He smiled at Eddie, and Eddie smiled back. His eyes crinkled at the corners, sparkling where the last rays of desert sun scattered across them. A few stray strands of hair fell across his face, mussed from his passenger seat nap, and his cheeks bulged around a bite of burger. Ketchup stained the corner of his lip.

He could've been a painting.

Hastily, Buck looked away, tearing his eyes from Eddie's face and down to his own food. The distance, he reminded himself, had nothing to do with this. It couldn't, because this was nothing more than friendship. This wasn't love, because he wasn't in love with Eddie, so he didn't have to pull away. He didn't have to prove himself.

"So," Buck said, needing more than anything to fill the silence. "That Alex woman seems … nice."

Truthfully, Buck hadn't heard more than two words from her that didn't involve some sort of crisis management, but that wasn't the point, because Eddie had. Eddie'd had all kinds of conversations with her, conversations Buck wasn't privy to. Conversations that led to him trusting her with parts of his life that he used to trust to Buck.

That was fine, really. That was good. Eddie needed people, and Buck was all too happy for those people to not be him.

Eddie grunted around his burger and took his time swallowing. "Yeah," he said lightly, eyeing Buck's fries. He'd opted for coleslaw, like a liar. "She's great."

"Yup." Buck sucked his teeth. He pushed his plate forward, inviting. Eddie immediately reached over, stealing three fries at once. "She's um, she's good at her job. With the State Mental … Aaaa …"

"Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Team," Eddie rattled off. Of course he had it memorized.

"That!" Buck snapped his fingers. "She's very good. At that."

"Sure. Where are we going with this?"

"Nowhere!" Eddie's face scrunched in disbelief. "Okay," Buck capitulated, "I'm not saying anything, but. She's pretty, she's competent, you two … work well together, is all." He picked up a fry, jabbed it into the little cup of ketchup, and did not examine why his own words sounded so forced.

Eddie, for his part, just rolled his eyes. "Seriously? This again?"

"What do you mean again? When have I ever mentioned Alex before?" Buck was sure he hadn't touched on this point. Yet.

"Not Alex," said Eddie, "my love life. First the bar, then the auction, now this? Why are you trying so hard to get me a date?"

Eddie was overselling it. Buck hadn't been that pushy. Had he? "You're my friend. Do I need some nefarious purpose to want you to be happy?"

"Do I need to date a woman to be happy?"

He didn't look at Buck as he said it. 

I need you to date a woman, Buck didn't say. 

Buck did say, "I just don't understand why you're so resistant to the idea of a relationship."

Eddie shrugged, fiddling with the cup of coleslaw on his plate. "Maybe I'm happy with what I have."

"But are you really satisfied with that? Just … being alone?"

"I'm not alone," Eddie insisted. "I have my son, my job — a purpose. I have my family, the 118. I have you."

Half of Buck's fry had already fallen into the depths of the ketchup cup. He kept jabbing what was left in there anyway, a half hearted attempt to dig it out.

"Buck?" Eddie ducked his head, leaning in until he caught Buck's eye by force. "I have you, right?"

The fry slipped from his fingers, finally given up for a lost cause. He didn't care.

"Yeah," he said, helpless to the pull of Eddie's gaze. "You have me, Eddie. At least," he added with a purposefully lopsided grin, "for the next four hundred miles, you do."

Eddie laughed. The sound of it melted the tension housed between Buck's shoulder blades.

"Right," he said, burger back in hand. "Once we're back home, all bets are off?"

"I might have to donate you to Ravi," Buck quipped.

Eddie chucked a fry at Buck, who swatted it out of the air. But he was smiling. They both were.

Back to being them. Back to being easy.

***

Conveniently, there was a motel on the same corner as the diner. The only other sign of life was a gas station. And that was all there would be for miles yet.

Buck handled filling the truck's tank while Eddie went to secure rooms. When he finished and Eddie hadn't emerged, he parked the truck and sat on the hood to wait.

It was a cloudless night. The sun had set during their dinner, though a smudge of orange still marked the western horizon, fading rapidly to an inky blue. Stars twinkled above, visible even past the motel sign with its neon glow and strip of yellow lights. They painted the sky in glittering constellations; if Buck concentrated, he could just make out the galaxy swirled over and around them.

You never got this view in Los Angeles. Buck knew people who had lived their whole lives in the city and never saw the stars.

"Stargazing?" Buck hadn't noticed Eddie approaching, his mind too lost in space. His voice was soft, his face softer, a fond smile gracing his lips. He settled in beside Buck without waiting for an answer, nudging him over to make room.

"You know," said Buck, "I never notice how much I miss the stars until I leave the city."

Eddie hummed. "Sometimes you don't know what's missing until it's right in front of you."

Buck looked sideways at Eddie. His gaze was fixed upwards, unfocused. Something dangerously wistful played along the corner of his lashes, the curve of his lips.

Buck snorted, if only to break the moment. "Okay, Guru Eddie. You get that one from Frank?"

"Shut up." Eddie pushed his shoulder playfully into Buck's, and Buck pushed back. "Got a room, by the way. They only have queen beds, but we're almost at the end of our budget so I figured we could share."

"Yeah," Buck said. "That's fine."  It wasn't like they hadn't shared a bed before. There was no reason for it to be weird now.

He rolled off the truck and held a hand out for a room key, which Eddie obligingly handed over.

The room had a vintage feel, with patterned umber wallpaper and kelly green bedding. Buck claimed the side of the bed closest to the bathroom and set about on his nightly routine. Eddie joined him partway through cleansing, already clad in his basketball shorts and sleep shirt.

They settled in early with hopes of heading out before dawn the next day. The last leg of the journey was the shortest, and they were eager to get home — though, privately Buck thought he wouldn't have minded an extra day or two on the road, so long as Eddie was driving.

Night closed around them, dampening the light to a faint glow from the window. Buck lay on his back and listened to Eddie breathing beside him, waiting to drift off to sleep.

"Buck?"

Eddie's whisper was gentle, so soft Buck might have imagined it. Soft enough he could pretend he didn't hear it. 

He wouldn't, though. He wasn't wired for it, not with the way his entire being shifted around Eddie, constantly reorienting to stay within his orbit. If he hadn't heard Eddie he would've felt him, felt the air shift from his lungs, felt his lips move in the dark. Even with the respectful foot of space between them.

"Yeah?" Buck whispered back.

"It's not about … not wanting a relationship."

"Oh." Something about the way Eddie said it, hushed and hesitant, felt dangerous. A precipice loomed before them, and Eddie danced on tiptoe towards it. Buck wasn't sure what they'd find over the ledge, but he knew he'd hurl himself over, if only Eddie asked. "No?"

Eddie shook his head. Buck turned his own to look. His profile was dark, backlit by the soft glow penetrating the cheap curtains. Reds and blues from the motel signage, yellow spilling over from the diner. 

Buck waited for him to speak. When he didn't, he prompted, "What is it then?"

Eddie swallowed audibly. "Alex is … nice. She's capable, and pretty, and we get along well."

"Okay," Buck said softly, not sure where this was going.

"But she isn't." He turned his face toward Buck, eyes glinting in the dark. His mouth hung open, working over whatever would come next. "She's not … a man."

Buck blinked, and thought he could hear it. His mouth went dry and his heart hammered as if he'd taken a ten story fall. A leap.

He nodded vaguely.

"Okay."

Eddie didn't look like it was okay. The line of his neck was taut, and his jaw worked. He lay almost too still under the sheet, strung like a livewire.

"Is that … weird?"

The words called to mind Buck's old loft. The warm lighting, the industrial appliances, the exposed brick. A couple of beers shared, secrets spilled between friends. Buck remembered Eddie's warmth, his easy embrace that day that he came out. 

He twisted so all of him faced Eddie. The movement brought them a few inches closer. He longed to reach out, to lay a hand on Eddie's shoulder, to take his hand, feel his arm through the sheet, cup his jaw.

He settled for simply placing his hand on the bed between them, and watched as Eddie softened.

"Of course not," he said on a breath. "Eddie …"

Eddie nodded, blinking rapidly, and shifted to mirror Buck. His hand came to rest next to Buck's, close enough that a twitch of the pinkies would have them touch.

"How long?" Buck asked. It wasn't the right question, not by a long shot, but he couldn't help himself. He had to know.

"A while," Eddie admitted. "Since Texas. Maybe before."

Something in Buck sank. Since Texas … a year, then. More. All that time and Buck had no idea. He was supposed to know everything about Eddie, but he didn't know this.

Eddie hadn't told him.

"I don't know what this means," Eddie said, and it sounded more a confession than anything else uttered that night. "I'm not … sure."

"You're not sure?" Buck echoed. "What aren't you sure of?"

Eddie took a steadying breath. "I don't know," he said. "It's new, but it doesn't feel new. It doesn't feel right, but it doesn't really feel wrong either. And I can't stop thinking about — about it, but I don't know how to tell, for sure."

"I see." Buck cursed the night, that it mired Eddie's face in shadow. Only the whites of Eddie's eyes caught the light, his shape outlined in the backglow. Buck wanted to see him, to trace every twitch and expression. "You want to know how to know."

"How did you know?"

Buck turned that over. His tongue formed a name, but the space between them had become something sacred; invoking the name could shatter it. So he said, simply, "I was kissed."

"And that was it?"

"Yeah," Buck said. "It just … it made sense. It made me make sense."

Eddie nodded. "Just a kiss, then?"

His pinkie twitched.

Buck's breath stuttered. The room spun around them, the space between them reduced to inches. The air between them danced, charged, exchanged on congruent exhales. 

Buck drifted, was drifting, tethered to Eddie on a collision course.

He was going to kiss Eddie.

It struck him then that this could never be any meaningless kiss. Not on Buck's part. Millions of those ran through his mind; none of them were like this. None of them had that pull, that desperate urge that thrummed beneath his fingertips, touch him, touch him now, pull him close, closer, closer. 

There was a gravity here unlike any Buck had experienced before. Eddie, a black hole, and Buck caught in his orbit, helplessly sinking in. Once he passed the event horizon, there could be no turning back. 

So he turned away. 

"Yeah, so." The words came too loud, echoing in the cracks of the motel ceiling. "When, when we get back to L.A. we should totally, uh, find a guy for you to kiss. Oh, we can go back to that bar we went to with Ravi! A-and now that I know what you're actually looking for, I can wingman way better this time."

Even to his own ears his voice rang hollow. The sheets rustled beside him, nearly drowning out Eddie's mumbled agreement, and the room fell silent. 

Regret washed through Buck, pinning him in place. The space between them may well have been the desert that surrounded them, expansive, unyielding. He had a feeling it would take just as long to cross.

For the first time, Buck let himself think of Eddie and want. God, did he want. He wanted Eddie. He wanted the little spot he'd carved in Eddie's heart, in Eddie's life. He wanted that spot to mean something. 

He wanted to mean something.

Long minutes passed before Buck could drag his eyes from the ceiling. Eddie's back was to him, sheets drawn up to his ears, hair haloed in the neon glow of the vacancy sign.