#it’s more that they’re clearly buddie baiting for engagement

[mishtershpock]

.

[therawrliveson]

Some 9-1-1 thoughts I need to get down.

I know Buddie shippers are relentlessly positive that their ship will be canon one day and I respect it. But I have been active in fandom since I was 13 (almost late 20s now) and I’ve never seen a fandom be so obnoxious about it?? Every tweet is “when buddie becomes canon” “they’re clearly making buddie canon” “it’s not if it’s when” and it’s so incredibly off putting.

All media is up for interpretation, and they’re choosing to interpret any moments no matter how small as “Buck and Eddie are in love with each other” and I’m not going to ick their yum but… that’s their interpretation. And when you get people saying “actually ive never shipped this and always thought they were just friends and it’s a meaningful story to me still” and buddie shippers (BoBs mostly) scream at them that they’re wrong it’s just… too much. Because clearly this interpretation exists, and telling people they’re wrong is just incorrect.

This isn’t even about bucktommy at this point, it’s just about people wearing buddie goggles and refusing to hear what other people are saying and assuming their word is law because the “majority” of the fandom ships something… online… where they’ve placed themselves surrounded by other people who share the same viewpoint and block or do not engage with anyone who shares an opposing opinion.

Buddie may never become canon, and no one should be watching the show assuming that they do because all they’re doing is disappointing themselves and queerbaiting themselves and accusing the network of ship baiting them when Buck and Eddie are friends and they should be allowed to interact and be shown to interact without the screaming that buddie shippers were tricked into viewing.

And while I’m here I just wanna say the “we have platonic male friendships they aren’t special, making them canon would be way more important” argument I keep seeing is not the right take in my opinion. They aren’t just two dudes being bros. Buck is coparenting eddies literal child. I don’t know about y’all but I’ve never seen that dynamic ever? Platonic male friendships may not be “special” to some people but they’re important to show and this particular friendship goes deeper than nights playing games and drinking beer and chatting about women. They’re two men, who even in romantic relationships, have each others backs. They don’t bail last minute on each other for their partners, and Buck is still a present person in Christopher’s life. It’s just wild that some people think this complex but beautiful and meaningful relationship that currently exists on screen is not enough.

This is incoherent at best because many thoughts and not enough time in the world. Might get someone yelling at me over this but who knows.

[inawickedlittletown]

Queerbaiting and Buddie

(word count: 1,900)

I keep saying that I don’t want to spend any more time on 9-1-1 meta or fic, but the events of this weekend made me open up a document where I had some unfinished meta and in light of the S4 finale airing tonight, I thought I might at least write this: 

“Queerbaiting is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ representation. They do so to attract a queer or straight ally audience with the suggestion of relationships or characters that appeal to them, while at the same time attempting to avoid alienating other consumers.” 

That is how Wikipedia defines queerbaiting. And I really feel like everyone needs to read that and then read it again and realize that what is happening on 9-1-1 with Buddie is NOT queerbaiting. 

I don’t want to go into the long history of queerbaiting because we would be here all day and anyone that wants to do some research should go and do so. There are a lot of resources out there. Use them. 

But the short of it is this: queerbaiting has a lot more to do with the way a show is promoted, with the way that anyone involved in the show talks about a queer ship, and with the show deliberately scripting scenes that hint at a relationship without any intention of following through. Expectations and wanting a queer ship to go canon and those expectations not being met do not alone equate to it being queerbaiting. 

For any of us that have been around a long time there are a lot of perfect examples and if you compare Buddie to any of them, they are very different. I’ll name a few:

Merlin/Arthur

John Watson/Sherlock

Emma Swan/Regina

Derek/Stiles

Castiel/Dean Winchester (though they did go canon...barely)

Lena/Kara

Buck and Eddie do not fit into that list. Which isn’t to say that someday they could belong there, but I just do not believe that they will even if Buddie never becomes canon. And this all lies in how Buddie as a ship has been treated both on screen and off. I’ll break it down by season. 

S2: 

Eddie is very clearly introduced as a new character, a straight Army veteran with a disabled kid and family drama. He and Buck have immediate chemistry. We can’t deny that, or deny that from that first episode there are immediate sparks. Unintended sparks, but sparks nevertheless. And it is easy to tell that no one on the production team expected that and the story reflects that. 

Yes a foundation for their friendship is formed and yet the season long story focuses on Eddie’s relationship with his estranged wife and Buck is dealing with his own growth after being left by Abby. Their friendship shines and their scenes are great but none of them suggest romance and there are actually a lot of episodes where Buck and Eddie barely interact in S2 aside from in the background or for small work related moments (this mostly happens after Shannon returns). 

S2 does give us the first acknowledgement from the powers that be aka Tim Minear that they know what the fans have seen. This is why the elf scene exists, but it exists in a space where it’s a nod to the fans and not meant to do much more than that. The other moment is during the call with the livestreamer. But S2, places them completely and without question on a strong friendship. 

S3: 

We see a lot more conflict for Buck and Eddie in this season and we see how close and important they are to each other. Those are the two main things. That can be read as friendship easily and it’s a season where both Buck and Eddie deal with their pasts and in one way or another start to get closure while their friendship remains intact. 

Yes there are some scenes that make us squint and go huh, wtf? (I’m looking at you kitchen scene), but narratively we also know that neither of these boys is ready for a real relationship with anyone, let alone each other. But we can bask in how close they are as well as how Christopher fits in into all of it. 

But in S3 we are also introduced to Ana and we see the return of Abby. We also get to see that Buck and Eddie have become closer than ever and that the lawsuit only serves to highlight the importance that they both feel about having the other available to them. I’ll also quickly mention that Eddie Begins worked hard to highlight Buck’s devotion to Eddie. 

S4: 

Without considering the events of the finale (I am avoiding spoilers and know nothing about it or the speculation), we’ve seen Buck and Eddie both grow and get further closure on their past. This season has paralleled them well and their friendship has not faltered, they’re as close as ever. 

The beginning of the season was heavily focused on Buck and we saw him grow as a person and begin to work on himself in a healthy way and we’ve seen Eddie be supportive of that. 

We also have Ana to consider and her relationship with Eddie as well as the return of Taylor and yet the appearance of these women has not changed the Buck and Eddie dynamic. And I find it fascinating that Eddie beginning to date Ana, is the thing that prompted Buck to start dating. The parallels are all over the place but it is the strength of the friendship and the way they care so deeply about each other that remains whether that becomes romantic is still to be seen, but it could still go either way.  

Off-screen by the end of S2, Tim Minear had already addressed Buddie by throwing in that elf scene in a wink/nudge fashion that said “I see you” and in the scene with the girl with the livestream with the comments. During S3 he tweeted about being frustrated by the fans demanding and being hostile and thinking that that would make him more likely to do what they want (I’m paraphrasing what I remember seeing). Tim has never once said that Buddie will happen or shut the door on the ship entirely, but he did say he did not want to engage in conversation about it because he doesn’t want to get into arguments with fans. 

Oliver has always been enthusiastic about Buddie and has even said that he would be perfectly fine with it happening both a while ago and more recently in promo for S4. Conscious of queerbaiting and not wanting to give fans false hope, he has specifically said that he does not know if it will or won’t happen and that he wouldn’t speak on that as he’s not the one making that decision. His support for it happening does not mean he has any sway one way or the other. He’s said this a few times and even wrote a letter to the effect to make it clear to fans that the last thing he wants is to disappoint someone due to something he’s said. 

All in all, it just isn’t a constructive environment for anyone working on the show to interact with fans on this topic because any time that they do, they get attacked by overly enthusiastic buddie shippers that in many ways are making everything worse. 

In all of the interviews from Tim that I’ve seen, he has always been very quick to hint at what was coming up on the show in a way that at times has been misleading on purpose. The number one thing that comes to mind is early in S4 where Buck was said to get a new woman in his life. Tim absolutely made it out to seem like it was a girlfriend while knowing fully well that it was a therapist. This is an excellent example of what promoting and hinting is actually like. No one from this show has done that in regards to Buddie. 

No one has gone out of their way to hint that it may happen in a way that excites the fans. And this is one of my main reasons for knowing that Buddie is not a queerbait. At no point in the life of the show so far has anyone used Buddie in a promotional way to bring in viewers. Because THAT was the whole point of queerbaiting in the past. 

It was a way that some showrunners found to bring in a lot of viewers when they needed to up their numbers in order to show networks they were worth keeping around. Someone figured out that LGBTQ people wanted to see themselves represented so much so that they would tune in to anything that promised an LGBTQ character in some fashion. It was a tactic that worked well in the landscape of tv where there was so little LGBTQ content on mainstream media that anyone wanting it would latch onto anything. And then they just wouldn’t deliver on those relationships or characters. In 2021, that is not the world we live in any longer. 

In today’s tv landscape there is so much to watch and so much to pick from and diversity has grown, it is celebrated. Queer characters are well represented as are queer relationships and queer stories. The times are different. A while back I was listening to a podcast (Bait: a queerbaiting podcast) and something I found interesting was how the hosts both agreed that in today’s tv landscape there is no more real queerbait and that we won’t easily find anything like the ships I mentioned above. I think I agree more with this than I expected to, because I do think that it exists in some spaces, but it definitely isn’t what it used to be. This is a good thing. 

Specific to 9-1-1, this is a show that has that diversity and that isn’t afraid of tackling that diversity and giving us interesting and nuanced perspectives and stories embracing that. We have characters of color, women in positions of power, a F/F relationship, two multi-racial relationships, a disabled character, other queer characters including a M/M relationship. There is so much in this show that embraces diversity and that embraces the reality of what the world looks like. To call it queerbait is to disrespect everything else that this show is and has done and the hard storylines that have been tackled that we would not have seen on tv ten years ago. 

And I get that Buddie would be another breakthrough. It would be a novel way to tell a queer story, and it would be amazing if it were to happen. The set up is there, but it isn’t fully realized, and Buck and Eddie can still be read as just friends if we take off the shipping goggles. But it also isn’t queerbait or likely to become queerbait and people have to stop calling it that. 

What Buddie resembles is one of the many unintended slow burn ships that have frustrated viewers in many forms across fandoms and we just have to go along for the ride and maybe it will happen. Or maybe it won’t. But if we know anything about relationships on tv, it is that a lot of the fun comes from the journey, even if the destination is good too. 

[bumblesimagines]

Rewatching Eclipse

Thoughts and shit

"Marry me" "No bitch"

Bell clearly doesn't/isn't ready to get married

"It's called a compromise" stfu

"Knocked up" oof

Ew I'm skipping cuz this cutesy shit ain't for me

Stop being a bitch to Charlie

"Edward is in my life" i think your seventeen and you're an idiot. He's a guy.

Jake wasn't a dick when Bell was in her time of need

He really broke something from her truck to stop her from seeing a friend what a piece of shit

Love that Mike/Ned/Nate

Jasper got a new haircut

"That's what you said last time" ouch, he's right there Bell

With each passing movie, everyone gets prettier

How come they don't bother with contacts? Golden eyes aren't normal

"Super. That makes me super happy." poor Charlie

Why was she staring out into the water like that??

Her mom's cool

She looks fifteen with the sunglasses

TELL HER MAMA

Cool gift. She's not gonna need it lmao

STAY HUMAN YOU'LL FINE BETTER DICK SOMEWHERE ELSE

Y'all look like a cult standing like that

Why'd they change the actress for Victoria? It's so obvious lmao

Wolves

Half of the movies is just running

Rosalie looking out for her man

Emmett and Paul should've been friends

Wtf is that intro song for Jake?? Lmao

Bella and Jake always have angsty moments in bad weather

Stfu Ed

She deserves to know

MiSuNdErStAnDiNg

Jake lmao

He's always lying to you Bells

Jake looked really confused when Bell said she called him

I like the boots Jake

Soundtrack *chefs kiss*

All of them rushing out is so cute awe

Monologue

I love them

L E A H

I love HER

Emily owo

The boys really are like children

Jake don't be a dick Leah's cool

Sam and Leah should've talked

Imprinting is brought up. Finally.

Her her her her what about the gays, Jake?

Wait... I thought Jake did imprint but it was somehow... Not really

A MONTH???

He has a point. She hasn't even lived.

Jake is a dick but he has some fair points.

PRETTY BOY finn? Or was his name Riley?

Leave pops alone pretty boy

His eyes?? IM SO LOST

Rosalie is so 💕💕💕

She has Jake

Aye ya girl was right

You need them Ed

Same here Bella. Both of them are annoying

Monologue

Emmett and Alice look so dumb standing there lmao

Flexing on these hoes

Oof he kisses her just to piss him off

"Hey beautiful" stOP

BONFIRE

Council meeting? Oh oof

History to make her not trust vamps lmao

SETHSETHSETHSETH

OwO i love Seth. His voiceeeeee

Your as cold as ice

Nice shift there buddy.

Screaming match

She couldn't have cut her palm or some shit? But whatever! Love the story

Way to guilt trip Jake lmao

Finn/Riley looks so disgusted but he's so attractive 💕

Emmett has so much chaotic energy i love it

So his name IS Riley aight super cute

Charlie is such a good dad

you're already selfish for constantly lying to her Ed

OOH IS THIS THE SCENE WHERE SHE PUNCHES JAKE AND BREAKS HER HAND??

Mkay truth. Options.

In love or did you imprint?

She just rejected you wHAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND

Lmao ain't for long

She wants to change. Ask Ed lmao

Bell is so uncomfortable poor girl

LMAO THE SOUND WHEN HER FIST CONNECTED TO HIS CHEEK JUST *thump*

The way Jake explained it is so funny

Oop Rosalie 💕

Bonding time

I AM TEAM ROSALIE fuck Ed and Jake

FUCK ROYCE

Rosalie deserved better

ROSALIE IS MY QUEEN

Jesus so silent and then just screaming lmao

Riley uwu

Alec and Jane 💕

Damn his back must hurt like a bitch

Jane's voice is so soft

Jessica's speech is *chefs kiss*

Nice party outfit Bell

I wonder if anyone stole anything lmao

Right hook lmao

Highly doubt he made anything

Did they kick everyone out??

RILEY

Oh no nvm

Yeah no shit they're after her

They were made for fighting Bell

Ooh the training scene

You've never met a newborn Bell lmao

Jake you ass

The whole ride there and he didn't notice the bracelet??

WOLVES

They look so soft

Sam noted Carlisle's words lmao

Mr. Jasper Hale

Musiccc

How come the wolves didn't train? Like with each other?

They look so soft

She's bait good to know

Jaspers backstory is so... Oof

He suddenly got an accent

Ma'am

My apologizes ma'am

As a spanish speaker, hearing that over and over again was uncomfortable

Rileyyyy

Why is he so pretty????

Ooof Victoria

as bAIT

Bella looks kind of like Elena lmao

Jake tried to be funny but got pissed off

Stinks

Jasper tried to be nice with the scent comment

"Since I let Sam"

Thanks for mentioning it Bell

But uh, Sam would beat Jacob's ass

It's called a poly relationship, Jake

She broke her hand, If I were her I'd be nervous too

Alice and Charlie.. It's uncomfy

"Like.. Alone?" you're not getting any dick Bell

Charlie said Alice x Bella rights

"wat"

Charlies attempt at the 'talk'

Old school sounds... Terrible

"I'm a virgin!" "aosjaiauha glad we covered that" "Me too!"

Just say you got jelly and go Ed

Pretty bed

She thinks she's gonna get some

"Anything you want is yours" "yoUR DICK"

Ed is a good Christian boy

Bell is super thirsty holy shit

Ed is saving it til marriage good for him

Courted you ugh

That is one ugly- Oh it's your mother's? Wow it's so cute

R I L E Y

So she's lying to him

The talon clan was what I heard lmao

She's pretty too

Put a bandaid on it sweets

What she's trying to say is "it's an ugly ass ring"

They can feel the weather??? Huh??

"Same old same old" you don't even knOW

Aaljaiaha i can imagine them fucking power walking underwater

"What can I do?" stay the hell away

I wanna know what Jake was thinking lmao

"She's in love with me too. She just won't admit it to herself" no Jacob, you're supposed to be her bestie

They're bondingggg

Jake ruined it

Ed seems really sweet and genuine in this scene

THEY 👏 SHOULD'VE 👏 BEEN 👏 A 👏 POLY 👏 COUPLE

The shared smilesss

THEY 👏 SHOULD'VE 👏 BEEN 👏 A 👏 POLY 👏 COUPLE

A flannel in the snow. Lit.

SETH

Oop-

He did deserve to know. He's not fighting lmao

"Maybe I'll get myself killed and make it simple" Go ahead and jump off that cliff/mountain your on Jake

"That's not good enough" bitch-

Jacob your a little bitch for actually kissing her

She's engaged oml lmao

PushhimoffBell

He was gonna go anyways-

More like heard

He's her best friend dude

Does nobody understand platonic love???

We love a good power couple

EMMETT AND PAUL SHOULD'VE BEEN BROS

Seth is babey

Poor Riley he's babey

SETH

Victoria is a good villian. She had a good reason to attack the Cullens.

Riley should've been adopted and become best buds with Seth

You could've just pricked your finger Bell lmao

Her eyes were open in one shot and closed in the next

Only you can prevent forest fires

Lowkey ship Jake and Leah

We can see your faces, no need to take off the hoods lmao

Billy, Carlisle, Charlie, and Sam should've started a 'Done with my children' club

Lmao Jake says Ed isn't as bad as he thought and then said he wasn't as perfect as she thought what??

Give. It. Up. Jake.

The romance field is back. Sigh.

THEY 👏 SHOULD'VE 👏 BEEN 👏 A 👏 POLY 👏 COUPLE

"Like literally stumbling through my life" lmao meee

At least she didn't say I'm not like other girls

Ugly ass ring won. Yay.

[youngster-monster]

rare and sweet as cherry wine

Razel enters the hangar and makes a beeline for Cayde, giving Amanda a high five on his way.

“Hey, buddy! Didn’t know you were in town.” Surprise, the happy kind, colors his tone as they fistbump.

He shrugs a shoulder, attempts standoffish-ness. “I thought it’d be nice to take a brea-”

“Ikora grounded you again, didn’t she.”

He laughs. “Yeah. On an unrelated note, you were right: the Cabal have no sense of fair-play.”

Cayde blinks, confused for a second. Razel can see when it dawns on him by the way his eyes light up, glowing an even brighter blue. “You didn’t-”

“Fight a Gladiator with my bare hands? Hell the fuck yes I did. Bet ya I would, didn’t I?”

He smiles, smug, and Cayde lets out a delighted laugh. “Shit, well done. How was it?”

“Fun, until I had to stop his sword with my bare hand and it burned through my gloves… and a few layers of my skin. Hurt like a bitch.”

“Don’t bullshit me, I know that was your favorite part.” He bumps their shoulder and Razel hums in assent. Yeah, honestly, that was fun. Gladiators are huge and their sword-cleaver thing can cut clean through a guardian. The fact that he managed to catch the not-sharp side of it was impressive enough. That it managed to hurt him anyway… Yeah. Fun times. Challenging. “I get why Ikora grounded you though. Did she give you the speech? Tell me she gave you the speech.”

“The one about ‘being a hazard to myself and others’?”

“A classic.” Cayde pitches his voice higher in an imitation of Ikora’s. “Maybe this time you will learn your lesson about not needlessly endangering yourself for the sake of glory or stupid baits.”

A pause, and they both break into giggles. They’ve heard that speech countless times before. At this point Razel’s pretty sure Ikora only does it to keep face because it sure as hell isn’t working on them. As for the grounding— well. She’s always telling him he should take a break. That must be her way of making sure he gets one.

“Yeaah, I give her three days before she kicks you out of the Tower herself.”

“Wanna bet on it?”

Cayde punches his arm lightly. Or as lightly as it gets when you’re immortal and used to kinda-killing your friends for fun. “Don’t take bets you know you’ll lose. Not with a Hunter, at least.”

He shrugs. “It’s fun. And I don’t mind losing to you.”

It’s true. Usually Cayde gives him dumb dares or make him pay the bill when they go eat ramens. He has a thing against big Bets… Something to do with the previous Hunter Vanguard is all he told him. Razel doesn’t pry.

Cayde pushes away from the beam he’s leaning against, pats Razel on the shoulder. “Lemme settle that one first, then we can make another. What was it we bet again?”

“A night’s worth of drinks, I think.” A better deal for Cayde, who has an impressive alcohol tolerance even for an Exo. Razel is a bit of a lightweight— he doesn’t have the same experience with booze.

“Sounds about right. Hey, Amanda! We’re going drinking tonight, you comin’?”

The shipwright doesn’t look up from the parts she’s inspecting as she yells back, “I’m in!”

Cayde turns back to Razel. “Well, we got some time before she’s done here. Fancy a meal?”

“If you’re paying, sure.”

“Parasite.”

-

They catch up over spicy ramen and a cold beer. Cayde almost stabs Razel’s eye out with his chopsticks while telling him about the missions he ran before joining the Vanguard.

They relocate to a bar. Cayde and Amanda bicker over their drinks — she says he should pay the first round, while Cayde insists he only promised he’d pay Razel’s drinks and she was old enough to buy her own alcohol.

They drink. And drink. And… drink some more. At some point there are shots. That’s when it starts to get blurry. Razel remembers… looking at Cayde. Maybe spacing out while looking at Cayde? Also, dancing with Amanda, and watching the two of them engage in a drinking game that is clearly biased toward the robot side of the competition.

It’s unfair that he can’t really get drunk.

Razel tells him just that as they’re walking out of the bar. Well, he’s not quite walking out on his own two feet. Amanda has his arm over her shoulder and they’re kind of keeping each other up, swaying in time with the tune she’s humming.

“And yet she keeps trying,” Cayde says. He’s slurring a little, his voice box trying and not quite succeeding to keep up despite the liquor in his system. He’s not that steady on his feet either. He’s just better at pretending he’s sober.

“And one day I’ll...” Amanda trips on thin air and almost sends the two of them sprawling. They keep their balance through sheer luck and uncoordinated flailing, Cayde cracking up at the spectacle. “Fuck. One day I’ll beat you.”

“The day you beat me at a drinking game is the day I retire, kiddo.”

“Or y’can- y’can- you… can be a robot too?” Razel leans to the side, dragging her with him, before stumbling a few steps and righting himself. “Wait. How does that work.”

“Dunno. Not like that, though. I think,” Cayde replies.

They walk a little while still before Amanda painstakingly peel herself from Razel’s side. “That’s my stop boys,” she says before turning to Cayde. “You’ll be alright with him?”

Razel stands in place and focuses very hard on his feet so he doesn’t fall while they talk. It’s hard, because the ground keeps moving and his legs aren’t responding like he expects them to. He sways, almost falls, and an arm snakes behind his back, a hand coming to rest on his waist to steady him. He’s used to it, by now, so it doesn’t take him long to find the coordination necessary to throw his own arm around Cayde’s shoulders.

“Yeah, it’s like that every time. We got a system.” Cayde hauls Razel up, the other guardian going limp in his grasp. “I just got to get him to my couch and we’ll be golden.”

They exchange good nights, Razel mumbling his into Cayde’s shoulder, before she leaves. They’re left standing in the middle of the street, Cayde easily bearing his weight against him despite not being exactly sober himself.

“Ready?”

Razel hums something vaguely positive, and they’re off.

The walk to the Vanguard’s chambers isn’t a short one. They could go to the Hunters’ barracks, Cayde has a bed there, but his actual apartment is just… more practical. And the trip goes by quickly anyway, the way it does when you’re too drunk to keep track of time. Razel sings under his breath, an off-key rendition of the songs that were playing in the bar, and leans against Cayde until he’s practically carrying him.

It feels like a blink of an eye before they’re standing in front of his door. Razel hangs off Cayde’s shoulders as he unlocks his door with fumbling hands.

“You’re druuunk,” he sing-songs.

“And you’re trashed.”

He laughs. “Yeah.”

Finally they stumble through the door and it locks on its own behind them. They fall over themselves and against a wall, leaning on each other to stay on their feet. Razel, who pretty much fell on top of Cayde, rests his chin on his shoulder.

“Cayde… bro.”

“Yeah?”

“I love you, bro.” Razel leans all his weight against Cayde, sighing softly. Comfy…

“Yeah, I know,” Cayde replies, sounding like a man trying really hard to gather the few brain cells he has left to accomplish the one simple task of getting the two of them to their respective bed.”

Razel frowns and pushes back, just far enough to look Cayde in the eyes. It’s blurry and not quite a still picture, but at least there’s an effort. “No, bro, you don’t get it. I love you. You’re so fucking… important to me and shit. You’re my best friend. I love you so much.”

“You’re my best friend too. Even if you’re crushing me.”

A spark goes through Razel’s mind. He leans forward, so close the blue light of Cayde’s eyes fill his vision. “Let’s make a bet.”

That catches his attention. “Sure. What d’you wanna bet on?”

“Betcha I can’t kiss you right now,” he says, and does exactly that.

It’s clumsy, because he’s drunk and more ‘falling on Cayde’s face’ than kissing him. It’s also awkward, because Cayde doesn’t have lips and Razel isn’t exactly experienced in kissing people, let alone Exos.

But it’s amazing. Probably because it’s Cayde, and Razel has been wanting to do this for forever. Apparently. He didn’t notice, but now he knows. It feels so good, he should have done it months ago.

Cayde is struck speechless when he draws back. He looks at him quizzically. Did he break him? Is that a thing that can happen and no one saw fit to warn him?

Finally, he says, “I don’t think you know what a bet is.”

“Sure I do,” he replies with the absolute certainty of a drunk guy with only a distant knowledge of the subject matter. “I lost.”

The hand still holding on to the back of his shirt flattens against the small of his back, a slight pressure drawing him closer. Another falls on the back of his neck, fingers threading through his hair. Cayde leans in, or maybe he does, and they’re so close they would be sharing air, if Exos breathed.

“And what did I tell you about taking losing bets?”

He kisses him again before he gets the chance to reply.

(They wake up together on Cayde’s small couch, their legs tangled together and Razel’s head slotted under Cayde’s chin. Both with a creak in their neck to go with the hangover.

Worth it. But next time they’ll at least take off their shoes before passing out.)