Archive of Our Own

In retrospect, saving his boudoir photos to his phone instead of his computer was a rookie move. A catastrophically stupid, life-ruining rookie move, but he's getting ahead of himself. 

When the photographer emailed him that the photos were ready, Buck had been at work, sitting on the couch in the loft pretending to watch whatever Chimney had put on the TV, and he'd opened the email like a normal person and then immediately closed it because he was at work and his coworkers were right there and the thumbnail preview alone had made him choke on his own spit. So that was fun. 

Chimney asked if he was okay. Buck said he swallowed wrong. Chimney said "that's what she said" and Buck almost threw his phone off the loft balcony. 

But the point is, he'd been excited. He's been — look, he's been kind of going through it lately, body-image-wise, ever since Tommy dumped him, and yeah, he knows that's a him problem and he's aware that entering a boudoir photoshoot giveaway on Instagram is perhaps not the most conventional method of addressing one's post-breakup insecurities, but who cares. He wanted to feel hot. Sue him.

Okay, let's back up.

Buck has been single for twenty-two days, and he knows this because he hasn't stopped counting, which is embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as the fact that he's also been tracking it in his Notes app under a folder titled "misc.” 

Twenty-two days. 

That's over three weeks. That should feel like progress. It does not feel like progress. It feels like twenty-two individual days of waking up alone in his apartment and staring at the ceiling and thinking about how Tommy used to make coffee before Buck was even out of bed, and then thinking about how he needs to stop thinking about that, and then making his own coffee and standing in his kitchen drinking it alone, which isn't even sad, it's just quiet.

He's fine, though. 

He's doing great. He went to the grocery store yesterday and stood in the cereal aisle for fifteen minutes trying to decide between Cap'n Crunch and Frosted Flakes like it was a life or death decision, because it turns out when you remove the person you've been grocery shopping with from the equation, you just stand in aisles and stare at things until a stock boy asks if you need help. 

He bought both. He's been eating cereal for dinner every night like a feral college freshman and he's not even a little bit sorry about it.

The point is, he's going through it. 

Not in a cool, mysterious, post-breakup-glow kind of way. In a showing-up-on-Eddie's-porch-unannounced-at-nine-pm kind of way. Which is its own category of pathetic, except Eddie never makes him feel pathetic about it, because Eddie is a good friend — arguably the best friend Buck has ever had — and also because Eddie answered the door three weeks ago in tighty whities and a pink button-down that was fully buttoned, which should have looked ridiculous — and did look ridiculous, technically, like a frat boy who got halfway through getting dressed and then just gave up — except Eddie was also flushed and out of breath and his hair was all ruffled and sweaty like he'd been doing jumping jacks or having a private dance party or murdering someone or —

He's lost his train of thought.

That keeps happening lately. 

Specifically when he thinks about Eddie answering the door like that. Which is fine. It's fine, it doesn't mean anything, it's just that his best friend has arms and a chest and apparently does whatever the hell he does alone at nine o'clock at night that leaves him red-faced and panting in his underwear, and Buck is recently single and starved for physical affection, so of course his stupid brain is going to latch onto any available warm body in his vicinity, even if that warm body is his straight best friend who was probably just doing laundry. In his tighty whities. Dress shirt buttoned up to the collar. Breathing hard.

Cool. Moving on.

So at some point during his moping era — the early days, when he was still in the scrolling-Instagram-at-two-in-the-morning phase, because that's what healthy well-adjusted adults do after getting dumped — he came across this post from a photographer offering a free boudoir photoshoot giveaway. Full session, professional lighting, fancy underwear, the whole deal. And yeah, most of the other entrants were women, but Buck has never once in his life let gender norms stop him from doing anything stupid, so he clicked the link and filled out the form. There was a little text box at the bottom that said "why are you entering this giveaway today?" and he typed out something mortifying about being freshly dumped and needing to feel like a human being again, which in hindsight was probably the exact kind of pathetic that wins you a pity giveaway, because two weeks later he got a DM saying congratulations, he'd won.

Which — okay. He was not expecting that. At all. He'd forgotten he'd even entered. He'd also, in the intervening two weeks, eaten his body weight in Cap'n Crunch and cried once in the shower to a Hozier song, so "boudoir photoshoot winner" was not exactly the energy he was putting out into the universe.

But he won. So he went. And the photos came back, and they're good — like, objectively good — and he saved them to his phone like an idiot instead of his laptop, and this is where the story takes a hard left into Buck's personal hell.

So here’s what happened.

He was lying on his couch — his sad couch, the couch that has become the epicenter of his post-breakup depression nest, complete with a blanket that hasn't been washed in a timeframe he's not willing to admit to and a throw pillow with a permanent dent in it shaped like his head — and he was looking at the photos. Just scrolling through them. Admiring the artistry. The composition. The lighting choices.

Fine. He was checking himself out. 

He can admit that. He was looking at pictures of himself nearly fully naked on a white sheet, lying on his stomach with his back arched and one leg bent up and nothing but shadows and a very strategically placed hand keeping the photo from being actual pornography, and he was thinking holy shit, is that me? Because apparently all it takes is professional lighting and a photographer who knows what she's doing and suddenly Buck looks like he belongs on one of those calendars that middle-aged women buy at Spencer's and hide in their nightstands.

There are other ones too. One where he's on his back with his arm draped above his head and his hips angled and everything below his navel is just — out, basically, barely covered by a scrap of silk the photographer had handed him and said "drape this wherever feels natural," and Buck had draped it and she'd said "perfect" and he'd thought this does not feel natural at all but apparently it looked incredible because the resulting photo is obscene. 

Like, genuinely obscene. Like, he would not be able to open this photo on public transportation without getting arrested.

He's having a moment with himself. A rare, flickering, fragile moment of thinking he might actually be attractive, and he wants to hold onto it, so he's scrolling back and forth between the photos and maybe zooming in once or twice — fine, several times — when his phone buzzes with a text from Hen about something he doesn't immediately process, and his thumb does that automatic thing thumbs do, that muscle-memory swipe-up-and-tap to switch apps, except his thumb miscalculates by half a centimeter and instead of opening the text it taps the share icon, and instead of opening the share menu it taps the recent contact at the top of the row, and instead of being literally anyone else in his recent contacts it's —

Eddie.

The photo that was pulled up — not one of the tamer ones or one where he's at least wearing underwear, but the fully nude one, the one with his back arched and his ass on full display and his face turned toward the camera with an expression the photographer had called "inviting" and Buck would more accurately describe as "fuck me" — flies into Eddie’s text thread before Buck's brain has even registered the sequence of inputs his thumb just executed. Delivered. Blue bubble. Done. At ten thirty on a Thursday evening.

Buck stares at his screen.

The screen stares back.

Delivered.

The throw pillow goes flying. So does the remote, which he kicks off the coffee table on his way to sitting upright, and it clatters onto the floor somewhere behind the couch, but that doesn't matter right now because there are bigger problems happening, there are exponentially bigger problems happening, like the fact that a fully nude photograph of his entire naked body just pinged in his best friend's text messages completely unprompted, on a weeknight — as if sending porn to your straight best friend on a weekend is any better — and there is no explanation for this that doesn't end with Eddie never making eye contact with him again.

Unsend. He can unsend. That's a feature, Apple added that, thank god — he taps the message and holds it and the little menu pops up and Undo Send is grayed out because it's been more than two minutes, it's been more than two minutes because he spent the first two minutes staring at his screen in catatonic horror like an idiot, and now the window is closed and the photo lives in Eddie's phone forever. 

His naked body is permanently in Eddie’s text thread. Right there between their last conversation about whose turn it was to bring coffee to work and a meme Eddie sent him about a dog wearing a hard hat.

Typing. He should start typing.

omg ignore that

No. Too panicked. Delete.

LOL wrong person sorry

Too casual. Also a lie. Also Eddie will ask who it was meant for and Buck does not have an answer to that question that doesn't make everything worse. Delete.

hey so funny story

Literally nothing about this is funny. Delete.

so I won this giveaway and

He's not going to explain boudoir photography to Eddie over text. Absolutely not. Delete.

Typing and deleting and typing and deleting, thumbs working against each other, and then the little notification slides in under the photo.

Read 10:41 PM.

Oh. Oh shit.

Phone is now face-down on the couch cushion, in time-out. Buck picks it up to make sure he saw it right, and he did. Great. He puts it back down. Picks it up again. A merry-go-round of a very specific brand of bisexual panic ensues.

Eddie saw it. Eddie opened the message and looked at a fully nude photograph of Buck — back arched, ass out, face angled at the camera like a goddamn invitation — and now that image is in Eddie's brain, taking up real estate in Eddie's memory, and Buck is going to have to change his name and move to another state. Fake his own death. Transfer to a different firehouse in a different city in a different time zone and grow a beard and pretend he's never met anyone named Eddie Diaz.

Okay. Okay okay okay, he can fix this. He has a mouth and semi-working fingers that got him into this mess, sure, but they can click the call button next to Eddie’s contact. That’s a thing they can do. 

First call: two rings, three, voicemail.

Second call: straight to voicemail. Eddie turned his phone off. Eddie looked at Buck's fully naked body and was so disturbed that he powered down his entire phone, which — yeah. Fair. Buck would also turn his phone off if his supposedly platonic male friend sent him an unsolicited nude. That's a reasonable and proportional response to receiving surprise pornography from your buddy.

Texts go out rapid-fire anyway, because his thumbs, the little bastards that started this, decide to keep going. Hey can you call me back? Fifteen seconds later: It's not what it looks like. Ten seconds after that: Actually I don't know what it looks like but it's not that. And then, because rock bottom is apparently not low enough: I won a giveaway.

None of them deliver. Every single one sits there with gray Sent underneath, mocking him, while the original photo — the full nude, the back arch, the fuck-me eyes — still reads Read 10:41 PM.

Buck wonders, briefly, how Nova Scotia is this time of year. Maybe he could move there. Become a lighthouse keeper. Grow a really cool beard and be that guy people tell stories about. 

He can’t move to Nova Scotia. Who would water his plants? Shit.

The blanket goes over his head as he fumbles to grab the throw pillow off the ground and clutch it to his chest. Nova Scotia may be off the table but he could live here. This is his home, under this blanket, on this couch, replaying every single interaction he and Eddie have ever had and calculating exactly how much of their friendship he just incinerated with one photograph. 

Maybe he'll suffocate under here. Maybe he'll haunt his own apartment as a very sad, very naked ghost. At least ghosts don't have to make eye contact with their best friends at work the next morning.

Five minutes. Nothing.

Ten minutes. Nothing.

Fifteen. The texts still haven't delivered. Eddie's phone is still off. Eddie is probably sitting in his living room right now, in his tighty whities and his buttoned-up dress shirt, staring at his wall, trying to figure out how to tell Buck that they can't be friends anymore because he can't unsee his best friend's bare ass. And Buck can't even be mad about that. This is entirely self-inflicted. Eight years of friendship and a bond he genuinely considers the most important relationship in his life, body-slammed into the ground by one poorly aimed thumb and a boudoir photoshoot he entered at two in the morning because he was sad and horny and lonely and —

Buzz.

His hand shoots out from under the blanket so fast he clotheslines himself on the armrest, grabs the phone, fumbles it, catches it against his chest, flips it over.

From Eddie.

Incoming call.

His thumb hovers over the green button for a full second longer than it should, because answering this means it's real, means he has to use his voice, means the conversation he has been mentally pre-writing for the last seventeen minutes is about to actually take place in audible reality and not just inside the panicked echo chamber of his own skull. He could let it ring. Could let it go to voicemail and then sprint to the airport with no luggage and start a new life in, say, Belize. He has options.

He answers. "Eddie. Hey. Hi. Listen, before you say anything—"

"Hey, bud."

Whatever Buck was about to say next dies somewhere between his throat and his teeth.

Because Eddie sounds — okay, firstly, Eddie sounds completely normal. That's the thing his brain notices first, the casual hey-bud of a man who has not, in fact, just received unsolicited evidence of his best friend's entire body, and Buck, sitting under a blanket on his sad couch with a throw pillow crushed against his rapidly beating heart, feels relief flooding his system so fast he gets dizzy with it, because okay, okay, maybe Eddie didn't open it, maybe the read receipt was a fluke, maybe he tapped on it accidentally and Eddie hasn't actually seen anything, maybe—

Then the second thing becomes more obvious, lagging behind the first by about half a second, which is the part where Eddie sounds out of breath.

Really out of breath. The kind of out-of-breath where the syllables come unevenly and the consonants are softer than they're supposed to, the air on the other end of the line carrying a faintly rasping quality, like Eddie is speaking around something his body is trying to do louder.

Buck does not think about what that something is. Buck does not think about it because Buck's brain is currently a Florida swimming pool with a string of holiday lights submerged in it, sparks and steam and the smell of something burning, the only signal making it through the static being the steady high whine of Eddie has seen me naked, Eddie has seen me naked, Eddie has seen me naked.

"Are you okay?" Buck manages. "You sound like you’re running.”

"I'm fine."

Buck scrunches his eyebrows together. "You sound winded."

Eddie chuckles, breathlessly. "Just got out of the shower."

Shower. Right. Sure. People get winded by showers. Buck has been winded by showers. Eddie has that fancy renovated showerhead from when he redid the bathroom last year — a small weather system mounted to a tile wall — and yeah, a shower like that is basically a cardio workout in itself, so this tracks, this is normal, except that Buck has been on the phone with Eddie post-shower like, probably one billion times in their friendship and Eddie has never once sounded like this, like the air is coming out of him on a delay.

The blanket is suddenly too hot. Buck pushes it off without consciously deciding to, sweating against his couch cushions, the throw pillow slipping sideways into his lap because he has apparently forgotten how to hold things, has possibly forgotten how to hold things forever, his motor function shutting down system by system the way an old computer goes dark one window at a time.

"Okay," Buck says, slowly, dragging the word out while his brain frantically tries to catch up to the rest of the conversation. "Eddie… about the text—”

"Yeah," Eddie says, his voice dropping half an octave, going rough in a way Buck has never, in years of friendship, heard come out of him before. "About that."

That's not Eddie's voice. That's a voice wearing Eddie like a costume. A voice that lives somewhere in Eddie that Buck has been allowed to suspect existed but has never been permitted to hear, and now it's just — out, here, in Buck's ear, on a phone call, while Eddie is breathing the way he is breathing, and Buck's stomach does a series of acrobatics before plummeting to the earth’s core.

"It was an accident, I—"

"Was it?"

Buck fish-mouths. "Yes?" he says, and even he can hear that it sounds less like a statement and more like a question, less like an answer and more like he's polling the room for input, and Eddie has gone very quiet on the other end of the line in a way that is not the silence of processing an apology. It's a different kind of silence — a listening silence, an attentive, almost-amused silence, the silence of a cat watching a bird through a window — and Buck doesn’t know what to do with it.

Die, probably.

The throw pillow has migrated entirely into his lap. He's gripping it with both hands now, like a man on a roller coaster who has just seen the height of the first drop, the phone tucked carefully in the space between his ear and neck.

"You sure about that, Buck?"

There is a thing happening behind Buck's belly button. A thing he is going to address in a minute. A thing he is currently telling NOT NOW, BODY, READ THE ROOM, because his best friend is asking him a question and the question requires an answer and the answer is currently being filtered through a billion pounds of brain fog and one very specific traitor of an organ that has apparently decided the situation is, in fact, very now.

"It was— my thumb— I was— I had it open and—"

"Mm,” Eddie hums, stuttering a bit. “Open."

"The photo, I had the photo open, I was— I wasn't sending it to anyone, Eddie, I was just—"

"Just?" Buck can practically hear the raised eyebrow through the phone.

His face is hot, has achieved a thermal output that should be worrisome considering his face could probably be used to heat a small apartment.

"Looking at it."

"At yourself."

"At— yes. Fine. A-At myself, okay, I was looking at myself, I won a giveaway, there were photos taken, they came out— they came out really good, Eddie, and I was— I was having a moment, I was having a private moment with my own existence, and my thumb slipped and now you've seen my—"

He can't finish the sentence. He gestures vaguely at his own body with the hand that isn't holding the phone, despite the fact that Eddie cannot see him and also the gesture would not have clarified anything if Eddie could.

There's a pause. The breathing on the other end of the line is doing the thing again, except more so now, and Buck has the distinct sensation of being studied through the phone, of Eddie sitting wherever Eddie is sitting — on his bed probably, Eddie is definitely on his bed, why is Buck picturing him on his bed, stop picturing him on his bed — putting together a picture Buck has not yet processed him having.

"You were having a moment," Eddie says, slowly, "with your own existence."

"Yes."

"While naked."

"In— In the photos. Yes." Buck shifts on the couch, suddenly very aware of his own clothed body, of the sweatpants he hasn't changed since this morning and the t-shirt with a small stain on it from breakfast, like Eddie can somehow see him through the phone. "I'm not— I-I'm not currently naked."

"On your couch."

"Eddie."

The throw pillow gets a death-grip squeeze. Somewhere in the kitchen the refrigerator hums on, an obnoxiously normal sound for a moment that is doing whatever this moment is doing.

"Probably with that sad blanket that's been sitting there for weeks." A beat. Buck can hear the faint rustle of sheets on the other end of the line, the unmistakable sound of Eddie repositioning, and his stomach drops directly into his shoes. "Looking at pictures of yourself."

"Why do you sound like you're making a list?"

One of Buck’s hands has migrated, without his permission, to the hem of his shirt. He is fiddling with it. Twisting the fabric between his fingers like a Victorian woman with a fainting couch. He notices and forces his hand back down to the cushion beside him, palm flat, fingers splayed, like he's trying to convince his own body to stay put.

"Just trying to picture it, Buck. Help me out."

“Picture what, exactly?” Buck squeaks, hand twisting back into the hem of his shirt despite his previous instructions to it. “What are we— what is this— w-what are you doing, Eddie?”

There’s a breathy exhale on the other end of the line, almost a laugh, and then the rustle of sheets again, more purposeful this time, as if Eddie is settling in. 

“What am I doing?” Eddie says, an amused lilt to his tone. “Just appreciating, Buck.”

“A-Appreciating.”

“Mm. Various forms of artwork.”

Buck sits with his mouth open for an embarrassing length of time, trying to assemble a thought from pieces that refuse to fit together. Eddie just said that, while breathing the way he is breathing, and the implications are settling into Buck’s brain on a delay, one floor at a time, like an elevator that’s been broken for years. 

“Artwork,” Buck echoes, distantly. 

“Yeah. Been getting into it more lately. Some of it’s pretty good.” Another shift on the other end, fabric whispering against itself. “Composition. Lighting. Subject matter.”

Buck swallows. “S-Subject matter.”

“You’re really going to make me spell it out, huh?”

“I— I don’t—”

“You should…” Eddie takes a long, drawn out breath. “Appreciate it with me.”

Buck’s body does something he doesn’t quite have a name for, somewhere between a flinch and a shudder, travelling down his spine and pooling somewhere far too south of where he’s currently willing to acknowledge anything. His free hand keeps jumping back to his shirt, twisting and untwisting the fabric while his brain races to keep up with what is happening right now. 

“Appreciate it with you,” Buck repeats. He’s been reduced to a parrot, his vocabulary stripped down to whatever Eddies says last. 

“Mm-hmm.”

“Like— like how—”

“Pull it up, Buck. If that’s alright with you.”

"Y-yeah," Buck manages.

It sounds closer to a croak than a word. And what he doesn't say, what he wishes he could shout into the receiver so Eddie understands the full picture, is that it is so fucking alright with him, actually, it is the most alright thing that has ever happened to him, he has no clue where any of this is going but his bags are packed and he is, metaphorically, in the passenger seat with his seatbelt on and his hand on the dash and he is ready to ride wherever Eddie wants to take him. Yeah is the thinnest, palest, most cowardly possible version of yes please, yes always, yes whatever you want, Eddie, I have never said no to you in my life and I'm not about to start now.

“The— the same photo?”

Eddie hums. “You said there were several.”

There are several — a whole album, actually. Buck's traitorous thumb, the responsible party for this catastrophe, is already drifting toward the photos app before he can veto the motion. He stops himself, freezes, hovers, because if he opens the photos right now — if he opens them while Eddie is breathing into his ear like that, doing whatever Eddie is so politely refusing to confirm in whatever room he is currently doing it in — Buck is going to combust.

"Eddie," Buck says, smaller now, the smart-ass timbre stripped out of him. "Are we— what is this? Tell me what this is."

"I told you what it is."

"And what are you calling it?"

"Art appreciation. That's what I'm calling it." A pause. The next words come out lower, the metaphor stretching like fabric pulled tight enough to see through. "You're free to call it whatever you want, Buck. I'm just looking at the photo. Privately. In the comfort of my own home. And I think you should join me."

Join him. 

Buck's stomach does a slow, lazy roll. Join him in what — the looking, or the other thing, the thing Eddie is so studiously not saying, the thing his breathing has been broadcasting for the last ten minutes on a frequency Buck's body picked up before his brain did? Eddie has structured this in a way that he can deny later if Buck pulls back, has built in plausible escape hatches at every turn — I was just looking at the photo, Buck, I don't know what you thought I meant — and the careful generosity of it, the way Eddie has left every door cracked open for Buck to walk out of, somehow makes Buck want to walk into the room instead, lock the door behind him, throw away the key.

He opens the photos.

The most explicit one fills the screen — the back arch, the angled hips, the eyes, fuck — and Buck stares at his own naked body with the surreal awareness that Eddie is also, at this exact moment, looking at the same image from a different room across the city, both of them sharing a screen across the dark.

"I'm— I have it open," Buck says, hoarse.

"Yeah?" Eddie's sounds rougher, the breathing accelerating slightly, and Buck hears it now without filtering, hears it for what it is, a man whose hand is doing exactly what Buck has spent the last twenty minutes refusing to imagine. "Which one?"

"The— the one I sent."

"Of course." Eddie laughs, but not in a funny way. "The greatest hits."

"Eddie—"

"Tell me what you see."

"What?"

"In the photo. Tell me."

Buck swallows around a dry mouth. The hand that isn't holding the phone has moved without his permission to his thigh, his fingertips pressing in. He's pretending he doesn't notice. "I see, uh, m-me."

Eddie scoffs. Buck can hear the eyeroll from here. "Helpful. Try again."

"I'm— I'm on my stomach. On the white sheet. My back is— my back is arched. My— I'm looking at the camera."

"Mm-hmm." 

Fuck it. Buck’s gonna enjoy this while it lasts. 

"What— what do you see?"

There's a long pause. The breathing on the other end has gone uneven enough that Eddie has clearly stopped trying to hide it, and when his voice comes back it's rough, held-back, like he's talking around sounds he's refusing to let out.

"I see," Eddie says, measured, careful, the metaphor finally beginning to fray at the seams, "someone who looks like he wanted somebody to see him like that."

Buck's whole body goes hot.

"And I'm trying to decide," Eddie continues, slower now, his breath heavier, "whether I'm allowed to be that somebody."

The hand on Buck's thigh has migrated upward. He notices it three seconds after it happens, his palm now resting flat against his own stomach where his shirt has rucked up, fingers splayed across the skin. The touch of his own hand on his own body in this context is sending a current up his spine that he is, evidently, helpless to stop.

"Eddie." Buck's voice cracks. "Are you— are you jerking off to my photo?"

The pause is brief but loaded, and when Eddie answers it’s barely recognizable, the art-appreciation framework finally, mercifully shed, every word landing somewhere in the south of Buck's body with a measurable physical impact.

"You send me a picture like that, Buck. What am I supposed to do?"

A whimper escapes Buck before he can catch it, a groan and a curse twisted together. On the other end of the line Eddie's breathing audibly hitches and picks up speed, the rhythmic schlick shlick shlick of his hand stuttering for half a second before resuming faster.

"Yeah," Eddie breathes, closer to a groan than a word. "There you go. There it is."

"Eddie, fuck—"

"You should see this picture, Buck. I'm looking at you right now and I can't decide which part to look at first." A pause, filled with the slick, unmistakable sound of skin on skin that’s driving Buck crazy. "Your back. Your mouth. The way you're looking at the camera like you were thinking about somebody."

Buck's hand has migrated north again, flat against his ribs now, his whole body alight with the awareness of being watched, even though Eddie can't see him, even though Eddie is looking at a photo and not at Buck — but it doesn't matter, because Eddie is looking at some version of him, the version of him that laid down and arched his back and angled his face at a camera while thinking, very specifically, about a person whose name Buck has not let himself say out loud.

"I was," Buck says, before he can stop himself.

The breathing on the other end of the line stops suddenly. Buck can practically feel Eddie freezing, his hand pausing wherever it currently is, his entire body going still in that way Eddie goes still when something matters.

"You were?”

"I was thinking about somebody. When she— when she took the picture."

He hears Eddie suck in a sharp breath. "Who?”

"Eddie."

"Tell me, Buck."

"I think you know,” Buck says, quieter now.

The sound Eddie makes is wrecked beyond recognition. Buck has known this man for years, has heard him grunt and curse and laugh and cry, has memorized the entire range of his vocal output across every emotion a human being is capable of, but Buck has never heard this sound before — broken and almost angry, like Eddie has just been handed the thing he was hoping for and is having to grip the edge of the bed to keep from falling off it.

"Say it,” Eddie pleads, gravel-rough, his words barely formed. "Don't make me guess, Buck, I have been guessing for way too long, just—"

"You." It’s punched out of Buck. "It was you. I was— when she said to look at the camera like I wanted somebody, I was looking at— I was thinking about you."

"Jesus Christ."

Buck exhales shakily. "Yeah."

"Jesus Christ, Buck."

Eddie's hand is moving faster on the other end of the line. Buck can hear it, can hear the rhythm of it, the wet purposeful slide of skin. His own hand has slid to press against himself through his sweatpants where he is, to no one’s surprise, painfully hard.

"Touch yourself,” Eddie breathes.

It’s not a request, not even a suggestion. It’s calm and certain, an order. Buck shivers at the thought of Eddie giving him orders. He wonders briefly about Eddie in the military, if Eddie ever had to give orders. If he ever had to punish people for not following those orders. If he had to— 

Buck's body is already obeying before his brain has finished receiving the input, switching the phone to speaker and balancing it next to his head, his hand sliding under his waistband while a small confused voice in the back of his head pipes up to ask, with genuine bewilderment, wait, what? 

Because this is Eddie. 

This is Eddie Diaz, his best friend Eddie, the Eddie who has been to weddings and funerals with him, who has a kid, who has dated women, who has, to Buck's knowledge, always dated women, who has never once given Buck a single indication that he might also be a person whose hand goes places under instruction from another man on the phone. 

And yet here Eddie is. Here that voice is. Here Buck's body is, executing the order, going right past whatever question his brain was trying to ask, because apparently Eddie's straightness and Eddie ordering Buck to touch himself while audibly jerking off are two facts Buck is going to have to figure out how to reconcile later, possibly much later, possibly never.

He finally wraps his hand around himself with a punched-out groan, the feeling lighting him up inside. 

Eddie matches it with a groan of his own. "Oh, fuck, baby—"

The endearment is like a hand around Buck's throat. Like a hand around something else, actually, given that he is currently jerking himself off on his sad post-breakup couch while his best friend calls him baby in a voice that is going to live in his head until he dies. Another moan slips out of him, helpless, his fist already working fast wet strokes because there is no slow option available to him, precum dripping steadily from the tip, his body has been wound up for the last twenty minutes and is now barreling toward release like a freight train.

Buck is going to have several questions about all of this later. Buck is going to sit Eddie down, possibly in a well-lit room with a notepad, and ask him to please walk Buck through the entire timeline of Eddie's sexual identity from roughly middle school to the present moment, because Buck has spent the last near decade actively suppressing every inappropriate thought he has ever had about Eddie specifically because Eddie was, to his knowledge, a straight man, and if it turns out that Eddie is in fact not a straight man, Buck is going to need a minute to grieve the time lost. 

"E-Eddie,” Buck whines.

Eddie groans. "Yeah. I'm here. Tell me what you're doing."

"I'm— fuck, Eddie, I'm—"

"Use your words, Buck."

"I'm— I’m touching myself." It’s practically a sob, his fist pumping faster around himself. "I've got my hand on myself, I'm— fuck, I'm so hard, Eds, I'm so fucking hard right now."

"Yeah you are,” Eddie breathes. “Bet you're soaking wet for me, aren't you, bud."

"Eddie."

"Aren't you?”

"Yes."

The wet sound of Eddie's hand on himself gets louder, more urgent, and Buck can hear the bed creaking under him now, can hear every restraint Eddie has been politely maintaining for the entire phone call snapping one by one. The escape hatches Eddie built so generously into the structure of this conversation have all been locked from the inside, and Buck has never been so grateful for anything in his life.

"You know what I'm doing right now, Buck?"

"Tell me."

"I'm staring at your picture.” Eddie chuckles. “I have it pulled up on my laptop, full screen, because my phone screen wasn't big enough."

"Oh my god,” Buck groans. 

"Mm-hmm. I'm laying in my bed looking at you with my hand on my cock, and I'm thinking about every single one of the filthy thoughts I've had about you."

"Eddie, fuck—"

"You wanna know what I would do to you, Buck?"

The words have stopped working in Buck's mouth. His hips are snapping up into his own fist now in helpless little jerks, his sweatpants shoved down to his thighs, his free hand fisted in the leather of the couch because it's the closest thing he can grip.

"Yes," Buck manages, somehow. "Yes, please, Eddie, please tell me."

Eddie's breath hitches and Buck makes note of that — the way Eddie reacts to being asked, to being wanted out loud — because somewhere underneath the haze, underneath the desperate working of his own hand, Buck has started turning over a very specific thought.

Eddie has been running this whole call. Eddie has had all the power. The careful cruelty, the easy demands. And Buck has been a puddle on his sad couch, parroting and stuttering and following directions like someone with no spine and several feelings.

It's time to even the score.

Buck takes a breath and tries to steady himself. Fails, mostly, because his hand is still wrapped around his cock and his ears are still full of Eddie's breathing, but it doesn't matter, because he's the one with the album, isn't he?

He's the one whose phone is currently holding a small private collection of professionally lit boudoir photographs that Eddie has only seen one of. Eddie has been doing whatever Eddie has been doing to a single image and falling apart on the other end of the line, and there are like, twenty more in this folder.

Buck has, on his phone, over twenty additional weapons.

His thumb drifts to the photos app while Eddie inhales to answer, the album still open from before. Buck scrolls through the row with what he considers a remarkable amount of composure for a man whose pants are around his thighs. The one on his back with his arm above his head. The one with the silk. The one where he's biting his lip with his hand splayed across his stomach. Several others, each more obscene than the last, all of them currently weaponized on his behalf by virtue of the fact that Eddie has just confessed, more or less, to having had filthy thoughts about him for an undefined but apparently substantial period of time.

He picks the lip-biting one first. Easier to start with. A warmup volley. He taps share, taps Eddie's name, and hears the woosh, watches the delivered notification pop up under it before he can second-guess himself.

"I'd start at your mouth," Eddie is saying, oblivious. "I'd kiss you for so long you'd forget your own name. I'd—"

A pause. A very specific pause that has Buck smiling from ear to ear.

The rhythm on the other end of the line stops. The room across the city has gone silent in the unmistakable way a room goes silent when someone has just looked down at their phone in the middle of doing something they were already losing their mind about and sees another picture of the thing causing them to lose their mind in another compromising position. Buck feels a hot prickle of triumph crawl up the back of his neck. 

Got him.

"Buck." It sounds strangled. 

"Mm?" Buck does his best to keep his voice level. His hand has slowed on himself to long lazy strokes, dragging it out, savoring the leverage. "Something wrong, Eddie?"

"You did not send me another one."

"You said you wanted to see the album."

"I did not say that, Buck, I asked you to describe the photo, not send a— a follow-up.”

"Composition," Buck offers, his voice maybe shakier than he means it to be, but still — still in control. Mostly. "Lighting. Subject matter. Thought you might appreciate the variety."

Eddie all but growls under his breath, some involuntary stuttered exhale that goes through Buck's spine and makes his dick jump. The bed creaks on the other end. Eddie has clearly shifted, looked at the photo, and is — Buck can hear it — already breathing harder than before, the brief stillness shattered, his hand starting back up again at a pace that suggests the new image has hit a previously unmapped nerve.

There is, distantly, a part of Buck that realizes how absolutely surreal this is. 

He’s doing this with his best friend, who, last he checked — last Buck checked, which was admittedly a while ago, but still — was a self-identified heterosexual man who had a perfectly nice ex-wife (god rest her soul) and an established history of dating women named Ana and Marisol and Shannon and not, to Buck's knowledge, anyone named anything else. 

But that same man is currently on Buck's phone doing… things, and apparently this is just — what they're doing now. This is the new normal. Heterosexual Eddie is a phrase Buck is going to have to retire, effective immediately, pending an extensive debrief that Buck is too busy to conduct at this exact moment. 

"You are—" Eddie tries, then loses the sentence somewhere on the way out. "You are something else, Buckley, I swear to god—"

"Tell me what you'd do," Buck murmurs, pressing his advantage, because the smug little curl in his chest is real, the heady knowledge that he can do this. "You were saying. My mouth. You'd kiss me. Then what?”

Fuck, he’s still kind of in shock they’re even doing this at all. 

"You don't get to—"

"Then what, Eddie."

A long shaky breath. Buck can practically see him, can see Eddie scrubbing a hand down his face, regrouping, trying to drag himself back to the position of authority he had so confidently occupied a minute ago. Eddie clears his throat, but it doesn’t help the gravel-rough lilt of his voice.

"I'd put my fingers in your mouth," Eddie says, dragging the words back into the lower register. The air in Buck's apartment immediately leaves the room and it’s suddenly much hotter. "Two of them. I'd push them past your lips and watch your tongue work around my knuckles, see if you'd whine for me with your mouth full."

Buck flinches a little and his hand tightens around himself. He had a plan. He had a plan, and the plan involved continuing to send Eddie photos and watching him unravel from a safe distance, but Eddie has — Eddie has casually mentioned fingers in his mouth and now Buck's brain is broadcasting full color HD imagery of that exact scenario on a continuous loop, and his cock is leaking against his own knuckles, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from whining into the phone.

He doesn’t bite his cheek hard enough. The whine slips out anyway.

"Yeah," Eddie breathes, satisfied. "Just like that."

No. No, this is not how this is supposed to go. This is supposed to be Buck's flip. Buck's revenge. Buck refuses to lose the upper hand thirty seconds into having it.

He’s back in the photos app before he can think it through, scrolling, hunting, and there — there it is. The one against the headboard. He's sitting up, one knee bent, his back against an upholstered headboard the photographer had wheeled in specifically for this shot, a length of silk pooled across his lap and barely concealing anything that matters. His face is angled directly at the camera. He looks into it. The photographer had said give me bedroom eyes and Buck had been thinking about — well. Same answer as before.

Send.

"Eddie," Buck says, sweetly, while the delivered notification slides into existence on the other end of the line, "I think you'll like this one."

Nothing but dead air comes through the speaker, then a moan, and the unmistakable noise of something getting knocked off Eddie's nightstand.

"Did you just— Buck."

"Mm?"

"That is— Buckley, that is the most— fucking hell. You’re sitting against a— what is that, a headboard? And your eyes, Buck, your eyes in that one, you cannot— you cannot just send me that while I'm—"

"While you're what, Eddie?"

"I am going to kill you."

Buck giggles. Like a school girl with a crush. "You keep saying that. Try harder."

Eddie laughs brokenly, and Buck feels it in his cock. The smug heady feeling of getting Eddie to come apart is so loud in his head he almost forgets, for a second, that he is also coming apart, that his own hand is wet, that he has been hard for what feels like an hour, that the second he lets his focus slip even slightly he is going to come all over his stomach before either of them get to the part where Eddie tells him what he wants to do to him.

"Tell me," Buck says, a little desperately now. "You were saying. About your fingers. In my mouth."

"Take your hand off your cock right now, Buckley."

Buck blinks. "W-What?"

"You heard me. Hand off. Now."

"Eddie—"

"You think you can sit there and pull a stunt like that and not pay for it?" Eddie's voice has gone low, low, low, the gravel back in it tenfold, every ounce of Buck's brief power reversal collected up and handed right back to Eddie with interest. "You think I'm just going to let you cum whenever you feel like it after sending me those? Hand off, baby. Right now."

Buck's hand, which had been working itself in a torturous stroke, freezes.

He does not, on a conscious level, decide to release himself. His fingers just — unfurl. His fist relaxes. His hand falls open against his thigh, and the immediate absence of contact pulls a small wounded noise out of his throat.

"There we go," Eddie murmurs, pleased. "Good boy."

Buck's eyes flutter closed against his will. Two stupid words from his stupid best friend with the stupid voice that should not be this devastating, and Buck is suddenly, viscerally aware of the fact that he is going to lose this game spectacularly, that he was never going to win it, that the second he picked up the phone and answered Eddie's call, the outcome of this conversation was decided and Buck has been a passenger ever since.

And in some still-functional corner of his mind Buck has the brief, dazed thought that this is, by any reasonable accounting, the strangest possible outcome for the evening, because he woke up this morning a single man with a sad blanket and a cereal habit and a best friend he had successfully convinced himself was straight, and he is going to fall asleep tonight a single man with a sad blanket and a cereal habit and a best friend who has just jerked off to his nudes. 

The interim period contains, evidently, several developments. Buck is going to need to sit with all of them. Just — preferably not right this second. Right this second he would like to find out what comes after good boy. 

What comes after good boy is silence. 

A long, intentional silence — Eddie letting Buck sit in it, letting the absence of contact and the absence of permission stretch out long enough for Buck to feel every second of it. 

Buck's hand is splayed open on his thigh and his cock is throbbing untouched against his stomach and Eddie is breathing on the other end of the line, patient now, contained, reining himself in. Buck has the dizzy realization that Eddie has done this before. Not necessarily this exact thing, but this — the holding back, making someone wait, calm authoritative pacing — Eddie knows how to do this. 

Eddie has practice. Eddie has, apparently, an entire skill set that Buck has been criminally unaware of for the duration of their friendship.

Practice on whom, though. 

That's the next question, the one Buck's brain helpfully volunteers not even seconds after the practice observation settles. Because Eddie didn't pick this up at the firehouse. Eddie did not develop the ability to make a grown man whimper into a phone over coffee runs and Christopher's parent-teacher conferences. Eddie has done this — exactly this, or some version of this — on other people. Multiple other people, probably, given how confidently he's running the call.

And — okay. Now Buck's curious. Now Buck is, in fact, very curious, in a way that is not entirely productive given his current physical condition. Other women, Buck assumes, has to be, the Shannons and the Anas and the Marisols, except — except — Eddie has been entirely too composed for this to be his first audio rodeo with a man. The practiced way he keeps leaving every door cracked open while simultaneously herding Buck into the room — Eddie is not making this up as he goes. Eddie is running a play he has run before.

So which is it? Other men? Has Eddie done this with other men? 

Is there a roster somewhere of dudes Eddie has casually destroyed during phone sex and sex-sex and Buck is now just the latest, most embarrassingly oblivious entry on the list? 

Is there a blueprint? Is there a Yelp review? Is there a previously-suspecting-nothing best friend somewhere out there who one day sent accidental nude to Eddie and ended up in this exact same configuration, on his exact same kind of sad post-breakup couch, learning the exact same things Buck is currently learning about his own previously-suspecting-nothing self? 

A hot, completely irrational flare of jealousy spikes through Buck's chest at the thought, which is — fine, that's fine, that's a thing that's happening, Buck is going to add it to the list, the list of things to revisit and unpack at length once his cock is no longer the primary organ in charge of decision-making in his body. Because of course Eddie has done this before. 

Look at him. 

The man could destroy a person with a voicemail. The man could end careers with a well-timed pet name. Of course Buck is not the first to be on the receiving end of this particular Eddie. Buck is just the first to be on the receiving end of this particular Eddie tonight.

"Eddie," Buck says, cracking around the name.

"Mm-hmm." Eddie sounds patient. Composed. Like a man who has all night, which, actually, he might. 

"Please."

The word slips out before Buck can dress it up into anything more dignified, and he hears his own desperation echo back to him through the speaker. He pinches his eyes shut, mortified, and his hips twitch up off the couch in a small involuntary jerk, chasing the contact that isn't there. 

Eddie hums, the sound rumbling through the phone. "Please what?"

"Please let me—"

Buck swallows. His throat is dry. His couch is sweat-damp underneath him in a way that he is going to have to address tomorrow with Febreze and possibly an entirely new couch. 

"Not yet."

"Eddie."

"You sent me three pictures, Buck. Three." Eddie's voice is full of that pleased tone, the satisfaction bleeding through having, at long last, gotten exactly what he wanted. "You weaponized your ass against me and you think you're just going to get to cum whenever you feel like it? No, baby. You wait."

Buck whines, unrepentant of it now. His hips twitch up off the couch involuntarily, chasing contact that isn't there, and the small mortified part of his brain that is still trying to maintain dignity notes that he is, at this exact moment, humping the air like a teenager in his childhood bedroom while his best friend tells him to wait on the other end of the phone.

"How long?" Buck manages.

"How long what?”

"How long do I have to wait?"

Eddie laughs, and it's so warm and pleased and Eddie that Buck feels something twist in his chest underneath all the other things currently twisting in his body. "Patience, baby. We're getting there."

There. Where, exactly? Where is there? Buck has no idea where they're going and no map for the territory, but Eddie sounds like he knows, sounds like he has the whole route in his head and is just driving Buck slowly toward it, and Buck is content to be a passenger in this metaphorical vehicle for the rest of his life.

"Talk to me," Buck whispers, and it comes out smaller than he means it to. "Eddie. Please. If I can't touch myself you have to— you have to give me something."

There's a pause. Eddie is thinking, calculating, weighing options. And then the sound on the other end of the line shifts. Buck hears the bed creak, hears the rustle of sheets, hears something — a laptop, presumably the laptop, the laptop currently displaying Buck's nudes in full screen — being shifted around, and then, after a beat—

The phone buzzes against Buck's ear.

He pulls it back to look and there's a FaceTime request hovering at the top of the screen.

Eddie's contact photo. Incoming video.

Buck's heart stops. "Eddie," he croaks into the phone, audio still connected, "Eddie, did you just—"

"Pick up, Buck."

"You want to— you want to do this on—"

"I want to see you, bud. Right now."

Buck has spent the last twenty-something minutes blindfolded, working off sound alone, conjuring Eddie up from breath and rustled sheets and a voice he didn't know existed, and now Eddie is offering — offering — to let Buck see him. To let Buck see what he looks like. To put a visual to the already life-ruining audio.

There is a very loud objection happening somewhere in Buck's head. Something about how he hasn't checked a mirror in roughly six hours and his hair is, by any reasonable account, doing whatever it wants up there, and how his apartment lighting is the kind of overhead that has historically been horrible in selfies, and how going from purely audio to high definition video is the kind of escalation that requires a running start and a producer and possibly a hair and makeup team, none of which Buck currently has access to.

The objection is, however, drowned out almost immediately by the much louder broadcasting of YES PLEASE YES NOW YES ALWAYS, which is coming from a different part of Buck's head entirely — a part that has, apparently, been running this whole evening from the back room, calling the shots while Buck's frontal lobe is busy panicking about logistics that do not actually matter.

"Y-yeah," Buck says, hoarse. "Yeah. Hang on."

He hangs up on the audio call and watches the facetime ring. Inhales. Looks down at himself — his t-shirt rucked up around his ribs, his sweatpants tangled around his thighs, his cock flushed and aching and visibly leaking, his entire body flushed pink from the chest up. He looks, frankly, like a man who has been doing exactly what he has been doing, which is the point, which is what Eddie has asked to see, which is — fine. Fine. He can do this. 

He has, after all, paid a professional photographer (technically Instagram paid the professional photographer, he won the giveaway, semantics) to take pictures of him doing something not entirely unlike this. He has practice. He has experience.

He props the phone against the pillow at the angle the photographer had recommended for selfies, hits accept on the FaceTime request, and immediately the screen fills with Eddie.

A strangled uh escapes Buck, his mouth dropping open against his will, gaping.

Because — okay. Eddie. Eddie Diaz. Eddie Diaz, his best friend and partner. Work partner. Not — anyway. Eddie is propped up in his bed against his headboard, his MacBook balanced on his stomach with the camera angled up at him, and he is — he’s shirtless, which is unsurprising, given the current happenings. 

His hair a sweaty mess from his hand running through it, his chest flushed pink and damp, his lips bitten red. The screen is split — Eddie's face takes up most of it, and in the corner there is, unmistakably, the boudoir photo Buck sent first, still pulled up on what must be a secondary monitor or browser tab or something, full screen, glowing in all its glory. 

Eddie has been jerking off to Buck's photo on a laptop like Buck is some sort of fine art exhibit, and Buck cannot decide whether to laugh or cry or cum on the spot.

"Hi," Eddie says cheekily, his eyes scanning the screen for what Buck assumes is his face in HD via FaceTime on Eddie's end.

"Hi," Buck manages.

"You look—" Eddie whimpers. Buck is actually going to die. "Jesus. Buck. You look—"

"You're looking at me." Buck sounds — wondering, almost stupid, like he’s narrating something obvious to himself just to confirm it’s real. 

"I'm looking at you."

"You— you have my photo.” Buck's eyes keep flicking to the corner of his own screen where the boudoir shot is just visible beside Eddie's head, the lighting on his own bare back glowing softly in the space like an art piece. Which, technically, it is. “On your laptop. I can see it."

Eddie’s lips purse around a smile. "Yeah."

"In a separate window." 

Buck doesn't know why he keeps reporting this back to Eddie like Eddie isn't fully aware of his own desktop layout and wasn’t the one to put the photo there for himself to look at. And jerk off to.

"Mm-hmm." Eddie's not even bothering to look embarrassed about it. If anything, he looks proud. 

"Like I'm— like I'm wallpaper or something."

"You should see how big you are on this screen, Buck."

Buck moans unabashed. "Show me," he says. "Show me you. T-Tilt the screen. I want to see— I want to see all of you."

Eddie's eyes go dark. His hand moves out of frame, and then Eddie is tilting the screen down, inch by gorgeous inch, the camera traveling down his throat and across his chest and over his stomach and finally, finally, settling at the angle where Buck can see Eddie's hand wrapped around his cock, thick and flushed and slick and moving, jesus fuck — of course Eddie’s cock would be big. 

Buck whimpers. 

Shiiiiiiit. Fuck. Okay, he’s — he’s alright. 

"Yeah?" Eddie murmurs, tilting the screen back up just enough that Buck can see his face again, see the satisfied smirk that has crept across it. "That what you wanted to see, baby?"

"Eddie,” Buck breathes. 

"Hm?"

"You're so—" Buck loses the sentence. His own hand has crept back toward himself and he is pretending he hasn't noticed. "Eddie, you're— fuck, you're—"

Eddie clicks his tongue and Buck's hand freezes mid-creep. "Hand off, Buck. I see you."

"See what?”

"I can literally see you on my screen, Buckley. You're not as sneaky as you think you are." Eddie's smirk widens, devastating, and Buck has the brief impression that he is being toyed with. Eddie’s like a cat. Playing with his meal before he eats it. "My turn. Go ahead and show me, baby. I want to see what I've been listening to."

Oh god. Buck's body flushes hot and is prickling all over, his hand going to the phone, tilting it down despite the part of his brain that is screaming. He tilts the phone down his body slowly, the lens dragging over his bare stomach, the trail of hair below his navel, finally settling on himself where he is hard and aching and flushed and—

Eddie's groan comes through the speaker so loud Buck flinches.

"Oh, fuck, Buck. Oh, you have got to be— you have got to be— turn it back. Let me see your face. Wanna watch you fall apart.”

Buck tilts the camera back up, his hands shaking, and Eddie's face fills his screen again — Eddie biting his lower lip, Eddie's eyes blown nearly black, Eddie's chest heaving — and Eddie is looking at him like — like the photo. Exactly like the photo. The expression Buck had been wearing in the picture that started all this, that fuck me expression the photographer had coached out of him by asking him to think about somebody, that expression — Eddie is wearing it right now, on Buck's screen, in full color, while Buck stares.

"You—" Buck tries.

"Yeah." Eddie's tongue darts out to wet his lower lip 

"Eddie, you—"

"Yeah, Buck." It’s gentler this time, almost coaxing. Eddie would be one to talk you through it. Fuck. 

"I can't— I'm not gonna last."

Eddie's expression softens. His hand slows on himself, an obvious mercy. "Touch yourself, baby. Take your time. I want to watch."

Buck wraps a hand around himself before Eddie has even finished the sentence, and he tries — he tries — to keep it slow, to do what Eddie asked, but his hand is already working in tight strokes, already so wet from how much he’s leaking, his hips already snapping up into his fist, his whole body locked into the kind of headlong sprint that does not have a brake pedal.

"E-Eddie."

"Show me, Buck. Tilt the camera again. I want to see both."

Buck’s eyes flutter open at the request. He’s not even sure when he closed them. “Both?"

Eddie chuckles, mildly condescending. God, Buck should not find that so hot. "Your face and your hand. Pull it back. Show me how hard you are for me, sweetheart.”

Buck fumbles the phone out to arm's length, his fingers trembling around the case, and the angle catches everything at once — his blown pupils, his chest heaving where his t-shirt is still rucked up under his collarbones, his fist circling himself in tight wet pulls that he cannot, despite his best efforts, get under control. 

On Buck's screen Eddie has mirrored him, propped at exactly the same angle, the laptop tilted somehow to capture his whole upper body and the fierce purposeful pumping over his thick, dripping cock — holy shit. His knuckles are flushed, his fingers gripping tight at the base before twisting up over the head, the rhythm relentless and so much more practiced than Buck's own desperate fumbling.

A small uh punches out of him on the next stroke, effectively fucking his fist at this point. Eddie's eyes drop to where Buck's hand is moving on himself as he groans, so raw it sounds painful.

"Yeah, baby. Just like that. Don't — shit — don’t stop."

"Uh— Eds—"

"Look at me. Keep looking at me."

Buck drags his eyes back up to Eddie's face, his thumb sliding through the slick gathered at the tip of his cock on every stroke, his whole body going tight at the slick wet sound it makes — and Jesus Christ could his body please, just once, be normal about anything tonight? The noise emitting from his Very Hard Dick has no business being that loud. 

Eddie hears it. Eddie hears it, Buck can tell, because Eddie's mouth falls open and his hand picks up speed, his abs flexing visibly as his hips chase the pleasure, and they are, for the first time tonight, looking at each other with no more excuses or plausible deniability. They're just — they're doing this. Jerking off without looking away, as if they could feel each other through the damn screen.

"Uh, uh, uh." Buck cannot stop the sounds now, every stroke pulling another one out of him, his teeth digging into his lower lip between them but failing to contain any of it.

"That's it. Fuck, Buck, you sound so good, you have no idea—"

Eddie is unraveling now, the unaffected dominant facade giving way to this — less composed, his words running into each other, sentences tripping and stumbling and not finding their end. Buck watches him on the screen, the way Eddie's jaw goes slack between sentences, the way his throat works around a swallow, the way the muscle in his arm jumps with every stroke of his fist below the frame.

"Eddie." Buck breathes, damn near reverent. Worshipful. 

He has tried to say several different things in the last thirty seconds and all of them have come out as some version of Eddie's name, his vocabulary apparently reduced to one syllable, his entire body humming with a tension that is about to snap.

"Buck, baby, I'm— I'm close, I'm so close, I want— I want to watch you—"

The way Eddie says it — like he's asking for something, like he's begging — ricochets through Buck's chest. His hand stutters around himself, faltering, because watching Eddie come undone practically on him, because of him, is a level of devastation Buck was not prepared for tonight.

"Together," Buck gasps.

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah, Eddie. Together. I'm— fuck, I'm already—" 

Buck's hips jerk up off the couch again, his whole body coiled now, the pleasure piling up behind a dam that is about to break whether he lets it or not.

"Look at me, baby."

Buck looks because Buck would never, in his entire life, look anywhere else again if he could help it. Eddie's face is flushed and beautiful and right there, lips parted, his eyes locked on Buck through the camera. Buck stares back, the pleasure building hot and devastating, his hand a blur on himself, and—

"E-Eds — shit — Eddie—"

"That's it. That's it, baby. Come on. Cum for me."

Buck cums, hard. His back arches off the couch and he spills over his hand and stomach and thighs with a broken sob, his eyes locked on Eddie's the entire time, watching Eddie's face shatter half a second behind him, watching Eddie's mouth fall open around a guttural groan, watching Eddie come undone but not over the picture — the poised and posed and edited porn-adjacent picture — no. Over Buck right now. 

The aftershocks roll through him for what feels like a lifetime. His hand keeps moving on himself in languid, sloppy strokes until it gets to be too much, and he just lies there, panting, the phone slipping in his sweaty grip, his eyes still locked on the screen where Eddie is now collapsed back against the headboard, his chest rising and falling fast, his hand limp on his stomach, glistening, evidence of his — well, his fucking orgasm caused by Buck’s orgasm because Buck just jerked off over FaceTime with his straight(?) best friend.

Holy shit. 

But, Eddie is straight. Right? 

That's been the operating assumption for the entire duration of their friendship, the foundational premise on which Buck has built his elaborate scaffolding of repression, the immutable fact around which he has organized years of carefully managed thoughts and very specifically aimed showers. Eddie Diaz: Straight Man. A given. A constant. A bedrock principle.

Except.

Except straight dudes don't usually — well, no. Buck cannot make confident generalizations about what straight dudes do or do not usually do, because Buck is not a straight dude and probably never has been, and his sample size for what straight dudes get up to in the privacy of their own bedrooms is none of his business, actually. 

Maybe straight dudes are routinely calling their best friends baby while jerking it to professionally lit boudoir photos. Maybe this is a thing they do. Maybe Buck has been mischaracterizing the entire heterosexual community for years.

(He has not. He knows this. His brain is grasping at straws now, doing damage control on a scale typically reserved for international PR disasters, and would very much like to construct a reality in which what just happened is something other than what just happened, because what just happened is going to require Buck to reorganize his entire understanding of himself, his best friend, the last near decade, and possibly the underlying nature of reality itself, and his brain is tired.)

Somewhere, the small voice of reason pipes up to suggest that perhaps Eddie was not, in fact, ever quite as straight as Buck had been operating under the assumption of. That perhaps the straight designation was something Buck had affixed to Eddie's forehead unilaterally, like a sticker, with no formal input from Eddie himself. 

That perhaps, in the absence of explicit confirmation, Buck had simply defaulted to the most useful possible interpretation for the purpose of his own continued survival in close proximity to a man he has been catastrophically in love with for the entire duration of their acquaintance.

Buck thinks the voice of reason should shut the hell up. The voice of reason is bringing up things Buck really doesn’t have the emotional capacity to deal with right now.

Instead, he looks at the screen, at Eddie, who is grinning at him now, soft and tired and a little disbelieving, as if he has just won something he didn't know he was playing for, and Buck thinks — okay. Maybe this is fine. 

Maybe this is great, actually. 

Maybe Buck is going to need to update some files in his mental records department, retire some assumptions, but it's fine, because Eddie is smiling at him like that, and Buck just came so hard he saw constellations, and somewhere Eddie is also a sticky mess because of Buck, and if this is the worst thing that has happened to Buck tonight then Buck is actually having a pretty fantastic evening, all things considered.

For a long beat neither of them speaks, the only sound a duet of uneven breathing through the speakers — Eddie's rough and damp, Buck's still hitching on the aftershocks, both their bodies catching up to what they just did to each other. Then Eddie laughs, scraped raw and out of breath, and somehow it's the most Eddie thing Buck has heard all night.

"So," Eddie says, his voice hoarse from use, "that just happened."

"So," Buck says. He clears his throat. Then clears it again. Several seconds pass while he attempts to formulate a complete sentence and fails repeatedly, his mouth opening and closing like a fish at a particularly disappointing aquarium. "So you're— um."

"Mm-hmm." Eddie sounds entirely too composed for a man who just came on his own stomach over FaceTime, which feels a little unfair if Buck’s being honest.

"You're not, like." Buck waves his free hand in front of the camera, the universal gesture for help me out here, this is your scene to clarify, I am drowning. "You're not, uh, straight. Apparently. Or— were you straight? Did you used to be straight? Did the photo, like— did it, like, convert you, or— actually don’t answer that. That’s insensitive. I — I don't think that's how that works. But also, if, uh— if it is, I have several follow-up questions about the conversion process and I would like to know if there's an instruction manual because I—"

"Buck."

Buck’s eyes snap to the screen. To Eddie’s face looking so fucking fond Buck could scream. Yeah?”

"Breathe."

"Yeah." Buck breathes. It does not help.

Eddie laughs, gentle and amused, settling deeper against the headboard, and somewhere in the back of Buck's head he recognizes that Eddie has not, at any point in this conversation, looked alarmed by any of it. Eddie has been, in fact, the only steady thing in the room for the last however long that just took. Eddie has been calm. Eddie has been prepared. Buck is the one falling apart over the bisexual or — or gay implications of a video call, while Eddie is over there looking completely fine and honestly, kind of ethereal. 

Un-fucking-believable. 

"I'm not sure what I am, exactly," Eddie says, scratching the back of his neck, looking off-camera for a second like he's actually thinking about it. "I've been, um, figuring it out. For a while now."

"For a while now,” Buck parrots.

"For a while now."

"How—” Buck lets out what he can only classify as a nervous wheeze of sorts. “H-How long is a while?”

"Buckley."

"Edmundo."

"A while." Eddie meets his eyes through the camera, and the corner of his mouth twitches. "But yeah. Not straight, bud."

Not straight, bud.

Well, shit. What the hell is he supposed to say to that?

Coolio, my dear friend. Should we chat about our recent sexual encounter in person, perhaps?

No, too formal.

Maybe — Wow, congratulations on your sexual identity, Edmundo, would you like a medal to match your silver star? No, that's worse. Maybe — Cool cool cool, glad we've established that, anyway, do you want to grab a beer this weekend and discuss the fact that I have been in love with you since, like, forever? Also worse. Every option is somehow worse than the last, like his frontal lobe has been replaced by a pull-string doll that only produces stilted catastrophes.

He should say something normal. Something casual. Something that does not telegraph the full extent of the realignment currently happening in his understanding of his life, friendship, and decade of carefully managed yearning. 

Cool, maybe. Cool, that's cool. He could say cool. Cool is a word. 

Buck blinks at the screen for what feels like an extremely long time, the phrase ricocheting around the inside of his skull at velocities that are not friendly to his already-compromised brain. Not straight, bud. Said with the same casual bud energy Eddie uses when he's asking Buck to grab him a beer from the fridge or pass the salt at dinner. Not straight, bud, like it's an observation about the weather. Not straight, bud, like Buck has not spent years of his life meticulously constructing an elaborate emotional firewall around Eddie specifically because Buck was operating under the unilaterally-affixed assumption that Eddie was a Straight Man, full stop, terms non-negotiable.

The firewall is, evidently, no longer required. The firewall is, funnily enough, currently smoking and on fire and may have already burned all the way down to the ground. Buck has been defending a fortress against an invasion that was never coming, and that realization is doing something to his sense of self that is going to require considerable time to process, probably with a professional, possibly with several.

"Cool," Buck hears himself say. "Cool cool cool cool."

Eddie sighs, chuckling. "Use your words, Buckley."

"I'm just— I'm processing." Buck drags a hand down his face. He has not yet cleaned himself up. There is a small but significant amount of evidence drying on his stomach that he’s going to deal with that in a minute. "I just spent— Eddie, I just spent the last decade of my life convinced you were the straightest man alive, like, top three straightest men I have ever met, and now you're telling me— over FaceTime— while I’m still— while we are both— that you are not straight, which is information that would’ve been nice to know earlier, I think.”

Eddie tilts his head. "How much earlier, Buck?”

"I don't know! Day one! When we met! A heads-up would have been nice, Eddie!"

"Yeah?" Eddie grins, wicked. "Not that I even knew back then, but out of curiosity, what would you have done if I'd told you on day one?”

Buck's mouth opens to answer.

Buck's mouth closes.

Buck's mouth opens again, and what comes out is, "Oh."

Because — yeah. Oh. Because the honest answer is that on day one, when Buck was a different person and Eddie was a different person and they had not yet spent over eight years building whatever they have built, Buck would have probably gotten on Eddie like a hungry man on a sandwich. Buck would not have lasted. Buck would have made a catastrophic play, and Eddie would have either dodged it or accepted it and either way it wouldn’t have ended up like this. With a friendship he values more than anything, a kid Buck loves like his own, the entire framework of a life that Buck has built brick by careful brick around the foundational understanding that Eddie was a Person He Could Not Have.

(Also — not that he even knew he was bi until, like, last year. Which is its own whole separate thing he is not going to unpack right this second, but worth noting that if Eddie had said something on day one, Buck would have not only botched it, he would have botched it from inside the closet, which is an extremely advanced level of botching that Buck is grateful past-him was never tried to attempt.)

"Oh," Buck says again, smaller.

"Yeah." Eddie says gently. "Yeah. I've been— I've been trying to figure out how to tell you for a minute now, actually. Couldn't find a good way in." He rubs the back of his neck, a little sheepish, and Buck has the dizzy thought that Eddie has been losing sleep trying to draft a coming-out conversation to his best friend, and Buck somehow short-circuited the entire process by sending a photo of his bare ass. "For what it's worth— I didn't know I wasn't straight until fairly recently myself. So. Maybe we can both, I don't know. Figure it out together."

Buck's whole ribcage warps around the words. He is going to need to lie down for several days after this conversation, ideally in a dark room, maybe with someone bringing him soup, ideally that person being Eddie, even if it sounds counter-productive.

"You're gonna make me cry, Eds."

"On camera?"

"Yes, on FaceTime for you to see in all its pathetic glory."

"Okay, okay." Eddie is laughing now, soft and fond, and Buck loves him so much in that moment it almost overrides the gross feeling of the still-cooling evidence of what they just did. "C'mon. Don't cry. We can— we can talk about this later. In person. With words. Like adults."

"In person."

"Yeah." Eddie says it simply, like he hasn't just casually proposed an in-person rendezvous less than fifteen minutes after they both came and Buck is losing his goddamn mind.

"Like,” Buck gestures wildly to all corners of his apartment. “You would come over here."

Eddie's eyes track the movement on screen, amused. “Or you could come over here."

"To do what?”

"To talk about this, Buckley."

"To talk," Buck repeats, dubiously, squinting his eyes, because there is no universe in which Buck and Eddie are going to be in the same room within the next twenty-four hours and just talk. Whatever happens next is going to involve significantly less talking and significantly more — just that. More. Significantly more, generally speaking, in the realm of more, related to what they just did. 

"Among other things," Eddie says, low and suggestive and seductive and despite there being no way he can get it up again so quickly, his dick gives a valiant twitch at the thought. 

"Eddie,” Buck whispers.

Eddie grins at him, innocently. Buck doesn’t trust it. "Yes, Buck?”

"I'm— I need to lay down."

"You are laying down."

Buck groans. "I need to lay down harder."

Eddie laughs, full and rich and so much like himself that Buck feels the whole evening settle into place around the sound — the panic of it all folding into the same Eddie-shaped reality Buck has been living in this whole time, just with the dimensions slightly redrawn. The new floor plan. The renovated layout. Same house, more rooms.

They look at each other through their screens, both of them grinning like idiots, both of them sticky and ridiculous and dazed, and Buck can work with this. Is enthusiastic about the prospect of working with this, actually.

Then Eddie's eyes flick to the corner of his screen — to the boudoir photo, still glowing in his periphery, still very much present in this conversation as a third party — and the wicked grin returns full force.

"So," Eddie says nonchalantly. "What're your thoughts on making this my actual wallpaper?"

Buck chokes on his own spit. "What?”

"You heard me."

"Eddie."

Eddie shrugs. "It's a really good photo, Buck. It would be a shame to let it just sit in my downloads folder."

"You cannot— you cannot have my naked body as your computer wallpaper, Eddie, what if Christopher uses your laptop—"

"He has his own laptop. Plus, mine is password protected."

"What if Chimney uses your laptop—"

"Why would Chimney be on my laptop?"

"That is not the point, Eddie!"

Eddie’s eyes are shimmering. Buck kind of wants to kiss him about it. After he’s done strangling him. "Then what is the point, Buck?"

Buck splutters. The point, technically, is that Buck has spent the entire evening having a religious experience due to a series of professional photographs and is now being asked to formally consent to one of those photographs becoming the desktop background of his best friend's personal computer, and Buck does not, on a fundamental level, know how to be normal about that. 

The point is that yes, obviously yes, of course yes, Eddie should make every single one of those photos his wallpaper, his screensaver, his lock screen, his ringtone if such a thing were technically possible, the photo that pops up when Buck calls him, the photo that pops up when Buck doesn't call him, the photo printed on a series of greeting cards Eddie can mail to Buck on holidays and minor occasions, the photo on a billboard outside Buck's apartment, the photo on the moon, but Buck cannot say any of those things out loud because he has, somewhere in the last few minutes, developed a small but important amount of pride.

"The point," Buck says, with great dignity, "is that you should ask permission first."

Eddie's eyebrow lifts. "Buck."

"What?”

"Can I make this my wallpaper?" Eddie tilts his head slightly, like a puppy asking for a treat.

Buck pinches the bridge of his nose and counts to three, trying to summon any remaining shred of self-respect from wherever it has gone to die. 

"...Yes."

Eddie flashes him an unrepentant smile. "Thank you."

"You're insufferable."

"You like it,” Eddie retorts, grinning smugly, settling in like he plans to stay. 

God, Buck hopes he stays forever. 

"I— yeah." Buck drags a hand through his hair, helpless, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. "Yeah, Eds. I really, really do."

Eddie's expression softens, the wicked grin folding back into something calmer and more dangerous. "Get some sleep, Buck."

"Yeah." Buck nods. He doesn’t want to hang up. Has never wanted anything less than to hang up and sit in the aftermath of what was just the best phone call of his life.

"And next time?"

"Yeah?" Buck's heart does a small ridiculous flip at the existence of a next time on the table, at the way Eddie has slid that promise into the conversation like a folded note under a classroom desk. 

Eddie's eyes sparkle. "Send it on purpose."

The screen goes dark.

Buck stares at it for a while, his own reflection gradually becoming visible in the black — a slightly sweaty, slightly stunned, completely besotted idiot grinning at himself on a sad couch in his sad apartment that suddenly doesn't feel even a little bit sad anymore. It feels, actually, kind of like a place a person could live. Imagine that. 

He sets the phone down, and goes to clean up the mess, but stops halfway through to pick it up again, opening his photos. He scrolls through the entire album one more time, with the new and devastating context that somewhere else, Eddie has been thinking about him for a while now.

Then, because Buck has, evidently, never learned a single lesson in his entire life, he picks one. A new one. One Eddie hasn't seen yet. One that is, objectively, the dirtiest photo in the entire collection, the one the photographer had specifically warned him might be a lot before she took it.

His thumb hovers over the share icon for exactly half a second before sense or restraint or any other vestige of self-preservation can intervene. He taps it.

On purpose this time, he types.

Hitting the send button, he hears the woosh. His pulse jumps and his eyes stay glued to the screen, and there it is, right on cue. 

Read 11:26 PM.