#time to release it into the void like i'm freeing a lion from the zoo

[guiltreservoir]

in spite of the way that it is ✧ read on ao3

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when buck first brings it up, it's to everyone in the 118, or at least anyone who's willing to lend an ear. he saunters into the kitchen with a smile bright enough to account for the unseasonably grey weather outside, megawatt-beam elation radiating off of his body and bouncing into every corner of the station. the minute he starts blabbing about how tommy came to his place late last night, at least two ears are swiftly discounted — chim walks away with his hands firmly clapped over the sides of his head, saying, "la la la, don't want to hear it," much like a petulant kindergartener.

bobby finds himself suddenly very busy with noisily reorganizing the utensil drawer, but doesn't quite leave the area; hen immediately raises her brows and takes a pointed sip of her orange juice, knowing buck will continue unprompted. ravi, just coming up the stairs himself, has no idea what he's walking into, the poor guy.

and eddie — eddie knows better than to involve himself in this. he could easily extract himself now, fake a phone call with christopher's school, pretend like there's something imperative that he left in the locker room. instead, he remains parked at the table, piping mug of black coffee insisting that he needs mo' joe as it sits untouched in front of him. his own uncertain reflection stares back at him from the coffee's dark surface.

"i think i finally found someone who can match me," buck's declaring, cheeky grin still lighting up his face like a marquee sign. eddie can practically see the colorful bulbs flashing above his head, a giant neon arrow and the brazen announcement: this lucky guy got his brains fucked out last night!!

"bless that man," hen snorts, shaking her head a bit. ravi's brows knit together in confusion, and when he asks for details on what buck's referring to in the first place, hen's head shaking deepens. "ignorance is bliss, ravi, you probably don't want to know."

"buck got laid last night," falls out of eddie's mouth without him meaning to let it, and fuck, he hopes it sounded more casual than it felt, bubbling up his esophagus like bitter-hot bile.

ravi's, "...and?" is reassuring. eddie feigns a laugh, relieved his cover isn't blown. he glimpses at buck, whose gigantic smile hasn't faltered for even a millisecond, and ignores the mass of earthworms writhing beneath the tin lid of his breastbone.

"and it was seriously awesome!" buck pumps his fist into the air, triumphant and ridiculous, sunbeam personified, and god. buck may be the one getting railed into his mattress by his new boyfriend, but eddie is the one who's truly fucked.

⫘⫘⫘

when buck has eddie over for drinks at his place the next night and asks him if he wants to hear more about it, he convinces himself it's a fine idea. how much can really go wrong, anyway? it's just the man who cradles eddie's whole cowardly lion heart in his unknowing palms, telling him about the way that eddie's good, kind, unbearably hot friend fucked him so tenderly he cried.

it's fine. everything is fine.

buck's never been one to spare details, especially not when eddie allows him all of the space and time in the world to lay out how he got laid. the nearly-gone beer in his hand (on his lips, on his tongue, on the collar of his shirt where an errant drop landed) is fuel for his fire, rattling the confines of his inhibitions just enough to knock a few loose, get him spilling details like the belgian white down his throat.

"he was really good, eddie." the glint in buck's eye is evidence enough, but eddie wants more; he's curious, to a detrimental degree, a tabby cat scaling a tree to catch a sparrow whose wings will carry it to safety, leaving him hungry and without the knowledge of how to climb back down to level ground.

"yeah?" he presses, like he needs to.

"yeah," buck continues. the next pull he takes from his bottle is long, slow, draining it empty. eddie's eyes track the movement, the pink curl of his mouth over the bottle's rim, the wet flick of his tongue across the cusp, the bob of his adam's apple as he swallows the dredges. "it was like he could just... tell what i needed."

eddie's stomach drops. he blames the beer. his mind offers, silently, i would know what you needed, too.

he blames the beer.

"he made sure to take it slow, to start. he's— he's not a small guy, you know."

flashes of tommy's sweat-slick skin offer themselves up readily in the eye of eddie's mind. all thanks to their sparring during muay thai, he knows how it feels to be pinned beneath that man, to feel the heft of his strong arms and legs and chest against his own, to feel so utterly surrounded. he can only imagine what it's like to have tommy inside, too. he says, rougher than he means to, "i know."

buck clears his throat, ducks his head. when he meets eddie's eyes again, his cheeks are flushed. "i... i don't have to tell you about this, man. maybe it's too much. i mean, he's your close friend."

"you're my close friend," eddie says thoughtlessly.

the expression that settles on buck's features is complicated, to say the least.

"buck, i told you it's okay. you can tell me whatever you're comfortable with me knowing." eddie's can of worms burst opened wriggles and squirms, a slimy tangle mucking up his chest cavity. he catches and clings onto buck's gaze and adds, unequivocal, "i'll tell you if i want you to stop."

if buck's face wasn't already rosy, it would be now. his mouth falls open before his response catches up to him, and the spit-glint of his bottom teeth against his tongue makes eddie grit his own together, lest he say something he shouldn't.

"are you sure?" buck asks, back turning to eddie while he reaches into the fridge behind him for a third round. when he turns around again he's got two cold bottles in his hands, tilting one towards eddie, an offering that eddie accepts as automatic as breathing.

the fizzzzz-clink of buck popping the beercaps punctuates eddie's answering, "yes."

"alright." another generous swig of buck's drink bolsters his nerve. "i didn't think he was gonna fit at first, eddie. i swear to you, it doesn't seem like it should work. it's not like i haven't had anything up my ass before, i mean, tommy's even been warming me up for the real thing. but."

warming him up, jesus. buck's nonchalance is staggering, even when frankly, this isn't even the first time eddie's been confronted with such imagery. he wishes he could forget buck telling him about the times taylor had used her strap with him. not because it wasn't an appealing thought — eddie might have complex emotions around taylor, but the idea of buck getting dicked down by anyone at all has always been one that twists his guts into feverish knots. hence the desire for selective amnesia.

he fails not to wonder exactly what the thick line of tommy's dick would look like snuggled between the cleft of buck's asscheeks and swirls his beer in its bottle before knocking back a good-sized gulp, saying, "i'm guessing you made it work eventually."

because how the fuck else is he supposed to react while he's busy painting a vivid mural of his two 'close friends' fucking on the ceiling of his overenthusiastic imagination? he might as well be michelangelo with the way he's filling in the blanks with such inspiration.

the sputtering laugh that comes from buck has no right being as charming as it is. "he did indeed get his dick inside of me, yeah, great job putting those pieces together."

"thanks, it was difficult."

"i bet," buck responds. his gaze separates from eddie's and drifts down the length of his torso, catching on the steady rise and fall of the breaths expanding his chest before continuing down his past his bellybutton. he focuses just below eddie's belt before skimming back up to peer into his eyes again. "he took his time getting me ready with his fingers, and even still i felt like he was gonna split me in half. he got maybe halfway inside and i was already seeing stars. thankfully he kinda paused and gave me a second to adjust."

"come on, man." eddie's heartbeat threshes his ribcage and echoes all the way up to his eardrums, frantic and heady, bass drum kicking a chaotic rhythm. he can't help but imagine tommy's big, surprisingly gentle hands working buck open before slicking himself up with lube to nudge inside. he wonders if it made buck gasp, if he cursed and clenched at the blunt shock and slow push and steady tilt of tommy's hips. he wonders if tommy's got claw marks on him somewhere from buck scrabbling for purchase while curling his toes and communicating without words that he needed a minute.

"too much?" the way buck's half-mast eyes glitter reminds eddie of a tiger slinking low through moonlight silver-soaked grasses. all at once he can sympathize with the position of a lone antelope lurking just beyond through the open plains, vulnerable and enticing.

he perks his ears forward, tilts his head down, looking into the eyes of the beast who's about to consume him, and says, "no."

the antelope places its fragile skull straight into the tiger's hanging maw.

⫘⫘⫘

when eddie makes it through the next couple of days without jerking off about it, he considers himself victorious. he's been doing a fine job of distracting himself, hanging out with his girlfriend, his kid. he's been reading before he falls asleep to keep his mind from wandering too far. he's been working out more, burning off the extra energy that's been vibrating through his entire nervous system since buck drenched his subconscious — and his conscious mind, who is he kidding — with the most luscious, arousing descriptions of sex he's ever heard.

he's doing fine, until he's leaving the station with buck after a long shift and tommy's there to pick him up. he's standing outside of his buck's jeep, conveniently parked next to eddie's truck, eyes crinkly with delight at the sight of them. his voice carries through the atmosphere and shudders straight down into eddie's molten core, a simple and swift, "evan! eddie."

"hi, tommy," eddie says at the same time that buck says, "hey, babe!"

evan.

babe.

eddie is going to dissolve into a cloud of nebulous vapor.

he autopilots his way through the rest of their short conversation, ears buzzing with static, cottonmouth setting in. he doesn't pay attention to the small talk, mind too busy reeling with potential. the moment he'd caught sight of buck's jeep, he was a goner.

where is tommy's car? did he stay the night at buck's, hang out at his place for the day just waiting to come play chauffeur and take him back home to pound him into the mattress while kissing him deep and lazy, like his lips are laden with ambrosia?

"catch you later, eddie," he hears tommy say over the ringing in his ears. buck knocks shoulders with him and nods agreeably, lashes fluttering and lips stretching into a pretty smile.

the best eddie can manage in response is a pathetic wave and a half-hearted, "bye, guys."

his drive home is thirty-six minutes too long. he relinquishes his willpower and allows the fog of his daydreams to creep in.

"tommy called me a good boy when he finally bottomed out," buck had told him around a drawn-out exhale, hops heavy on his breath, steaming the air between their faces. somewhere between the third and fourth beer the space between them had collapsed, eddie backed against the kitchen counter and buck looming over him, cool and collected and beautiful and dangerous, striped wildcat on the hunt.

"he told me how incredible it felt inside me, how i was all warm and tight. and god, eddie, you don't understand how crazy it felt. it was so much, but in the best way. it was warm and tight for me, too."

that's when eddie had spooked and bolted, yanking free from within the loose gape of buck's tiger fangs and nicking himself on jagged ivory edges. worms clustered and crawled up from his chest and into his throat as he stumbled away, wounded and wet. he'd choked out, "i can't," and buck had backed off without hesitation, no longer a fierce big cat but a helpless cub, saying, sorry and low, "i know, i know, i should've stopped sooner."

⫘⫘⫘

when eddie finally gets his hand around his dick, it's nearly enough to make him cry. the bittersweet reprieve of it, the way he's been craving his own attention while being even better at withholding it from himself — there's practically nothing he's more practiced at, but just because it comes fairly naturally to him at this point doesn't mean it is painless.

he sinks into a different brand of masochism found in the inviting expanse of his mattress, world narrowed down to the sensation of his slippery grip around his blood-rushed cock, to the white-hot fantasies splaying themselves out in the darkest meadows of his mind, absolutely resplendent. he tries to make his hand feel warm, tight, incredible, like buck's soft aching insides; he speculates whether or not tommy would talk to him like that, if they were to hook up. would he qualify as good, in tommy's eyes?

with barely a second thought, he brings his free hand down to play between his asscheeks, knuckle ghosting across the delicate skin of his hole. tommy's fingers are bigger than his, tommy's bigger all around. a moan wrenches itself free as he swipes up some lube from where it's dripping down his balls and presses a fingertip inside.

eddie's pace picks up along with his breathing, chest heaving like he's been running for hours, days, years. maybe he has been. maybe he still is.

"fuck," he grits out, rolling his hips up into his hand. his mind is playing through scenes of buck opening up for tommy, tommy so careful and confident, scenes of buck wrapping his limbs around him to draw him as close and deep as he can get, buck so open and wanting. buck, such a fucking good boy.

eddie's orgasm shreds through him gut to throat like the sharp starving blade of a hunter, come spattering across his stomach, stickying his fist.

there are real tears streaking down his cheeks, now, damp and unrelenting, a mix of relief and guilt and something else he can't figure out a name for.

he jams the heels of his hands against his eye sockets and thinks, i know, i know, i should've stopped sooner.