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There’s really nothing that Buck and Eddie don’t like to do in bed.
That’s been the fun part of this whole thing. Actually, all of it has been the fun part, because with Buck, literally everything is fun. Even when they’re bickering, Eddie is having a good time. It’s what being in love is really like, he supposes. You’re not supposed to be worried and confused and feeling like you’re performing all the time. It’s supposed to feel like you’re hanging out with your best friend, except for the part where your best friend rides you to oblivion.
It’s Eddie’s favorite part out of everything they do together, when he’s staring up at Buck, his mouth partially open, his head thrown back, curls bouncing with every one of his movements. It’s just like Eddie had imagined, but better, because yeah, Eddie had imagined what Buck would look like riding him. At the time, it was super normal friend stuff. Waking up after a dream of Buck, maybe getting himself off, but blaming his subconscious for it. That’s what all straight guys felt for their best friends, right?
Buck tells Eddie that he’s stupid every day of their lives.
Now though, Eddie feels like he can let go when they’re together. No one else has been able to see this side to him before, not even himself. Buck lets him feel safe to let go, makes him feel like he doesn’t have to white knuckle his grip on his self control for an hour or so a night. So yeah, they had to make a rule about no marks, neither of them are ready to come out to their team yet. It was both of their faults, actually. It wasn’t just Eddie that liked to sink his teeth into Buck’s neck, obviously. Buck is the most jealous person that Eddie has met in his life, which means that he likes to mark Eddie as his own. There are safe places to leave marks, like on the ass, or low enough on his hipbones that no one on the team would see it.
Eddie’s been so good about it so far. Really good. It’s not easy, but he’s managed, keeping the horny teenager in his mind locked up in a cage for the sake of keeping their relationship a secret. So is he really to blame? Buck’s the one that makes him lose his mind, after all.
Honestly, they’ve gone longer than Eddie would have thought without anyone finding out about them, especially with how nosy the whole team is. It was only a matter of time before one of them slipped up. Both he and Buck were aware of that possibility, had talked about it, and knew that it would come eventually.
The thing is, Eddie never thought that it would be him that let things slip.
They change in front of each other (Eddie doesn’t know how he made it seven years without jumping Buck’s bones, honestly, catholic repression is a hell of a thing), and it’s no big deal. They’ve all been doing it together for seven years. That is the exact reason why Eddie is so confused when he hears Chimney gasp when Buck takes off his shirt. Buck doesn’t notice, too caught up in his own world, but Eddie turns around, eyebrows pulled together slightly. Chimney isn’t looking at him, only at Buck’s bare back, making Eddie turn his attention to him and oh.
Oh no.
There, on Buck’s beautiful, toned, tanned back, are what is very clearly nail marks raking down from his shoulder to near his ass, deep and red, and extremely damning.
The thing is, Buck has very publicly taken a break from sleeping with other people. Since breaking up with Tommy (since starting to sleep with Eddie), the idea of him dating, or even sleeping around, has been completely shut down. Even the jokes haven’t been allowed, because Buck knows that Eddie doesn’t like to entertain them. Everyone in the firehouse knows this, has been reminded multiple times when the jokes started again, so.
So there has to be a reason that Buck is suddenly and openly having sex with someone.
For a second, Eddie just stares, eyes wide, but he can feel Chimney looking at him, making the natural conclusion that anyone would jump to in this situation. Eddie knows that he’s not having a normal reaction to this. If this was before he and Buck started sleeping together, he would be ribbing the man, immediately jumping in on the joke, but Eddie can’t find that in him. He’s frozen, trying to remember when he did that to Buck, and oh– Yeah. This morning. Buck woke him up with his mouth on his dick and then got on and rode him and Eddie might have been clinging to the man for dear life.
Fuck.
Slowly, Eddie turns back to Chimney, eyes still wide. They make eye contact, Chimney’s grin growing. Eddie coughs, feeling like his throat is closing in on itself.
Finally, Buck turns around, the silence that fell over their changing area confusing him.
“Um, hello? Everything good?”
Eddie coughs again, his face beat red, not sure if he’s been breathing since Chimney gasped. He turns back into his locker, resisting the urge to shut it on his head over and over again until his brain turns to mush, but just barely.
“I think we should be asking you the same thing,” Chimney says, crossing his arms and smirking, and fuck, Eddie really really wants to die right now.
“I’m great, but you look like you have something to say and Eddie–” Buck looks over to Eddie, sees how red his cheeks are, and frowns, “you look like–”
Buck finally realizes that the two of them were looking at his back, which is when Hen walks in.
“Oh my god,” she says, and immediately starts laughing.
Eddie contemplates moving to El Paso for the second time in as many months. This time though, he might actually go through with it.
“What? What is it? Do I have boils again?”
Buck spins around like a dog trying to catch its own tail, cranking his neck as far as it can go, but he can’t see what they’re all looking at. That’s sort of the problem. If either of them had been able to notice it this morning, this never would have happened. Except Buck couldn’t, because it’s on his back, and Eddie was too busy rushing around getting ready for work to even contemplate the fact that he might have mauled Buck during their morning quickie.
“It just looks like someone was marking their territory back there,” Hen teases, leaning up against the wall with her arms crossed, a grin on her face, “are you fucking a bear?”
Hen has to know the implications of that. That couldn’t be an accident. Eddie swears she’s staring at him, but he has his face too far inside of his locker to tell.
“There’s claw marks on your back, Buck. I take it you didn’t know that?” Chimney adds helpfully, because watching Buck look like a confused puppy is getting a little boring.
“What? No that’s just Edd–”
Eddie finally looks up from his locker, eyes even wider, because seriously Buck?
“Eddie. My– My cat.” Buck finishes, a grin on his face. It’s actually almost convincing. “I have a cat, and he’s– He’s really clingy, he doesn’t like to be put down, and he sits on my shoulder, so– So when he gets off he leaves scratches down my back.”
“Your cat.” Eddie deadpans. He can’t believe he’s in love with this idiot.
“You got a cat?” Hen asks, but she’s clearly trying to keep herself from bursting out laughing.
“Yeah. My cat.”
“That you named Eddie,” Chimney supplies helpfully, looking to Eddie for some sort of explanation, and Eddie just shrugs, helpless, trying to force himself to act normal.
It’s not working.
“I dunno. It was the first name Buck thought of.” Eddie attempts a smile, but he’s such a bad liar. He has to turn back into his locker, inspecting the inside of it as though here’s something in there that’s more interesting than this conversation.
“Right! It just fit him! He has a little mustache like Eddie did!”
Okay, maybe Buck is better at lying than Eddie thought, because why does he have such an insane detail like that prepared?
“Right,” Hen says slowly, exchanging glances with Chim, then back to Buck, “you should really get on antibiotics if your cat is scratching you that bad, you know. You could get sick.”
“Yeah, no, of course, we’re– I’m– I’m being safe–”
Buck.
Hen throws a pointed look Eddie’s way, and he pretends not to notice it. He can feel it linger there, longer than he wants it to. It doesn’t seem like Hen is going to give up on this one. Slowly, he turns around, and immediately regrets it. She’s standing there, arms over her chest with her eyebrow raised.
“What?” He’s trying to seem as clueless as possible. Buck always says he looks like he has no thought behind his eyes. Maybe that’ll work to his advantage here.
“Nothing. You just look a little red, is all.” Hen smirks a little, raising an inquiring eyebrow. Eddie wishes for death, but when it doesn’t come, he gives a pathetic shrug.
“I’m sunburnt?”
Hen snorts, then finally leaves Buck and Eddie alone. For only a moment, Eddie lets himself deflate, head falling into his hands, resisting the urge to scream. This must be what it was like for teenagers to get caught with their boyfriends over, to have their whole family pick of them for a little crush. Eddie takes a deep breath, lifts his head, then slowly turns to look at Buck, expression weary.
“Your cat?”
“You weren’t helping at all! You just stood there!” Buck defends immediately, his voice a shouted whisper, as though the rest of the station doesn’t know exactly what they’re talking about. The two of them stare at each other for a second, before Buck deflates, sighing. “Do you think they believed it?”
“Oh my god, Buck, no they didn’t believe it!”
Eddie has to laugh, because it’s stupid. It’s hilarious.
“It’s not like this was exactly my fault,” Buck continues to defend himself, even though Eddie has never said that any of this was Buck’s fault.
“Okay, hey, what we don’t need to do is assign blame here.”
“The only reason we’re not doing that is because you’re the one to blame. Claw marks? Really?” Buck doesn’t look mad, though. In fact, he looks a little– God, he looks a little turned on. He’s such a little freak.
“Get that face off your face, Buckley. I think our days of secretly fucking in the supply closet are behind us.”
Immediately, the horniness disappears in return for a pout, one that Eddie has to resist the urge to kiss off his face. Maybe after today though, they may be able to do that here. Despite all of the effort they’ve been through to keep this a secret, suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a bad thing that they’ve been found out. Initial humiliation aside, Eddie thinks he can get on board with kissing his boyfriend at work, and not just in the bathroom. Maybe Buck can tell what he’s thinking of, because the pout disappears in favor of one of his private smiles, moving in closer to Eddie with a mischievous look on his face.
“We could get a cat, you know. A cat with a mustache, named Eddie, and keep pretending that we aren’t together.” Eddie laughs at Buck’s words, and Buck’s smile turns into a grin, clearly pleased at making his boyfriend laugh.
“If we get a cat,” Eddie starts, lifting a finger as he talks, then turning it into a palm flat on Buck’s chest, the public display of affection making Buck’s grin grow impossibly more, “they will not be named Eddie.”
“Edmundo?”
Eddie laughs again, shaking his head.
“No.”
“Fine, fine.” Buck gives in, reaching up to wrap his hand around Eddie’s wrist. At the same time, they both look out the glass doors to the rest of the 118, watching as Hen and Chimney turn their heads away as though they weren’t watching this entire conversation take place. Eddie sighs, laying his forehead flat on Buck’s chest.
“We should really tell Bobby before they do, huh?” Eddie says, and Buck chuckles, nodding his head. Eddie looks up, eyes a little wider, a little more pleading. Buck’s expression changes, becomes something softer, bringing a hand up to cup Eddie’s cheek. Immediately, Eddie leans in, not concerned in the slightest that their team is watching them. They might as well be the only two on the planet in this moment.
“You ready for this, Eds? I mean, we can probably talk our way out of this, right? We did more romantic things while we were still friends.”
Eddie’s heart squeezes in his chest, the same way that it always does when he’s with Buck. It’s like Buck is cradling it in his hands, holding it, keeping it safe. Of course he would be this gentle with him, because he’s never been any other way. Eddie loves him so much that he thinks he could burst with it, but Buck won’t let him. Buck sees those little cracks before they can burst, and puts him back together again.
“Yeah, Buck. I’m ready. Lets go.”
They make their way up to Bobby’s office, their shoulders bumping together the entire way there. Chimney and Hen don’t say anything, but they’re smiling. Eddie doesn’t pay them any attention, knowing that the teasing will come later. For now, he can just focus on this, on the lightness that’s buoying him along. When he thought about coming out to the team for the first time, he didn’t expect to be so happy about it. Then again, nothing with Buck has been how he expected it to be. It turns out that being in love isn’t comparable to anything else.
They get to Bobby’s office and immediately settle into the chairs in front of his desk, watching as Bobby narrows his eyes at them, immediately suspicious. He doesn’t speak, though. Bobby has an unnatural way of knowing when the best time to talk is. It probably comes from being a dad, but it isn’t a skill that Eddie’s learned yet. Then again, he isnt the father of an entire fire station.
“We have something to tell you, cap,” Buck starts, and seriously, Eddie loves him so much he doesn’t have the words for it. Eddie is too busy looking at Buck with a fond expression to notice Bobby’s complete lack of reaction, up until the moment that he speaks.
“It’s been… Three months, right? Congratulations.”
Eddie’s head whips back from looking at Buck to look at their boss, brows pulled together in confusion.
“Uh, what?” It’s all that Eddie can think to say, because seriously. What?
Instead of responding, bafflingly, Bobby sets half filled out HR paperwork down in front of them. Eddie takes a second to stare at it, squinting as if he can’t quite make it out, before he looks back up to Bobby, then back down again, then back at Buck. Buck’s just staring at their captain in the same way that Eddie had been, until he looks over at Eddie. In sync, they look back at Bobby, who’s now wearing a smirk on his face, clearly rather proud of himself for the reaction that he’s elicited.
“H-How did you know?” Buck asks, picking up the paperwork to inspect the details. “We were so good about keeping it a secret. You– You nearly got it down to the day.”
“Not as good at hiding it as you think.” Bobby corrects, before tapping on his computer, Eddie and Buck sitting in stunned silence while they wait. Bobby turns the computer screen around for them to see, and oh.
Oh no.
Eddie watches, beat red and trying to keep himself from covering his face in embarrassment. The picture is grainy, but even so, it’s clear enough to know what’s happening. Eddie kind of wants to ask if he can keep the video.
“Security cameras. No more making out in the supply closet, okay? Otherwise, I mean it. Congratulations to the two of you, really. I just need that paperwork finished by the end of shift.”
Eddie lets out a long breath, not realizing he had been holding it until just now. It’s a relief, all of this, being out, being free. More than he could have imagined. Eddie looks over to Buck and grins, their hands finding each other automatically.
“Thanks, Bobby,” Buck says, but he doesn’t look away from Eddie, and Eddie swears there are stars in his eyes.
“Of course, boys, but I’m mostly happy because I won the bet for how long it would take for you two to come out to the team. It’s a pretty big prize by now.”
“What?”