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Buck thinks you should only be allowed to fall apart in the middle of the night.
He feels safer in the dark — less exposed — because if he’s going to be stripped of everything that’s barely keeping him together then it needs to be where no one else can see. It needs to be buried beneath the sound of the rotating fan in his bedroom, the flash of headlights as they glide across the windowpane, the crimson blink of a clock that tells him he won’t be getting any sleep tonight. There’s something intimately familiar in the way he fist his sheets, a cold sweat breaking over his forehead as he sits up with a gasping breath. It’s okay to wake up screaming if it’s under the cover of darkness. It’s okay to back yourself into a corner, like a caged animal as you come to your senses, telling yourself that you’re safe, you're safe, you're safe until you almost believe it. But maybe, not quite. It’s okay because in the middle of the night you are alone and you don’t have to pretend. The mask can slip. The real you — the ugly, exhausting you — can stake its claim until it’s pushed back by the palm of your hands behind puffy and red-rimmed eyes.
Funny, considering he’s here retching into his toilet at ten in the fucking morning trying not to think about how it still taste like a margarita on the rocks lined with salt.
It’s too bright.
He closed the door, turned off the lights, but it’s still so goddamn bright because the sun is spilling in through the cracks and he’s alone — isn’t he always really alone? — and it’s just too fucking bright. He heaves again, lets his white-knuckled grip on the porcelain tighten until it hurts. He carefully wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and sits back on his knees. He made it through that last twenty-four hour shift without completely losing it after Bobby’s big personnel announcement. He was mature. He maintained his professionalism.
(He promptly avoided Lucy at all cost until he was forced next to her into the fire truck for their first call of the day where she pressed too much into his space and all his bravado and insistence that Evan Buckley does not squirm went right out the window.)
Trying to be a better Buck
Isn’t he always?
Buck falls back against the wall, lets his head drop into his hands, and thinks about what new version of himself needs to walk out that door.
Buck 1.0 was reckless. Wild. Easy going and carefree. He stole fire engines and had sex on rooftops with girls who were only interested in a pretty face. He was the bad boy of the 118. The one that disobeyed orders and loved to play the hero just to capture that fifteen minutes of fame feeling that almost felt warm in his chest. Buck 1.0 liked to run and run and run and run.
Buck 2.0 was softer. He found a place to settle his roots and thought love was something he could give without ever really getting anything back. He liked to fix people because that was easier than fixing himself. Buck 2.0 thought waiting was the answer. So he waited and waited and waited and waited.
Buck 3.0 was wiser. He faced his truths (some of his truths, anyway) and forgave his parents even when they really, really didn’t deserve it. He was coming to terms that it wasn’t his fault that he was either too much or never enough. Buck 3.0 was going places, the best version yet. He had a family, a sense of belonging, and almost everything he could ever want.
Almost everything.
And now.
Trying to be a better Buck
And, yeah, maybe he could become Buck 4.0 or Buck 10.0, or however many versions it takes to be what he’s supposed to be and what everyone wants him to be. But Buck knows. He fucking knows. He knows that whatever the fuck Buck is left doesn't matter because the real Evan Buckley — the ugly, exhausting Evan Buckley — is still standing on that street with his best friend’s blood in his mouth.
He quickly tips forward and throws up again. Or maybe he sobs, he’s not really sure anymore. He lays his head on the seat, the plastic warm against his already blistering skin. Maybe, if he screws his eyes shut tight, he can push the roaring of blood against his ears hard enough that it will drown out the harmonic sound of bluebirds chirping, the unmistakable honk of cars from the Los Angeles commute, the faint tinkle of laughter, and the soft melodies from porch radios that remind him that it’s ten in the fucking morning. The bathroom lights up for a moment, his phone glaring brightly from its forgotten place on the sink. He reaches for it, fumbles with how heavy it suddenly feels in his sweaty palms, and looks down at the little Twitter notification warning him to avoid Fifth and Main due to an exploding fire hydrant.
Logically, he knows Eddie didn’t write this. He has Thursdays off, same as Buck. It was meant to be a transitional thing. A way for them to hang out to ease the ache of Eddie leaving the 118. It was easy, at first, because they were Buck and Eddie. And Buck and Eddie always fall back into each other, always find their way home. Temporarily started to give way to permanently and the shadows beneath Eddie’s eyes lingered longer — became darker. Thursdays suddenly became too busy and the only time Buck ever really saw Eddie was around other people. Never alone. Never just the two of them. No more opportunities to really ask if Eddie was doing okay.
You need to move on.
I have.
Buck hears the groaning of plastic beneath his fingers, the way his phone case bends uncomfortably beneath his grip, but the pain is almost cathartic, if only because pain is something he is so, so familiar with. He knows he shouldn’t look. Nothing has changed since their last conversation, but Buck is nothing short of a masochist these days. He unlocks the phone and it only takes three clicks to find what he’s been staring at since he got home from the bar three nights ago.
Buck: you’re coming, right 🥺
Eddie: I wouldn’t miss it
Except, Eddie never really made it. Or, according to Ravi, never made it past the parking lot. Buck swallows the sudden, bitter bite of anger clawing its way up his throat. But it’s not enough. Not when it’s itching beneath his skin, wrapping like a hot coil around his lungs, compressing them until he can hardly breathe. Eddie was supposed to be there. Eddie was supposed to be the one he was recounting the tale with. Eddie was supposed to be the one smiling over his beer, making exaggerated hand gestures, and rolling his eyes at Bobby’s weird state grain knowledge. Eddie was supposed to be the one he was bumping his shoulders with, teasing grins with soft, knowing gazes that lingered too long. Eddie was supposed to be the one he—
Buck is on his feet before Buck 2.0 or 3.0 or whoever the fuck knew better than to give into his anger and dangerous impulses could stop him.
The sun is still too bright, but he’s flying blind anyway, stumbling through his goddamn life without knowing which way is up.
His fist is pounding on Eddie’s door twenty minutes later.
Maybe, this time, blood stained Evan Buckley will finally leave his purgatory. Maybe he’ll finally catch up with all the fake smiles, the I’m fines, the versions he’s carefully crafted to make sure he’s enough for someone to stay. Maybe if Eddie sees the monster created from years and years of running — of surviving — of circling so far down the goddamn drain covered in speckles of crimson straight from Eddie’s own bleeding heart then he’ll finally be free.
When Eddie opens the door he only has a second, one gut wrenching second to be that Evan Buckley, before he pulls together the Buck he needs to be to take that haunted look out of Eddie's eyes.
“Buck?”
Buck’s lips part, there are so many things he wants to say. So many words jumbled and broken that have been sitting against his chest, crushing it like a fire truck to his leg. They don’t move. They don’t move and Buck could almost laugh, maybe he does, but it comes out wounded and pained because this feels a little bit like déjà vu.
“Buck,” Eddie tries again and he hasn’t moved, but he looks so, so much worse than the last time Buck saw him and that fucking hurts, “what are yo—”
“Sometimes I can still taste your blood in my mouth.”
It’s not what he means to say. Not by a long shot. Eddie stiffens, his eyes wide and terrified, but now that it’s out there he can’t stop. Buck can’t stop — has never known how to stop.
“I — I can feel the grit of it against my teeth,” he continues, voice rough and raw and probably the most honest he’s been over the last year, “in my hair, it’s stuck behind my eyelids, and just—” he breaks off, staggers forward because Eddie hasn’t moved and he can not fucking do this anymore, “it’s just in my goddamn mouth.”
“Buck,” And god Eddie sounds, Eddie sounds so broken.
“I kiss Taylor,” Buck goes on because he’s too much he’s too exhausting he can’t stop, “and I taste blood. The other night at the bar,” he runs a hand through his hair, tugs at his curls just to keep himself grounded, “Lucy kissed me. She kissed me and I — I didn’t stop her. Taylor was asleep in my bed in my loft and Lucy kissed me and I didn’t fucking stop her because all I can taste is blood. I am stuck with this perpetual ache of nothing and it is killing me.”
He doesn’t realize he’s shouting or that his chest is heaving or that there are tears streaming down his face. All he can do is look at Eddie and wish he were Buck 2.0 or 3.0 or 10.0 or all the better versions he so desperately tries to be, but always seems to fall short.
“I think it’s killing me too,” Eddie admits, quietly, just barely enough for Buck to hear.
Eddie reaches in the space between them. He reaches over the pool of blood against the blacktop, over the miles and miles that have pushed them farther apart, he reaches for Buck and this time. This time Buck — real, ugly, exhausting, blood stained Evan Buckley — reaches back.