Close to midnight, a couple weeks after the Xanax incident, Eddie finds himself blissfully floating on a cloud of post-coital afterglow while a freshly fucked Buck pants on the mattress beside him, equally boneless. Their room absolutely reeks of sex, the fitted sheet has popped off not one but two corners of the mattress, and Buck's semen tickles as it rolls off of Eddie's belly, syrup-slow, splashed there without warning a few strokes before Eddie spilled so deep up inside of Buck it's gonna take forever to drip out.

It's a nice thought.

Actually, it's more than a nice thought. Eddie has finally gotten to a place where he can admit that it's a thought that turns him on, and that's not nothing.

Eddie Diaz just came, and he is *still* turned on. For him, that's more than 'not nothing'. It's more than he'd ever dared to hope for when it came to sex. Sure, he knew people made a big deal about fucking, a bigger deal that it was worth, in his opinion, but he genuinely thought sex was overrated until one Evan Buckley turned his heart upside down and his brain inside out and as for Eddie's body...well, the day he kissed Buck and Buck kissed him back, it was like Eddie's body became a new animal entirely.

It was like touching Buck, *being* touched by him, had unlocked a cage inside of Eddie. Ripped the door off the hinges was more like it. Melted that cage down and now Eddie has this hungry beast roaming around inside of him. It's coiled and craving and ready to pounce with thoughts about Buck, wet and hot and gushing in Eddie's mouth. Sometimes, the thing in him was an inchoate roiling mass pure unrelenting desire. Just this throbbing, impure drive to rub and thrust and pet and squeeze and mouth blindly at the nearest available stretch of Buck's skin.

He still wanted the little touches too, the casual affection, the closeness he could indulge in now without the strange prickle of *careful, careful, that's enough* that used to flare when he really relaxed with Buck, against Buck, back before they became more. Those little touches were still there, now that they were more, but that PG sort of comfort wasn't entirely new.

Not like the big touches. Not like the deep ones. Not like the solid weight of his man pressing him down, spreading and nudging and rocking, shamelessly stiff. Not like that mouth. The inside of that mouth, hot and eager for Eddie. Not like the way he could kiss for hours now, didn't want to stop kissing, moaned pathetically when Buck's plump lips abandoned him, even for a second.

Wanting like this felt new.

Eddie felt new.

It was an entirely new concept for him, that sex could be something where having it made you want it even more.

Not some mission to accomplish and dutifully check off the good boyfriend list for the night, or a pesky itch to scratch in a way that was not *quite* right but good enough to quiet the physical urges until the next time. Not the romantic equivalent of an MRE, something that got the job done and functioned, more or less, as food. In 'straight' Eddie's experience, sex was just not something he craved or thought fondly of or really even thought of at length at all until it came time to perform, or until his body felt backed up enough to necessitate half an hour of mindless tugging at himself in the shower, a few times a month at most.

It wasn't exactly a manly thing to admit, but he didn't need much sex. Never had. And he had a hell of a time believing people needed it as much as they acted like they did. Sure, fine, an orgasm felt good, no denying that. But everything leading up to that was shot through with anxiety and pressure to perform, no matter how easy-going the woman. And after?

He knew it wasn't supposed to feel like it did for him, when the physical high faded and he sank into this lonely, disappointing, hollow place, shot through with disgust at his own sticky body, at the objectively lovely woman beside him, then the wave of guilt at that disgust. He'd never fucked a woman he didn't already like as a friend, as a person, and on paper, they'd all been objectively attractive. So to feel that way about her, all the hers, it was shitty.

He chalked it up to Catholic guilt and, late, when he was a little more educated on gender dynamics, latent misogyny. It wasn't unheard of for men to want to fuck women, but still not like them as people. But Eddie did like them as people!

He just didn't want to fuck them very much.

He had quietly come to terms with the fact that he didn't want to fuck *anyone* very much. If that was a little weird, well, there were far worse ways to be weird, sexually. Eddie could function, when he needed to, and was grateful for that. But as long as he didn't have a woman in his life, he didn't need to, which was a relief.

And all that was fine with him, it had been anyway. He thought it had. He had a busy life, a son to raise, a job that didn't make dating the easiest thing in the world (even if women and the occasional man made it embarrassingly clear that it was there for the taking if Eddie wanted.) But most of the time, Eddie didn't *want*. And sitting here and wishing that sex was, for him, this normal, natural, easy thing to want and have and enjoy and pass through into some sort of cathartic, narcotic post-coital oblivion that all the poets crowed about? That didn't make it so. And that was fine with him. It was. It was hard to miss what you'd never had, at least that's what he tried to tell himself.

If there was anything he had been jealous of, with people for whom sex came easy, it was that fabled afterglow. Good sex left you relaxed, it took away tension, nature's tranquilizer, left you warm and loose, like a good workout. That's what everyone said it did, anyway. That's how it was supposed to work.

For all that sex with women never felt natural for him, he dedicated himself to being an effective partner, so he'd certainly seen women doze off beside him, slack and sated. And safe. He liked that he made women feel safe. He liked that he could make a woman he cared about feel good. He liked the idea of an orgasm being a release of tension that left a person empty of thoughts and full of affection. He knew that's how it was supposed to be.

But that just wasn't Eddie's lived experience. From the start, sex had made him feel *hunted* for no fucking reason he could identify, which made that feeling all the more maddening. He remembers it so clearly, a soft, satisfied woman tucked under his arm after the successful completion of sex, happy and close, so close Eddie wanted to crawl out of his skin to escape the sensation, like the hairs on the back of his neck lit up red from a sniper's scope. Sleeping in anything but fitful, falling awake bursts in bed with a woman was out of the question. Eddie knew this about himself early on and it never changed, no matter how hard he tried.

And the thing was, Eddie didn't even consider himself a light sleeper. Not back in the Army at least. Give him a tent with a few dozen men snoring and cleaning equipment and hollering across the wall-free space, plus all the sounds outside of movement and demolition and roaring air superiority besides, none of it mattered. Eddie Diaz could and would still sleep like the dead, given a reasonable flat surface. Hell, he could do it sitting up.

Before he left for war he had no trouble sleeping, not anywhere. He was great at it, in fact. "My little lazybones," his abuela would tease, but he didn't care. All Eddie knew was it felt *good* to fall asleep. It felt so damn good to wake a little, with nothing going on, and then drift back sleep for just a while longer. It was his favorite thing.

He was a teenager then, hard and hungry and tired on his growing body's schedule, not his. Then the came army, with its own schedule for his body, but that schedule often held long stretches of a whole lot of nothing and he easily trained himself to snatch bites of his favorite treat, a little catnap. Shanon and him always had drama, from the start, so he figured that was why he could never really sleep next to her. But then another person, a person he liked. A woman he slept with, or tried to, but no. And then no again.

So okay, that was just how Eddie was built. And that was fine. He liked to sleep alone. Or as part of a group. But together? *With*? Weighted by the expectation of entanglement or a small, soft hand threatening to reach out and beckon him closer. Invite his body inside of hers? *That* was a reliable recipe for sleeplessness.

But it was also an avoidable one. Doctor it hurts when I do that, so don't do that, so he didn't, easy peasy, done and dusted. If you arranged your life right, filled it with other things, the question of how to sleep in a bed with your partner wasn't something you had to face. Especially if you were a grown man with a fair amount of control over how you lived your life.

Sometimes, though, circumstances overwhelmed one grown man's ability to decide who shared his bed. Sometimes, a coronavirus half a world away grew novel characteristics and slunk through the air from lung to lung until the whole world paused. And his job turned him into a vector for disease. His body was transformed into something that could silently, unwittingly transmit death to his own vulnerable child, and so he left his home.

It was decided they'd bubble at Buck's, the only convenient space with no family bystanders. No collateral damage. Made sense to Eddie, and he didn't care enough to be part of figuring out sleeping arrangements as long as he somewhere to pass out. Ended up being Chim and Hen downstairs on the pull out and eventually an air mattress, Buck and Eddie sharing the bed up in the loft. That was fine with him, he said more than once. He could sleep anywhere. He didn't even think of sharing a bed with Buck as *sharing a bed*. It was no different from bunks at the firehouse as far as he was concerned, not that he honestly gave it a second thought.

He'd been tired enough that first night, exhausted with anxiety and long shift, that he hadn't even given much thought to his 'sleeping with someone' issues. Probably helped that he didn't see Buck as that sort of 'someone'. And with the occasional noises from Chim and Hen downstairs, it felt more 'group' than 'with'. Buck's bed felt so secluded and welcoming, though by the time they got back to Buck's and showered and changed and ate and the four of them had shot the shit over the last of a bottle of Wild Turkey, the floor felt welcoming. That bed, though? When Eddie had climbed the stairs and seen it, it had looked like a slice of heaven.

Buck had apologized that first night, in all of the everything of it all he'd forgotten to wash his sheets, and the spare set was already on the pullout downstairs. Eddie'd dismissed his apologies and crawled in to the unmade nest of blankets and sheets, pillow smelling like a softer version of the exquisitely familiar Buck smell that Eddie had come to know (and love, though he'd far from admitted it at that point). Familiar detergent. Not crisp and clean, but family, nest, *home*. It smelled like home. Eddie grabbed two more pilllows and hugged them, curling around them as he snuggled in.

Buck had laughed and climbed in his side, clicking off the light. A soft amber filtered up from living room below and made shapes on their ceiling. There were glow in the dark stars up there too, in what looked like realistic constellations. He'd ask tomorrow, otherwise Buck would have half an hour of astronomy monologue for him, and Eddie didn't want to fall asleep in the middle. Still, the sight delighted him. The thought of Buck on some ladder, carefully placing the stickers, cast a warm glow on his heart.

From the other side of the bed came a sarcastic, "Got enough pillows there, Eddie?"

Eddie lifted his head. Buck had the one remaining pillow on his side, a thin thing that had seen better days. Eddie shrugged and hugged the nice plump down pillow to his chest tighter. "Yup."

"So that's how it's gonna be, huh?" He sounded like he was on the edge of laughter. "That's how it's gonna be."

"That's how it is. What are you gonna do about it?"

"Not gonna do shit, just gotta be patient. I know you. You're gonna fall asleep in ten and what are you gonna do about it then? Nothing. I'm taking all my pillows."

"I thought they were *our* pillows."

"Why would you think that?"

"We're sharing a bed, aren't we?"

"You're a guest."

"You don't give your guests a pillow?"

Buck snorted quietly. "Usually give my guests a lot more than a pillow."

The warm glow in Eddie heart flared into something with real heat, but that was an easy enough thing to ignore.

Buck cleared his throat. "If you need all those pillows, we can get more tomorrow."

Eddie handed over the thick one he'd had clutched to his chest. "Here. But yeah. Let's get more pillows."

The mattress shifted and dipped as Buck nestled the good pillow into place and rolled to his side to face Eddie. "Who knows how long we'll be doing this."

Eddie rolled to face Buck as well. "Not long, I hope. Of course."

"Of course. But..."

"But what?"

"It's corny."

"Who cares," Eddie said, drawing up a knee and accidentally bumping up against Buck's leg, beneath the covers.

"I just. If I gotta do this, I'm glad it's with you."

Eddie smiled. "Same."

Buck smiled softly and rolled to his back, heaving a sigh before shutting his eyes and murmuring, "I'm glad you don't snore."

"I'm glad I'm a heavy sleeper."

Buck gave Eddie's chest an unaimed smack, then within maybe a dozen breaths he went slack, chest rising and falling with the unhurried pace of someone dead asleep. It didn't take long for Eddie to sink into slumber, then came the sun. The smell of coffee drifted up to them, Buck's unmoving bulk just inches from Eddie. Down at the bottom of the bed, beneath the covers, their toes were touching. Eddie nudged Buck's foot with his own. Buck's breath caught, then he groaned, shifting and stretching. His eyes fluttered open, unfocused at first, then he smiled fuzzily at Eddie. "Hey, you."

That was the morning, all those years ago, that he learned that sleeping with Buck was easy.

And now, here, close to midnight a few weeks after the Xanax incident, his neck still tingling where Buck had probably sucked a hickey into it, his happy trail slicked down with jizz, his body still so alive with so, so much pleasure, Eddie has an entire night effortless sleep to look forward to alongside his...boyfriend? Lover? That word wrinkles his nose. Husband has a nice ring to it, but Eddie knows it is way to soon to put those sorts of thoughts into words.

His Buck. His man. His.

He sighs happily, feels an urge, and gives into without a second thought because he can. He reaches between Buck's legs, caressing his thighs with appreciation before nudging them further apart and fondling his balls, then back, where he's still slick. He pets at the softened entrance with a fingertip, then eases inside, appreciating the welcoming heat, the way it clings to his finger. He savors the little shiver that goes through Buck and bends down to kiss his hip.

"Hey you," he whispers to Buck.