#lain writes

Not that Eddie doesn’t visit him often, it’s just that… Buck may or may not have gotten unnecessarily aggressive on the basketball court last week and Eddie may or may not have been on the receiving end of said aggression.

He’d gone to Maddie’s earlier to talk to her about this enveloping, consuming jealousy he felt whenever he saw Tommy and Eddie together, and how he could not for the life of him figure out where it came from. A long conversation over brunch that abruptly ended when Howie “loud mouth” Han got home elucidated a few things. First that his abandonment issues were most definitely rearing their ugly head, but that past that, there may be something other than jealousy under there. Something closer to envy.

See, Buck wasn’t afraid that he would lose something to someone, or feel threatened, which he’d learned from Maddie was what jealousy actually meant. He realized he wanted what Tommy seemed to have - this flirty side of Eddie that Buck had never seen before. Because that’s what envy is apparently; a “painful feeling of wanting what someone else has”.

Anyway, when Buck realized he was envious, that opened a whole new door in his mind that he hadn’t even realized was there. Like in the attic of his brain, there was a hallway of rooms leading to one idiosyncrasy after another, and at the very end, past what the dim light could reach, was a door covered by boxes and boards that he forgot about a long time ago. Now that the light is shining inside, Buck is terrified. He’s terrified because not only is he envious of Tommy, he’s also a little envious of Eddie, too. He doesn’t want Tommy, not anymore anyway. It was actually an initial crush on him that really ended up being a catalyst for him to figure everything else out.

No, he’s envious of Eddie because something about the way that he seems to be able to be flirty and light and open with a man twists something in his gut. A little gremlin from that dark, forgotten room saying remember me, notice me, acknowledge me.

This all leads him to now, standing in his doorway with Eddie on the other side, a mix of contempt and wariness etched into his features. Buck silently moves to the side to allow him entry and Eddie steps past him and into the kitchen. He idly taps his fingers on the island countertop a few times as Buck slowly closes the door and turns to face him, a swell of nervous energy threatening to choke him.

“Eddie-”

“What has been going on with you, man?” Eddie interrupts him almost immediately, arms thrown out in frustration before crossing over his chest. “You invited me to play ball with you and then acted like you hated me when I showed up. Now we’ve barely talked in days.”

“I invited you,” Buck stresses, though the fight isn’t in him anymore. All that’s left are the nerves he’s carried since that damn attic door was opened and a bone-deep exhaustion over the intense self-reflection he’s gone through over the past week.

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Buck sighs, hinging his neck so his head falls back, eyes cast to the ceiling, as the breath makes an audible sound past his lips. How is he supposed to tell Eddie any of this? How is he supposed to explain well, see, you and Tommy were being all flirty and I realized I really wanted you to be flirty with me and then I realized I kind of wanted to be flirty with a man, and wait, that makes me gay doesn’t it? But I’m still attracted to women so that’s bi, right? Or would it be something else? Wait, holy fuck, I’m not straight? Why am I just realizing this at 30-years-old? Wait, do I have feelings for Eddie?

He still doesn’t have answers to most of these questions.

He must stay silent for too long because Eddie steps closer, the sound of his footfall breaking the trance Buck had found himself in. He looks back down, eyes focusing on Eddie to see concern now written across his face.

“Buck,” he’s softer now, “what’s going on?”

Buck steps around him and sits in one of the stools, folding his arms in front of him and dropping his head to rest atop them. Eddie, to his credit, gives him a moment to collect himself, because even though he is upset, he is still Buck’s best friend and he’s gonna be patient with him.

“I’m sorry.” The words come out muffled between his arms. “I don’t really have an excuse.”

“Okay, but you have a reason,” Eddie prods, rounding the island to stand across from where Buck is sitting and leaning forward on his forearms to get level with him, “talk to me, Buck.”

Buck raises his head and finds Eddie only a foot or so away and his brain short circuits for a moment, his eyes wandering around his face. He hasn’t shaved in a couple days so his stubble is grown out and why does that do something to Buck now? Was this feeling always there?

“Were you jealous?” Buck’s eyes snap up to meet Eddie’s once more, thrown a little off-kilter by the question.

“What?”

“That’s what it seems like,” Eddie unfolds his hands, holding them out as if asking for a better explanation. Buck doesn’t know how to give him one.

“No.” Buck answers truthfully, but he says the word slowly as if he is questioning whether he believes himself. Eddie can tell, of course he can. He huffs out a little breath, of amusement or frustration or disbelief, Buck doesn’t know, but he does stand up again with a small smile on his face.

“You’re my best friend,” he says resolutely, no room for question in his statement. “Nothing is gonna change that.”

“I know.”

“Then what is all this?”

He looks away, instead fixing his gaze on the cabinets behind Eddie’s head. He doesn’t feel ashamed, necessarily. Or well, maybe he does a little bit over how he acted, but the reason for his actions doesn’t bring shame to him. If he is queer in some way, that’s not a bad thing, he knows that. But for some reason the idea of admitting it, of saying it loud, feels monumental. Like a humongous secret he can’t take back. A bell he can’t unring. And if he says it, if he says I think I may be queer, Eddie’s going to support him, he knows that too. He knows that Eddie will have his back no matter what, hell or high water, gay or straight, feelings or not. He’s just a little bit afraid that if he speaks those words, it will shift something that he won’t know how to handle, and there may be a teeny tiny part of him that is worried Eddie will react badly. It’s irrational, there’s absolutely no basis for it, but it’s there and he almost feels more anxious over having the fear than the fear itself.

“I-I,” he swallows, his tongue sandpaper in his mouth. He still doesn’t look at Eddie, and he rings the bell.“I’ve been thinking that I may be bi, or queer, or… something:”

The silence that follows his admission probably only lasts a few moments, but to Buck it may as well be an hour. He can’t bring himself to look away from the wall because that small, irrational part of his brain is screaming at him you’ve given him another reason to leave.

“Buck, look at me.” Eddie’s voice is quiet, so quiet, and belies nothing of how he feels. “Evan.”

Buck resolutely keeps his eyes fixed while he inhales deeply, letting the air out in a measured breath, and then he does it one more time before finally tearing his eyes away to meet Eddie’s gaze. What he finds there definitely isn’t disgust or rejection, and it isn’t even confusion or annoyance, but instead unwavering love and fondness that steals Buck’s breath.

“There is nothing you can tell me that will make me care about you any less.” Eddie doesn’t hesitate even a little in laying his hand across Buck’s arm, grip sure and firm. “And this? I’m so grateful you shared it with me, and I’m so proud of you.”

Buck’s throat clicks as he tries to swallow, a fractured breath slipping past his lips at Eddie’s declaration. Is it really this easy?

The silence drags on, and this time it doesn’t feel like Buck is suffocating on it. It doesn’t feel like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop on his relationship with Eddie because he dared to look a little too closely at how he was feeling. Though, he realizes now that his coming out (oh my god that’s what I just did) doesn’t exactly explain everything; it doesn’t explain-

“Why were you so upset at me though?” This time, the question doesn’t sound accusatory or angry, merely curious, and Buck can do curious. He can handle curious, though Eddie’s hand is still on his arm and his brain is working at half capacity at the moment so he can’t be held responsible for what comes out of his mouth.

“Because… because you clicked.”

Eddie’s face goes through a frankly adorable sequence of expressions before landing back on confused and he finally severs the contact between them, his hand coming up to scratch at his chin.

“I gotta say, I’m usually with you but I’m not getting this one, man.”

Buck sighs as he slips off the stool, his limbs sluggish and loose and he’s so exhausted. He stands behind the stool he was just in and fiddles with the leather binding of the upholstery as he speaks.

“You and Tommy,” he mumbles, “you all clicked and it looked so easy and free and you all were flirty and-”

“Flirty?” Eddie interrupts him, eyebrows shooting up in surprise and head cocking to the side. “What do you mean flirty?”

“Eddie,” Buck deadpans, head dropping as he looks up at him incredulously. “That man has been wooing you since you met and you all have this easy back-and-forth, and I think part of me was envious seeing you getting to have that with a man.”

He does not mention the other part.

Eddie, meanwhile, still looks a little shell-shocked at the ‘flirty’ comment, but he takes it in stride, head nodding slowly.

“And that made you realize-”

“That I’m… not straight. Yeah.”

Eddie comes around the island to face Buck again. He inhales deeply, just looking at him for a moment. His eyes roam Buck’s face, surely noting the fatigue and the anxiety that have made their home in the creases in his forehead and the bags under his eyes. Finally, he reaches up and gently drops his hand on Buck’s shoulder. The spot where it’s been a few times before, where his palm cups the joint and his thumb rests just barely grazing his neck. He shivers at the contact, or maybe the intensity of Eddie’s gaze, or maybe because he’s tired and it’s late and he wants to forget about his giant crush for a while. Regardless, his breath stutters to a stop in his chest as Eddie speaks.

“No friendship I have with anyone else will compare to this, to us,” he motions between them with his other hand, “and you’ve got to know by now that I love you, to the core, and that includes every part of who you are.”

Buck just nods, the I love you beating wildly into his chest and making a home somewhere dangerously close to his heart. He knows Eddie loves him, has known it, but not like that. Not how he wants.

“And if you act how you did last week ever again,” Eddie’s still speaking, and he raises his hand again, this time to point squarely at Buck, “then we might have issues.”

He’s grinning, fondness seeping out of him, so Buck knows he’s teasing. Still, he plays into it.

“We might just need to go for the title.”

“Yeah,” Eddie’s eyes glint, his bright smile taking over his whole face, “maybe.”

“Marks are for women and faggots, Edmundo,” Ramon had spat at him, “if you know what’s good for you, you’ll never tell anyone that you have one.”

He heard his parents arguing later that night, his mom admonishing his dad for what he’d said. She didn’t want Eddie feeling badly about himself. But despite her sticking up for him, even she agreed with his dad when he’d expressed his concern about how people would view him for having a Mark.

“I’d rather he take it seriously than let him go on thinking it’s okay.”

He never truly believed that Marks were some sort of symbol of weakness, as his dad had implied, but he couldn’t help the way that messaging burrowed its way into his mind and took root. When he had met and fallen for Shannon, he hadn’t even told her he had a Mark. She found out the first time they slept together at 16, and he vividly remembers the way her face fell when she saw it after pulling his shirt over his head. Where she had been grinning, all coy and sweet, her smile then dropped and tears almost immediately filled her eyes after they landed on the stretch of black across his bicep.

She didn’t have one, and while it wasn’t unheard of, it wasn’t exactly common for only one person in a soulmate pair to have a Mark. When she had cautiously, slowly, reached shaking fingers to his arm, she felt nothing when they brushed against the warm skin there. No rush of emotion, no flash of understanding, nothing. She didn’t have to look at Eddie to know he didn’t feel anything either.

No one knows why humans have these Marks. There are ancient cave drawings of lone Neanderthals with streaks of black on their bodies, while drawings of pairs had colorful splashes that aligned with where they were touching. It’s a trait that, as far as anyone knows, humans have always had and no one quite understands. Some people get them, some people don’t, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason as to who inherits them. They run in families, and women are only slightly more likely to have them despite the pervasive discrimination some people face in certain parts of the world that equate the Marks to femininity and therefore weakness.

Eddie has heard the stories in school about entire nations that vilify people with Marks, and about the places that venerate them. He used to dream of moving to a city that was more accepting than El Paso, as he learned fairly young that having a Mark wasn’t cool from more people than his dad. He was in middle school when he took his shirt off in the locker room and a popular kid saw the Mark on his arm and laughed at him.

“Hey, Eddie has a Mark, I bet he likes dick!” He’d snorted, slapping his friend’s arm and pointing over at Eddie, who had quickly slipped his t-shirt back on, shame twisting in his gut. Eddie doesn’t even remember his name now, but he remembers hearing a few years later that his dad was arrested for abusing him because he had a Mark, too.

By the time he graduated, found out Shannon was pregnant, and enlisted in the army, his Mark was barely a passing thought. He only ever thought about it late at night, with his arms curled in a self-hug while his fingers brushed the black ink as he thought about his soulmate out there somewhere in the world. He wondered if she, too, had settled down with someone else. If she also felt the same sense of wrongness when she climbed into bed with her spouse at night that he did. Most days he felt more guilty about that than running off to war when things got too hard.

A few bullet holes and a medical discharge later, and suddenly he’s home again and he had to learn how to be a husband and a father after barely being present for the first four years of his son’s life. He never thought he’d end up getting a crash course after Shannon left them just a couple weeks later.

So no, his Mark was never really at the top of his mind.

But after he worked some odd jobs and decided to join the fire academy, he began to think about himself a little more than he used to. The first choice he ever made for himself was to move to Los Angeles to join a firehouse there. He packed Christopher, a few boxes, and some suitcases into his old truck and made the 12-hour drive to L.A and the little bungalow he’d rented sight-unseen.

Now, with his twisted past behind him, he steps into station 118, meets his coworkers for the first time, and feels a sense of hope. That is, until he meets Buck.

His captain, Bobby Nash, is great, he knew that from the interview. Paramedics Hen and Chimney seem wonderful, very friendly and welcoming, albeit with very odd names. But Buck approaches him like he immediately hates his guts and frankly Eddie is a little offended.

“Don’t worry about him,” Chimney tells him after a couple of tense calls, “he just got dumped and he’s not taking it well.”

“Oh, was it a soulmate?”

Sometimes soulmate pairs don’t work out, despite the literal universe aligning for them. Sometimes people are too broken or too jaded and no matter how hard they try the relationships still fail.

“No, no, I think he wishes she was,” Chimney leans against the railing of the loft, looking down at Buck in the app bay. He’s cleaning the truck after the last call, his brow furrowed and gaze hard as he wipes at the same spot for far longer than necessary. “She was some great love apparently, but she just left him, went off to another country.”

“Wow, that sucks,” Eddie muses, his heart softening a little bit toward the man, “I uh, definitely feel for him.”

Before Chimney can respond, the bell sounds overhead, signaling another emergency needing their assistance. Eddie races down the stairs, and as he goes to climb into the engine, Buck steps in front of him and steps up inside. Eddie pauses for just a moment before getting in, shooting a glare Buck’s way.

This is going to be interesting.

From the moment he learned about soulmate Marks from his sister, Maddie, Buck was hooked. The thought that somewhere out there was someone who was universe-approved, made just for him, fills him with a sense of hope and purpose that he’d never felt anywhere else.

He’d spent his entire life scrabbling for love, getting scraps from his mom and dad. Maddie was his person, the only one who truly loved him, but he was only 13 when Doug got his claws in her. Before long, she barely visited, and more than once Buck thought for sure he’d seen a bruise peeking out from her sleeve. She always denied it, of course.

So, while Maddie’s leaving pained him more than anything, he could never blame her. After she left, it was like he became a ghost in his own home. His parents never noticed him, and if he’s honest, they barely noticed each other. Neither of them had soulmate Marks, but both Buck and Maddie did (he definitely noticed that his sister’s Mark that covered the inside of her right hand remained an inky black after she introduced Doug).

He wondered sometimes if his parents were too hardened, too bitter, to deserve Marks. They didn’t seem to care about Buck and Maddie having them. They were more interested in Maddie’s before she revealed she and Doug weren’t soulmates, sometimes discussing the money they were saving for her “soulmate wedding”. Buck may as well not have had one at all. Honestly, Buck may as we have not been there at all.

By the time he got out of Hershey, where he’d spent his whole ghostly life, the only thing on his mind was his Mark. He positively yearned to love and be loved in the way he’d grown up learning about, and he bounced around the country for a few years in search of it. From Wyoming to Ohio to Georgia to Peru, he worked his way through different odd jobs before finding himself settling down in Los Angeles working with the LAFD. Being a firefighter gave him a purpose more so than even his Mark had.

It took him a while to find his footing. Bobby was an enigma that he couldn’t figure out for a while, only learning he’s one of the rare people that have two Marks months after meeting. Buck had never even heard of it until Bobby told him about it. For a very small number of people, if your soulmate dies, a new Mark can develop later in life. Bobby had been angry about his new Mark for a long time. That is, until he met Athena, and she brought a peace to him he hadn’t felt since his first wife died. Buck was inspired by them, as well as Hen. She and her wife were set up on a blind date by Chimney and realized they were soulmates the moment they met when Karen touched Hen’s arm as they greeted each other across the table. Chimney also had a Mark, but he had not yet met his soulmate, the black marks streaking down the fingers of his right hand a common Mark for people to have. From handshakes to soft touches like Karen and Hen, Marks on your fingers are not rare.

Buck himself is a little different. It’s not necessarily abnormal, but it’s not as common to have Marks in less conspicuous places like the torso, shoulders, or hips. Buck’s is a single swatch of black at the hinge of his left shoulder, and he had grown up imagining many different scenarios that could explain its placement. He spent a lot of his childhood in his imagination, honestly. It was the only place that no one else could touch. The disinterest from his parents, the annoyance from teachers, the absence from Maddie, none of it matter when he escaped into his head to live out the fantasy of what could be. He did settle down a little, eventually. After working at the 118 for a while he became more confident, more sure that he didn’t necessarily have to rely on fantasy. The love he was wanting was out there somewhere.

That doesn’t mean he still doesn’t struggle with his self-esteem sometimes, or his raging jealousy that he usually refuses to investigate further. So when Eddie Diaz shows up at his firehouse, all competent and attractive and confident, he suddenly feels 16-years-old again. It doesn’t help that he’s still clinging to the hope that Abby will come back. He knew she wasn’t his soulmate, she didn’t have a Mark, but he’d spent their entire relationship trying to convince himself that it’s okay, that they didn’t have to be soulmates to make it work. Maybe that’s true for other people, but it’s been a few months since she left, and weeks since he’d last heard from her, so he’s beginning to believe it less and less.

Eddie just made him so frustrated. Who did he think he was, acting so familiar so quickly? Just because he’d served in the military it doesn’t mean he’s better than the rest of them. Besides, he was a medic, he’s basically just doing the same job. He was just being shot at before, as he had flippantly reminded Buck of earlier.

Despite this, Buck can admit (to himself, no one else) that he’s a little impressed by him. His quick thinking had come in handy on more than one call today, and he’s very, very thankful for his knowledge right now as they are staring down a live grenade from a grenade launcher. Really, how did Buck get himself in these messes? Charlie was a collector, he’d said. War memorabilia, artifacts, and dummy rounds of ammo and grenades. He’d sworn this one was a practice round, but Eddie caught sight of the gold cap and all hell broke loose. No, actually, this was a live round embedded in Charlie’s leg after he set off the gunpowder component that sent it launching through his thigh. According to Eddie, the second component included a proximity fuse and explosives. The grenade hadn’t traveled far enough to trigger the explosive, and their job was to remove it from Charlie’s leg without rotating it. Easy enough, right?

Of course Eddie is stupidly good at this, too.

All Buck can do is sit in silent support holding the explosive containment box as Eddie slowly but surely places the grenade inside. He’s not sure if it’s the hype from the ordeal or what, but Buck finds himself enamored by the end of it. After they’ve exited the ambulance they’d performed the dramatic save in and they’re standing in the empty parking lot, Eddie looks at him for a beat, a small grin on his face.

“You’re a badass under pressure, brother.” He reaches a hand out, which Buck shakes readily. The moment their hands meet through their gloves, Buck feels tingling move from his palm up through his fingers. He chalks it up to the fading adrenaline and instead looks at Eddie’s slowly growing smile. He can’t help himself from smiling back, his cheeks flushed as he breathes out, “uh, me?”

“Hell yeah,” Eddie nods, withdrawing his hand. Buck immediately feels the loss. “You can have my back any day.”

“Or you know, you, uh,” Buck stumbles over his words, looking down at his feet for a moment before looking back up, “you can have mine.”

Eddie just laughs, and Buck thinks for a brief moment that he’d be okay if he never stopped, and-

Oh.

Okay, things make sense all of a sudden.

Because see, when he was 13-years-old, this new kid, Henry, transferred from a middle school one district over and everyone liked him. He was so popular, he played football, the girls fawned over him and the guys wanted to be him. Buck hadn’t really been popular, he’d been a pretty chubby preteen and look, middle school is a rough time to be anything other than thin. But he’d been generally well-liked, and seeing even his own friends fall over themselves for this guy had made him so angry. After a few weeks, Buck realized that what actually was happening was he had a crush on Henry and thought he was cute. The only problem, though, is that… Well, Buck had a Mark. He was supposed to grow up and get married to a woman with a complimentary swatch of color on her skin. He couldn’t have a crush on some boy.

His parents hadn’t ever been homophobic, that he can remember. He remembers hearing about a cousin of his mother’s who was gay, and she’d gone to his wedding with no issue. They never made off-hand comments about the very few noticeably LGBTQ+ people they’d occasionally see around town like some of his friends’ parents did. But even though they hadn’t been homophobic, they never were exactly open to other possibilities. It was just expected that Maddie would grow up and marry a man and Buck would grow up and marry a woman. On the rare occasions they mentioned anything about his Mark, they always said “woman” when discussing his potential future partner. After realizing he had a crush on Henry, and considering those implications, he had patched up that part of his brain behind a solid brick wall and told himself that it’s okay if other people are gay or bisexual or whatever, just not him.

Once he packed away those feelings, he never felt them again. He never let himself. Until now, as he watches Eddie easily meander through the small crowd of other firefighters and the bomb squad that had assembled for the incident and make his way to the engine. He can’t have some crush, he can’t. He’s got to find his soulmate, he knows she’s out there somewhere. He knows, down to his bones, that she’s waiting for him to find her. He knows it as surely as he knows his heart is going to beat and the sun is going to come up every morning.

He hears Eddie laugh at something Bobby has said, and his heart quickens in his chest, and he realizes that yeah, he’s pretty much fucked.

Eddie is still jittery from the rush of that call as they pull into the app bay back at the station. The sweat that had gathered on his hairline and down his neck is cooling against his skin, leaving him sticky and gross, but he doesn’t really care. He hasn’t felt this amped up since Kandahar, and while he’s thankful he never has to go there again, he can’t help but miss the surge of adrenaline he’d feel from a successful mission. He also finds that he can’t stop thinking about Buck, and the way his cheeks had flushed when Eddie complimented him. He’s not totally sure why that reaction is replaying itself in his head, but he kept sneaking glances of the other man on the ride back and more often than not would find him already watching.

He realizes he’s been staring into space, unmoving, when Hen swats at his knee with the back of her hand and motions to the open door.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” he tells her, offering a smile in an attempt to assure her, “adrenaline crash I think.”

She nods in understanding, allowing him to jump out first before she climbs out behind him. She announces that she’s heading for the kitchen to get a snack and suddenly, he finds himself alone. The others had already dispersed, either getting food or hitting the showers, probably, and he should do that too, but instead he wanders into the locker room and plops down on the bench. He inhales deeply before letting the breath out in a long sigh, his shoulders sagging as the air leaves his lungs. It’s like he can feel the last of the nerves leaving his body, his hands tingling as he shakes them out in front of him and stretches his neck out in circles.

It’s been a good day. Not exactly what he thought his first day would be like, though he supposes he wasn’t really sure what it was going to be like anyway. Out of everything, Buck had certainly been a surprise. He doesn’t understand how he’d gone from hating him, to blushing at a single compliment. Even more, he doesn’t understand how he’d done the same; going from being a little perturbed at Buck’s contempt, to wanting to make his face flush again in whatever way he could.

Is this a gay crisis? Is that what this is?

Before he can question himself further, the man of his thoughts knocks lightly against the glass at the entrance.

“Hey, I didn’t wanna scare you,” he smiles, stepping lightly into the room and toward one of the lockers. “Our shifts over in five, I figured I’d go ahead and change.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

Buck just hums, pulling what looks like joggers and a tee from the locker before sitting on the bench beside Eddie, who watches as he begins to untie his boots and shimmy them off his feet. He watches as he toes them off and kicks them toward the lockers, one of them making contact with the metal with a dull thud. He watches as Buck goes to unbutton his shirt, and-

He whips his head forward, probably too hard and very noticeably, judging by the huff of a breath that Buck lets out beside him. Eddie can feel his cheeks burn, fingers fiddling with the hem of his own button-down uniform shirt. He should be changing out of his own clothes, but suddenly he finds he can’t will himself to move. He’s frozen in place, heart beating a rhythm against his sternum as he barely catches a flash of skin beside him as Buck finally unfastens the last of the buttons and pulls the shirt off his frame.

“You gonna change, Eddie?” He asks casually, his tone light and teasing. Eddie rolls his eyes, despite his sudden, what can only be described as gay, panic, and begins to unbutton his own shirt. He makes quick work of it and the fabric, wet with sweat, peels away from his shoulders.

Neither of the men look at each other as they remove their respective undershirts, both now completely bare from the waist up. The airy, flirty vibe Buck had been giving off just a moment ago has been replaced by a tension that Eddie can’t quite name. It’s right there, just out of his grasp, and he feels like if the thinks too hard on it he’ll just work himself into a real panic. Instead, he goes to stand, still keeping his eyes forward and reaching out to his locker in front of him to pull out his own street clothes. Just as he goes to sit back down, Buck moves to stand up and they brush against each other. The hinge of Buck’s shoulder swipes across the side of Eddie’s arm, and the world bursts into brightness in front of them. In an instant, Eddie feels a rush of emotions: love, contentment, adoration, peace. It throws him off balance and instead of landing on the bench he hits the floor, a loud oof pushing its way past his lips. He looks in wonder up at Buck, who had frozen in place the moment their skin touched. His eyes flit from his face, where his beautiful, wide blue eyes are turned on him, down to the ink on his shoulder. Deep blues and reds flood through the Mark, diffusing through the black like milk in coffee. Eddie snaps his head down to his own arm and just barely catches the last of the dark ink being overtaken by the same blues and reds.

Eddie’s not sure how long they stay like this, completely shocked and unmoving in the small glass-walled locker room, but eventually Buck lets himself fall back on to the bench, his eyes still fixed on Eddie and his Mark. It’s him who finally breaks the silence.

“Well damn.”

Eddie can’t help it, he laughs. It starts as a small giggle and works its way into full, bellowing laughter. After a moment, Buck joins in, sliding from the seat and joining Eddie on the floor. Their legs tangle together in a heap, and he finds himself reaching for Buck’s hand. Their fingers meet and twine together like they’re meant to, though, Eddie supposes they are. If it weren’t for the inundation of love pulsing through his soulmate bond, he would probably be freaking out right now. In fact, he’s certain he would be, and maybe he will later when the intense feelings ebb a little and let him have a feeling other than complete contentment again.

For now, he’ll let himself have this.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Eddie breathes out on a soft giggle.

“My real name is Evan,” Buck says at the same time, sending Eddie into another fit. “I figured you should probably know.”

Eddie pulls Buck’s hand up to his mouth and places a kiss to the knuckles, and ah, there’s that blush again, a soft pink spreading across Buck’s cheeks and down his neck.

“I wasn’t expecting you either, for the record,” he tells Eddie after a moment, squeezing his hand, “I never… I always just assumed it would be a woman.”

“Me too.” Eddie nods. “My parents made me think having a Mark was for f-”

He swallows hard and cuts himself off, unable to bring himself to say the word. Buck swipes a thumb across the back of his hand and hums.

“I can feel your shame, Eddie,” he whispers, scootching even closer to him. “That’s not yours to carry. Not anymore.”

Eddie sighs, letting the negativity roll off of him and settling back into the love pulling him toward Buck, marveling at the way he suddenly has all these feelings for someone he barely knows. Though, he does know him, doesn’t he? That’s what the Marks do; they allow you to feel the other person, like really feel them. One of his science teachers in high school once described it like potential energy. How, just like in physics, you have stored up energy, or love, and when the Marks finally meet, that’s the push the love needs to become kinetic energy. It’s love in motion. Love in action. The universe’s perfectly made match.

He opens his eyes, unsure of when he even closed them, and finds Buck watching him. He doesn’t look worried, because he can probably feel the peace that had washed over Eddie when he let go of that shame, that self-hatred. He’s just… Watching him. Eyes soft, thumb still rubbing gently across the back of his hand, and Eddie smiles. He looks down at the splash of color across his arm, no longer inky black, but navy and maroon, and he brings his opposite hand up to poke at the skin. He watches as it stretches before popping back into place, and then gently places his palm directly over the Mark.

“Well,” he begins, “I guess my dad was right.”

Buck is confused for a moment before he bursts out laughing again.