Chapter Text
Time didn’t restart all at once.
It stuttered back in slow, aching pulses—the kind you feel after an impact, when your ears are still ringing and your lungs forget how to expand. The ceremony space had emptied, but the echo of it all still hung in the air. Scraped chairs. Scattered petals. Ghosts of music that never played.
Eddie stood frozen at the edge of the altar, throat tight, hands curled into fists at his sides. The silence wasn’t peace—it was pressure. The kind that comes right before something splits wide open.
Buck hadn’t moved either. Still in the same spot Tommy left him, tux half-clumsy on his frame, like it didn’t fit right anymore. His boutonnière was crooked. His hands were shaking.
And when their eyes met, it wasn’t cautious. It was a freefall.
Eddie’s voice came out low and stunned. “What the hell just happened?”
Buck blinked—once, slow—like he was just now catching up to the moment. “Do you remember when I called you?” he said, voice rough. “Drunk. Upset.”
Eddie’s brow furrowed. “Yeah. After I RSVP’d no.”
Buck gave the smallest shake of his head. “Partly, yeah. But really? I called because I was terrified.”
He stepped forward, one footfall at a time like the ground still wasn’t steady. “Because this relationship with Tommy—it was supposed to be enough. It made sense. It was solid. Everyone thought we were good together.” A pause. “But I kept counting the days until the wedding, not because I wanted to marry him…” He looked up, eyes glassy. “But because it meant I’d see you again.”
Eddie flinched like he’d been hit. “Buck, that’s not fair. You love him.”
“I thought it was love,” Buck said quietly. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t yelling. He was breaking open—carefully. Completely.
“I thought love was supposed to be calm. Easy. Something you grow into if you try hard enough. Something that doesn’t consume you. Something that makes sense on paper.”
He looked down at his own hands, like they belonged to someone else. “But the only love I ever felt that burned—really burned—was for someone I couldn’t have.”
Eddie’s whole body went still. Not calm. Not easy. Just still. Like the eye of the storm. Like the moment before the earth gives way beneath you.
“I spent years,” Buck continued, “trying to convince myself I couldn't ever want you—that you were straight. That I was imagining it. That I was just... grasping for something I couldn’t name. I told myself I made it all up, that none of it was real.”
His voice cracked. “I tried to let you go. But nothing else has ever felt like you.”
The words landed with a weight Eddie didn’t know how to carry. They settled into the cracks he’d spent years pretending weren’t there.
“Come on Buck, that can’t be true,” Eddie said, voice low. Fractured. “You deserve better than someone who ghosted you for two years.”
His hands were still in his pockets, fists balled, like if he let go—if he reached, if he let his fingers curl around something real—they’d start to shake. And if they shook, if he trembled now, the whole damn foundation might come down with him.
Buck didn’t flinch.
“Who cares what I ‘deserve?’ Or what anyone deserves? This is about what I want.”
It shouldn’t have landed like a declaration. Not with Buck still standing in a crumpled tux and the aftermath of a wedding-that-wasn’t pulsing in the air like an open wound.
But it did.
Eddie shook his head. Just once. Barely.
And still, it felt like a fault line giving way.
“You’re just saying all this because Tommy left,” he said, even as the words scraped against something raw in his chest. “Because I ruined your wedding and you want it to be worth it. That’s not clarity, Buck. That’s a consolation prize. That’s chaos.”
Buck took a single step forward.
Into the quiet. Into the ache.
“No,” he said. “Chaos was trying to love someone safe, trying to reshape myself into someone who could settle without shaking.” His voice didn’t waver this time. “And doing it while carrying a heart that wasn’t mine to give.”
His eyes never left Eddie’s.
“You had it already.”
There were no echoes in the room—but Eddie swore he could hear the sentence reverberate inside him like a dropped stone in still water.
It didn’t matter that it was quiet. That the chairs were empty. That the crowd was gone. He felt it like a crowd anyway. Felt it like a spotlight on every lie he’d told himself just to survive.
He didn’t move, but inside—he buckled.
His breath hitched. His hands shook.
He shoved them deeper into his pockets, like maybe he could bury the tremor. Like maybe he could outrun the quake.
“I didn’t come back to stop the wedding,” he whispered. “I swear. I would never try to do something so selfish. I told my therapist I’d made peace with losing you. If that’s what it took for you to be happy, then I’d survive it. I’d survive anything if it meant you were okay. I have to be selfless. For you.”
“Fuck it—be selfish, Eddie. Please.”
The words hung between them, cracked and electric.
“Because what you thought was selflessness—this whole time—it was killing me.”
He took another step forward, drawn like gravity.
“Eddie,” he said, voice wrecked. “When I was standing up there, trying to say my vows…”
He looked down, shaking his head, a hollow kind of laugh slipping from his chest.
“I couldn’t even see Tommy. Not really. Everything in front of me just blurred. All I could see—all I could feel—was you.”
His voice trembled, but he kept going, eyes locked to Eddie’s like he needed him to understand—really understand.
“You were right there, and all I wanted to know was… Do you love me? Not as a friend. Not as a memory. But here. Now. Real.”
He breathed out like the words had been trapped for years.
“Because I spent so long convincing myself it wasn’t possible. That I had to bury it. That loving you out loud was something I wasn’t allowed to want.”
A pause. A breath.
“But I couldn’t stop hoping for it. Not then. Not now. Not even when I was about to marry someone else.”
The silence that followed was thick and trembling. The kind that dares you to answer.
Buck took another step—just a breath away from him now.
“I need to know,” he said quietly, the words stripped bare of anything but need. “Do you love me, Eddie?”
Eddie froze.
It hit like a fault line cracking down the center of his chest.
For a split second, every instinct screamed to run—to look away, to make a joke, to hide behind silence or logic or some deflection he’d used a hundred times before.
But this time—this time—he didn’t move.
Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe.
He stood exactly where he was and felt every inch of it—the ache, the hope, the fear.
And then something shifted. Something tectonic.
Because he was tired of running. Tired of being haunted by what he didn’t say. Tired of choking on ghosts and echoes and the quiet space between almost and never.
He looked at Buck and let every part of himself show.
The longing. The guilt. The truth.
“Yes,” he said, voice raw. “God, Buck. Yes.”
Buck’s breath caught.
But Eddie wasn’t done. Not this time.
“I love you so much—fuck, I’ve loved you for years,” he said, voice rough around the edges, like the words had been clawing their way out of him for far too long. “And I ran. Over and over again. I told myself I was protecting you and our friendship, but really—I was just protecting myself.”
He stepped forward, hands no longer fists, no longer hiding. Just open. Sure.
“I thought you never felt this way about me,” Eddie said, voice low and shaking with truth. “So I buried it. I tried to move on. And when I saw you with him—with Tommy—I told myself I’d missed my chance. That I was too late. That I had to let you go.”
His hands trembled at his sides, but he didn’t look away.
“I told myself I was okay with that,” he whispered. “But I wasn’t. I’m not.”
A breath. Then—
“I thought I was going to die a coward,” he said, the words ripped from somewhere deep. “Carrying this love to the grave—silent and unspoken. I pictured myself telling you on my deathbed, in some hazy dream, that I could never not love you.”
It hung between them like smoke, like something holy and damning all at once.
For a second, Buck just stared at him. Didn’t speak. Didn’t smile. Didn’t soften the moment with a joke or offer an easy out. He just looked at Eddie like he was something he’d never let himself believe in until now.
And then, gently—softly—Buck said, “It’s never too late to let yourself be loved back.”
Something cracked wide open inside Eddie.
He didn’t hesitate.
He stepped forward—one, two, three strides—and cupped Buck’s face in both hands like he was grounding himself in something real for the first time in years. His thumbs brushed the curve of Buck’s cheekbones, reverent, steady, trembling just a little.
And then he kissed him.
No halfway. No flinching.
Just full, aching honesty.
He leaned in like the weight of his confession had turned into momentum—like everything he’d held back had finally found direction. His mouth met Buck’s with the desperate relief of a man who’d been lost in the dark and suddenly found the light, and this time, he didn’t hold back. Didn’t temper it.
Eddie kissed like he was choosing.
Like he was done running.
Like he meant every word he hadn’t said until now—and was saying all of them in the space between their mouths.
Buck gasped against his mouth, hands flying to Eddie’s waist, gripping tight like he couldn’t believe this was real. Eddie’s fingers threaded into Buck’s hair, tugging just enough to make them both gasp, just enough to remind them they were still here, still alive, still theirs.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t perfect. It was everything they had never let themselves feel. All the years of almosts and what-ifs and locked jaws and unsent messages—all of it spilling out in the way Eddie’s mouth moved against his, desperate and sure and trembling all at once.
Eddie kissed like he was drowning and this was the air. Buck kissed like he was waking up for the first time in years.
It was teeth and heat and breath and tears neither of them had meant to cry. It was a hand fisting in the fabric of a ruined tux, another threading into too-short hair, the soft thud of someone being pressed back against the edge of the altar because standing still just wasn’t enough.
The world narrowed down to this: mouths and hands and breath, the thrum of a pulse beneath someone’s skin, the dizzying warmth of being known, seen, wanted.
And still, somehow, it felt quiet. Not silent—but sacred. Like the cathedral of every moment they’d survived apart had finally given way to this one, where they could stop pretending, stop performing, just be.
When they finally broke apart, the air between them still thrummed like a struck chord—vibrating with everything they'd just undone. The silence wasn't heavy anymore. It wasn't haunted.
It was breathless.
Eddie’s chest rose and fell like he was remembering how to feel everything at once. His lips were kiss-wrecked, eyes wide, and then—
He laughed.
It started small, almost shocked—like he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. Then Buck laughed too, sharp and disbelieving, shaking his head as he pulled Eddie back in by the lapel of his suit.
“What the fuck just happened,” Eddie said, breathless and grinning.
Buck wheezed a laugh. “I think… I got left at the altar?”
Eddie blinked, then let out a full-bodied laugh—messy, startled, helpless. He doubled over, forehead pressed to Buck’s shoulder, his whole body shaking with it.
“Jesus Christ,” he gasped, still laughing. “This is insane.”
“Insanely overdue,” Buck muttered into his hair, grinning like he couldn’t stop.
And Eddie—
Eddie couldn’t remember the last time he felt this light.
No ghosts. No echoes. No flickering reflections of the life he almost lived.
Just this.
Just Buck, alive and real and ridiculous in his wrinkled tux, grinning like they were seventeen and about to do something stupid, and for once—Eddie wasn’t afraid.
His laughter faded into something quieter, more reverent. His hand lingered at Buck’s jaw like he still couldn’t quite believe he was allowed to touch him like this. His voice came soft.
“I didn’t know it could feel like this.”
Buck’s eyes flicked over him, equal parts reverence and mischief. “Yeah?”
Eddie nodded. “Like… joy. Actual, stupid joy.”
And Buck smiled. Soft and whole.
~
They stepped out into the late afternoon sun, side by side.
The golden light hit different now—softer somehow. Less like a spotlight, more like a welcome.
The courtyard was quiet except for the murmur of voices just ahead. Bobby and Athena stood off to one side, hands clasped. Maddie was holding baby Kevin, who squirmed in her arms to wave, while Chim tried to keep Jee from stepping into a fountain. The chaos was familiar. Safe.
And right in the center of it all—Christopher.
As soon as he saw them, he crossed the courtyard in three fast strides, crutches swinging, determination written all over his face.
He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t hold back.
He threw his arms around Buck like he’d been holding that hug in for years.
“I’m so sorry that happened,” Chris said, voice cracking. “Are you okay? Oh, Buck, I missed you so much. I’m sorry I didn’t say it. I’m sorry I pretended I didn’t.”
Buck’s eyes closed, arms pulling Chris in tight. “Hey. You don’t have to be sorry. I missed you too. I missed you so much.”
Eddie stood beside them, hands tucked into his jacket pockets, eyes bright.
“He gets it from his dad,” he said softly.
Buck looked over at him, smile pulling at his mouth like he didn’t quite know how to stop it anymore.
Chris pulled back then, still holding onto Buck’s sleeve, and turned to Eddie. His brow furrowed like he was trying to read something deeper than words.
“Are you okay?”
Eddie didn’t hesitate.
He didn’t check over his shoulder. Didn’t bite his tongue. Didn’t hide.
He just smiled.
“I’m more than okay,” he said. “I’m happy.”
Chris blinked—then grinned like it made perfect sense. Like this was the version of his dad he’d been waiting to see again.
They lingered there for a few minutes—laughing, talking, wrapping each other in the comfort of what was real and earned and still possible.
Eventually, the others gave them space, walking ahead toward the cars.
Eddie hung back, Buck at his side, as the weight of it all settled into something quiet and solid between them.
“I’ve been thinking,” Eddie said, gaze fixed on the horizon. “About moving back this summer. Really moving back.”
Buck turned to look at him, eyes wide. Hopeful. “Yeah?”
Eddie nodded. “I’m done hiding from the from the truth, done running from myself. I want to run toward something this time.”
He looked over, and Buck was already looking at him like he’d never stopped.
“Toward joy?” Buck asked, a small, teasing smile playing at his lips.
Eddie smiled back. “Yeah. Toward you.”
They stood there as the sky dimmed around them, shadows stretching long and soft across the pavement. The world had cracked open and let the light in. And for once, Eddie wasn’t chasing ghosts or echoes or reflections in the glass.
He was standing in it.
In something real.
In something his.
And when he reached out—Buck’s hand met his halfway.
Like it had always been waiting there.