I’m gonna circle back To The Rest of It in a different post but I think the key thing this episode is that Buck feels very strongly but gives Zero Thought to identifying his feelings.
We can trace this back to as early as season 1 when he’s using sex and calling it intimacy despite the fact that it clearly does Not Make Him Feel Good after the fact. His initial conflict with Eddie, the lawsuit, pretty much every near death experience him or Eddie have had, the entire T*mmy situation, and! Most potently! The way he’s been acting about Eddie leaving/being gone. Like yes, he’s upset and acting a little insane and he Knows his feelings are strong but he’s also putting Zero Effort into identifying those feelings.
This is all to say: Holy Mother of God, on a buddie front, just serves to emphasize that Eddie exists in a gray area for buck that no one else can occupy or has occupied so buck calls it Best Friendship in spite of all the suggestions that it’s More. Despite the fact that he’s not like that with anyone else in his life and, in fact, couldn’t shut up about Eddie long enough to make a new friend.
The crucial other side of this coin is that Eddie can and has identified his emotions but generally represses things before he can grasp the enormity of them (see: the lawsuit, his grief around Shannon, the tension with his parents (my family is not screwed up!), and, one could assume, how he feels about Buck/his sexuality). They exist as compliments to one another.
