to stop, Eddie."

"But…why doesn't it make you uncomfortable?" Eddie asked, so quietly that Buck might've missed it if he hadn't been trying to catch every nuance in Eddie's behaviour, if he hadn't been trying to catalogue every word to ascertain what the bigger implications of the conversation were.

Buck shrugged. "Because teasing me is what Chim and Hen have done since I arrived at the house. He's also dating my sister, so I see him outside of the station regularly and I've gotten used to him making sly comments about my relationship status or lack of one. I also don't see being called someone's husband, or the implication that I'm gay, as a problem. I- What is it you want me to say here, Eddie?"

"I don't…know," Eddie mumbled, shaking his head and tugging at the ends of his hair.

"Look, if it freaks you out, if it reminds you of Shannon too much, then I'll tell him to stop. There are limits to any joke and I hate seeing you this upset over something he probably didn't even think through before he said it." Buck hesitated, biting his lip as he surveyed Eddie's defeated form. "Are you…you know…angry or upset because someone implied you were gay?"

"No," Eddie said, barely more than a whisper, while Buck kept slowly rubbing circles between his shoulder blades and made a mental note that some of the shallow breathing seemed to have abated. "I- I'm not homophobic, Buck."

"I wasn't saying you were. Just…" Buck sighed, eyes flicking to the ceiling as he tried to compose his thoughts without revealing the soft, vulnerable parts of his heart for Eddie to stab. "Like you said before, sometimes people get angry about it. I guess it doesn't bother me because it's a stupid issue for me to get angry about."

Eddie tilted his head slightly towards Buck. "What do you mean?"

Buck wavered for a moment, debating how much he should or shouldn't say. To hell with keeping this part of his life a secret. "I probably told Maddie before I was even a teenager that I thought her boyfriend was cute, but I almost certainly had a crush on one of her female friends too," he explained, able to still see the faint fuzzy outline of the guy Maddie had dated when she was around fifteen or sixteen if he thought about it long enough. To Buck's child mind, the guy had been tall and strong and made her smile a lot and that made him more acceptable than Doug, who had given him a bad vibe from the beginning. "Our parents were hardly supportive or receptive to any sort of official 'coming out' confession but she knew. She's always known."

Eddie stared at him like an additional thirty-four heads had just erupted from his shoulders. "You're not…straight?"

"If you're asking me if I only exclusively date or hook up with girls, then that would be a no," he said carefully, slowly, faintly afraid that Eddie was about to have a heart attack with how pale his cheeks were. "I don't advertise it around the house because I can only imagine how Chimney and Hen would start pestering me about being single."

Eddie's expression was unfathomable, although there were rapidly circulating thoughts clearly swirling in his eyes. "So you're…?"

"Into everyone and anyone," Buck shrugged, and then he became aware of how his hand was still rubbing Eddie's back. Was it awkward if he stopped now? Was it making Eddie uncomfortable? What if their friendship changed because he'd revealed that part of himself to Eddie? Or what if Eddie stopped coming over? Or no longer wanted to be held after awful days? Buck knew his feelings for Eddie were a complicated mess that he didn't know how to untangle but if he lost Eddie's friendship over this, he wasn't sure if he'd ever truly forgive himself.

"Oh." Eddie's eyes scanned his and Buck held the look, letting this particular vulnerability be seen and scanned and either accepted or rejected while Eddie made his assessment. "I…didn't know."

"Well, now you do. Just…please don't tell the others? I'm not ashamed of it, I just don't need the teasing."

"Yeah, that's…yeah," Eddie mumbled, breaking the eye contact to return his stare to the floor.

Buck decided his hand was a heavy, dead weight on Eddie's back and he'd somehow outworn his welcome in his own apartment. He pulled away, moving his sore limbs towards his kitchen under the guise of sorting out food, or something to keep his hands busy, or something to give Eddie space to process.

He glanced up from his fussing over vegetables from time to time to check where Eddie was, but the man remained on the couch with his head in hands and Buck felt lost. Eddie wasn't usually the one who talked the most between the pair of hem, especially when Christopher wasn't around and even more especially when it came to discussing feelings, but there was something about Eddie which seemed fractured and Buck couldn't tell what it was. He didn't know if he was meant to start cursing Chimney for the initial teasing or himself because of his reaction to the teasing. He wasn't sure what had triggered Eddie more, but it seemed obvious now why he'd frozen while they moved meals around and then fled. And Buck… He should've known how deeply Eddie's wounds ran about Shannon. He should've known that Eddie was still raw about the loss of his wife. Or did he view her as an ex-wife? Buck wasn't sure how Eddie viewed his previous relationship because Eddie rarely talked about it, or Shannon. He could almost believe he knew more about Shannon from Christopher, but even then that image was blotchy because the details were scant with Christopher's underdeveloped memo-

"Why do you always do that?"

Buck startled, barely holding onto the fork in his hand at the sudden proximity of Eddie being a whole lot closer to his kitchen area than he had been the last time Buck had looked at him. It probably hadn't helped he'd moved as silent as a ninja, either.

"Do what?" he said, placing the fork on the counter and turning to face Eddie.

Eddie stared at him with an intensity that made Buck want to look away or pull a blanket over his face. "Hide from your feelings."

He frowned. "I don-"

"You do. You hid the pain in your leg which nearly killed you with the clot. You still ignore your issues with water. You hide from being out with your colleagues because you're, what, not wanting to get teased?" Eddie shook his head, his brows furrowed. "Every time I think I start to understand you, I realise I'm not sure I know you at all."

Buck felt like his blood turned to ice. "If you think I've been lying-"

"No, I don't mean-" Eddie huffed, rubbing a hand over his face and smoothing away some of the frown. "I'm not- I don't care that you feel attracted to anyone, Buck. That's… That's not what I meant."

Buck remained unconvinced and was desperately trying not to cross his arms and start getting defensive. He knew from experience that if he got defensive, Eddie would probably turn into a firecracker and explode. Which would be incredibly problematic given everything beneath them already felt like it was built on eggshells and landmines.

"I- I meant that you open up and you talk about so many things sometimes, and you're so great with Christopher that I think I understand you, that I see the pure joy and contentment in your face you so rarely show any other time." Eddie paused, then took half a step towards him. "And then other times, it's like I have no idea who you are. You won't talk about your parents, you won't talk about what you're afraid of, or what you look forward to, or what you want to achieve, or who you like – your relationships with Abby and Ali notwithstanding."

Buck was starting to feel like Eddie was pinning him under a microscope again and he tried to avoid the restless shifting his feet wanted to do, like stepping backwards every time Eddie moved a step closer to him. What would Eddie say if he was hiding his feelings and fleeing?

"So that's why I asked about why you hide how you feel, because it feels like I don't know you."

Buck watched as Eddie inched closer and closer, and perhaps it was only the harsh dig of the kitchen counter against his back that kept his thoughts from unravelling completely. "Because there's safety in hiding your feelings," he said quietly, wanting to look at anything other than Eddie's intense stare but finding it impossible. It felt like a spell had been cast.

"Why?"

"Because…" He sighed and shrugged and waved his hand around aimlessly. "Because I've ruined friendships with people who are uncomfortable that I might end up liking them even though that's not how it works. Because my parents were a mess of a situation and Maddie and I have spent a lot of time piecing ourselves back together without their influence. Because dreams can be broken and it's easier to feel your own disappointment that you didn't live up to expectations than face the disappointment of failing everyone else's expectations. Because I'm a firefighter and I can't afford to be afraid when sometimes there are only seconds between life and death in our calls. What do you want from me, Eddie?" he said, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice.

"You're allowed to feel it though," Eddie murmured but Buck shook his head and looked at his toes to collect his thoughts, because he couldn't afford to feel afraid, or uncertain, or fear – because they could all lead to death – and he couldn't allow himself to feel too much happiness or satisfaction because that could all be taken away in a matter of heartbeats and rapidly moving water.

He could see Eddie from the corner of his eye still moving towards him. It was starting to make him feel like his brain was all twisted up. In a matter of half an hour, Eddie had found control over his emotions and managed to expose Buck's deepest insecurities. His heart stuttered in his chest when Eddie's index finger pressed beneath his chin to raise his head, unwilling to meet Eddie's eyes because surely his inner turmoil was displayed all over his face.

"You're allowed to have feelings with me, Evan," Eddie said, and Buck couldn't help but look at him, at the intensity in his eyes that made it clear Eddie didn't expect an argument.

Mounting an argument was a faraway thought, however, because Buck was fairly sure his lungs had forgotten how to expand and contract. He hesitated, feeling Eddie's finger curl against his jaw like he was trying to coax an answer from him.

"What about feelings for you?" he whispered and he could see when Eddie processed the adjustment in his words, and the range of thoughts that flashed across Eddie's face like a roulette wheel, but he didn't seem…surprised or shocked or horrified.

For a moment, Buck was conscious only of the sharp inhale that whistled faintly up his nose when Eddie kissed him, and then he noted how it felt like he'd been punched in the stomach with air, and then he realised he felt faintly dizzy but whether that was because of the kiss or because his lungs had stopped working, he couldn't tell.

And then somewhere amid all the internal flailing about, it started to filter in that Eddie was kissing him.

And then it became clear that his brain had stopped working for several moments.

Eddie's finger remained light against his skin to keep his head up, the kiss little more than a tentative brush of lips, and Buck had no idea what to expect, or what Eddie wanted, so for a moment he was frozen because he'd imagined this so many times and just kept crushing it so far down until it no longer hurt.

And then Eddie's finger shifted, replaced more completely by his hand cradling Buck's jaw, and the pressure against Buck's mouth increased and his brain stuttered to life again and he reacted. He was terrified of sending Eddie skittering away from him, terrified that Eddie was kissing him to confirm or deny something that would dissolve their friendship but…he couldn't stop himself when his hands pressed somewhere against Eddie's chest and waist to pull him closer, and Buck could feel the small trembles in Eddie's tense posture as they kissed in a way that was incredibly chaste and yet incredible charged and made his heart feel like it was leaping for the moon.

It was Eddie who pulled away, fingers tumbling from Buck's skin. Buck calculated they'd probably only pressed lips together for a handful of seconds and he was ready for Eddie to pull away, to express his disgust or his dismay, so when he finally cracked his eyes open to check how Eddie looked and whether he was panicking and looking for a way out, he was…pleasantly pleased to see that Eddie looked as utterly dazed as when they survived narrow escapes on dangerous calls.

"Should I- I don't know if I should have done that," Eddie admitted, eyes drifting between Buck's as he searched for something in his expression before his gaze slipped to his mouth with some sort of wide-eyed wonder.

"Why not?" Buck dragged his thumb against the cotton-covered groove of Eddie's waist, feeling the way the muscles tensed in a whole new light. "You're allowed to have feelings too."

"But I- I don't even know what those feelings are," Eddie said as his gaze fell somewhere towards Buck's chest, and Buck realised the amount of nerves and insecurities Eddie was allowing him to see. It was rare for Eddie to allow himself to be vulnerable, perhaps because he was always trying to be okay for Christopher, and it was then that Buck realised he already knew how he felt, he'd reconciled with that – and shoved it all down – months ago despite Michael and Carla's observations. Buck knew his sexuality and he'd made peace with it a long time ago, but…maybe Eddie didn't know all those answers yet. Maybe Eddie was still figuring himself out. And Buck couldn't decide if it gave him a whole lot of hope or a whole lot of fear because Eddie had the power now to break his heart worse than Abby and Ali combined, multiplied by a thousand.

And then it dawned on him that maybe Eddie hadn't been freaked out by being called Buck's husband because it was related to Shannon. Maybe he'd been freaked out for reasons that weren't related to Shannon at all.

"Start with the most obvious. Are they good feelings or bad feelings?" he said, fidgeting fingers tugging some of the creases from Eddie's shirt.

Eddie paused, lips working around thoughts he couldn't form into audible words for at least a minute. "I- I've never kissed a guy before," he eventually answered.

Buck nodded, because he wasn't sure he was surprised. He wouldn't have said Eddie was repressed but he did think Eddie had been staunchly straight for a long time. It was a huge part of why Buck had never said anything. "It's different to kissing girls, isn't it?"

"Yeah…" Eddie glanced up at him, something shy in his eyes. "That's not a bad thing though."

Now it was Buck's turn to struggle to form a coherent sentence. "Oh?" Well. That was lame. And awful. And was a clear demonstration of how Eddie could make his brain short-circuit. "You figured that out from one kiss?"

One side of Eddie's mouth pulled up in a wry smile. "When you've wondered about something for so long…"

"You- You've thought about-?"

Eddie leaned in to kiss him again and the hesitation was gone this time, confident hands under Buck's jaw and against his neck. Buck forgot what it was to think as his fingers curled against Eddie's shirt, pulling him closer until he felt the strength of Eddie's hips pinning him against the kitchen counter. It wasn't nearly so uncomfortable to lean against it when he had Eddie's mouth to distract him. One of Eddie's thumbs brushed against a sensitive spot on his neck, near that spot that had nearly made Buck dissolve when he'd heard Eddie still trusted him with Chris, and he shuddered around a small hitched breath. Eddie used it to lick at his bottom lip, losing any traces of nerves, and Buck fucking whimpered Eddie's name like he was a teenage boy having his first kiss all over again which was…really fucking mortifying, honestly.

"I like you," Eddie breathed against his lips in between soft kisses. When Buck managed to get his eyes open a fraction, he could see Eddie's eyes were still closed, like he was confessing all his secrets and afraid to see Buck's reaction. "I realised it months ago when you had the clot and I was- I was so scared of losing you, of being left alone again, and of Christopher losing you too."

Buck skimmed his lips against Eddie's and felt the other man's grip against his face falter. He tried not to smile. Working out what fried Eddie's brain could be fun.

"Trusting you with Christopher, seeing how you take care of him and keep him safe, made it even clearer. And then the tsunami happened and I realised how close I'd come to losing both of you when I hadn't even realised either of you had ever been in danger and I-" Eddie exhaled, the warmth of his breath tickling across Buck's skin as he continued to watch Eddie's creased brow as he worked through all his thoughts and feelings that had been simmering beneath the surface for months. "I didn't know how to cope with everything I was feeling because I'd been married to Shannon, and she hadn't even been gone that long. I- I've never really let myself think about a guy like this, not…not this seriously, and I'm an army vet. We- We don't share our feelings much, and I didn't think you'd feel the same and I just… I hated myself for feeling like that, like I was betraying Shannon and it was going to horrify you if you found out so I- I kept pushing it all down."

And it was so heartbreakingly similar to Buck's thought spirals during the past few months that he could've hit himself, or Eddie. Hopefully they were never that stupid again.

His hand wrapped around Eddie's arm, holding on tight enough that even another tsunami couldn't have ripped him away from this conversation taking place. What Eddie had said… It reminded him of other conversations, other times, other confessions. "Is that…why you started fighting?"

"It…was probably part of it, yeah," Eddie conceded, his eyes gradually opening and they were huge and clearly confused and a little lost as he looked at Buck. "It wasn't entirely about you. It was so many things, but I just had so much anger at myself, and Shannon, and the world, and it was… Getting beat up and feeling the pain of all the bruises was a good distraction from all of that."

Buck could understand the self-punishment thing that Eddie was describing. He'd had his own battles as a teenager, accepting who he was in a household that rejected him. He'd felt the self-loathing flare again after he'd realised what Maddie was going through, and he'd felt sick with it after Maddie had been kidnapped. He understood how searching for the pain was better than facing your feelings. He hadn't run miles every time he woke up from a nightmare for nothing. Especially when he still had the phone number of a therapist that Bobby had recommended

He kissed Eddie, soft and brief and fleeting, just because he could. Just because he wanted the reassurance and wanted to try to provide it. He realised that if this was going to turn into something important, if they were actually going to…to try to make this work between them, it was going to be really damn hard to keep his hands to himself at the house, or to not stare at Eddie too much thinking about how his lips tasted.

"And you wonder why I hide my feelings when you've been feeling all this," he teased and Eddie laughed, the tension in his shoulders melting away as he shot Buck an accusatory look.

"Maybe I wouldn't have felt all this if you didn't hide how you felt."

Buck hummed, tracing an abstract shape on Eddie's arm with his fingertip. "It's different for me though. You've never kissed a guy before and you're trying to come to terms with thinking about that, whereas I'm watching you with your wife and kid and figuring there's no chance for me because you're all straight and married."

Eddie's eyes fell from his, lips twisting with something like bitterness. "I'm sorry."

"No, don't be sorry, it's just…" Buck shrugged. "It's different, that's all. I didn't want to be jealous and I wasn't going to wreck your marriage once I realised that I felt something, but it wasn't like I could just come right out and say something. I wanted you to be happy, with Shannon or anyone else you might've ended up with, and I- I decided I'd be there for Christopher. I didn't want him to get hurt because of me, and he was so excited to have Shannon back so I knew I had to cover up how I felt because it was you who had everything to lose."

Eddie almost looked distraught. "Evan, you really need to stop making everything about you."

"Probably," Buck mused with a cynical sort of smile, because he'd attempted to make peace with all his feelings a long time ago. "Anyway. That's all in the past. What's more important to me now is finding out how you feel about kissing a guy or if your curiosity has been satisfied but you don't-"

He didn't even get to finish his sentence as Eddie kissed him again but it gave him an answer to the question. Eddie's hands slipped to his legs, lifting him onto the counter with ease and then pressing between his parted legs to clasp at his waist. Buck's hands started roaming, passing over Eddie's shoulders, neck, jaw, the back of his head. He felt like a teenager again because he would definitely classify this as 'making out', especially when Eddie's confidence in kissing started to make Buck forget his own name and Buck began scraping nails against Eddie's hair. By the time they stopped, Buck thought his blood was heated to the point of lava and he was completely breathless. Eddie was shuddering shaky exhales against his neck, head resting against Buck's shoulder and one hand pressed into Buck's skin.

"I- I don't know what to…um…do," Eddie said as Buck trailed his fingers down the back of Eddie's head to rub at knob of his spine.

"Do?"

"You know." Eddie made a crude gesture with his hand that made Buck snort. "Shut up! I've never been with another guy."

"So you said." Buck kissed Eddie's forehead to smooth away the divot between his eyebrows. "But if it's all the same to you, I'm okay with taking this slow."

Eddie peered up at him, the hesitancy and uncertainty clear. "Yeah?"

Buck rolled his eyes. "I don't need you freaking out on me again and deciding you need to go back to some fight club to get your sexual frustrations out of your system."

Eddie snorted. "I won't," he promised and Buck wrapped him into a hug which Eddie sank into, holding him like they had done so many times before. It was different this time, probably because he kept fighting the urge to tilt his head and nuzzle soft kisses against Eddie's neck. "Thank you."

Buck nosed at the spikes of budding hair on Eddie's jaw as he drew his fingers across the back of Eddie's shoulders. "What for?"

"Giving me the time to work myself out."

Buck smiled, finding Eddie's lips for a quick kiss which all but confirmed it was going to be impossible not to keep touching him at the firehouse. "You can take all the time that you need."

And if they spent the rest of the day lazily making out on the couch until Eddie had to leave to pick up Christopher from school which left Buck with a racing heart and the need for an icy shower… Well. Buck still preferred that use of recovery time after shift to merely sleeping.

~TBC~