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Eddie took them.
Of course, he took them. He would never forget to take them. He’s not stupid. He is religious about taking the suppressants. His entire life has revolved around those fucking suppressants. He’s not sure why he’s sweating; he’s not sure why he feels like he might throw up, but he took the suppressants. He took them.
He thinks through the morning. Chris complaining that Eddie hadn’t gotten cinnamon Eggo waffles and only had regular ones; Eddie explaining he’d tried but the store was out of them; Chris begrudgingly accepting this and asking for eggs.
Eddie made the eggs. He made them, and he reminded Chris three times not to forget his backpack. Then, Chris left.
Eddie closes his eyes; they’re on their way to the first call of the day, and Chim’s telling some story about Jee playing with Baby Nash—something about tickling him or giggling. It’s adorable. Eddie knows that, but mostly because he knows everything Jee and the baby do is adorable. Not because he’s hearing the story.
He’s having trouble staying focused.
There’s an ache burrowed and tangled in the lines of his veins. Like the rush of wrong before a fever. Eddie’s knee bounces. He thinks about his mother and the hard lines of her mouth, the deeper ones, the frown lines, the ones she tried so hard to smooth out of her skin with lotions and oils. The ones Eddie caused, she said but never said, over and over.
He thinks of her, in the doctor’s office, shaking her head. Shaking her head and insisting it was a mistake. Then, later—Eddie’s insides hollow and head aching—her hands on his shoulders, just a little too tight. “This is… this is… unexpected, but it’s not the end of the world, okay? You take the suppressants, every day, do you hear me? That’s how we get through this—that’s how you keep—that’s… it’ll help, Edmundo. Take them. No matter what. This world will—just take them, understand?”
Eddie thought he understood, then, until two years later, when he was seventeen and he forgot, and he experienced the full, shattering brunt of a heat. He locked himself in his room, making all sorts of awful, humiliating sounds as he tried not to hear his parents whisper-yelling on the other side of the door. Tried not to hear his mother crying.
After that, he didn’t forget his suppressants. He doesn’t forget his suppressants.
It’s anxiety. That’s what’s causing the knot in his stomach, the thick, oppressive saliva at the back of his throat. Eddie tries to swallow, to regulate breathing that’s slipped dangerously close to too shallow, but it just leaves his throat dry, like it’s tar, not spit, that he’s tasting.
The inside of the truck is hot, and Buck’s knee keeps bumping him, and it’s itching—itching Eddie deeper than it ought to be. He wants to grind his knee into something, into Buck, to make the churn beneath his skin go away. His teeth grit; he’s tired. He didn’t forget his suppressants. He never forgets his suppressants.
Because if he did…
Chris forgot his backpack. Eddie had to grab it, chase him down. He went back inside, to the bathroom. The suppressants were on the counter. He remembers picking them up, taking them—he took them. Or maybe he took them before he had to run Chris’s backpack to him. He had them in his hand. He knows he did.
This is one thing you cannot screw up, he hears his mother’s voice, halfway to panic. People won’t respect you.
He forces a deep breath and scrubs at the skin beneath his left eye. Buck’s looking at him now, and Eddie’s really hoping he’s got sense enough to let this go because he doesn’t want to talk about it.
His hand flexes, like he can materialize the little foil backing, the plastic, the pills. He remembers and remembers and remembers holding them this morning.
Buck’s knee brushes him again. It’s so heavy, thick, like Buck’s doing it on purpose. The touch skitters up and down, finds a foothold in Eddie’s abdomen and squeezes. Eddie pulls away—even if it hurts, even if it feels like going against gravity—violently enough that Buck shoots him a proper look this time.
Eddie swipes at his lip. It’s wet, or dry, he really can’t tell. He’s got to get it together.
Maybe he’s getting sick. The world feels distant, kind of, like the colors aren’t quite right. Except Buck, no, especially Buck. Eddie knows Buck’s scent, has always liked the way it lingers in the corners of his house—on the couch cushions when they spend the night there. It’s bright, if a smell can be that, all sea and summer breeze.
They’ve never talked about secondary genders. Of course no one at work talks about it, but sometimes—at some point, it might’ve made sense that Buck and Eddie would talk about it because they’re friends. Best friends. Because they spend so much time together.
Buck probably, maybe, doesn’t know Eddie’s an omega. He’s been around enough that heat ought to have come up, unless Eddie was on enough suppressants to sterilize a small country. Which he is. Because he’s been through it once in his life, and he is never, ever doing it again. Because he wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Buck’s never asked about it.
Eddie’s had other conversations with doctors over the years—conversations where his mother wasn’t over his shoulder—about how he can’t be on suppressants forever, how it’s important to let his body process the pheromones, how if he took them correctly it could be small, could be quick.
There are medical consequences, flare-ups, feedback loops, cancer risks; Eddie’s read enough to know what he’s doing, to know he’s taking a risk, but it’s a calculated one. Because Eddie can’t. Even quick might kill him.
Consequences be damned. He’s not fucking doing it again. All the clenched, empty aching. His body filling all the hollows with some necrotic, awful need. All whining, helpless, scraping want.
Eddie doesn’t do that. He won’t do that.
“You good?” Buck asks, because he can’t help himself. He never can.
Eddie keeps his tone light, easy. “Yeah, just hot.”
Buck tips his chin, face scrunched disapprovingly. “Got a feeling the fire’s gonna be a little hotter.”
Eddie wants to punch him. Eddie wants to grab him and—but he just half-smiles and shakes his head, drags his knee a little further away when it drifts, inexplicably back towards Buck’s. “Yeah, yeah.”
His voice sounds wrong in his throat, tears at the edges of it on its way up.
“Sure you’re not getting sick?” Buck pushes, trying too hard for casual.
Eddie closes his eyes. Normally, he’d roll his eyes, wave it off, joke, but something about it, today, thickens the knot at his core until it’s big enough to yank at his margins. “Yep.”
Another few breaths, and Eddie shifts, because he can feel his own, hear Buck’s, and it’s so, so much. His fingers flex beneath his gloves; he put them on early, just to give himself something to do, to stave off the anxiety, but he wishes he hadn’t. His hands feel trapped, all sweaty and slipping; he feels trapped. He swallows again, just to try and get some actual moisture in his throat, just to pull himself back to the baseline he’s lost.
Suddenly, there’s Buck’s hand in front of him, coiled around a sweating bottle of water he must’ve pulled from the rig’s cooler. “Here.”
Eddie’s stomach bottoms out, just for a second. He stares at the bottle, and there’s a shake that starts at the center of him and spirals, pulses out and out and out, until he’s got to clench his fingers to stop it from showing.
It’s just a bottle of water. Buck does this all the time. Looks out for people—looks out for Eddie. He shouldn’t have to.
Eddie opens his mouth to say something, anything, but instead, he just takes the bottle and barely gets out, “Thanks.”
Eddie’s hands curl around the bottle. The water shimmers like diamonds, like some unknowable treasure. He’s thirsty; he hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. Of course, he’s wearing his gloves, and he’s sweating—god, he’s sweating so much—so he fumbles with the top. Once, twice, until Buck reaches over and takes the bottle out of his hands.
Before Eddie can react, before he can puzzle together why Buck took it, Buck’s twisted the cap off and handed it back to him.
Oh.
Eddie breathes, vision blurred until he blinks, and again, like the world’s shunted him back thirty seconds, he’s staring at the outstretched bottle in Buck’s hand. His stomach clenches, thighs drawn together, skin electric beneath a shower of inexplicable sparks.
It’s kind. Buck is kind. It’s one of the things Eddie’s always liked about Buck. It’s…
Eddie closes his mouth where it’s starting to quiver, then takes the bottle, sort of snatches and can’t bring himself to say thank you again. Can’t, because he worries he’s going to say more, worries he’s going to slip over an edge he can’t climb back up.
Instead, he takes a drink, a long one. The water is cool, emollient over the dried-out cracks in his throat. It’s gone in three swallows.
Eddie feels Buck take a breath—it’s this dense crush of sound. Eddie’s eyelids flutter, fingers crooking on the seat. Buck’s an alpha. Of course Buck’s an alpha. Eddie’s known this, even if Buck’s never said it.
It’s his energy; it’s the way that something in Eddie, despite everything, gnaws at him when Buck comes into a room. Something that terrifies him. Something that makes him want to say yes when Buck asks if he can make dinner, if he can help with laundry, if he can drive Eddie to work.
Something that’s made him even more vigilant about the suppressants, which is why he knows he took them.
He must have taken them.
He did.
The call helps. For one, it gives him something to focus on. For two, it gets Buck away from him, and that, more than anything, is what he needs. Because Buck’s making it worse. Because he’s there, and he’s breathing, and he smells like ocean air and windswept palms, and he keeps looking at Eddie.
The call; he has to focus on the call.
He tumbles out of the truck, a little unsteady on his feet, but when Buck notices—when Buck reaches to catch his arm—Eddie swerves the touch, gives him this pointed don’t be ridiculous look and hopes it covers the traitorous litany of touch me, hold me, help me, at his core. Buck blinks, one heartbeat, two, three, four, then scoffs and raises his hands in surrender before moving away.
A woman’s crashed a car into her ex’s house. Chim sends Hen and Eddie to talk to her while Buck and Ravi enter the house. The woman’s mostly fine, save for the whole running her car through a wall; she’s shouting about something Eddie can’t fully make out. Mostly it’s a lot of expletives.
“Ma’am,” he tries for the third time, after Hen’s second failed attempt. “Ma’am, we need to get you out of the car. Can you—”
“—arrest me, I don’t give a fuck. He’s a low-life, selfish bastard. Motherfucker won’t even answer my—”
Eddie and Hen exchange glances of twin exasperation over the hood of the car. The woman in the car, who has failed to produce a name despite being asked twice, doesn’t seem to have any major injuries.
“Ma’am.” Hen makes another valiant effort. “I understand you’re upset, but you being here right now is not safe. We need you to work with us.”
“Did I kill him? I hope I fucking killed him.” It’s fractured, sort of sideways; Eddie doesn’t think she means it. Eventually, like she’s in the beginning stages of rigor mortis, she turns her head to face Hen. “I can’t open the damn door.”
“Alright,” Eddie says because they already knew the door was stuck. “I’m going to clear the glass and we’re going to get you out through the window.”
Eddie swipes at the remaining, jagged pieces of the already-shattered window with his glove, but the few seconds of down time has the woman snarling all over again.
“He finds out I’m an alpha, then won’t fucking talk to me—sorry your dick’s too small to handle an alpha vag, you fuck!”
Hen draws back, and Eddie grits his teeth—half because of the yelling, half because it brings him back to the cinch at the center of him, expanding into something bigger—something dangerous. His fingers quiver. That soft, awful swipe of skin beneath his jaw catches in the th-thump, th-thump, ththump of his quick-then-quicker pulse.
It’s loud and heavy enough that he thinks it might just bowl him over.
He did screw up. He must have.
He didn’t take the suppressants. He picked up the pills, and Chris called. He never went back to take them. He forgot his suppressants, for the first time since… since, oh god.
No, he can do this.
All he’s got to do is get this woman out of her car, finish this call, then give Chim some excuse to run home for an hour to take them. He can handle an hour; he can handle saving a life; he can handle one more truck ride with Buck. He’ll make sure Ravi or Harry or everyone is between them.
It’ll be fine.
He shakes his head, shakes it off. “Ma’am, can you undo your seatbelt, please?”
She’s still yelling at a man that Eddie’s not sure is even in the house, at this point. Eventually, Hen gets enough of her attention that she unbuckles, and Eddie reaches through the window and gets his arms around her.
Immediately, he hears her inhale; immediately, he feels her fingers clench, tighter than they ought to. He should’ve asked Hen to grab her, but he’s halfway there now, so he gets an arm around her back and hauls her out of the car—pretends not to feel her face dug into his neck. Pretends his body doesn’t bend and curve and want. He swallows, feels her mouth, her teeth—before he shoulders her towards Hen and staggers back.
Hen catches her and shoots him a warning look because this is a victim, and Eddie just essentially flung her at Hen without checking anything. He doesn’t meet her eyes.
The woman’s entire demeanor has changed; she’s gone still, pupils dilated, eyes all over Eddie. Her scent is sweet, woodsy, and burned through with anger. “Are you—”
“Y-you got her?” Eddie’s voice leaps from his throat like a rabbit fleeing a trap; he looks at Hen and tosses a hand outward, begging for understanding he hasn’t earned.
“Yeah.” Hen gives it immediately, setting the woman on the curb to start checking her. “You good?” she asks over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, then takes a few steps back. His turnouts are so hot. It’s October, and it’s still so fucking hot. It shouldn’t be like this. He grew up in El Paso. LA heat has nothing on it; he’s never hot here, and it’s October, but he’s…
His footfalls are heavy, sending strange, too-heavy ricochets up his legs as he takes a few steps over to where Chim is talking into his radio.
“How’s the crazy lady?” Chim says as he pulls the radio away from his face.
Eddie forces a smile, raising his eyebrows to make it more convincing. “Crazy, but fine on initial inspection. Hen’s checking her now.”
His voice is so wrong, thick with the heat building inside him. He wants Buck; no, no, he does not fucking want Buck, even if he thinks he can smell him through the walls of a half-collapsed house, even if his body twists up and up and up when he hears Buck’s tinny voice on the radio, “We found the owner, but… I… I don’t think we can move him. I don’t know what’s going on. I think he’s seizing or-or… something?”
Chim frowns at the radio, then turns to Eddie. “Diaz, you’re up. Be careful and be quick. Place’s got a wood frame, and our scorned lover hit a bad spot. I need everyone out ASAP, could be looking at a collapse.”
“Yep.” Eddie ignores the hot and cold throbbing at his core and grabs the medical bag he’d dropped near the truck. The leather is heavy against his hand, dragging through his gloves, sending a quiver up his arms.
Harry’s got most of the flames out, so it’s just a pile of smoking mess when Eddie enters through the side door. The smoke drowns out most of the smells, but it pierces straight to his center, desperate to meet the heat inside him, scorched on both sides. Buck calls out their location, but Eddie doesn’t need it—god, he doesn’t need it. Even with all the smoke, he feels, smells, tastes Buck and the salt sting of his panic.
When he finds them, Buck’s knelt over a man near the back corner of the house, behind the staircase, and Ravi’s stood over them, sort of hovering like he isn’t sure what to do. His eyes light when he sees Eddie, grateful because he’s got no idea the frayed thread Eddie’s hanging on by.
“We think he must’ve been thrown when the car hit,” Ravi explains, “but… h-he’s having some kind of reaction. I don’t think it’s just a head injury. He’s seizing, but it’s… I-I don’t know.”
Eddie closes his eyes, steels himself, and steps around Ravi to kneel on the opposite side of the man, who is definitely having a seizure. He’s rigid, eyes rolled back, jerking, but that’s not what Eddie notices—it’s the fucking scent. Heavy and humid, not like the woman’s in the car, not even like Buck’s. It’s incessant, like tendrils in Eddie’s throat, all leather and cigar smoke, suffocating. Eddie thought it might’ve been the smoke, but it’s not—it’s the man on the ground.
The sensation ravages his already-raw insides. Want and buckling—this horrific desire to be consumed, to be covered in something, anything, even if it kills him. Sweat beads between his fingers, makes them slick on the bag’s strap. His legs quiver, all of him is slippery, hot and sticky.
Eddie recoils, stumbles back, just a beat, before he gets a hold of himself.
“Eddie?” Buck asks, and it’s so clear—so wholly resonant—and it half-pulls him out of himself, but makes him aware, humiliatingly aware, of the slick between his legs.
This is really happening. He’s at work, and this is…
“Fuck,” he says, like a lifeline, something to bring him back to himself. To the person he’s supposed to be. The one who needs to save this man’s life, no matter what he smells like, no matter how bad things look. He forces himself forward, eyes drawn to the glands on the man’s neck. They’re swollen, like lymph nodes, but they aren’t. They’re red, all inflamed—scent glands, because of course it would be this, because Eddie is cursed.
“What?” Buck looks up, all wide eyed and curious. His scent’s not as dense; it feels like breathing beneath all the woodsmoke—all seafoam and open air. Eddie doesn’t look at him, can’t look at him, because he shouldn’t be able to smell Buck right now, not with another alpha this close, stuck in a rut like this.
Eddie clears his throat, blinks too hard. All his movements are gummy and too-slow, but he has to get through this. He knows how to get through this. “He’s, ah… he’s in—it’s a rut, i-it’s RINS. Basically, he’s stuck in-in… the hormones are overstimulating his brain.”
Eddie knows this because it’s part of being a paramedic, but he also knows from his own research. Knows something similar can happen to omegas. Knows, knows, knows.
“That’s a thing?” Ravi winces and draws back a little further. “So do we just have to, like… wait, or?”
“No.” Eddie opens his bag and digs through the different medications. “If we don’t treat it, it’ll essentially burn up his brain and kill him.”
“Shit,” Ravi hisses.
“New anxiety unlocked,” Buck says, then, more urgently, “do you have anything for it?”
Eddie winces. He’s trying not to breathe—trying not to inhale. Trying not to do anything but look through his bag and find the endocrine inhibitor. His fingers are soaked, fumbling through the different vials and gauze and—he blinks sweat out of his eyes. Everything is so slippery. Finally, he finds it, a tiny vial towards the bottom of the bag. He grabs it, grabs the syringe. Starts to draw up the ten milliliters.
And then the alpha gets a hand on his arm. The grip is sudden, violent enough that Eddie’s hand seizes as he drops the syringe back into the bag.
“Fuck,” Eddie gasps.
The man yanks, pulls Eddie towards him—still rigid and seizing and completely not there. His fingernails dig into the fabric of Eddie’s turnouts. If he wasn’t wearing them, they’d have drawn blood. And some far-off, horrible part of Eddie wishes he wasn’t—wishes he could take them off, let the nails and the scent and the hurt sink in. Let the want seep out, somehow, into anything but him.
“What the hell?” Buck half-lunges across the man’s body to try and tear his hand off Eddie, but it’s locked like a bear trap. Eddie blinks, blinks, stares as Buck grits his teeth, yanks harder. Some delusional, addled part of him swoons, half lost in the idea that they’re fighting over him, and that same disgusting, terrible part likes it. Eddie snaps back into himself and winces as he uses his other hand to find the medicine again.
It’s half spilled in the bottom of the bag.
Shit.
“Buck,” Eddie says and hates the fracture in his voice. “C-can you… there should be more in the truck. I-I don’t think this dose is gonna…”
Buck isn’t listening. He’s half out of his mind trying to get the seizing alpha’s hand off Eddie. Eddie readies the syringe with what little he’s got left of the medication—6 mL, not enough, but something.
Ravi, on the other hand, hears his ask. “I’ll get it. Will Hen know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, but it comes out warped again. Rasping. Because the hand on him is digging in harder, brushing his skin, and it’s hot—and he thinks, or doesn’t think, not really, not on purpose—but he imagines the touch digging deeper, tearing into him, his skin, burrowing deep enough to fill some of the hollowing ache at his center. His eyelids flutter, and he thinks of hands on his waist, his hips, his thighs.
The scent of leather drags down his throat, and he loses himself in it. The alpha’s grip on his arm tightens, tightens, and Eddie needs it to keep going—going until he’s twisted and crushed beneath it.
“Eddie!”
The grip is wrenched away, and Eddie is plunged back into reality—back into the empty ache, drowning in miserable, sticking want, every nerve scorched and searching. He opens his mouth to cry out but bites it back, swallows it, and that scalds him too, all the way down to his chest.
There’s this far-off sense of panic, this sort of crystallized thought that he should be worried, that he should get out of here. But all his body wants to do is drop to the ground, to curl inward. Everything is too slow. He blinks, jaw tense at the singe of tears in his eyes, behind his nose. A wet breath comes, half-choking out of him.
The man’s still on the ground; Eddie still has a job to do. He has to do it.
He blinks again, but the world’s gone blurry with heat or tears or want or some ruthless combination of all three. He can’t see, can’t think. Someone says his name again.
There’s another smell now, awful, nauseating—sick-sweet like death, like corpses and decay. Eddie’s. It’s his scent—the thing he’s run from his entire life. He shakes his head. People are looking at him, staring and not touching. Never touching. Because they can’t touch, because no one can touch him.
He tries to come back, find a way to be in his body, but his body is the problem. His body’s always been the problem.
Heat builds beneath his turnouts, a slow, oozing like lava over his bones. It clings to his skin, hardens and burns, until every rivulet of sweat feels damn near volcanic. Until it’s torn through his skin, caught in his blood stream, boiling him from the inside out like one of those tragic Pompeii plaster casts.
He’s halfway through yanking off one of his gloves—just to get some fucking air on his skin—when he sees where Buck’s plunged the syringe into the man’s swollen gland.
Good. Buck’s so good at stuff like that, picking up the slack. Eddie’s slack.
Immediately, the alpha—the man—starts to slacken. The scent eases, but the throb in Eddie’s chest doesn’t. The heat doesn’t. He’s going to suffocate, pass out—something. He wonders, briefly, if there’s some kind of suppressant he could give himself in his medical bag, but his mind’s as slippery as everything else. He can’t think.
Eddie tries to swipe at some of the sweat on his face, but he uses the wrong hand, the one that’s still gloved, and it’s rough, coarse, catching in every fever-scorched pore. It doesn’t work. It makes his insides clench and cramp, cramp enough that he makes a noise, a bad noise.
“Eddie?” Buck tries again, all heady. His hand settles on Eddie’s and sends a fluttering spasm down Eddie’s back. Eddie wants to melt into it, to let the heat take him and just drip, liquid, between Buck’s fingers.
No.
He has to shake this off; he has to wake up. They have to get this man—this victim—out of this house. Get back to the truck. But how can he do anything when it’s so fucking hot?
“I c—” Eddie tears himself away from both of them, from Buck, impossibly, stumbling towards the front of the house. “It’s... I can’t—it’s so hot. It’s so fucking… it’s…” He tears at the front of his turnouts, fingers clumsy and desperate, and rips, wrenches until his helmet and coat and gloves are on the ground.
“Hey, h-hey! What are you doing?” Buck takes a step towards him, but Eddie shakes his head, throws out a hand to protect himself and holds his breath. Because if he breathes, he’s going to come apart. He’s going to throw himself against Buck, again and again, until he breaks open.
He can’t do this; he has to stay in control. He will not come back from this if he lets it take him under. His hands slide down, grabbing, sort of uselessly for the bottom of his turnouts where everything is wet and oozing, the origin of all that heat, sweat and something else between his thighs.
He tries not to think about how desperately he wants Buck to cross the space between them, to pin him to the wall, to push and push and push into him until all his empty heat is crushed beneath Buck. Beneath his chest and hands, and the cool, crisp scent of him—the scent that even holding his breath—Eddie can’t stop breathing. The churn in his bloodstream, the saliva in his throat, on his tongue.
Somehow, he’s back against a wall, skull digging into drywall. He holds his breath as long as he can; he’s still holding it when he opens his eyes, and Buck is staring at him. Eyes dilated, lips parted.
“Eddie,” he says for a third time, but this time, it’s a gasp—almost a prayer.
Eddie wants to shake his head. He wants to take this back, wants to find an explanation that can undo the look on Buck’s face, but instead he can’t stop hearing Buck’s breath over his name, can’t stop the half-whine, half-moan that tumbles out of him.
Buck answers it with a sound of his own, something Eddie doesn’t recognize—no, does recognize like the drum of his own pulse. They’re on a job. Somewhere, in the recesses of his blurred, breaking mind, Eddie knows that—knows that can’t do this.
But he doesn’t care.
There’s movement behind Buck, though Eddie can’t make his eyes move to find it, like Buck’s the only color in a world of monochrome. Someone says something. The hair on Eddie’s neck rises, and there’s that scent again—woodsmoke. Tinged with something like ozone.
It makes Eddie look, finally, at the other person with them. It’s the man from before, back on his feet, chest still heaving. Eddie shrinks a little where he’s pinned himself to the wall. A swirl of fear and fever pitches his stomach, draws everything inside him heavier, too heavy. He knows what’s going to happen.
Eddie can’t tell if he wants to stop it or not.
The other alpha is on him fast. Eddie doesn’t realize he’s closed his eyes, but the touch is there, a hand slid up towards his neck—this deep, dragging wheeze. That leather-bound scent takes him under for another second. The grip sinks into his neck, cuts off his air flow, cuts off everything until there’s just hot, damp breath over the soft space beneath the hinge of his jaw.
And then it’s gone, and Eddie shivers, whines, pitches forward in this surge of confusion. He tries to open his eyes, does eventually, and finds Buck first, with his hands in another man’s shirt. Eddie’s knees shake, and he tries not to sink. He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. Or maybe something does, but it’s not words—it’s just whining. Pitiful, useless whining.
They can’t do this here, he gets that, but he can’t make himself know it. Not really. All he can do is watch Buck shove the other alpha, position himself between Eddie and him. Eddie opens his mouth to say his name, and he’s not sure why. Not sure if it’s a warning, or a plea, or something else. But it doesn’t matter, Buck turns.
Eddie’s not even sure he said it, but Buck turns.
The other man grabs Buck, tears him away, towards the car with its hood still crashed through the front of the house. Buck’s off-balance enough that he stumbles, hits the hood. The other alpha turns, eyes near-black when they find Eddie again. Eddie needs Buck to be okay, needs to check on him, even through the slurry of thoughts that will produce nothing but alpha, alpha, alphalphalpha.
Another man—not Buck—is in front of him again, his mouth an inch from Eddie’s, and he says, rasping, “You’re in heat.”
Eddie whimpers, because he’s lost control of the muscles in his throat. He needs Buck; he can still smell him. He needs to make sure he’s okay. He shakes his head and gets out, “Buck.”
The alpha frowns, but there’s not much room for confusion in his expression—there’s just molten, aching want to match the tug in Eddie’s gut. The drench between his legs.
There’s an audible crack, loud enough that Eddie hears it through the fog in his head. Another one, and then a sort of groaning shred of sound as the air shifts. Fear pierces Eddie’s delirium. His eyes widen, and he tries to get up, tries to get past the alpha standing in front of him.
But the alpha catches his waist, drags him back, more instinct than intent. But they’ve moved enough that Eddie can see Buck near the hood of the car, can see his eyes wide, on Eddie. Can see the shape of his name on Buck’s mouth before the floor buckles, crumbles, and there’s another crack, a dozen more.
Eddie sees Buck fall and feels the first slice of panic, heavy enough that when the floor beneath him gives, when he starts to fall, his only thought and feeling and instinct is relief that he’s falling too.
~
Buck’s body lurches around the need for breath, then stumbles, frantically, into it. His fingers drag over the ground, and his bones pulse with impact.
Impact.
He fell.
His eyes snap open, and he gets onto his knees, pain momentarily forgotten.
“Eddie.” His mouth says it before his mind catches up. He thinks back through the last few minutes: Eddie, damp neck exposed, sweating, his rasping breaths—those slender, silk fingers tearing at his turnouts. Twisted and tangled up with wet, screaming need.
That scent.
God, his scent.
Buck can’t see him now. The floor collapsed into a basement Buck hadn’t known was here, and now the space above and behind him is filled with collapsed dry wall, broken wood, things he can’t categorize right now because he doesn’t see Eddie.
The pocket he’s fallen into isn’t big; Buck’s helmet is cracked on the ground a few feet away from him, but Eddie isn’t there. He isn’t anywhere.
Buck takes a breath, finds it again. Eddie’s scent. He blinks away the memories of the other alpha, of his fucking hands on Eddie’s neck, on that hot, shredded breath in Eddie’s throat, those dark omega eyes on another alpha.
Buck’s known Eddie’s an omega. Of course he’s known. He’s never pried because Eddie’s never wanted to talk about it; Eddie’s like that with a lot of things. He’s got all these silent, jagged edges, and Buck picks carefully around them, through them.
But of course he’s known.
Buck knows Eddie takes suppressants, suspects he hasn’t let himself have a proper heat in a long time. Another thing Buck’s tried not to think of—Eddie in heat. Even now, the idea rips at some carefully constructed boundary in his chest.
Eddie was in heat today, on the job. Buck suspected, should have said something, but he froze, because it was Eddie.
He knows Eddie’s scent, has it locked in some deep, unknowable part of him. Sweet and clinging, like the dust of rain on a summer sidewalk, powdered sugar off a fair funnel cake, the vanilla-sweet of batter just as it starts to bake.
God, Buck knows it—has smelt it in the worn cushions of Eddie’s couch, in the sweat-stained shirts Eddie crams into his locker after workouts, in the sheets of the cot Eddie always, always uses if he naps on shifts. Buck lays in that same cot every shift when Eddie’s not on, pretends it’s coincidence, even as he buries his face so deep in the pillow he sees sparks in the backs of his eyelids.
He smells it now, starker, clearer, purer than it’s ever been. Enough to make him lightheaded, enough to rip open that bastion behind his breastbone. His fingers crook, and everything goes tight, sharp, throbbing. His skin heats, sticks to his uniform, and he knows—because of course he fucking knows—he’s about to lose control.
“Ed…” The second syllable catches in a heaving breath.
He needs to find him. Needs to keep him safe. Needs to touch him. Needs to help him. Buck’s body heaves, and he circles, needing to move, needing to give his limbs something to do other than yearn.
“Eddie?” He tries again. His voice rasping, explosive. The space is so small, it all but suffocates it. He growls, breathes, stumbles towards Eddie scent, straight into another wall of debris. The whole fucking living room is collapsed in front of him, blocking the way—half a staircase, snapped wood from a cabinet, cushions.
Eddie’s here. Buck can sense him, taste, touch, smell, hear—he just can’t see him. He digs his fingers into the wood of a half-crushed cabinet, ignoring that he’s in a collapsed pocket beneath a house that’s falling apart, ignoring that this space is just one piece of a larger basement. The rest of it could very well be crushed beneath the rest of this shit.
But he doesn’t think about that—doesn’t care.
Because if it is, that would mean Eddie is crushed beneath it, and Buck would dig through solid fucking concrete if it meant getting to him. He closes his eyes, listens to Eddie’s far-off breathing, shallow, scared. Loud in Buck’s ears. In his chest.
“Fuck,” Buck bows a little beneath the throb of his hunger, heavier, louder with the rush of blood in his body. Senses normally preoccupied with Eddie now completely consumed with him. “Eddie!”
“Buck,” a voice says, but it’s not Eddie’s—it’s tinny, faraway. Chimney. “Buckley, can you hear me?”
Buck thinks about ignoring it. Part of him is lost to something, something wrong and still breaking, even as he stumbles over and grabs his radio. “Y-yeah, I can—I can hear you, Cap.”
“Is Diaz with you?”
Buck’s chest constricts. He’s not, but he should be. He’s supposed to be. “No.”
“Okay, that’s okay. Just sit tight. The house collapsed, but the basement must still be standing. We’re gonna get you out.” A pause, brief—knowing, because Chim always has been. “All of you.”
“I’m gonna find him,” Buck gasps into the radio.
“No,” Chim comes back, sharp and stinging. “The whole place is unstable. Stay where you are. We’ll find him, I promise. It shouldn’t take us more than a couple hours, tops. Just don’t… just stay where you are, Buck. Okay? Do you hear m—”
Buck frowns, thinks about how to respond—how to explain that he can’t just sit here, but instead, he turns off the radio as Chim starts another sentence.
A couple hours.
Chim doesn’t get it. He can’t. Buck has to find Eddie, and he will. Because there’s something else. The copper, tangy scent of blood—Eddie’s blood. He’s hurt. He’s scared. He needs Buck. Buck needs him.
The churn in Buck’s chest crushes inward, some malignant twist of panic and possession. He has to get to him; he needs the eruption inside him outside, to obliterate everything between himself and Eddie, his Eddie, his omega, his—he has to get to him.
Eddie didn’t have his helmet on. If he fell, if he hit his head—if he…
Buck grabs the cabinet door, snaps it clean off the hinge. It grants him a narrow window to a second bubble of open space. There’s a burst of relief at the idea that there is more space, that it isn’t just a sea of furniture and floor and wall.
Then, Buck finds him. Eddie. He’s lying a few feet away, temple and chest on the concrete, next to shattered glass and an overturned weight bench. The dirty corner of a rug is caught between his fingers, like he’s going to wrap himself in it, and a rivulet of liquid, near black in the low light, streams from his hair to catch in his eyelashes.
Buck watches his shallow breathing, in the hitched, half motions of his chest. He’s still burning with heat. There’s the slice of sweatsalt and copper, mostly drowned in the intoxicating, undeniable scent of Eddie himself. Of how bad he needs this—how bad he needs Buck.
Eddie gasps, opens his eyes and finds Buck immediately through the narrow space Buck’s created in the makeshift wall between them. He whimpers, and Buck hears it like Eddie’s at his ear—all but feels Eddie’s panting breath on his temple. Buck inhales, opened mouth, and watches as Eddie drags himself upright, body curled inward, like he can fill the hollow in his center himself.
There’s a cut on his hand too, deeper than the one on his temple, from his wrist to the space between his index and middle finger. Buck’s throat goes thick with saliva, his teeth feel too big for his mouth. His bones feel too big for his body.
Eddie is so pretty, Buck wants to put his mouth on him, wants to crush that desire-damp skin to his, to lick every fucking inch of him.
“E-Eddie,” Buck almost can’t get it out for the growl in his throat. His body, mind, soul feel split in two—the dueling need to take and take care of. All these tiny, familiar twinges in his body made torrential. Because this isn’t just vigilance or hunger or lust or greed—it isn’t just a rut anymore. It’s Eddie. “Are you… y-your head?”
Eddie’s hand quivers, and he raises it, just a little, like he’s trying to understand where his head is, if he even has one. He aborts the attempt and doubles over, forehead to the ground, as he takes these desperate, open-mouthed gasps, and Buck’s knees nearly give out.
Buck groans, then shoves his arm into the narrow hole he’s made in the debris. He tries to widen it, push through, but it doesn’t work—instead the whole thing trembles like it’s going to collapse, and he’s still present enough to know that if it collapses—there’s a good chance neither of them survive.
“Eddie, I c—” Buck snarls, this tearing, violent sound that starts at the base of his chest and hurts as it presses past his teeth. “Fuck.”
Eddie’s fingers clench and dig into the ground at the sound of Buck’s voice. He whines, and it’s this sweet, reedy sound, the torn-out cry of an omega in heat. An omega who is desperate, aching, soaked through with sweat and slick and—Buck tears at another piece of the cabinet, at anything he can to get through the gap in the wall of debris between them.
The pile shifts, grinds, but won’t give him anymore space—won’t let him get any closer.
Eddie twists his head, pulls all of his limbs towards his core as he gets out, “I’m s—shit, I’m sorry. I thought I…” It goes high, wet, breaks off. “I didn’t… I… I’m so sorry.”
For a moment, Buck’s vision goes white; there’s nothing in him but burst after burst of something unnamable. Hearing Eddie, seeing Eddie, miserable and writhing beneath this thing that Buck could fix, that Buck was fucking made to fix if he could just get to him.
“I-it’s…” Buck’s voice gets lost in his own throat. “Don’t…”
And then it’s not just Eddie anymore.
There’s something else.
Someone else.
A stronger, suffocating, scent, that wrenches Buck’s crushing ache to full-blown panic. New leather, woodsmoke, danger, danger, danger, danger.
Buck will kill him.
Before he ever sees him, he imagines it a dozen times: tearing the arms and legs and limbs off his body. He snarls, screams as the man steps into his field of vision.
He’s close. He’s on his feet, stumbling, staring at Eddie. He’s on the other side of the rubble. Eddie’s side.
He’s close enough—he’s going to touch him. Buck’s fingers tear like claws over the debris in front of him, and metal scrapes and tears at his skin.
“Stay away from him,” he barely recognizes his words in the snarling.
The other alpha doesn’t even look at him. He’s still watching Eddie, who doesn’t seem to know he’s there. He’s still curled in on himself, trying to sate the need stealing his breath.
And then the alpha is on top of him, so fast it knocks the wind out of Buck. Eddie makes this small, uncertain sound, but he doesn’t resist when the alpha yanks the turnout suspenders off his shoulders, then peels the stained shirt off him and drags it over his arms before he drags half-gnarled fingers down the line of Eddie’s sternum.
Buck hears himself screaming—knows he must be saying something, but he can’t understand it. All he feels is horror, like his insides are being rent up and torn open. All he tastes is blood.
Eddie’s head tips back, and the alpha on top of him bends down, inhales at his neck and shudders. He says something. Buck can’t hear it, can’t, can’t, can’t hear or see or feel anything but the hitch in Eddie’s breathing, the raspy whine caught in his throat. It catches, harder, reacting to the alpha’s hand scooping lower, towards the bulk of Eddie’s pants—all that’s left of the turnouts that are supposed to protect him in situations like this.
No, not like this.
There’s no fucking protocol for something like this.
Buck shakes his head, feels the burn of tears as Eddie cants his hips, drops, lifts one of his knees so his boot knocks clumsily against the man’s hand. It’s not on purpose, might even be trying to help, but the alpha snarls and drags a hand down Eddie’s still-covered calf to rip the boots off one foot, then the other.
Eddie’s hand reaches to grab at the man’s arm; he whines again, all high-pitched, some mix of pain and pulse and pleading. The alpha strips the Kevlar from Eddie’s waist in this desperate, brutal tear. Eddie lets him. His movements are feverish, slow, and the alpha doesn’t notice. Doesn’t notice Eddie’s head fall back against the concrete too hard, doesn’t notice the twitch in his fingers as the rug he was holding onto is knocked away in the frenzy of motion.
“Stop!” Buck hears himself, distantly, hears how ragged his voice is now—how wrong. “You can’t—get off him.”
The alpha doesn’t look, but Eddie does. His head turns, eyes glazed, face flushed beneath a sheen of sweat, but he blinks, searches, and Buck hears the shape of his next breath, hears the prayer in it, “Buck.”
Buck cannot stand here and let this clumsy, miserable alpha touch Eddie like this. Not trapped under a bunch of rubble, half-scared out of his mind. Buck won’t—can’t—let this happen.
The alpha pins Eddie’s knee to the ground with his own, gets a hand on his throat. Buck’s vision triples, blurs, erupts with sounds and color that shouldn’t be there. The alpha’s scent is all threaded through with Eddie’s, suffocating it, like his thumb on Eddie’s pulse.
Eddie whimpers when the man drags his thumb away and presses his mouth into the soft spot beneath the hinge of his jaw. All of his body presses down, driving Eddie’s further into the concrete. He breathes too heavy at Eddie’s neck, and Buck hears, distantly, “I’m sorry. I can’t—I can’t stop. I can’t.”
Hears, “I-it’s okay. It’s…” Another breath, shot through with a moan, as the other alpha, the wrong alpha, drags his center against Eddie’s. Hand on Eddie’s hip, beneath his waistband, digging towards the bone.
Eddie closes his eyes, neck bare and exposed where he drags his head over the concrete, where he turns it to finally find Buck, eyes clearing just a little. They’re black from so far away, dark, but still, there’s something in them. Want, heat, absolutely, but something else. He tries to move his mouth, but it’s just another reedy wisp of a moan as the alpha fumbles for his own pants.
Buck doesn’t make the choice. Doesn’t remember doing anything. His hand is on the debris, has been on the debris—there’s something plastic, almost hollow, that buckles when he squeezes hard enough. He drags it back and drives himself into it, into the impossibly small space in front of him. It doesn’t matter. He will make himself smaller. He will rip off his own arms. It doesn’t matter.
He digs, claws, through the space, closer and closer, until he spills out the other side, until there’s nothing between him and Eddie—except the body of a man who can’t be there. Buck doesn’t think about what to do, doesn’t feel himself move until he’s got the man’s hair in his hand, wrenching and flinging him back—away, away, away from Eddie.
The man crashes into something, but Buck’s vision is so fuzzy he can’t tell what. He smells Eddie on him, on this other person, this alpha, this… Buck’s chest heaves, trying to catch breath that’s caught fire.
He tries to form words, tries to tell the man to back off, but all that comes out of him are these animal snarls, lips curling as he quivers. The alpha gets back to his feet, swaying.
Victim, Buck tries to remind himself. He’s a victim.
It doesn’t work.
Behind him, Eddie’s breath is wheezing, whining, as he rolls onto his side, curls back up, because he’s alone again, and nausea twists Buck’s stomach because this man was helping him—as clumsy and stupid as it was, he was helping Eddie. But he wasn’t, because Buck’s the only one who can help him, the only one who can do it right.
“I-is he your omega?” he asks.
Buck doesn’t hesitate. “Yes. He’s mine. Don’t touch him.”
The guy flinches, draws back like something’s burned him. He might be bleeding. He is. They’re all bleeding.
“Well,” the other alpha’s voice sounds like his, low, feral. “You fucked up letting him get that bad. We’re fucking trapped here, and he’s—he’s so…” Buck’s teeth snap together. The man’s takes a step towards him, towards Eddie. “You’re gonna have to share.”
If he hadn’t felt it first in his chest, Buck would think the sound was the building’s impending collapse. It’s loud, furious, and he crosses the space, hands imprinted on the man’s skull as he catches it—jams it against the concrete floor once, before he flings him back—back so he crashes into something else Buck can’t make out. Maybe the weight bench.
Buck’s not sure what his body’s next move is—lost in the throes of everything, but it doesn’t matter, because Eddie’s whine gets clearer, and he cries out, “Buck.”
A question, a plea, a warning, all jammed into a word as flimsy as ash.
Buck whirls, eyes wide, because Eddie is alone. Eddie, his Eddie, his omega needs him, and he’s wasting his time with an alpha that doesn’t matter. That never mattered.
He shakes his head and then he’s got Eddie’s head in his hand, off the concrete, pulling him up as he stripes his own shirt from his body—sets it on the ground as a pillow when he slides his hand to Eddie’s neck, and his head lolls onto it.
Eddie tries to grab onto him, fingers fisting, searching for fabric that isn’t there—slipping in the sweat on Buck’s chest, leaving streaks of blood where his left hand’s cut open. He blinks, and his eyes are wet, bleary, glazed, but he’s looking at Buck—looking with eyes shot totally through with pupil. Black like something wild and unspent.
“He’s gone. I got you. I’m right here.”
“You—” is all Eddie manages as Buck catches the space where his back and hips and spine gather into a dizzying, delicate center, and pulls him up. Eddie comes easily, obedient, eager, as Buck slides the rug back with his foot, sets Eddie on top of it. It’s not enough; it’s dirty and damp and smells like cigarette smoke; it’s not where they should be. But it’s better than concrete. It’s the thing Eddie was hanging onto when Buck wasn’t there.
Buck settles on top of him, brushing matted hair and dirt from his forehead in soft, soothing strokes. Eddie’s skin is damp, thrumming with heat that brightens with every labored breath. God, Buck wants him. He wants to drive himself into Eddie, to answer the jagged desperation caught in Eddie’s throat, to bite and suck and take and take and take, but he can’t. He won’t. “You’re okay.”
Eddie blinks, blinks again, and somehow both cinched and stretched thin, he whispers, “Y-you’re bleeding.”
“So are you,” Buck says as his eyes find the blood at Eddie’s temple. “Don’t worry—just, look at me, baby.” He keeps it gentle, warring with the want in his middle, the pulse of his cock swollen and rigid between his legs.
“I took them,” Eddie whines, but he listens—through a fog of delirium, voice wrung out and glittering with the tears in his eyes—he looks at Buck. “I thought—I… I’m sorry.”
“N-no… don’t be sorry.” Buck swipes at the tears on his cheeks, follows the path over his cheekbone again and again, shushing and soft as he kisses the temple that’s not bloodied. He lingers, throat thick with it, before he drags himself back. “It’s okay, I know. It’s gonna be okay, Eddie, I got you. I’m gonna take care of you.”
Eddie moans, like the words have set something off inside of him. His body rocks with it, and Buck watches a thousand eruptions run down him, crown to spine to toes, until he gets those familiar, fever-licked fingers on Buck’s neck.
“Please,” Eddie says, over and over, caught in his breath and buffeted until it’s barely there.
A keening rips out of Buck, and he shakes his head, mouth on Eddie’s neck, where he can still smell the lingering bid of another alpha, another man that never should have touched him. Buck licks, sucks until Eddie’s body shivers beneath it, then he kisses his jaw, the broken plea on his mouth.
Everything about this is wrong. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Eddie deserves something soft and safe and sacred, but Eddie needs this, needs Buck now, and Buck wants, wants, wants. Now and then and always. He drags the rest of fabric from Eddie’s hips, uniform pants, boxers; they cling, stick to Eddie’s soaked thighs.
Buck feels like a supernova, flirting forever with collapse, with eruption. His fingers sprawl to keep the hunger from taking him under, to keep him up, watching Eddie as he gasps, “God… you’re even prettier than I’d—Eddie. You’re so—fuck.”
An admission. Even if Eddie’s barely present to hear it, that Buck’s thought about it, in his room, every rut, a million stolen moments. Fuck, he’s thought about it. Eddie in heat, a drenched mess. Eddie whispering his name. Begging for him.
Yet, none of those thoughts, those fantasies, compare to this, to Eddie, real, actual, Eddie—even trapped in a half-destroyed building with another alpha unconscious a few feet away. None of it measures up. None of it even comes close.
Buck sucks in a breath, broken like water brought to boil. He keeps his mouth open, smearing, tasting, lips and tongue a mosaic down Eddie’s neck, the hollow in his throat, the heave of his chest. He sets a sprawled, crushing hand on Eddie’s collarbone, thumb heavy on his pulsepoint, to brace, to hold back and horde all at once.
Eddie’s scent is so all-consuming, so ever-present in his lungs, his throat, his blood, that he doesn’t think there is anything else. The world begins and ends with the vanilla-stoked pulse of Eddie’s sweat, his breath, his whimper. Buck’s teeth wander, wait, before he kisses the concave at the center of Eddie’s chest, hard, almost violent, and his knees squeeze where they’re bracketing Eddie’s hips.
His hand hooks around the soft underside of Eddie’s thigh, and he strokes circles with his thumb—thinks of setting his mouth against it, tasting it, but Eddie’s breath is wheezing, lungs cinched off and screaming for something—for Buck.
He coaxes Eddie’s thigh up, enough that his knee comes off the ground, close enough that Buck can drift sideways and kiss the thin skin over the bone of it. He moves his grip towards Eddie’s hip and licks a streak of wet heat down his inner thigh as he slides himself between Eddie’s legs properly, as he gets both his knees up enough that he’s got two hands on the near-vulgar jut of Eddie’s hipbone.
“I’m gonna help you, Eddie,” Buck whispers against the smooth, slick-glazed skin of his thigh. The taste plays at his lips, thick like a promised storm, and saliva gathers on Buck’s tongue like raindrops. Buck’s eyes cast upwards to watch the swallow in Eddie’s throat as he hears it, tries to nod. “It’s not how I wanna do this. You deserve more than this, but I have to… I’m gonna fuck you. I’m gonna make it better, then I’m gonna get you out of here. I’m gonna take you home, is that okay?”
Eddie whimpers, and Buck slides one of his hands over the line of his cock, enough that Eddie’s grits his teeth, wrestles with, succumbs to, the moan at the back of his throat. He nods, all wet and frantic.
“Look at me,” Buck instructs, then drags himself away from Eddie’s skin, pulls his hips up, his body down, towards him. He’s raised his head enough that he can see Eddie panting, see the heave of his chest, made glossy with sweat, the same sweat caught and clinging in his hair, in the curve of his dark eyelashes.
Eddie obeys, opens his eyes, fluttering above a swollen, too-pink mouth, before he finds Buck, before he whispers, again, again, again, “please.”
Want and need crash and drag Buck under like a wave. He’s half-drowned before he adjusts his grip on Eddie’s hips, before he hikes him up, just a little further, and finds the drenched entrance of him. It’s so easy—so fucking easy, to slide inside of him. Buck watches the flutter of Eddie’s long, ink dark lashes splayed against his cheeks, and he holds him a little tighter as his eyes drop to Eddie’s fingers, clenched over the rug beneath them.
It’s like being home, like breathing, being inside Eddie. This thing Buck’s thought about, but never thought about—Eddie gives so easily, so completely, and the shape of him molds entirely to Buck. Tight and wet and warm enough that Buck’s hands dig into his skin, until they find bone, and Eddie’s head drops back, neck exposed and damp again, as he feels it—takes it. Needs it.
One of Eddie’s ankles hits the hard line of Buck’s shoulder, and Buck draws a hand back, catches it, holds it there, stoking the curve of the bone as he pushes further into him, feels Eddie relax, then tighten around him. He pulls him closer with the hand still on Eddie’s hip, and Eddie comes like something called, something owned. Buck finally sinks, gives into the warmth of it. Heat and pleasure pool in his core as everything but Eddie goes blurry in front of him.
Some of the tension bleeds out of him, even as the pleasure ramps enough that Eddie gasps, again and again, he gasps. Buck hangs onto him, feels the swell of his own knot as he pushes, harder, into him, again—then again, into the cradle of Eddie’s insides. He keeps his eyes open, even as pleasure catches and clogs his throat. He watches Eddie. Watches the flutter of his eyelashes, the subtle part of his mouth, the click and hitch of his throat as the moan catches on another wave of ecstasy.
Satisfaction crashes over Buck like a porcelain vase, pours into him like sunlight. Eddie pulses around him, this mold made just for him, Buck wonders who he is—who he’s been before this moment, before finding the lock where his key fits. Before Eddie—before having him.
He glides the hand at Eddie’s ankle down, further, to find the rigid, slippery line of his cock. It’s still hard, still leaking, as Buck strokes more delicately, and leans up, over, so that he’s watching Eddie gasp, watching his eyes go from black to brown then back again. Buck bites his lip, somehow inches himself deeper into Eddie, before he strokes some of the dark hair off his damp forehead.
“You’re perfect,” he whispers, then, because he needs to see it—like bearing witness to the birth of something holy. “Eddie, Eddie… come for me, baby, one more time…”
Buck’s hand slips back down, fingers caressing, slow, over the skin of his neck, then slower, over the ridges of his chest, his abdomen, his navel, until he finds the shape of himself—his own knot, beneath the skin of Eddie’s stomach. Eddie’s head peels to the side, and he whines into the air, towards the rug, before Buck catches his jaw and drags him until his eyes find Buck like a bolt of lightning in a hurricane as Buck’s thumb settles at the corner of his mouth, the other still caressing the shape of himself beneath Eddie’s skin.
Eddie catches his gaze and cries out as he comes apart again, warm and oozing over Buck’s thigh, and his lips make the shape of Buck’s name, all scraping air. Buck can’t suppress the snarl as he leans in, breath heavy over Eddie’s open mouth, the soft, pink cradle of his tongue. He breathes, hot enough that Eddie’s lips tremble, that his eyes clear, just for a moment, as Buck watches his mouth, traces it, cautiously, with a sweat-slick finger, all smearing curiosity, before he drives himself down and kisses it.
A sound catches like a breath from Eddie to Buck, and Buck’s fingers sprawl, hungry, over the line of his throat. His tongue falls hard and thick in Eddie’s mouth, like the knot still buried in his core—pinning it with his own tongue, all expert, sweeping, consuming direction. Eddie twitches, shivers, and Buck thrusts harder, with his mouth, his cock—all of him, and Eddie lets him, opens up like he was born for it. Makes so many aching, almost anguished noises, threaded through with pleasure, with pleading, with Buck.
Buck thinks, impossibly, he could bite him. He could mark him, mate him, right here. He could make sure another alpha like the one lying unconscious a few feet away would never happen again—he could claim him, could own him, and he thinks, half-delirious, that Eddie would thank him. He thinks, mostly-certain, that Eddie wants him to.
As if in question, Buck slides his tongue out of Eddie’s mouth and kisses the corner of it, then his jaw, then his neck. Eddie’s head tossed back again, half-buried in the shirt Buck set beneath his head, so the long, vulnerable column of his neck is exposed; Buck thinks inexplicably that even steel breaks under the right conditions, that everything strong can be made fragile. And right now, Eddie is so, very fragile.
Buck’s teeth pulse sharp in his own mouth and play over Eddie’s skin, and Eddie’s fingers tense, beg, where they’ve buried in the space just beside his spine. Buck can feel and smell and taste the trickle of blood from Eddie’s hand where the cut is still bleeding, still untreated, still hurting—even if Eddie can’t feel it right now, even if pleasure’s smothering it like a blanket on flames, he’s still bleeding.
None of this has been right—none of this has been fair. Eddie’s first words to him, the first real ones, before Buck touched him, were “I’m sorry,” and that can’t be the way Buck does this. Can’t be the way Buck claims him. He won’t.
Eddie deserves more than that.
Eddie deserves the fucking world.
He lingers, longer than he should, fingers pressed into skin, not quite hard enough to break. The scent of Eddie rakes through him, soaks his every breath until his throat is fucking paved in it. He slides his hand up the arch of Eddie’s stomach, settling where the wings of his ribs come together, and he drags himself up, inch by agonized inch, like tearing off his own skin, just as bloody.
Eddie makes a noise like something struck, a rasping whine, and his hands slip up to fist in Buck’s hair. Buck’s still inside him; he watches the heave of Eddie’s chest as his eyes flutter open, for one, single heartbeat, and his mouth glistens red with spit and sweat.
Buck lets Eddie pull him, kisses his temple, then drags a tongue over the blood on it. It tastes metallic, like blood, but sweet too. Sweet because it’s Eddie’s. He wants to taste again; he wants to bite and taste the blood that rushes out fresh and ruby.
Buck groans, trembles beneath the weight of this, between doing what Eddie needs, what he’ll want later, instead of what he wants now. What both of them want now.
“Eddie,” Buck whispers into his hair. “They’re gonna clear the rubble. They’re gonna… they’ll come in here. I gotta get you out of here.”
Eddie makes another sound, not quite a word, but closer, maybe, than he was before. Buck can’t help the smile that breaks his mouth before he kisses the side of Eddie’s head again.
“I know,” Buck soothes. “But it’s better now, yeah? Enough that I can get you home? That we can do this—do this right?”
Eddie’s fingers tremble in his hair. “Please.” The same word, over and over, but Eddie doesn’t know what he’s asking for. Hasn’t, this whole time. Buck has to know it. It’s an alpha’s job to know what his omega needs, even if he can’t say it.
“Trust me, Eddie.” Buck shapes it like a command.
Eddie’s eyes come open again, and through the glaze of a thousand-degree heat, there’s this familiar, wide-eyed expression. Wide and brown and waiting, made lethal by the doe-dark lashes framing them.
“I’m gonna get you dressed. I’m gonna tell them you hit your head. I’m gonna take care of you, but you have to listen to me.”
Eddie’s mouth quivers, but one by one, his fingers disentangle from Buck’s hair. Buck slides out of him and winces at the slice of open air, at the hollow that it opens up in him. Eddie whimpers like he feels it too, and Buck drops, half feral, to crush his mouth against the sound. He hangs on, fingers dug into Eddie’s side for too long, before he wrenches back and braces his knee on the ground beside him.
Eddie’s half-limp as Buck grabs his clothes, as he slides his underwear and pants over his slick and sticky thighs. They cling, and Eddie shivers when Buck’s hands skim, too slow, over the skin. Then, he gets his hand beneath Eddie’s head and pulls him up, steals the shirt from under him, and in this kaleidoscope of instinct and possession and want, he slides his own shirt over Eddie’s head.
Eddie comes back to himself enough to pull forward, to drop his head into the crook of Buck’s neck, hand settled loosely against his hip. This is the hardest thing he’s ever done. He’s been through a tsunami, an earthquake—he’s walked through fire for most of his adult life—and none of it compares to holding himself back, here, now. None of it compares to how badly he wants to pin Eddie to the floor and give and hold and take and have until they’re both spent and satisfied.
But he doesn’t. He gets his own pants on, squeezes himself into Eddie’s bloodstained shirt. Pulls both their coats on. He gasps around it, like glass lodged in his windpipe, when Eddie’s mouth brushes, half-open, over his neck.
Eventually, Buck grabs his radio, flips it back on, and Buck flinches under the crackle of Chim’s voice—at the irrefutable proof that he and Eddie aren’t the only two people in the world. It was why he did all of this, why he stopped, because he knew they weren’t, but still, hearing it feels surreal.
“Buckley, come back.”
“I’m here,” Buck huffs, tries to keep his voice from splitting open with the want still trapped in his throat. “I, uh, I found Eddie. He’s… he hit his head, but we’re okay.”
The voice jars Eddie awake, as much as it can. His chest heaves, and he shakes his head, clings, tries not to—clings harder. “Buck… Buck, I can’t—they’re gonna think—they’re gonna know… I can’t.”
Buck sets his hand over Eddie’s lips—they’re still wet and warm—and finds his eyes with as encouraging a nod as he can manage.
“Good,” Chim says on a breath too relieved to be anything else. “What about the victim? He alright?”
Buck blinks, another blow to the bubble he’d carved out for him and Eddie. The bubble he desperately wishes he could crawl back into. His eyes lift towards the prone, still form across the space. “Not conscious, concussed probably, b-but he’s breathing.” He almost adds I think, but that might give away that he gave the guy the concussion, that might give away that he nearly killed him for touching Eddie like he did, might give away that Buck just fucked and nearly mated Eddie in the middle of an active emergency.
Eddie’s grits his teeth and drags Buck’s hand from his mouth, stopping with one of Buck’s fingers still half-hooked on his lower lip. “Buck… Buck, please. I can’t—” His voice breaks off into a keen.
Buck pulls Eddie’s face to his chest, half to muffle the sound, but mostly because he needs him closer—he needs him so close their molecules blend and create something new, something better. Until they aren’t two bodies, but are just the one, endlessly, intrinsically linked whole.
“Alright,” Chim says. “We should have you out of there in a few minutes. Just hang tight. Don’t go near the noise and don’t get crushed.”
“Sure,” Buck says because it’s all he’s got the breath for, then he cuts the radio and sprawls his fingers further into Eddie’s hair so he’s cupped the entire back of his head. He’s breathing too fast and too hard. “I got you, Eddie. Calm down.”
“Buck,” Eddie tries again, “Buck, I can’t—I don’t think I can…” He rakes in another breath. “This is so…ridiculous… this is…”
“It’s not.” Buck wants to pull him away, to make Eddie look at him when he says it, but he can’t bring himself to put any distance between them. Especially when Eddie clings.
It ignites something in Buck. The clinging, the closeness—the naked, frantic vulnerability—it slots into Buck like a vertebrae he’s been missing all his life. Eddie’s terrified, and Buck can protect him from it, from everything. It shouldn’t feel so easy, watching Eddie like this, but god, it does. It feels like exactly where he’s supposed to be.
Eddie’s fingers crook against his back, breathing still shattered like glass in his throat.
Buck strokes the back of his head again, and he doesn’t have to make his voice gentle, doesn’t have to think about it; his body does it on instinct, anything Eddie needs. A space only he can fill. “I’m gonna carry you, okay? I got your clothes on. I got the radio. I got you. I will carry you out of here. Just don’t—don’t talk. I’ll tell everyone you hit your head, and I need to take you home.”
“They’ll know.” Eddie tries to shake his head. “Th-they can’t—”
“They won’t,” Buck whispers, and as much as he wants to tell Eddie he’s perfect, that anyone would be lucky to see him like this—his lip curls at the idea of it, of someone other than him, seeing Eddie like this, understanding this. Because it’s Buck’s. Only his. “I swear.”
Chimney’s true to his word. A few minutes later there’s a rattling, and some of the debris falls loose before it’s carved away to reveal a too-bright slice of sun.
Buck hunches his body over Eddie’s, and some sloughed-off bits of dust and dry wall shower across his shoulders as the space vibrates. Eddie’s fingers curl at Buck’s neck, still gloveless where Buck couldn’t bring himself to deny himself some parts of Eddie’s skin.
“You okay?” Buck asks against fever-licked skin.
Eddie makes a sound, half affirmative, half whine, and his head thuds heavy and searching against Buck’s shoulder, like he can find a way in. When he can’t, his eyebrows pinch together, and Buck can’t stop himself from settling between them, waiting for the wrinkle to smooth.
Eventually, it does, and Buck slides his hand down Eddie’s cheek, his jawline, before he’s got two fingers beneath his chin, and he tips it delicately up. Eddie’s eyes are glazed again when they meet Buck’s. “Eddie.”
Eddie blinks, breath heavy enough to shift the weight of his chin in Buck’s hand, in, out, up, down. Buck thinks, with this euphoric, shattering jolt, that if he told Eddie to cut his own throat right now, he’d do it. The back of Buck’s throat goes wet, his tongue thick with it, struck dumb by the frightening, flawless reality of Eddie Diaz. Of his omega.
His, his, his, his, his.
Buck draws a trembling breath. “Trust me.”
“Okay,” Eddie whispers and sinks into Buck again.
Ravi climbs in first. He spots them immediately and keeps himself steady as he picks over the slant of debris. “Buck, you guys okay?” He slows a few steps before them as the scene catches up to him, the scene and likely the realization that Buck’s holding Eddie rather than the victim with a head wound.
“Yeah,” Buck says, loud and fast enough that Ravi can’t ask. “H-he’s over there. You’re gonna need a board.”
Ravi’s eyes follow Buck’s, and he blinks, hard, a few times before he nods, then glances at Eddie. “E-Eddie, are you—?”
“I got Eddie,” Buck says, and it’s mostly clear enough to mask the growl. “You get the victim. I told Cap he’s probably concussed.” Ravi glances between them a few more times, long enough that Buck snaps, “Go!”
“Okay, okay,” Ravi mutters, “just… did you guys get him… I-I mean, did the medicine—?”
Right. Because Ravi was there when Eddie explained what was happening with this guy. Buck tries not to wince. “I-I’m not sure. He stopped seizing, but he was… I mean, he’s unconscious.”
“But he’s breathing?”
“H-he was… and you’d know if you’d just go over there.”
Ravi frowns, but he heads over to the other alpha just as Harry makes his way over to them. He’s there by the time Buck gets his arms beneath Eddie enough to hoist him off the ground.
“Oh shit,” Harry says. “He good?”
Eddie’s not unconscious, but Buck’s hoping it’s hard to tell with the way his face is pressed into Buck’s neck.
“He’s—he hit his head, but he’s—” Buck gives up the sentence. “I just need to get him out of here. Go help Ravi, okay?”
“I can take—”
“I’ve got him,” Buck snaps, and this time, the growl slips between its teeth.
Harry jolts, and Buck winces as he tumbles back into his own body.
“Go help Ravi,” he says more gently, eyeing the slope to get out of the basement.
It would make sense to ask someone for help, to maybe hand Eddie off to someone and climb out on his own, but he’s pretty sure the sight of someone touching Eddie right now would have catastrophic consequences for everyone involved.
Buck gets himself and Eddie through the rubble, somehow. Eddie hangs on a little tighter as they move, and he whimpers again, burying his face deeper into Buck’s neck as the movement jostles him. He draws his thighs together, and Buck feels his skin go hotter, even through his turnouts—and he prays the smoke and gasoline is enough to mask Eddie’s scent from anyone that isn’t him. Because fuck if his knees aren’t about to buckle beneath it.
“Buckley,” Chim says, frowning around the question he never asks.
“Ravi and Harry are getting th-the, uh, the guy. I…” Buck’s breathing hitches around Eddie’s breath against his jaw. “I need to get him home.”
“What?” Chim asks. “Not the hospital?”
“No,” Buck says, and it’s all hoarse. He needs Chimney to not ask—needs Chimney to get this without getting it. “Please,” then, hoarser, “Chim.”
“Alright, yeah, uh…” Chim glances over his shoulder, scratching at the back of his head. “Just, uh, take the utility truck. Garcia brought it over with some supplies. He can ride back with us. Just don’t…” Chim gestures, sort of vaguely to Eddie in Buck’s arms, “Just make sure it’s back at the station by tomorrow in the same condition, and leave your turnouts.”
“Yeah,” Buck says, and if he had extra limbs and wasn’t half on fire, he would hug Chimney. “Thanks, Cap.”
“Uh-huh,” Chim says, then waves Hen down before she can come over and ask questions.
Buck carries Eddie around the side of the red SUV and shoulders the door open. He tries to slide Eddie into the passenger seat, but Eddie hisses a breath through his teeth and clings, harder than before.
“Shit,” Eddie gasps. “Shit, this isn’t normal, Buck—it’s not…”
“It’s fine,” Buck gets him on the seat, then grabs Eddie’s face before he pulls back. Eddie’s lashes flutter, eyes glassy but steady, as he listens. “You’re bleeding. A building fell on us. No one’s expecting normal.”
“No.” Eddie’s trembling, all fault lines and fissures. “I-I mean... me. My… it won’t stop. I want—I-I just… why am I... dammit.” Eddie gets his hands on Buck’s suspenders and pulls until their bodies are flush, and Buck’s skin burns so hot he thinks it might burn up the Kevlar between them.
It’s as good an excuse as any to peel the jacket off Eddie’s shoulders, to unclip the suspenders, to take off everything he put on him before the rubble was cleared. Eddie’s fingers catch on the clothes, on Buck, on everything, and every breath comes out begging. A dozen more half-formed pleas that all have one answer: Buck.
Buck can’t stop the noise that catches and drags out of him, can’t stop himself from tearing the fabric from Eddie’s neck, far enough that he can get his mouth on it. “Eddie, baby, just let me get you home.”
Buck can’t figure out how he’s going to let go, how he’s going to step back, but fortunately, Eddie sucks in another breath and does it for them. He scoots himself back over the passenger seat, breath labored as his head falls back against the headrest.
There is a heartbeat, one, two, three, where Buck stands there, paralyzed. Where Buck forgets where he is, who he is, what he’s supposed to do, and thinks how easy it would be to climb on top of Eddie, to straddle him, to slide inside of him again until it smooths all the decades of unanswered need out of Eddie’s shoulders, his brow, his jaw. He thinks and thinks and thinks, and then he closes his eyes and shuts the door, just in time for Garcia to step around the side of the SUV.
His eyes are wide, as concerned as they are curious. “Everything alright?”
He’s got the keys extended, and Buck takes them before he answers. “Yeah. Fine.”
Buck can smell Garcia, a heavier, less restrained scent than Chim or Ravi, and he suddenly needs him as far from this vehicle, from Eddie, as he can get.
Fortunately, Garcia gets the hint and offers a half salute as he walks back towards the scene.
An uneasy breath ripples all down Buck’s body, and he strips his own turnouts and leaves them in a heap on the ground. It’s not the most responsible thing he’s ever done, but it’s also not the least responsible thing he’s done in the past forty-five minutes.
He climbs into the driver side. Eddie hasn’t moved, heels dug into the floorboards, fingers clawing at the seat, neck thrown back, coiled and exposed and glittery with sweat. Buck’s eyes track a rivulet over the column of his neck. His chest heaves with a hunger that feels like possession before he gets his hands on the wheel and starts the engine.
The drive is long, endless, and Buck swallows around the sounds Eddie makes, the ones he tries to suffocate, the ones he can’t. The car is so small, smaller than that pocket of space they had in the basement. Buck ought to crack the windows—ought to do something so he doesn’t drown in Eddie’s scent. He holds his breath; he lets it out.
Eventually, Eddie pulls his feet off the floorboard and drags his knees to his chest, clutching and clamoring for a core he can’t reach. Every motion coats Buck’s lungs and soul and body in the scent; it’s not sweet anymore so much as it’s transcendent, this unnamable twist of color and sound and light and air. The imprint of everything Buck’s ever wanted.
“Why won’t it stop?” It comes out of Eddie like keening. “Fuck, I’m so stupid. How did I—how did I fuck up th—”
Buck snatches a hand across the space, and it’s like giving into gravity. He tugs Eddie towards him until his head lands in Buck’s lap. It’s not the touch they need, barely the one he wants, but he’ll take anything. “You’re not stupid. You didn’t fuck anything up.”
“I did,” Eddie whimpers, even as he pulls himself closer, until his knees brush Buck’s thighs on the seat. He presses his face into the patch of soft skin above Buck’s hip; Buck hears his inhale, feels it, and his grip tightens. “It’s my job. I’m supposed to… fuck, he needed me. He needed—and I… what’s wrong with—?
Buck slides his hand down until it’s got the back of Eddie’s neck, and he squeezes once, hard. “Hush. Nothing is wrong with you. You saved him.” Buck doesn’t think about himself, half-feral, slamming a man’s head into concrete. He can’t. “You—you did it right, okay? But you… but this is about what you need.”
“I feel like I’m dying, Buck,” Eddie croaks into the space where Buck’s shirt’s ridden up. His head’s half in Buck’s lap, close enough that Buck’s cock twitches, stoked with the heat rolling off Eddie, stoked with the idea of what he never got to finish doing to Eddie. His teeth grit, and he makes himself hear Eddie’s next words: “You—there, you were—you… so why is it still…”
“God, you really haven’t…” Buck’s vision doubles, then blurs, but he keeps one hand on the wheel, somehow. “You’re in heat, Eddie, and you haven’t had one in… fuck, I guess years, so it’s gonna be pretty brutal. It doesn’t just… it has to… I can make you feel better, but it’s still gonna last awhile.”
“I-I know, but it’s… but I thought…” Another breath shatters out of him, into Buck.
Buck cards his fingers through Eddie’s hair, fingernails scraping against his scalp until some of the tension bleeds into them. “You need more than that, baby. You deserve more than that.”
“You were good,” Eddie gasps. “And I can’t—if Chris…”
“Haven’t you talked to Chris about secondary genders and… what happens?”
“Yeah,” Eddie manages.
“So he should understand what’s going on?”
“He doesn’t know…”
“About you,” Buck finishes and wonders how and when Eddie became such an expert at keeping himself out of every conversation. “Okay, well, we will find someone else to pick him up today and explain it to him later.”
Eddie whimpers again. His fingers clench the hem of Buck’s shirt, and some of the sweat smears where his knuckles slip over his back. Eddie never should’ve gone this long. Never should’ve felt like he had to.
Buck’s own knuckles go white on the steering wheel, and the tips of his fingers tingle with the lack of circulation as he finally turns into his driveway. “Okay, we’re here,” Buck says. “Can you—”
“I can walk,” Eddie says, immediately, almost desperately. He pushes himself up, all dazed, blinking until it turns to fluttering. Buck doesn’t like it, but he relents and gets out. He goes to Eddie’s side of the car, opens the door.
Eddie tumbles out so Buck has to catch his waist. Buck should’ve carried him, but he rights himself. He tries to walk, but he’s barely there, and Buck knows it, but he especially knows it, when it takes Eddie until Buck’s opened the door to say, “This—this is your house.”
“Yeah,” Buck says. “Figured it might be easier for you, if it…” He swallows, tries to focus enough to send a text to Maddie and Hen to ask about childcare. It’s nearly impossible with Eddie leaned against the doorframe, needy and near-collapse.
But he wants to be an alpha, and if he’s learned anything—if he’s thought anything—about what it means to be an alpha, it means taking care of his omega, and that includes his kid, that includes everything. Before Buck takes what he wants, what he needs.
“I…” Eddie sinks his teeth into the skin of his fist, pitching against the wall a little harder. “Buck, I can’t—I can’t do this in your… I’ll figure it out, but I can’t…”
“Can’t what?” Buck doesn’t even mean to say it, hasn’t processed any potential answers when it comes out of him.
Eddie pulls in a breath, trembling, and shakes his head. “I don’t want to do this here.”
“What?” Buck tries to piece it together. Maybe it’s better if they’re at his Eddie’s house, maybe it’s easier to figure out a nest, maybe there’s steps he’s not thinking about. But he holds himself still, doesn’t pin Eddie to the wall, doesn’t kiss his neck, drag him to the bedroom. Because he needs to understand. He needs to do this right. “I-I mean… we can—if you’d rather do it at yours…”
“We?” Eddie asks. It’s so nascent, so clear, so new, like the first note of a child’s piano recital. Buck breath is hot like smoke in his lungs. He’s holding a leash that’s fraying, threatening to snap.
“You want someone else?” Buck asks, not sure what or how or when or whatever he’s going to do if Eddie says yes. If Eddie doesn’t want this. It will break him, but he has to stand here—he has to hear it.
Eddie blinks, blinks and blinks and blinks, but this time, it’s not a flutter, this time, it’s wet, all sun through the stained glass of a church—pure, unholy reverence. “Someone else?” Like the concept is inconceivable, like there is no one else in the world but Buck.
“I-I… I don’t… Eddie,” Buck says, and it comes out of his mouth like velvet, because for all the marks on him, all the leaving and the letting go, Buck knows Eddie. Knows what wanting looks like in those brown eyes, and knows he’s been looking at Buck with it for so many years. Years Buck’s ignored because he couldn’t believe it.
Even now, he can just barely.
But he sees it, and he steps towards Eddie, breath hot over his jaw, his neck. Eddie trembles, fingers quivering in the space between them, until Buck grabs his hand and presses it to his mouth.
“I almost bit you back there,” Buck says. “I wanted to, but I didn’t because I wanted to do it right, because you… because you deserve more—deserve everything. Everything, Eddie. And I wanna… I wanna be… I wanna be everything, for you, just you.”
Eddie’s knees buckle, and Buck catches his waist, pulls him to his chest, then up, into his arms. “You are.”
Buck takes Eddie back to his bedroom and lays him on the bed. Buck pulls the dirty pants and shirt and underwear off him. Buck settles on top of him, hand stroking the bruised length of his side. He pushes inside of him, holding and sucking and licking, until Eddie goes boneless on the bedsheets, and Buck kisses him, softly, on the mouth, then everywhere else.
It’s only once Eddie’s said please a dozen more times, only until his body has started to take the shape of it, until he’s so satisfied that all the whimpers have turned to soft, impossible purring, that Buck sinks his teeth into his neck and takes what he needs.
And it’s not until days later, once Eddie’s come out of it, all sparkling and satisfied, once he’s rehearsed the speech he wants to give Chris twenty times, once Hen’s agreed to bring Chris home in an hour, that they return to Eddie’s house, and Buck goes into his bathroom to find the aluminum packet of suppressants, to find the crinkled, empty plastic where a pill should be.
And it’s before it, after it, during it, that Buck calls through the door, “You took them, Eddie.”
“What?”
“You took them,” Buck says as he steps out of the bathroom and leans against the wall, drunk on his own self-satisfaction, even as Eddie snatches the packet out of his hands. Even as his eyes go wide.
“Then… how did—”
“They failed,” Buck says. “It happens.”
“It’s never happened to me before,” Eddie whispers, but Buck watches some of that lingering guilt seep out of him.
Buck gets a hand around his waist and pulls him in, not bothering to fight the smile on his face. “Guess you really needed an alpha.”
“Yeah…” Eddie’s eyes move up, catch his, then back down. “Or maybe just you.”
“Or maybe just me.” Buck grins, bursts with an impossible, intoxicating delight as he kisses Eddie again, long and deep, because he can, because Eddie is his, only his, forever.