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Hen stretched and sighed on her way up the stairs, more than ready for the shift to be over, and hopeful for a snack. Maybe there was still–
Aha!
She snagged the last muffin, left alone on the table, and leaned in for a bite, only for Chim to swoop in and snag it.
“Chim!” She shouted, and whacked at his shoulder, only for him to turn an outraged look on her, still holding the muffin far away
“Excuse me, but I am trying to help!”
“Help yourself, maybe” Eddie muttered, walking by to collapse on the couch next to Buck, who was evidently on a phone call.
“Exactly,” Hen pointed at Eddie, and Chim furrowed his brows.
“Eddie's a suspicious person, a pessimistic person, so of course he'll doubt my good intentions, but I can't believe you wouldn't give me the benefit of the doubt, Henrietta!”
Hen rolled her eyes and rummaged through the snack drawer for a granola bar, as Chim leaned on the counter next to her and set the muffin down as if it might explode.
“Buck licked it,” Chim said in a stage whisper and making a face and laughing as soon as Hen made an outraged noise. “You see? I saved you, you're very welcome.”
“More importantly,” Hen said, “if he wanted it, why didn't he just take it and, oh, I dunno, EAT it?!”
“He got a phone call but said he was calling dibs, I said I wouldn't wait more than 5 mins before taking it, so he licked it and then answered the phone call and walked off. Like an animal,” Chim said, not that Buck seemed to have heard. Whatever the phone call was about, he seemed pretty focused.
Hen grumbled to herself, shaking her head and ignoring Chim workshopping puns about animals and muffins, and getting nowhere fast. She should probably let the Hans borrow their If You Give A Mouse A Cookie books if Chim didn't immediately land on moose for muffins. But it was too early to deal with stupidity like this, and when Buck loudly hung up his phone call, with an obnoxious sigh, still oblivious to how annoyed both Chim and Hen were with him, Hen didn't even think before snatching up the muffin and lobbing it at the couch. Eddie caught it instead of Buck, but who cared; Hen resentfully crunched on her granola bar and walked downstairs to wait out the last few hours of shift.
Eddie had unwrapped the muffin, eyebrow raised at Buck as he brought it closer to his mouth, but Buck refused to rise to the bait and lunge for it.
“It's mine, Eds, I licked it so it's mine.”
“I don't think saliva actually counts for ownership.”
Buck leaned back on the couch making lazy grabby-hands at the muffin, still not paying much attention, maybe distracted still from the call. Eddie shrugged and took a huge chomp out of the muffin.
“Eddie! That's mine!”
Eddie grinned through crumbs, and then shifted to the side to keep the muffin out of Buck's reach, laughing and chewing as Buck whined about how unfair he was being, pawing at Eddie's shoulder and threatening to tickle him.
The thing was, Buck was too cautious for that; Eddie knew for fact Buck would never tickle someone in the middle of chewing, just in case it caused them to choke. Maybe that was their EMT training, but honestly, Eddie suspected Buck had really internalized the risk once he started hanging out with Chris. Eddie faked a tiny cough, and then dissolved into laughter again when Buck panicked and leaped off the couch. Good ol’ Buck, he wouldn't move too much to save his snack, but he would jump straight to the rescue to save Eddie.
“That's not funny, Eds! What if you really choked?”
Chim had wandered over and dropped into one of the chairs, now that he'd been abandoned again by Hen.
“Yeah, Eddie,” Chim said. “Only Buck is allowed to choke around here!”
Eddie coughed again, a bit more real this time, and swallowed the bite.
“Is that a– are you kink-shaming Buck?”
Both Buck and Chim whirled to face Eddie, and Buck looked shocked and confused with a hint of embarrassment, but now Chim was the one cackling.
“Kink-shaming, oh my God, oh Buck-and-Eddie, you codependent freaks, never change. Whew,” and he wiped a tear off one eye. “No, in fact, I didn't know there was a kink there to shame, and Buck, I'm almost proud of you, dude, keeping secrets like that now that you're Buck 3.0 or whatever. No, I was actually referring to that time Buck choked on a date and had to get trach’d.”
Chim leaned over for more effective eye contact with Eddie. “Trach’d….by his date. If THAT'S a kink, then I am shaming that, actually.”
Eddie looked up at Buck, perplexed, and Buck gave an embarrassed half-shrug.
“Abby. He– he's talking about Abby.”
“Wait, Buck, does that mean you've choked on more dates, so you have to specify which choking date? You know what, I am kink-shaming, I'm– Actually, no, worse than that, I'm telling Hen!”
Buck had reached out toward Chim as if to stop him, but then the alarm blared out anyway, and they all trooped downstairs to go on the call.
In the truck, Chim immediately got distracted by something else, chattering away at Hen, while Buck sat hunched in a bit on himself in the seat.
For all the codependency jokes, Eddie hadn't known this story about Buck's time with Abby, and it caused an unpleasant twist in his gut to think of it. Obviously the narrowly avoided danger was the primary dark spot in the story he was reacting to, and yet, Eddie also felt a moment of annoyance at Abby, actually. That she'd put him at risk, just by existing when he got hurt, maybe, which Eddie knew was nonsense from the many times Buck or even Eddie were injured while near each other. Or maybe for being the one to save him, not that she shouldn't have saved him, of course, but it didn't sit right, somehow, for Abby to have been the one to put her fingers in Buck's throat, to save his life, and then to abandon him anyway. Like a violation of some insane sort of you-break-it-you-buy-it.
Eddie frowned to himself, and then fought to keep his expression neutral. He had no idea how to explain his thought process to himself, let alone to Buck, who would no doubt internalize it to mean Eddie thought something bad about him, like he thought Buck deserved it as divine retribution for former sluttiness or something. Or maybe that Eddie thought that Buck and Abby were doomed from the very beginning, which Eddie did kind of think, but only because of Abby herself, and not anything to do with Buck, and certainly not because of any accident that happened to Buck.
When they stopped for coffee later, Buck was still moping a bit from earlier, so Eddie bought him a pastry. Buck's face lit up, and then dropped into a glower when Eddie obnoxiously licked across it before handing it over.
“Well? Is it mine now, or are you still going to eat it?” Eddie asked, grinning and licking some crumbs off his lips.
Buck rolled his eyes and acted like he had to think about it, but it was his very favorite, pain au chocolate, and Eddie knew full well he'd give in, so he just smirked and walked away. In the engine on the drive back, Eddie made sure to leisurely and mockingly dust the crumbs off Buck's chin and shirt.
Another day, another shift, and then Buck was at the house with Eddie and Chris, and both Eddie and Buck gave up and acted like there was too much to do in the kitchen when Chris' math homework that night was a bit too much for either of them. Eventually Eddie carried out the plates and set the table, while Chris packed up his schoolwork and Buck brought out their current favorite, the sparkling lemonade from Trader Joe's. Chris eagerly took one of the glasses and squawked when Buck snagged it back.
“Uh, sorry, s-sorry Chris, that one is, um, your dad's.”
“What difference does it make?” Chris asked, and Eddie arched an eyebrow and then squinted when Buck failed to come up with an answer, beyond some sputtering.
“He just added some alcohol to it, no doubt, Chris,” Eddie finally said, though Buck’s wide-eyed look of gratitude made him shake his head.
Eddie took the suspicious glass, and took a hesitant sip only once he made sure Buck was watching him (since Buck would never let him get actually hurt or anything) and Buck let it happen, smirk poorly hidden on his face. He couldn't taste or notice out of the ordinary, but still, after a few moments he got up to grab napkins, and got Chris and Buck thoroughly distracted by bringing up a recent argument over which cover version of a song was better, and then quickly swapped his and Buck's drinks. Whatever the hell was wrong with it could be Buck's problem.
Not that he'd really suspected poisoning, but by the end of the meal, Buck was oddly flushed and kept abruptly looking away from Eddie. He'd expected that maybe Buck had licked the rim of the glass or something, since he couldn't really think of what else it could be, but that didn't explain Buck's reaction.
When Chris finally begged off to play video games with his friends, Eddie only turned and lifted an eyebrow at Buck, who immediately folded.
“I'm sorry, alright, it was a dumb joke, but I spit in your glass.”
Eddie shrugged and took another sip.
“Eds, I just said–”
“Yeah, but I swapped it back with yours already, so you've had your own tampered glass, as you deserve.”
Buck slumped back in his seat from where he'd been leaning toward Eddie.
“Oh. Ok. Well, ok.”
“Ok,” Eddie teased, taking the last sip of his own glass.
“But wait, Eddie, you did drink out of the other one right at the beginning, right? You didn't switch it beforehand or anything?”
Eddie shrugged again.
“Yeah, so what, I ate the muffin you licked too, same as you ate the pastry I licked. Big deal.”
Buck still shifted around uncomfortably in his seat, and Eddie sighed.
“What, what's the big deal? Let's not forget, YOU'RE the one who did this in the first place, so why the hell are you the one worked up over it now?”
Buck didn't answer, and Eddie huffed and leaned over to snag back Buck’s glass, only to deliberately and calmly spit in it. He nudged it back in front of Buck.
“Drink up. Or don't.” Eddie got up to move the plates to the kitchen and checked into the fridge. “But that's the last of the lemonade,” he called back.
“What, no, there was a bit more–” and then he came into the kitchen and saw Eddie drinking the last bit directly from the glass bottle and squawked, but he was too late. Eddie chuckled with his mouth still closed and gestured like he could mama-bird-share the last sip, and Buck turned around and walked out instantly, and Eddie almost aspirated on his last sip trying not to laugh, but it would've been worth it.
It had gone too far now, Buck could see that. It had been a joke, a weird too-much joke, and now it had tipped over into something else. He recognized that.
But the thing was, each of the incremental steps hadn't been all that difficult to justify. Licking each other's food, spitting in each other's glasses, stealing each other's toothbrushes.
Actually, never mind, he can recognize the toothbrushes were probably the point of no return. That doesn't sound very normal even to him, even as he remembered Eddie pushing past him in the bathroom to get his toothbrush, ready to go to sleep after another movie night before Buck went to sleep on the couch.
It's not a huge bathroom, especially for two fit guys, and they usually laughingly jockeyed back and forth for space in front of the sink anyway. Buck would always rather get cramped up against Eddie than do something by himself when they could just hang out some more. And he refused to feel weird about that, because that's what the BEST in best friend means. Eddie's his favorite, obviously, why does anyone feel the need to point it out when it's obvious anyway and when they both proudly proclaim themselves best friends anyway? And Eddie being his favorite meant most of Eddie's reactions and moods were his favorite too, and the huffy betrayed attitude he got from being teased featured top-shelf Eddie expressions.
So Buck had snagged Eddie's toothbrush and gotten it wet and dabbed with toothpaste all before Eddie had noticed, and held it up in front of his own mouth, waiting.
He'd expected some scuffle, some outrage, and then he would have passed over the toothbrush, and even enjoyed the minor helpful act of getting Eddie's toothbrush ready for him. But instead, Eddie had felt his eyes on him, and turned with a quick grin that immediately dropped into a look of betrayal, and then snatched up Buck's toothbrush and shoved it straight into his mouth! So obviously Buck had no other option than to actually use Eddie's toothbrush, though he'd never intended to. At least he'd finally managed to convert Eddie into using his favorite style of toothbrush, the flossing bristle kind, even if Eddie only agreed because the two-pack was cheaper, and always made fun of Buck for having a favorite toothbrush type anyway.
Anyway.
The toothbrushes were definitely going too far. Buck knew sharing toothbrushes could transmit bloodborne diseases like hepatitis, even if that was a rare risk, and Eddie surely knew that too. And that should be a gross thing, a bad thing, but Buck felt… Buck felt some kinda way about it.
If he was honest, he's felt some kinda way this whole time, about all of it, as much as he'd avoided looking at any of it head on.
There was something about the claiming of it, the possessiveness, and then the intimacy of sharing saliva.
There was a girl, way back in his Buck 1.0 days, who asked him to spit in her mouth, and he'd hesitated long enough that she took it to mean he wanted her to beg, and she had, with her full chest. Her blissful expression was perfectly clear even through the spit and sweat on her face when she came, and he'd gently swiped it off with the edge of her sheets, happy she was happy, of course, but a little unsure about how he felt about it otherwise.
He's pretty sure about how he would feel about it now. When he'd watched Eddie drink lemonade with his spit in it, he'd thought it would be a funny prank, but he'd only pranked himself, and not just because it turned out Eddie swapped the cups back.
No, he'd been instantly drenched in a strange wave of lust watching Eddie take that first sip of his tampered lemonade, especially with the way Eddie kept eye contact the whole time.
And then, at the end of the meal, Eddie spit in his cup, directly, handed it to him, sauntered off.
Buck obviously poured it down his own throat immediately, not taking even a fraction of a second to think about it and perhaps acknowledge his own insanity, before following him to the kitchen.
The point was, however this started, he was worrying about how it was supposed to end.
So he wants anything and everything from Eddie, to an alarming degree.
Okay. Sure.
So he loves Eddie, fine. He already knew he loved Eddie as his best friend, it's not really that much of a stretch to be in love with him. Especially because Eddie's so damn lovable. He's all sharp edges and gooey center.
And of course Eddie's hot. Everyone else even said so, the very first day he started at the firehouse.
But all of these facts had somehow failed to coalesce into the obvious conclusion until this trainwreck he'd found his way into.
Until he's trying to bite back Eddie's name when he's in the shower, touching himself and picturing spitting into Eddie's mouth the way he had with that now-nameless girl. Picturing Eddie messy and giddy the way she had been. Picturing adding to the mess, maybe, and then licking and kissing it all off.
So actually, maybe the toothbrushes weren't the bridge too far, maybe he was always going to end up a cliche just like this, in love with his straight best friend, desperate for literally any speck of him, even his spit, even his blood.
There's something insane and compelling about the very idea of the intimacy of it. Buck's had Eddie's blood in his mouth before, from the shooting, and it had been the strangest comfort and torment, the whole interminable wait while worrying through the surgery, to think of Eddie's blood inside of him. He realized now it's because he wants anything and everything of Eddie inside of him, but where he's supposed to go with this information, he hasn't a clue.
Later he cooked dinner at the Diaz house, on a night Chris is eating out at a group project meetup with his friends, and he had a flash of imagining spitting in the meal and watching Eddie eat it, savor it, compliment the taste the way he always always does when Buck cooked for him. Instead Buck stuck his head in the freezer for a moment to try to calm down and then listened to a scary true crime podcast to distract him.
It still seemed like a joke from Eddie's perspective, though, and that's the messiest part, because Eddie kept playing into the joke, and Buck kept getting off about it. Buck’s never been ashamed of masturbating; whatever crimes his parents laid at his door his whole childhood, they wouldn't have called them sins, since they weren't the religious type, so he'd mostly avoided the sort of allergy to pleasure that Eddie sometimes seemed to have. But it's probably not a good idea (even if he's not sure whether it counts as a full-on sin, and he'd rather not know for sure, thanks) to masturbate about people you know who aren't into the idea, and it feels several levels more fucked up to let someone continue to innocently participate in whatever weird kink you've fallen into. But then again, how in Attenborough’s Blue Planet is he supposed to end the joke without admitting everything?? And with the whole idea of ignorance-is-bliss, doesn't he owe it to Eddie to keep it to himself, and not make Eddie deal with whatever the hell this is?
So he finally resolved that since he can't end the whole ongoing joke, the very least he could do was not directly get off on it. It meant a lot of skipped orgasms, since he didn't even risk touching himself whenever it was clamoring around too loudly in his head, and he at least tried to keep his thoughts generic and far away when he does finally give in. But the extra pent-up aspect was making all of this even more heightened and confusing!
And then Eddie took it even further, and Buck definitely should have ended this before the toothbrushes, if not because of the toothbrushes themselves.
Eddie got a new type of agua fresca when he was out on some errand helping Pepa, and when he was back home he immediately complained that it hadn't tasted quite right, and it's not like Buck could know, but he can't help asking about it and trying to puzzle out what might've been added or missing from the flavor. It had been thrown out already, evidently, so Eddie mumbled through some sort of explanation and description, before finally rolling his eyes and standing over Buck, who was still sitting on the couch and leaning back to better see Eddie. And then Eddie grabbed his chin and eased his mouth open, and leaned further over the back of the couch to spit in Buck's mouth.
Buck probably could've come from just that. If he'd had any inkling that was coming, then he'd have been coming, but as it was it knocked the breath out of him, and Eddie just laughed as he walked off. He called back some question about whether Buck had any theories on the flavor, now that he'd tasted a sample, and Buck hung his head and pressed down, too hard, on his dick. At that point, he was cooked, he knew it, he accepted it.
So he's less-than-platonically into whatever the hell they've got going on.
So he wants Eddie's bodily fluids in his mouth, so what. Some people are literal cannibals. Some people don't follow the zipper merge rule on the freeway. People can be monsters, is the point. In the scope of things, Buck’s really not that bad.
HAVE SOME PERSPECTIVE, as Hen might say, not that he would want to have to justify any of this to her. Not that he would want to even attempt to explain any of this in words!
But he gave up on the self-flagellation about it. He's not Catholic, the guilt never came as easily to him as it seemed to plague Eddie.
He'll just keep the ramifications to himself, and hope that getting more of Eddie makes it easier to live with not getting all of Eddie.
Eventually he got caught. It had to happen, he knew that; he'd listened to enough cold case podcast stories to know how often people get caught.
Eddie's driving them home from a shift, chewing the gum he'd been given by Chim until he complained that it was tasting weirder the longer it was in his mouth, and when Eddie asked Buck to take the gum to throw it away, Buck immediately put it in his own mouth. No thoughts, head empty, mouth salivating, he just stuck his hand out, caught it when Eddie let it fall from his mouth, and shoved it in his own. Eddie was distracted by LA traffic so he hadn't seemed to notice Buck didn't have a napkin in his hand when he spit out the gum, but Buck's immediate commentary on the flavor guaranteed Eddie would realize.
Stealing incredulous looks between looking at the crowded streets, Eddie asked why he would ever chew used gum, how often he did that, and Buck further sealed his fate by indignantly replying that he would never chew someone else's gum, but Eddie's the exception of course.
There was a long quiet moment after that pronouncement. Eddie drove them in silence the last few turns, and then they sat in the car in the driveway for the slowest minute of Buck's life.
The click of the car door handle seemed impossibly loud, and Buck followed Eddie's lead up the front walkway, until Eddie paused and gestured for Buck to unlock the front door.
Hands shaking, he did, and while he knew he couldn't actually sense the electricity of Eddie's presence behind him, it certainly felt like he could, goosebumps and shivers down his spine. Eddie followed him, and maneuvered them further in, back against the wall.
Buck could not tell what Eddie was thinking right now. Literal years of cataloging his face and expressions, and now, at a critical junction, his research has failed. It was intense though, because Eddie often was intense, and then it was almost scary the way he got closer and closer.
Nearly gasping at the sudden shock of Eddie's hand on his jaw, he swallowed hard, and absentmindedly shifted the forgotten gum in his mouth. Just because it probably wasn't true that gum would linger in your stomach for years if you swallowed it didn't mean he should test that.
“Give me my gum back,” Eddie said, and whatever Buck had been expecting, that was not it. He hasn't reacted yet, still just staring dumbly, and Eddie's hand on his face jostles him just a little.
“Alright. Maybe I should just take it back,” Eddie said, quiet, and his thumb pressed at the hinge of his jaw, encouraging his mouth to open. The way Eddie's eyes roved over his face, intent and warm, would've risked spontaneous combustion anyway, even without the heat of his body all along his front and inching in closer.
A last pause, like he was waiting for Buck to pull away, to resist, as if Buck wouldn't happily found a religion based on helping Eddie get whatever he ever wanted. In that way, it was easy as anything to tilt his head just a little and let his eyelids sink closed as Eddie kissed him.
Eddie. Kissing him. Hands on his shoulders, in his hair. Hips lined up, and weight pinning him against the wall.
It was maybe the messiest make-out since his awkward teen years, too much spit and mouths too wide open, but it was as electrifying and world-changing as being a dumb horny high schooler again too. That heady relief of finally clutching too hard to a warm body pressed against him, someone happy with him, wanting him, the best drug he'd ever found.
And this wasn't just some casual hookup, this was Eddie. Eddie! Eddie, who was the best and his very favorite and who was kissing Buck like he could find all the words Buck had lost and swallowed if he just kissed hard enough, deep enough.
He probably could, Eddie could do anything. Eddie could have anything.
In the end, he wasn't actually sure what ever happened to the gum, after all of that. Sweaty and fucked out and covered in numerous fluids later, on Eddie's bed, it didn't matter enough to worry about, didn't matter at all.
But just the same–
He heaved himself up onto an elbow to lean over Eddie, gratified to feel Eddie immediately pulling him in, closer, tighter, without even opening his eyes, still panting and looking perfect, debauched and happy.
So maybe he should check inside Eddie's mouth again, just in case.