Archive of Our Own

The sun has long since set when Buck knocks on Eddie’s door, but Eddie answers after a length of time that would only make sense if he had already been within reaching distance of the handle the moment Buck had raised his hand to put his knuckles to wood. 

He’s smiling, in that lopsided way he does when Buck’s getting on his nerves on purpose, and raises his eyebrow. “Forget something?” He teases as Buck steps over the threshold, startling Buck enough that he almost forgets he’d come here, hat in metaphorical hand, to ask Eddie a favor. 

“Oh, uh,” Buck says, instinctively trying to backtrack but finding nowhere to track back to. He feels caught out. It’s only his second day in the new house, and he doesn’t have a lot of furniture moved over yet, but that’s not his problem, not what he’s here for. 

Eddie’s teasing demeanor falls as quickly as he’d put it on. “What is it?” He asks, smile evening out to the tight-lipped cast of his mouth that he gets when he’s trying to figure out a logistical problem in the field. 

Buck shakes his head, feeling his own mouth twist. “It’s stupid,” he grunts, making to turn back around, “nevermind.” 

Eddie catches him before he makes it very far, one huge hand wrapping around Buck’s bicep as his other hand reaches out to shut the door. Buck blinks, sticks his finger on the rewind button in his brain. Eddie’s normal sized hand grasps Buck’s bicep normally, in a casual grip that does not fully encompass Buck’s upper arm, and does not span wide enough that Eddie’s blunt fingernails press into Buck’s tricep on both sides. 

“Buck,” Eddie says, dragging him back, deeper into the living room. The lights aren’t on, and Buck realizes he was probably in the kitchen when Buck’d pulled up, since it’s the only light source in the room. He catches Buck’s eye, chases his gaze in the way he does that is so distinctly Eddie it would be foreign from anybody else. “What’s wrong?”

Buck fidgets, closing his eyes when Eddie presses closer, pulling him in by the arm. “I have a, uh, problem,” he finally breathes.

He doesn’t need to be able to see Eddie to know he’s frowning. “What kind of problem?” He asks, suddenly dead serious, “is it—?”

“No, no,” Buck interjects, even without knowing what Eddie’ll say, stomach dropping at his clear concern, “it—it’s nothing serious.” He sucks in a breath, squeezing his eyes tighter closed. “It’s stupid,” he says again. 

“Maybe,” Eddie says, squeezing his arm, “but that doesn’t mean I won’t help. A lot of your problems are stupid.”

Buck blinks his eyes open, takes a moment to scan over Eddie’s face. Worry creases his brow despite his teasing, his brown eyes dark in the dim light. Normally, he would fall into their banter with ease, bite back, call Eddie stupid-er, but his mouth closes tightly. 

Eddie scans his face right back. “C’mon, Buck,” he says, dropping his voice to a murmur, “just talk to me.” 

Buck braces himself, measures how much of the bush he wants to beat around. “I think I have an ingrown hair?”

Eddie frowns. “That’s it?” He says after Buck doesn’t elaborate further. “All of these dramatics for an ingrown hair?”

Buck shuffles on his feet a little, tugging his arm out of Eddie’s grasp. Eddie lets him go. “It’s in a…” He pauses, then lowers his voice. “A sensitive area.” 

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Ouch,” he empathizes. “Front or back?” He asks after a moment, as though that’s a reasonable thing to ask, tilting his head inquisitively.

Buck balks. Not the first clarifying question he’d expected.

“Can you not reach it?” Eddie pushes, still looking at Buck like he’s trying to honest to God assess him, “or does it just hurt too bad?” 

“Front,” Buck answers after a long moment, sure Eddie’s a second away from asking even more invasive questions. “I tried, I just—” He scrunches his mouth up, cutting himself off. He’d been trying to dig it out for almost two weeks, starting as an irritation he’d noticed in the shower—Eddie’s shower, since he hadn’t moved out yet—and only got worse as it chafed under his uniform pants over the last few shifts. He’d even gone out to buy a pack of baggy boxers, hoping the reprieve from his usually skin-hugging boxer briefs would keep it from getting worse. 

He’d finally given in and accepted that he couldn’t get it on his own after spending the last hour with an ice pack trying to bring the swelling down enough for him to find where to pick at, only stopping to take a shower before he’d headed over to the house that he’d be tripping over calling home for the foreseeable future. 

Eddie was the only option he kept circling back to. He couldn’t go to the ER for something like this, he’d be too ashamed to bring them patients after dropping trou for a glorified pimple. Maddie’s off the table considering how close to his dick it is, even though she’d surely seen much worse when she’d been a nurse, and the same goes for Hen. He has a great relationship with both of them, full of trust, but he really doesn’t want to get up close and personal like that with his sister, or someone who might not be exactly like a sister to him, but family nonetheless. 

So, Eddie it is. Eddie it has to be. He had plenty of reasons why he shouldn’t go to him, sure, but none as concrete as the others. And yeah, he’s been accused of being in love with Eddie more than once recently. But he’s not. And even if he were, which he isn’t, Eddie wouldn’t let him make this weird. They’re best friends. They’ve seen each other naked plenty, especially during their recent stint as roommates, and it’s never been weird. It was different then than how it’ll probably have to be if Eddie agrees to help him, sure, but it was never weird. It couldn’t be weird, not if Eddie was straight and Buck wasn’t in love with him. 

The sound of Eddie unzipping his med bag clears his thoughts. He hadn’t even realized Eddie’d stepped away, too busy gnawing at the inside of his lip. 

Eddie looks up from his bag. “Wanna take your shoes off, bud?” He asks, nodding back toward the door. So he’d noticed Buck standing stone still for the last…however long it’d been. 

Buck nods, a lot overwhelmed with it all, thinking about just telling Eddie he really, really, changed his mind and he should go. But the pain lances up through his core the moment the aggravated pore rubs against his thigh as he’s leaning down to untie his shoes, and he decides he might actually need to go to the hospital if he doesn’t let Eddie help him. 

He lines his shoes neatly up next to Eddie’s—a size and a half bigger than his, despite the slight height advantage Buck has on him, not that he’s ever paid attention, or is paying attention right now—and ambles back over toward the couch, stopping just short of where Eddie’s clicking the lamp on. Satisfied with the light, he starts to pick through the bag, pulling out alcohol wipes and some gauze and a little black case, dwarfed in his hand, that he cracks open and sets down on the coffee table. The med bag gets dropped to the floor in front of Buck’s cushion, the spot on the couch that has been designated as his for years. 

“In here okay?” Eddie asks, looking back up. Buck’s still trying to get his limbs to move again. It feels stilted, being here and not living here. Sure, he has his own assigned seat on the couch, but it had been his bed, too, for a while. And Eddie’s, he reminds himself, when they had been switching off once or twice a week, depending on how their shifts would line up while they existed 24/7 in each other’s space. 

Buck swallows. He feels like he should ask where Chris is, should say “don’t really want to take my pants off in the public space,” but he knows it would be worse to go to the bedroom, would make him feel vulnerable in a way he’s not prepared to face. 

Besides, Chris has been talking his ear off for two weeks about the Star Wars marathon he’s having at one of his friends from robotics club’s house tonight with the whole team. It’s Buck and Eddie’s—well, just Eddie’s, since Buck doesn’t live there anymore—turn to host next month, seven fifteen year olds taking over the house from dusk ‘til dawn four Fridays from now. Buck doesn’t think about how he’ll probably be there anyway, as helpless to the pull of the Diaz family’s gravity as he is the Earth’s. 

He blinks, remembering how he’d started to circle that drain—they have the house to themselves. He knows it, and Eddie knows he knows it. 

He forces a nod. Eddie quirks an eyebrow up at him, straightening from where he’d been kneeling by the couch. He tilts his head, gaze skimming down Buck from scalp to socks. Buck disguises the way his breath catches by pretending to clear his throat. “Left side?” Eddie asks. 

Buck’s caught off guard for the second time in their discussion. This time, it’s not by the question itself, but because Eddie’s right. Eddie hadn’t even known it was on a side, it could’ve been right above Buck’s dick, dead center, for all he knew, but his keen gaze seems to strip Buck bare sometimes, and Buck should know better by now. This is Eddie. 

He sighs, shuffling closer. “Yeah,” he breathes. 

Eddie nods. “You’re walking weird,” he says, as though Buck’d asked for an explanation. Buck doesn’t say that Eddie’s seen him take maybe ten steps since he’d arrived, because of course Eddie could see it in the first ten steps Buck’d taken. He probably saw it the moment Buck had come into the house, the observation probably having been a contributing factor in the way his smile had dropped in concern. 

Buck sighs defeatedly, earning another scrutinizing look before Eddie’s mouth twitches into a grin.

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Eddie says, putting his hands on his hips. His fingers sprawl wide over the waistband of his shorts. Buck does not look at his long fingers, instead keeping his eyes on Eddie’s smile. He’s trying to keep the mood light, even as Buck breaks the first layer of skin from his inner lip with how aggressively he chews at it. 

“What day?” Buck asks. It comes out funny, lip still a little caught between his teeth. 

Eddie cocks his head. “The day you’re nervous to take your pants off.”

That breaks the first, the thickest, layer of tension, making Buck’s shoulders roll forward. “Jerk,” he says, even as he makes for his own waistband. He tucks his thumbs between the sweats and the boxers, the baggy cotton material a foreign scratch against his thumbs, and pauses. “It’s just weird,” he insists. 

“I’ve seen you in your underwear a million times,” Eddie answers easily. 

And he’s right, but Buck feels like he’s being intentionally obtuse. He tells him that, just earning a roll of the eyes. 

“Sure, it’s a little different,” he concedes, “but you remember when I got shot.” Buck does. They’d been close, then, very close, but nothing like they are now: so enmeshed in each other’s lives that it would be inconceivable for Buck to not be the one who would take care of him after leaving the ICU. 

Back then, he’d washed Eddie’s hair for the first three weeks after he got home. The first time, Eddie’d worn swim trunks, at their mutual agreement, and Buck had just stood outside of the spray. Then they’d decided it was harder for Eddie to deal with taking them off when he was already wet so he could shower himself after his hair was clean, so he just faced away from Buck until Buck took his leave for Eddie to finish, and eventually they just fully showered together, separately scrubbing down after Buck’d rinsed Eddie’s hair, until Eddie could lift his arms enough to wash himself. 

Buck thinks if it happened today, they would jump straight to joint showers. They’re best friends. It’s not weird. 

It’s not like this, Eddie’s scrutinizing gaze intolerably close to his dick. They never washed each other’s bodies in the shower, just hair. And once, just once, Eddie’d washed Buck’s face. And it was because Buck had shampoo in his eyes and he couldn’t get the suds off. It’s different. 

“It’s very different,” Buck insists. 

Eddie frowns. “Why?”

Ten different reasons pop into Buck’s mind, but the loudest one, and therefore the one he wants to say out loud the least, is simple: Eddie looking at the ingrown hair just at the crease of Buck’s thigh means Eddie’s face is going to be in the vicinity of the crease of Buck’s thigh. He bites his tongue. “Because,” he starts, scrambling for a more reasonable answer. “You usually have your pants off too.” 

Eddie purses his lips. Nods. “Good point.” He adjusts the spread of his fingers, dipping into his waistband and tugging his shorts down with absolutely zero fanfare. He kicks them to the side, toward the kitchen. Eddie’s his best friend, and definitively not an option, but Buck’s only a man. Standing five feet from someone casually dropping their pants is enough for something animalistic in the back of his mind to perk up in interest. 

“Feel better?” Eddie asks, returning his hands to his hips. Buck does not let his gaze fall any farther south than where he approximates Eddie’s diaphragm is. He wishes he had a gun to shoot the something animalistic in the back of his mind. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, mouth dry. He shoves his own sweats down, steps gingerly out of them, and leans over with a wince to gather them in his hands and throw them toward where Eddie’d discarded his own. 

Eddie nods to the couch, and Buck tries to hide the anxiety physically thrumming through him as he settles, bows his knees out, sliding close enough to the edge that Eddie doesn’t have to lean over him to get a look. He grits his teeth, watches Eddie glance around the room. 

“Gonna move the coffee table, give me a little space,” he says, crossing to the near end of it. Buck starts to stand, but Eddie waves him off. “Just turning it.” He picks up the end and pivots it until it’s perpendicular with the couch, leaving a good distance for Eddie to place himself in front of Buck but not dragging it so far that Eddie can’t reach the supplies he’d delegated for the table to hold. His med bag sits out of Buck’s sight, right in front of the couch between his spread thighs. 

He looks around again, then gestures with his thumb toward the hall. “Be right back.” Buck takes four centering breaths in the time it takes for Eddie to return, cradling the lamp that Buck had bought for the bedroom when they’d shared it. It’s battery operated, with a long, flexible neck and an adjustable brightness, perfect for reading late at night. Or this. 

Eddie positions it on the coffee table and turns it on, angling the light in the general direction and turning the brightness all the way up. Satisfied, he straightens up with a grin.

Just before he sits, he ruffles a hand through his hair, releasing one strand to fall down his forehead. Buck tenses. This is a bad idea, the logical part of his brain insists. The something animalistic in the back of his mind wags its tail. 

Buck doesn’t move. He barely even flinches when Eddie settles cross-legged in front of him, even though he feels his pulse start to climb. 

“How high up?” Eddie asks, flicking his eyes to Buck’s left leg. 

“It—it’s pretty high,” Buck answers. He needs to shop shaking. He swallows, throat clicking. 

“Okay,” Eddie says, leaning in with one hand outstretched like he’s about to shove Buck’s boxers aside. 

The noise that escapes Buck is not like anything that has ever come out of his mouth before. “Gloves,” Buck nearly shouts, scooting back to get himself out of Eddie’s reach. 

Eddie frowns, a familiar pinch appearing between his brows. “Ingrown hairs aren’t contagious,” he answers, moving forward, chasing Buck back into the cushion. 

Buck sticks a hand out, stopping him at the shoulder. “It’s gross, Eddie. Wear gloves.”

The pinch gets pinch-ier, and Eddie opens his mouth as though he’s going to argue more, but then the pinch smooths out. “Fine.” He looks down to dig through the bag, withdrawing a pair of gloves from the box he keeps tucked against the inner lining. 

Eddie grumbles as he slips them on, flexing his fingers until they’re settled on his hands. It’s the same type of glove he uses at work, smooth blue nitrile. “Happy?” He asks. He scoots back a little bit, allowing Buck room to reposition back to the edge of the couch. 

“Nothing about this could make me happy,” Buck says seriously, but only earns a laugh. 

Eddie shakes his head, reaching back out toward Buck’s leg. “All good?” He asks right before his fingers meet the hem on the leg of Buck’s boxers.

Buck fists his left hand in the pillow next to him, equally dreading the pain of the poking and prodding that he’s sure is about to start and the feeling of being exposed like this, and nods.

It’s Eddie, he reminds himself, he trusts Eddie more than anyone else in the world. 

Eddie, ever deserving of that trust, peels the leg of the boxers back, carefully rolling it up to expose the top of Buck’s quad. Buck can’t help but watch Eddie’s hands, the stark blue of his gloves as he works diligently to keep the fabric from dragging across the expanse of skin that looks progressively irritated as he climbs. Eddie has to adjust the angle once he’s high enough that he’s within brushing-his-hand-against-the-base-of-Buck’s-cock distance, and if Buck had any sense of self-preservation, he’d have thought to grab something to act as a barrier, to put between Eddie’s hand and his dick. Instead, he just focuses on his breathing and not measuring the distance with his eyes. 

It feels like forever before Eddie’s gotten his thigh fully exposed, his gaze zeroing in on the spot where the skin is reddest and angriest, right next to his femoral artery. 

“Jesus, Buck,” Eddie says, looking up to meet his eyes. The boxers fit loosely enough that Buck’s able to use his free hand to maneuver them to keep himself decent now that Eddie’s done freeing his work area. He leaves his hand there, pushing himself to the side as far as he dares without risking his dick thinking he’s grabbing it. Eddie’s eyes flick down to the movement, but jump back to Buck’s face immediately. “How long did you say it’s been like this?”

He hadn’t. Eddie knows he hadn’t, he would’ve remembered. “It’s been getting worse the last couple days,” he answers.

Eddie looks between his leg and his face multiple times, gently pressing the back of his hand to the skin. Buck knows it’s hot to the touch enough for Eddie to feel it through his gloves. 

Eddie moves closer, the hand that hadn’t just felt his skin reaching toward Buck’s slightly freer hand, the one that’s strangling the pillow next to him to death.

“Let me take your pulse,” he insists, beckoning with his fingers. Buck lets the pillow go and allows Eddie to wrap his gloved fingers around his wrist, pointer and middle finger pressed against his radial artery. Buck counts along with him, heart pounding in his ears as he watches the second hand on his watch turn.

“One-twelve,” Eddie says, mouth cutting deep into a frown. Buck knew that was coming, counted the same fifty-six heartbeats in the same thirty seconds that Eddie had. 

“It’s not—” Buck argues. “It’s not because of that. I took my pulse before I came over. It was in the eighties, it’s fine.”

Eddie’s eyes widen, paramedic assessment mode fully activated. “So you’ve jumped up thirty points in a half hour?” Buck bites the inside of his lip. Of course he’s tachycardic. Eddie, who he is not in love with, but is objectively very attractive, is knelt between his legs, hands well within brushing distance of his dick. He looses a sigh. He’s one wrong word away from Eddie dragging him to the ER, which is irritating, because if he was going to agree to go to the ER in the first place, he would’ve skipped the “pantsless at his best friend’s house” part of the evening. 

“Eddie,” he says firmly, “take your pants off and I’ll put my hands right by your dick and take your pulse. Bet your heart rate will jump up too.” 

Eddie’s frown doesn’t abate, but he does ease off on the glare. “My pants are off,” he answers. 

Buck huffs. “You’re impossible.” 

“You made me take them off,” Eddie reminds him. 

Despite this being a situation Buck never thought he would get into with his best friend, he finds it easy to slip into their bickering, like a perfectly fitted suit jacket, snug in all the right places. “I didn’t make you. You’re making me do this.”

The frown twitches. Eddie’s stubborn as a fucking mule, but Buck can read him like no other, and he’s growing more confident that Eddie isn’t going to knock him out so he’ll be easier to kidnap and take to the hospital. A little more confident, at least. 

“Let me take your temperature,” Eddie concedes. Buck nods in a concession of his own. Eddie ducks his head to dig through the med bag, turning slightly away from Buck’s groin. Lucky he did, too, because the movement drives home just how close he is to getting a face full of Buck’s cock—or, well, a face full of Buck’s hand that’s covering his cock—if either or both of them don’t move carefully. Eddie doesn’t seem to be thinking about this, just passing the thermometer over after turning it on and allowing Buck to put it in his own mouth. At least there’s that; Buck tries not to think about how Eddie would’ve positioned his bare legs between Buck’s bare legs to hold the thermometer under Buck’s tongue. 

It comes away at a near-perfect ninety-eight point seven, which seems to alleviate the majority of Eddie’s worry when Buck passes it back over smugly. 

“See?” Buck says. “No fever, just a little tachy because, well. Y’know.” He gestures at Eddie, crouched between his legs.

Eddie opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but then snaps his jaw shut with a click. He swallows. Buck doesn’t watch the path his Adam’s apple travels, but he also doesn’t not watch it. 

Eddie seems to settle on what he wants to say as he puts the thermometer away without looking back down at the bag. “Would it be better if I took my shirt off too?” He asks once he’s back in his previous position, squarely between Buck’s knees. 

Surely Buck hadn’t heard him correctly. “What?” He asks in response. 

Something crosses Eddie’s face that Buck can’t recognize, but it’s gone before Buck has the opportunity to search his mental encyclopedia of every expression Eddie’s ever made for something to compare it to. “You still think this is weird,” he explains, hands folding in his lap. At least, Buck thinks his hands are folded in his lap. He refuses to look below Eddie’s waist, but the blue of the gloves is blinding against his tanned legs, imprinting on the edge of Buck’s vision like he’d just accidentally stared directly at the sun. “I don’t think this is weird,” Eddie continues, “so if it would make you feel better for me to take my shirt off, I can do that.” 

Buck thinks maybe they might be going in the wrong direction. He’s about to say that, tell Eddie that maybe they could just…act more normal, and then maybe he’ll stop freaking out. But normal would involve them both having their pants on, and Buck has no option but to be pantsless, so he sets his jaw and shrugs. 

Eddie stares at him, really stares, for a tense seven seconds—Buck counts—before he leans back to shuck his shirt off. He doesn’t leave the bracket of Buck’s thighs, making his elbows bump against Buck’s knees, but he doesn’t seem to care. 

“Alright,” he says, now shirtless, and Buck decides he can’t look anywhere but Eddie’s face, for fear of this turning south very quickly, “let me take a look.”

Eddie adjusts, trying different angles to approach the area, before making a disgruntled noise in the back of his throat. He pinches the fabric between two fingers, glancing up at Buck. 

“How attached are you to these?” He asks.

“Uh,” Buck says eloquently. “Well, they’re new?”

Eddie hums, letting them fall back to the position he’d had them held in. “What if I cut them?”

Buck feels his jaw drop. “Why would you,” he’s able to manage, “why would you do that?”

Eddie’s using both hands to maneuver the fabric again. “You won’t have to keep your hand here. It’s getting in my way.” As though proving his point, he brushes the back of his hand over the back of Buck’s, the smooth slide of nitrile against bare skin. Buck almost screams. Out loud. The thought that there would be no barrier between Eddie and his dick besides the doubled up layer of cotton making up the fly front of his boxers and the thin material of Eddie’s glove makes him a little nauseous.

Buck doesn’t voice his thought. Buck tries not to think his thought. 

“Whatever you think is best,” he finally answers.

Eddie sits back on his haunches for a second, assessing. Buck doesn’t move his hand. Eddie reaches back forward, making a scissors motion with one hand. 

“If I cut here,” he says, indicating the middle of the leg section, “I can fold it back on both sides, and you can stay a little more covered.” He brings his hands together to make a motion with them like he’s opening a book, exposing both of his palms toward the ceiling. The strand of hair Eddie’d dislodged earlier shifts when he tilts his head, and Buck feels his jaw clench. 

“I hate this,” he chokes out, even as he moves his hand away from his dick. 

“I know,” Eddie answers, withdrawing to retrieve the trauma shears from the bag. It’s his nice pair, the ones he’d retired from the field after Buck had borrowed, then subsequently lost, them. They’d been missing for just long enough for the replacement set Buck’d bought him to get delivered, and then they’d popped up under the airway seat of the ambulance, destined to reside in his home med bag for the rest of time. 

He unfolds them and lines them up at the hem. “Metal’ll be cold,” he warns, right as he starts to snip. It only takes three cuts for him to reach the waistband, one smooth line all the way up the leg. The waistband goes easily, Eddie allowing Buck to take the inner half and fold it over the fly. It’s not nearly as trustworthy an option as Buck’s hand covering himself, but three layers of cotton is better than two.

“Doing okay?” Eddie asks as he folds the shears back up to put away. 

Buck starts gnawing at the inside of his lip again. Maybe if he bites hard enough, it’ll distract him from how extremely vulnerable a position he’s in. He nods.

“Okay,” Eddie says, “this’ll probably hurt. Need to get a good look.” He shifts, placing his right hand firmly on Buck’s left thigh, his thumb curling down far enough to press into the cushion of the couch. He pulls back with his hand, pulling the skin of Buck’s inner thigh taut. Buck, now with two free hands, reaches behind his head to claw at the back cushion he’s leaning against. 

“Ow, fuck,” he groans. 

“I know,” Eddie says quietly, “I’m sorry.” His breath is hot against the sensitive skin, and no matter how sharp the sting of Buck’s teeth against his inner lip is, he is extremely, painfully, excruciatingly aware of how intimate a position they’re in.

Buck sort of feels like crying. It’s not the pain, he’s had much worse, but it’s how stripped-bare he feels. Eddie looks for a long minute, tugging on the skin with both hands in turn, before releasing the pressure, but not the touch, on Buck’s thigh. 

“Hey,” he says, giving a careful squeeze. His hand has moved down pretty far, most of the way to Buck’s knee. A safe distance.

Buck blinks his eyes open. He hadn’t realized he’d closed them. “Hey,” he tries, but it comes out pretty rough. 

Eddie squeezes him again. “Thank you,” he breathes, “for trusting me with this.” 

Buck really feels like crying. “Don’t make it weird,” he chokes out, rolling his head back so he can stare at the ceiling. 

Eddie laughs, releasing Buck completely and starting to move back until he’s not in close range anymore. He pulls the med bag into his lap and digs around a little, withdrawing some more supplies that he stacks on the coffee table. Buck allows himself to glance below Eddie’s chin for the first time since he’d taken his shirt off, taking in the broad expanse of his shoulders, the comfortable set of them. He looks at ease, almost, like this isn’t the most mortifying thing he’s ever experienced. Buck guesses it isn’t. Eddie is a medical professional after all, it makes sense that he can separate the part of him that knows whose dick had been two inches from his face while he’d been formulating his plan of attack on the ingrown hair. 

Buck’s eyes snap back up when Eddie makes an irritated noise, still digging in the bag. “Think there’s a suture pack in here somewhere,” he mumbles, more to the bag than to Buck. 

“Suture pack?” Buck asks, voice pitching high. Eddie catches his thought process, lifting his head to catch Buck’s eye. 

“Just for the needle,” he explains easily, “the tweezer tips are too blunt for how little is sticking out. I’ll just—” He makes a pinching motion with his hand, like he’s holding it between his fingers already, then a little scooping motion. “—get right under the hair and pull it out. There’s enough above the skin I think I can get it.” 

Buck settles, though he continues eyeing Eddie warily as he searches for the suture pack. He withdraws it with an a-ha!, brandishing it at Buck.

“Awesome,” Buck deadpans.

“You’ll be fine,” Eddie chides, “I won’t even poke you.” 

“You think you won’t poke me,” Buck corrects, “you can’t be sure.” It’s not a lie, because he can’t be sure, it’s just that it feels like a lie. Buck can’t think of anyone in the world who has steadier hands than Eddie, ever since their first shift together, assuredly extracting a live grenade with deadly—well, the opposite of deadly—precision. He’d been told once that Eddie was the last person to do CPR on him after he’d been struck, his return to spontaneous circulation coming from those steady hands. He wonders if they’d shaken, that night in the rain. 

He blinks. Hard. 

“Fine,” he huffs. 

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Stay still. I’m gonna be pissed if you stab yourself squirming around and blame it on me.” 

Buck sets his jaw, breathing in hard through his nose. “Whatever.” 

Eddie spends a minute using a couple alcohol wipes to scrub the area where he’s going to be working before he pops the suture pack open and withdraws the needle and thread, wrapping the black thread around his wrist twice.

It’s not that Buck forgets that Eddie’s left handed. It’s just that sometimes he’s a little struck by it. This is one of those moments, interestingly, Eddie with a suture needle held delicately between the pointer finger and thumb of his left hand. It’s pretty rare, and Buck likes rare things. Eddie takes his right hand to pull traction on the skin of his thigh again, and Buck loses his train of thought as he grits his teeth against the pain. 

“If I can’t get all of the infection out,” Eddie says, leaning in to examine the hair again, “you’ll have to go to the hospital.” Now that Buck’s a little more used to Eddie in this space, a sensation he never would have thought he could grow used to, it’s easier to watch. Eddie passes the needle to his nondominant hand, mindful of the length of thread keeping it tethered to his wrist, and Buck breathes. At some point, the something animalistic in the back of his mind had reintroduced itself to the scenario—possibly after Eddie’d taken the needle out. Buck does really like rare things. They intrigue him. Eddie intrigues him. He tries not to look at his cock, because he’s afraid that if he does look, he’s going to see that he’s sporting a half-chub. And if he sees that he’s sporting a half-chub, he’s going to do something that he very much regrets. 

He takes the safe route and looks back up to the ceiling as Eddie hunches over, adjusting the lamp before taking the needle back in his left hand. 

Buck doesn’t even realize he’s talking until he hears the words from his own mouth. “I should just go to the hospital,” comes his disembodied voice. Or maybe he’s a disenvoiced body. He’s unsure. The only thing he is sure of is that now that he’s acknowledged the flow of blood to his cock, it’s not stopping. 

Eddie doesn’t move, doesn’t look up at Buck, doesn’t look over at his dick, even though it’s starting to obscure the light where he’s working to catch the edge of the hair with the needlepoint. 

Eddie sighs and places the rounded edge of the back of the needle against Buck’s leg threateningly. “Do not move,” he reprimands, “I almost have it.” His right hand makes a half-movement, a glide of his thumb over Buck’s firm muscle, and if Buck were a little more sane, he’d be able to read it as anything but a soothing gesture. 

“Eddie,” Buck groans. He’s past a half-chub now, the boxers shifting with it. “Please, just back up.” His voice shakes.

“It’s okay,” Eddie says. Buck wants to plant a foot firmly on Eddie’s chest, kick him back onto the rug, but he can feel the ghost of the needle against his skin, and knows if he moves like that, he’s getting stabbed with it.

“I—I don’t think you understand what’s happening right now, Eddie,” Buck says, a little hysterical. Fuck that, actually, a lot hysterical.

“I do,” Eddie says calmly, still unmoving, “don’t worry about it. You’re doing a good job.” 

It’s not that Buck intends to whine, but he’s already strung-tight, nerves on a hair trigger. He slaps a hand over his mouth, the other digging into the cushion behind his shoulders again, gripping so hard he might actually tear a hole in it. 

Eddie finally looks up, just with his eyes, gazing up at Buck through his lashes. This time, when his thumb moves, there is no doubt that it’s intended to soothe. Up, down, up, a slow, careful drag across the sensitive skin of Buck’s inner thigh. Buck can’t read his expression, it’s so calm. 

“Eddie,” Buck croaks, moving his hand only enough for the name to slip out. 

“It’s still not weird,” Eddie insists, even as he pointedly avoids looking at the hardening dick inches from his nose. 

“It is!” Buck bites, even though he wants to scream. He lets out a frustrated grunt. This is literally exactly what he was afraid of happening. “I’m making it weird.” 

Eddie starts to shake his head, but seems to realize that any movement at the moment would be a bad idea, because his eyes widen nearly imperceptibly before he stills. “Don’t think so,” he says. Finally, there’s strain in his voice. Proof! Proof that Buck is fucking up, and Eddie’s still so stupidly stubborn, keeping them in a deadlock as long as he has that needle to Buck’s leg. 

Buck feels delirious. “Eddie,” he pleads, “I cannot put you in this position.” 

Eddie’s mouth twitches, his voice thick when he answers. “Promised I wouldn’t stab you, Buck, if that’s what you’re worried about.” His gaze drops again, and he adjusts his hands, endlessly gentle as he works on loosening the hair from the pore. Buck feels the give of it, a sharp pain that brings a wash of relief instantly after. He’s so distracted by the progress of defeating the weeks-long pain in his ass that he almost forgets he’s an inch from a mental breakdown. “Besides,” Eddie adds, reminding him of the aforementioned impending mental breakdown, “got myself in this position, I think.” 

Right. Buck’s going crazy. Why is Eddie pretending to be so nonchalant? “You’re my straight best friend,” Buck grunts out, “this is—this is like, harassment.” He’s trembling, and Eddie finally, finally loosens the grip of his right hand, allowing the skin to relax back to its normal position. 

“Is that why you’re freaking out?” His voice is level again as he looks back up, his whole face turning up this time. Buck gapes at him, then clenches his eyes shut, the image of Eddie’s face directly adjacent to his tented boxers something he won’t ever be able to forget. He almost misses Eddie’s next words with how hard he’s breathing. “Because you think I’m straight?” 

Buck has imagined, a hundred times over, what it would feel like to get shot. This may be the closest approximation he’ll ever be able to produce outside of experiencing the real thing. He lurches back, desperate to get out of this situation. He’s ruined everything, and Eddie’s just pretending that Buck hasn’t just thrown a live grenade between them, like they aren’t counting down the seconds until they both explode into pink mist. 

He doesn’t realize he’d pricked himself with the needle until Eddie’s swearing, following him deeper onto the cushion, needle dropped somewhere between them, and grabbing roughly at Buck’s leg. Buck shakes as Eddie examines where he’d been clipped, just a light scratch directly beside where Eddie’d been working at the hair, and sighs shakily. 

“I told you to stay still,” he reprimands, “what the hell?” A single drop of blood beads along the scratch, and Eddie reaches blindly for the gauze beside him, bringing a single square over to wipe it away.

Buck wants to tear his hair out. He can’t stop shaking. His dick throbs. “It was looking at you, Eddie!” He wails. 

Eddie presses the gauze against the scratch, sets his jaw. He almost looks like he wants to laugh. “I’m not,” he says, nonsensibly, “by the way.” 

Buck blinks. Eddie glances back down, removes the gauze and presses at the scratch to make sure it isn’t still bleeding. 

“Good thing you’re not on blood thinners anymore,” he says dryly, tossing the gauze behind him and using his right hand to collect the thread where it’s still wrapped around his left wrist, drawing the lost needle back to his grasp. 

Buck reels. He feels like he had the one time Chimney had sanded down the soles of his turnout boots on April Fool’s, scrabbling desperately for purchase when he should be able to take a solid step. “What—” he breathes, “what are you talking about?”

Eddie squints at him, sets his shoulders, relaxes them down. “I’m not straight.” He looses a breath. He looks a little shaky, the facade of his calm finally crushed. He smiles, watching Buck watch him. “I haven’t told anyone except Christopher,” he says quietly. 

Buck, if he were a good best friend, would say thank you for telling me, or maybe give Eddie an echo of his own this doesn’t change a thing between us. 

He doesn’t have it in him to lie right now. This changes everything.

“Oh,” he says. 

Eddie huffs out a laugh. “Yeah,” he says, “now, I’m going to get the tweezers. Can you chill out a little?” Buck nods, a little dumbly. He decides that he doesn’t think he can look at Eddie until he’s significantly calmed down, and maybe his dick has, too, so he closes his eyes, trying to breathe through the rest of Eddie’s poking and prodding. Eddie doesn’t talk, or hum, or do anything except work diligently at his task and rub his thumb up and down and up and down on Buck’s thigh. 

Eddie, who’s not straight. Eddie, who’s Buck’s second-favorite person in the entire world, save for the person who’s also Eddie’s favorite person in the entire world. Eddie, who stripped near naked to make Buck feel better about exposing himself on his couch.

Eddie patting Buck on the top of his thigh drags him bodily out of his head. 

“Got it all, I think,” he says, withdrawing just enough to dig through the med bag again. “Pretty sure I have some bacitracin in here,” he murmurs, again more to the bag than to Buck. “We’ll keep an eye on it, make sure it doesn’t get bad like that again.” He withdraws a small white tube from the bag, pointing the cap at Buck. “No ER trips for sepsis this month, please.” 

Buck sighs and nods. “Sure,” he promises half-heartedly. 

Eddie accepts that, setting to work cleaning the area again. It’s only a few seconds, but Buck feels the silence stretch out long between them. There’s a difference between Eddie needing to pull the hair, since Buck couldn’t himself, and Eddie bandaging it. Buck’s just about to say something, to stop him, tell him he can do this part himself, when Eddie’s suddenly uncapping the bacitracin with his teeth and squeezing a small dollop directly onto Buck’s skin. He massages it into the sore wound with his gloved fingers, Buck’s skin aching in memory only, then spreads the ointment across the small scratch nearby. 

Buck’s still speechless when Eddie pulls the bandage out and carefully places it over top of the area.

“It won’t stick very well,” Eddie warns, “but it should be okay if it comes off. This is more for peace of mind.”

He gives Buck’s thigh another pat, and Buck expects him to back up, remove himself from the bracket of Buck’s thighs, and show Buck to the door. Worst case, he decides he can’t be near Buck anymore and he moves back to El Paso with Chris, never to see or talk to Buck or anyone in their lives again. Best case, they laugh at this one day, when Buck is Eddie’s best man at his wedding, to another man. Or maybe not, he hadn’t specified that he was gay, just that he wasn’t straight. 

He’s only able to stop himself from asking Eddie flat out, are you gay?, because he realizes Eddie, unmoving from his position between Buck’s legs, is looking at him. Like, really looking, hooded gaze and unabashed affection written clear across his face. 

After all of that effort Buck went to to keep Eddie away from his dick, he finds himself freezing up. No way this is what’s happening right now. 

Eddie watches him patiently for ten seconds. Buck counts.

The corner of Eddie’s mouth quirks up. “Anything else I can help you with?” he asks, blinking up at Buck with affected innocence. 

Buck can’t help but glance down to his lap, where his dick is straining obviously against the tattered fabric—not tattered, actually Eddie had made a very precise cut—of his boxers. Eddie, like a gentleman, or maybe just a very good best friend, does not follow his gaze. He does something that’s maybe, definitely, one-thousand percent worse. He shuffles a bit, still not moving away, and readjusts his hands, lifting his free hand to Buck’s opposite thigh. The smooth material of the glove feels foreign on his skin, skin-warm but not the right texture. Thankfully most of Eddie’s hand is placed over top of the leg of his boxers, only his pinky and the edge of his palm raising goosebumps where they settle. He shivers involuntarily, and he knows Eddie, eyes not shifting from Buck’s face, can feel the reverberations as well as he can see them. 

Eddie’s eyebrows draw in, barely a flash of movement that Buck wouldn’t have seen if he hadn’t been watching Eddie so intently. Or maybe he would’ve. It does seem like he’s been watching Eddie pretty intently lately—part of him thinks he always has, with the way he thinks he recognizes a muscle twitch as a shift in expression. It’s damning evidence, frankly. 

Eddie’s eyebrows relax, as though he’s come to some sort of conclusion. About what, Buck doesn’t know. He doesn’t think he wants to know. He’s about two breaths away from launching off the couch and calling 911. He doesn’t know what he’d say to the dispatcher, except for the address he thinks he would remember even if he got a traumatic brain injury tomorrow and lost every memory from his last ten years. 

Eddie hums, hands so, so warm on Buck’s legs. It almost feels like he’s pressing them apart, wedging himself good and proper between them. And he’s mostly naked, just the gloves and the socks and his briefs, his briefs that Buck has very pointedly not looked at in the last—how long? Ten minutes? Ten hours? 

Buck’s going to die. He’s going to actually, for real, die. Eddie opens his mouth, loading the gun that’s going to blow Buck’s brains out. “Want me to take something else off?” Eddie offers, thumb absently running along the inseam of Buck’s boxers. How is it worse to have Eddie’s hand on his clothed thigh than it had been when he rested his hand on the bare one?

Maybe he’s already dead. Maybe he died of sepsis from the ingrown hair and his body is in his new house going into rigor and now his mind is in some weird fucked-up purgatory, half-heaven and half-hell, with his best friend, who just told him minutes ago that he’s not straight, offering to get naked where he sits holding his legs open, two inches from Buck’s weeping cock.

And, if he’s dead already, why not? 

“Sure,” he says, voice travelling out of his mouth as though someone else’d said it.

It’s hard to look down at Eddie, but he can’t help it. A satisfied smirk curls onto Eddie’s lips, the little scar on his lower lip going pale with the tug of flesh on either side, and if Buck hadn’t already been harder than he’s been in weeks, he thinks his boner would’ve popped up like a whack-a-mole at that sight. 

Eddie’s hands are firm on his thighs as he levers himself up, the pang of loss assuaged by the sight of Eddie’s gloved thumbs tucking into his waistband once he’s vertical to tug his briefs down. Buck still doesn’t look down at the briefs, eyes only on Eddie’s face, flush high on his dimpled cheeks.

Buck’s definitely dead. This is definitely heaven. He’s faintly grateful that he made enough of a difference in his life to deserve to go to heaven. His mouth waters.

Eddie’s cock springs free from the briefs, and Buck only has time to recognize that Eddie’s hard, and big—he’s never seen Eddie hard, only soft, and it was impressive soft too, but Jesus—before Eddie’s starting to pull the gloves off as he simultaneously kicks the briefs down.

“Wait!” Buck blurts. Eddie pauses, pinching low on the palm of one glove with the opposite thumb and forefinger, proper doffing technique. Fuck, he’s so competent. It’s so hot. 

“Wait?” He echoes, raising his eyebrows at Buck.

Buck isn’t sure his voice is going to work. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. All he’s able to force out is a pathetic squeak. He clears his throat, blinks hard, looks at Eddie’s dick again, loses all progress. 

Eddie’s still not moving. “Buck?” He prompts. 

Buck squeezes his eyes closed with an act of strength he hadn’t been sure he’d be able to muster. It’s physically painful to shutter his gaze, but he knows he won’t be able to talk and look at the same time. “Leave the gloves on,” he says, voice strained.

“Oh,” Eddie says, and it sounds like the noise had been punched out of him. Buck opens his eyes, desperate to see what Eddie looks like after producing a noise that is going to be imprinted on the bones of Buck’s inner ears for the rest of his life. He’s redder than he’d been a minute before, flushed down to his chest. “Don’t want these,” Eddie breathes, “I’ll put on clean ones.” 

Buck thinks better of telling him he doesn’t care. Eddie had just practically gone full sexy Doctor Pimple Popper on him with those gloves, he should change them. Buck nods, and Eddie nods, and then the gloves are coming off, and the briefs are getting kicked to the side, and Eddie’s hopping on one foot, then the other, to peel his socks off before he’s dropping back to a kneel between Buck’s legs. He grins, reaching into the med bag to withdraw a new pair of gloves, making a big show of sliding his fingers into them, wriggling them snugly over his palms, snapping the wrists into place. 

Buck’s dick is throbbing. He thinks he might just jizz the boxers that Eddie’d turned into an arts and crafts project.

“So, Buck,” Eddie says, grin stretching wide and sly in a way that steals the breath from Buck’s lungs. He braces both hands on Buck’s thighs again, pressing them apart with purpose this time. “You like the gloves?”

Buck’s helpless to both the whine that escapes him and the ragged inhale that rides its tail. “Eddie,” he says, breathless, feeling like he’s trapped in place, at Eddie’s whim, “Eddie, what are you—”

And, yes, he feels helpless, but Eddie’s never put him in a position where he didn’t have his back. He catches Buck before he can start spiraling, the grip on his thighs turning tender as Eddie’s bravado falls, the cheeky smile wiped from his face. “You okay?” 

Buck feels his lip tremble. His head is so foggy, with lust, with exhaustion, with relief. “Pinch me,” he says, a non-answer.

Eddie’s eyebrows draw in for the hundredth time tonight. “Pinch you?” He echoes. 

“Need to know this is real,” Buck answers. His thoughts are starting to clear a little bit now, and Eddie’s expression comes into sharp focus. There’s nothing but care on his face.

“Not gonna pinch you, bud,” Eddie responds. His thumb starts the absent soothing motion against Buck’s leg again, sending a thrill up Buck’s spine. “We can—”

Buck shakes his head. “No,” he cuts Eddie off. He doesn’t want to stop, but he can’t do this, not without Eddie knowing. If Eddie wants this—which, despite Buck’s long-held belief that Eddie was not and never would be attracted to men, his fresh admission, as well as the hard cock between his legs, are both pretty hard to argue with—Eddie needs to know. He can’t allow Eddie to make this decision without the knowledge that this would mean something different to Buck entirely. “I—I just have to tell you something, first.” 

Eddie nods. “Whatever you need,” he says, and his tone is so gentle it makes the sharp-edged arousal stabbing through Buck melt honey-thick, filling him from head to toe with warmth. It makes his next words, words he’s pushed away for far too long, come easier. 

“I think I’m in love with you,” Buck admits. It doesn’t feel like a confession, it feels like a culmination. Years of being at each other’s sides, years of having each other’s backs, being there for each other when they could, their bond pulled painfully taut when they couldn’t. Eddie’s his person, his best friend, his partner.

Eddie’s gaze goes soft. “Yeah,” he says, “me too.” He leans in to press a kiss to Buck’s clothed thigh, stubble scratching where it catches below the hem. “Think I’ve been in love with you for a long time,” he speaks into the fabric, not muffled enough to dispel the meaning from a single word. 

Buck swallows hard, stopping himself from asking Eddie to pinch him again. “Okay,” he says weakly. His head spins. He leans back, allows his head to roll back on his shoulders as he directs the next words to the ceiling. Eddie’s not straight. Eddie’s been in love with him for however long a long time is. Never in his wildest dreams would he have thought this was even a possibility, but his world doesn’t feel like it’s been flipped upside down. Calm settles over him, Eddie’s easy assurance bleeding through his lips where they’re pressed to Buck’s leg, soaking into Buck’s skin through his boxers, a balm on his anxiety. His voice does not shake when he speaks. “Ask me about the gloves again.” 

Eddie chuckles, and it’s such an intoxicating sound that Buck has to look back up. Eddie hasn’t moved from his position, mouth still against his thigh, head tilted so he can look up at Buck out of the corner of his eye with what Buck now knows is love. His chest cramps up as his mental encyclopedia files that away, matches the definition to every time Eddie’s gaze has softened like that when he was looking at Buck, revisions upon revisions upon revisions, stretching back years. 

Eddie pulls back, resquares himself after dragging his teeth briefly over the fabric, making Buck’s breath catch again at the bilateral press against his thighs. “You like the gloves?” Eddie repeats, voice slipping low and sultry. Buck lets the shock rip through him this time. Lets it feel good, the way it was intended. 

“Yeah,” he says, even as his cheeks flush, “so fucking hot.” Eddie’s ability to pull honesty from him with so much as a look is going to be a serious problem going forward. “What were your plans?” He asks quietly, wanting, wanting, wanting. 

Eddie, who’d just redefined everything that intimacy has ever meant to Buck, crouching between his legs with a pair of trauma shears and a needle and pads of gauze, smiles. 

“Had a couple ideas,” he answers, releasing Buck’s thighs to dip back down to the med bag. An involuntary noise, reedy and desperate, claws from the back of Buck’s throat at the loss of touch. “So impatient,” Eddie growls from where he’s still digging through the bag. He withdraws the shears again and a few packets of lube.

Buck gestures to the shears with raised brows. “No matter how much lube you put on, those are not going in me.” 

Eddie drops both his jaw and the shears in surprise. “Buck, what the hell?” He barks out, leaning back down to retrieve them where they’d skidded under the couch. “Of course not.” 

Buck shifts a little, excruciatingly aware of Eddie’s presence directly below him, head dipped almost to the floor as he searches for the shears. Despite how starkly unfamiliar it is, it isn’t. This is just them, doing something new together. It’s like when Eddie had started doing the crossword, and Buck’d bought a book for them to share over coffee. Teasing and nudging and figuring out which clues Eddie was better with, which ones Buck would fill out without even giving Eddie a chance to read them. It’s also very much not like that, crucially because they’re naked, or most of the way there, and Buck’s pretty sure Eddie’s about to finger him, probably within an inch of his life, with those blue gloves that are so sexy he might develop a Pavlovian response to Eddie wearing them at work. 

Uh oh. He’s definitely going to have a Pavlovian response to Eddie wearing them at work. 

He tells Eddie as much once Eddie’s popped back up between his legs, shears wielded in his left hand. 

“Oh,” Eddie says, like he hadn’t considered that, “now I am too, I think.” He shakes his head, just a little bit, like he’s dispelling the mental image, before he gives the shears a snip in the air. “Can I finish the job?” He nods at Buck’s boxers, which are making a valiant effort of maintaining the tent around Buck’s cock instead of just falling down around it. 

“I can just pull them down,” Buck answers, already starting to shift his hips before Eddie’s free hand clasps over his bare thigh to stop him. 

“You don’t think it’s hot to cut them off?” He pouts. 

Buck runs his tongue over the inside of his teeth. Of course he does. “Don’t make this a habit,” he chides, “I have a lot of very nice boxers.” 

Eddie grins, that wide, sly curve of his lips he’d enlisted earlier. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

His hands are steady as they work the shears over Buck’s boxers, just as steady as they had been when he cut the first leg. This time, the thrumming in Buck’s veins is for a different reason. Well, sort of. This time, Buck allows the thrumming in his veins to signal anticipation of Eddie being in such an intimate position instead of anxiety. He feels drunk off of Eddie, just his presence between his thighs giving him a better head high than ten well-paced tequila shots. 

Buck feels the warmth of Eddie’s breath over his cock before he even realizes Eddie’s drawn the boxers’ fabric away to expose him to the open air. He jolts, hips jerking up toward the sensation, which only earns him another chuckle.

“Eager,” Eddie teases. 

“Fuck, Eddie,” Buck gasps. His vision had almost whited out from Eddie’s breath, what the hell is he going to do once Eddie actually puts his hands on him? Worse, what about his mouth?

As though summoned, Eddie leans in to press his lips to the crease of Buck’s groin, on the opposite side of the bandage, and huffs like he’s trying to breathe the musk from the sweaty—thanks to Eddie, because he’d been clean and dry and fresh from the shower when he’d knocked on Eddie’s door—patch of hair. Buck’s sure the noise that he lets out isn’t anywhere near sexy, but it must be to Eddie, considering the way he groans low and loud against Buck’s sensitive skin and his teeth nip as he mouths just close enough to Buck’s dick for the ghost of stubble to threaten scraping against it. He sees Eddie’s shoulder shift, and realizes it’s not just moving, but moving rhythmically. He does the first thing that comes to mind, which is clamp his knees around Eddie’s shoulders. Eddie withdraws with a gasp, jaw hanging slack and pupils blown wide. He’s pulled back enough that Buck can see the glisten of his precome on the glove where Eddie’d been working his own cock, and his heart rate ratchets ever higher. 

“Eddie,” he says, very seriously, “if you don’t touch me right now I’m gonna die.” 

Eddie blinks, once, twice, before turning to pick the lube up from where he’d set it on the coffee table when he was looking for the shears. He tears a packet open with his teeth—good lord—and wrings it out onto his already-slick fingers. He uses his unlubed hand to brace Buck’s thigh, shifting until he’s got the leg partially thrown over his shoulder, then presses the cold, slippery pads of two fingers against Buck’s hole. 

“Doin’ okay?” Eddie asks. His thumb rubs back and forth on Buck’s thigh distractingly. His fingers are too much and not enough pressure all at once. Buck can feel the slick glide of the lube across smooth nitrile.

“Decompensating,” Buck croaks, “need intervention. Stat.”

Eddie huffs in amusement, slowly circling the fingers around Buck’s rim. The very tip of one edges inside, and Buck has had enough sex, of all kinds, to know what to expect next: the stretch, not uncomfortable, even with Eddie’s massive fucking hands, the drag in and out. He relaxes into it, allows Eddie to work one gloved finger inside of him. 

“Another?” Eddie asks the first time Buck hitches his hips up, trying to get Eddie’s finger to drag against his prostate. 

“Please,” Buck whines, then, a moment later, as Eddie’s withdrawing to line the next finger up alongside the first, “you choose when for the next one.” 

Buck does not miss Eddie’s sharp inhalation in response. He pants, and rocks, and allows Eddie to take him apart slowly with his fingers. 

“So good at this,” he groans when Eddie starts working the third finger inside, “you’re so good at everything.” He blinks his eyes open to look at Eddie, takes in his flushed face and heavy breathing. 

“Buck,” Eddie growls, “Buck, baby, can I—”

Buck thinks he blacks out for a second. His ears ring. Baby. He doesn’t hear the rest of the request. “Anything, Eddie,” he agrees, hoping it’s an appropriate response. He’s so blissed out, the perfect rhythm of Eddie’s fingers in him keeping him close to the edge but not allowing him to quite topple over, and he’s sure it’s on purpose. Eddie’s too observant not to ramp the pace up until Buck sees stars if he wanted Buck to come like this. He’ll let Eddie have whatever he wants. He wants to close his eyes again, allow Eddie’s request to take him by surprise, but the squeak of a glove has him lifting his head in confusion. Eddie meets his gaze, the hand that doesn’t have three fingers buried in Buck raised to his mouth, wrist of the glove caught between his teeth. 

He releases it at the look of confusion Buck gives him. 

“Wanna feel you,” he explains, putting his teeth back to the nitrile and continuing, muffled, “can’t with these.” 

He crooks the fingers inside Buck, something like an apology that he’d gone back on his promise to keep wearing the gloves, and Buck gasps as his prostate is hit dead-on. He’s so focused on trying to watch Eddie pull the glove off with his teeth—hot, fuck it’s so hot, he needs Eddie’s teeth back on him—that he almost doesn’t realize the pressure hasn’t abated, Eddie’s fingers suddenly unrelenting in their grind, until the tension starts building again. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, his hips jerking up violently, “fuck, fuck, fuck, Eddie, I’m—” 

Eddie leans in, pressing his fingers firmer against Buck’s prostate, and slips his hand between Buck’s stomach and Buck’s neglected cock, straining against his abs, to lay his free hand across the soft flesh, directly above where his own cock would reach if he’d been fucking Buck instead of fingering him. He pushes down, pressure on his abdomen meeting pressure against his prostate, and Buck comes with a shout, striping Eddie’s arm, and Eddie’s bare chest, and his own shirt with come. It takes a second for the world to come back to him, just panting. Eddie slides his fingers out gently once he’s sure Buck’s ridden out the orgasm in its entirety, meeting Buck’s gaze and maintaining eye contact as he licks the taste of lube and Buck off of his gloved fingers before peeling the glove off the same way he had the other one. 

“Eddie, fuck,” Buck says, squeezing his eyes back shut, “Eddie, oh my God.” If he didn’t feel so boneless, he’d try to wrench Eddie up onto the couch with him, lick into his mouth and jerk him off sweet and slow. As a compromise, he opens his eyes and slides forward off the couch until he meets Eddie on the floor, pushing Eddie back until he’s laying on the rug and Buck’s straddling him with trembling thighs. Eddie stares up at him, the pretty brown of his irises entirely swallowed up by greedy pupils. 

“Buck,” he says, more adjacent to a whine than it is to any other noise he’s made all night. He’s sweaty, and flushed, and so fucking irresistible that Buck can’t help but catch his mouth in a kiss, licking his way past Eddie’s teeth immediately as he gives a tentative rock of his hips. He can’t go again yet, he doesn’t think, but he’s not on the sharp side of sensitive, so he lines their cocks together and starts grinding, leveraging his weight onto one hand so he can hold himself and Eddie together in the other. Eddie meets his kiss with equal—no, considerably more—fervor, pressing up into Buck like he’s trying to swallow his tongue. His hands skim every inch of Buck he can reach, grabbing at his ass, scratching up and down his back, sliding around to his chest to cup his pecs and brush his thumbs over Buck’s nipples. His hands are so big, so broad and hot against his skin that Buck almost convinces himself that he’s dead and in heaven again. It’s dizzying, especially when Eddie’s tongue licks flat across the roof of Buck’s mouth as Eddie’s hips join the rhythmic grind and he makes a noise of encouragement as he squeezes one of Buck’s pecs hard, sending vibrations through Buck’s skull and fireworks down his spine.

They move in tandem, Buck having a split second to wonder if Eddie’s grip will leave bruises, then another split second to acknowledge that he would really like if it did, before Eddie’s breaking from Buck’s mouth to get his teeth on his neck, and dispelling any conscious thought Buck could possibly form. Eddie bites his earlobe and mouths messily against his pulse point, all the while rubbing himself off against Buck’s half-soft cock on top of him and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing Buck anywhere he can wrap his fingers around. 

Eddie nips at Buck’s throat, right beside his Adam’s apple, and Buck shudders. His cock warns him that he’s verging on overstimulation, but he’s settled firmly and happily on the painful side of pleasure, smearing his tacky come over Eddie’s cock and digging his thumb into Eddie’s slit. 

“Fuck,” Eddie moans, “that, do that again.” Buck does. Eddie’s hands slip around to grab at Buck’s ass again, yank him closer, controlling their grind with his huge hands and their strong grip on Buck. Buck does it again, and then again from a little bit of a different angle, and then he presses the pad of his thumb over Eddie’s slit and draws a tight circle, fingers encircling the head, and suddenly Eddie’s coming with a drawn-out groan, hips jerking up against where Buck’s bulk has him pinned to the floor.

He withdraws his hand as Eddie catches his breath, moving to wipe it clean on his shirt but Eddie snatches it from the air before he can make it even halfway. He tucks Buck’s middle two fingers into his mouth, laving his tongue around and between them diligently, before moving on to his pinky, and his pointer and thumb, then licking broad strokes over the palm. Finally, he presses his teeth to the spot he’d taken Buck’s pulse earlier, eyes fluttering closed as he breathes through his nose and just holds Buck’s heartbeat under his tongue. Buck counts to thirty before Eddie blinks his eyes open, messy strand of spit connecting his mouth to Buck’s arm when he releases Buck from the grip of his jaw. He licks it off, which is only successful in adding more spit to the scenario, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Buck definitely doesn’t. 

“Still tachy.” Eddie’s voice is gravel-rough. Buck would laugh, if his dick wasn’t making such a valiant effort to stand at attention again; Buck’s never been able to count seconds and beats at the same time, completely reliant on his watch to keep his time, but it’s no surprise that Eddie can, and it’s no surprise that Buck’s cock is extremely interested in the casual display of competence.

“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” he sighs, rolling off of Eddie to lay next to him on the floor, wedging himself on his back between Eddie and the displaced coffee table.

Eddie hums, reaching for Buck in the space between, running his hand over any skin in close reach, squeezing the meat of his thigh and cut of his hip. “You’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” he counters, earning a smack on his bare shoulder. 

“Even my ingrown hair?” Buck asks, raising an eyebrow. 

Eddie laughs, looking back at him. “Yeah, Buck. I wouldn’t do the sexy Doctor Pimple Popper thing for just anybody.”

Buck sits up so fast he almost brains himself on the edge of the coffee table. “I was just thinking about how you were like a sexy Doctor Pimple Popper,” he says excitedly.

“While I was fingering you?” Eddie asks. He’s still on his back, looking up at Buck. He blinks, and it’s a slow, lazy thing, indicative of his exertion. His hand rests on the rug, having fallen when Buck sat up.

Buck bites back his smile as he rolls his eyes. “No, when you were stripteasing me with your gloves. Obviously.”

Eddie huffs. “Obviously.” He moves to sit, and Buck offers his hand to help him up, and the next thing he knows, Eddie’s yanking Buck’s come-covered shirt over his head and herding him to the shower with a hand possessively placed on his lower back. 

“C’mon, we gotta go to bed,” Eddie yawns into his ear fifteen minutes later as Buck brushes his teeth, “need to figure out how to break your lease first thing in the morning.”