Chapter Text
Evan Buckley dies for the first time when he’s precisely fourteen years, three weeks, four days, fifteen hours, thirty-two minutes, and forty seconds old after he crashes headfirst off his friend’s ATV into a ditch and breaks his neck.
No one climbs down to check on him, and all his so-called friends are too busy running for the hills to even think of calling 9-1-1. There’s no way anyone could have survived a crash like that, they’re all saying amongst themselves, let’s not hang around to find out.
They’re right. There’s no way anyone could have survived a crash like that.
Evan Buckley is a failure in many senses of the word.
His parents look at him like he’s a stain on their white walls, Maddie is too busy spending time with Doug to care about him in the slightest, and his teachers seem to think there’s something wrong with him – they keep trying to get him diagnosed with disorders he doesn’t have and look pityingly at him when they hand his tests back.
So, it’s not entirely a surprise to him when he fails at dying.
Okay, that’s a bit of a lie. He’s very surprised, actually. When you die, you expect to, y’know, stay dead.
Evan Buckley fails to die when he’s precisely fourteen years, three weeks, four days, fifteen hours, forty-five minutes, and twenty seconds old.
When he finally has the wherewithal to climb out of the ditch covered in mud, rainwater, and god-knows-what-else, he’s shivering and sore all over, especially in his neck. He thinks for a second about pulling the ATV out of the ditch and using that to make the long walk home, but the thing’s totaled.
He sloshes home, and when he finally walks through the door, he’s greeted by two disapproving frowns and another grounding.
When Evan Buckley walks into homeroom the next day, one classmate goes deathly pale, another falls out of his chair, and the third hastily stammers an excuse and runs from the room.
The day doesn’t get much better from there.
Freak, the halls whisper as he passes. Look at the freak.
He feels seen. Too seen. Exposed.
The year, next four years, really, don’t get much better from there, either.
By the time he graduates high school, Evan Buckley has managed to die a total of eight times.
How he’s not discovered, he’ll probably never know, but hey, he’s saved up a bit of a nest egg from the stupid dares people throw his way.
Community college is interesting.
He’s never really been an academic, but now he gets to choose his own classes. It makes things a lot easier, at least. So, he picks up a few Lit classes here and there, maybe a history or two. He avoids math like the plague, even if it is an FDR, but he tacks biology onto his schedule just for the hell of it.
He tacks a few other things onto his extracurricular schedule as well.
Like experimentation.
Thursday, October 22:
#23
Method: Alcohol poisoning.
Pain Level: 2-3
Notes: It’s hard to tell it’s even happening, honestly. It’s like you just drift off to sleep and never wake up. Headache afterward sucks, though.
At least the kegger was a good one – he has hazy memories of a cute blonde with legs for days that showed him one hell of a time before he finally kicked the bucket.
Tuesday, November 7:
#36
Method: Bar fight.
Pain Level: 7
Notes: Internal bleeding is a pain in the ass. Do not recommend.
Here’s the thing about his weird superpower: it comes with terms and conditions, just like most things in the world.
He doesn’t have super healing. Well, he does. Kind of. He just has to die for it to activate. In fact, he could break every bone in his body and come out the other side like nothing ever happened so long as he dies at some point afterward. Easy peasy.
But, if he doesn’t die? He’ll heal just like anyone else until he dies again. Not so easy.
He learns this after attempt number eighty-four goes sideways, and he breaks both of his legs. He decides very quickly that the hospital stint isn’t worth his continued survival.
Dying is also a bit of a double-edged sword. Sure, he heals completely when it happens – and boy, is that a relief – but he also feels it after. Like a hangover, almost, if that hangover involves the feeling of nails being jabbed into whatever he’s managed to break or damage this time. He’s pretty sure the worst is after attempt seventy-seven, which involved a hydrogen-ice bomb, a glass vase, and the sensation of his entire body being poked and prodded with sharp pointy needles for weeks after.
There’s a part of him that wishes he’d gotten the chance to read the fine print and say no.
Sunday, December 16:
#92
Method: Exsanguination.
Pain Level: 4
Notes: It only really hurts after the first cut. From there it’s just dizziness and you slip away.
He drops out of college sometime after attempt one hundred and twelve to end his seemingly unending life. He’s spent a good portion of his college savings on keggers and materials to create even more outlandish methods of killing himself, and if he’s being honest, he just can’t bring himself to care anymore.
It’s not like he doesn’t have practically all the time in the world, literally, to learn whatever he wants. Why waste time now?
So, he makes a visit to Maddie after crashing his bike – which, ow, healing like normal people sucks – and begs her to come back with him.
He can see the bruises peeking out from the edges of her long-sleeved undershirt.
She’s not going to come with him. he knows this immutable fact just as well as he knows he’s not going to stay dead the next time he tries to die. Evan doesn’t die, and Maddie can’t ever leave: two constants of the universe, their own hellish status quo.
“You think you’re indestructible, but you’re not!”
But he is. But I am.
He can’t say those three words. They’re stuck in the back of his throat as his mother screams and cries.
I am indestructible, Evan thinks bitterly. I’ve done enough in my life to prove it.
Then Maddie comes to pick him up, and Evan is saved from another round of ranting.
Maddie gives him the keys to the jeep, and suddenly freedom seems a lot more real.
She also gives him a letter.
Evan tries to swallow the bitterness that creeps up his throat as he drives off knowing that the status quo is god.
If Maddie can’t be saved, what chance does he have?
He drives to Georgia.
It’s nice enough. He gets himself a job in a bar where they don’t quite care if he’s actually twenty-one or not and learns how to mix drinks properly.
It’s when he dies after a mugging gone wrong that he packs up the jeep and leaves Georgia behind.
He liked bartending the first time around, so he tries bartending school when he travels up to Virginia Beach.
He picks up surfing, too, but that one has to stop when he hits his head on a rock after a particularly nasty fall.
Florida is one of the better stops. He picks up a construction job that pays decently well and is rather fulfilling. He also gets a paid work out every day, just as a bonus.
He dies when an idiot literally drops a brick on him. Luckily, no one is around for the fallout.
He leaves pretty quickly after that.
Arizona, Montana, Oregon – he goes anywhere and everywhere, sometimes moving on because he’s ready and other times moving on because it’ll be far too suspicious if he stays. He manages to only get seen coming back to life once by a kid outside a library in the middle of New Jersey, but he hits the road again before anything serious can happen.
He’s lucky, he knows. He’s not going to be able to keep this up forever.
That’s when he gets the idea to hide in plain sight.
Navy SEALS. What’s the worst that could happen?
A lot, apparently, can go wrong in SEAL training.
All it takes is one malfunction in his diving gear for Evan to realize that this whole “hiding in plain sight” thing is a bad idea. He can’t explain away bullet wounds or drowning or explosions where he miraculously comes out alive, can he?
So, he quits just before the final round of trials.
The bitter disappointment returns with a vengeance, but he’s not entirely sure if that disappointment is with himself or his situation.
His wanderlust takes him to Peru where he takes up mixology again.
Funny how life can take you full circle like that.
Live. Die. Repeat.
Circles.
Not exactly productive, is it, spinning circles in the sand?
“You go, I go.”
Evan stares at the television above the bar and wonders.
“You go, I go.”
The characters on the screen, firefighters, speak in rapid-fire Spanish to each other as they make their way out of the burning building.
“You go, I go.”
The way it should have been. The way it could be. Maybe.
This time, it doesn’t take him dying to leave town. He just leaves, headed straight for LA with one thought on his mind: You go. I go.
The first time someone calls him Buck, it’s an accident.
For Evan, his last name’s always felt… off. He’s not a part of his family, not really, and that’s what a last name is supposed to do, right? Make you part of a family? Granted, his first name doesn’t exactly inspire warmth either, considering the fact that it’s practically always said with thinly veiled disappointment and frustration.
But Buck – Buck’s not really tied to anything. Well, maybe to his last name, but it’s different. New. He’s not screws-everything-up Evan, and he’s not unwanted-not-really-family Buckley. He’s Buck. He’s firefighter-in-training-wow-there-are-too-many-Evans Buck, and for the first time in a while he feels right. Like he’s settled-ish in his own immortal skin.
Ish. It’s hard to be settled when you’re worried you’re going to burn to death in a fire and have to explain to your co-workers that, oh yeah, you can’t die.
So, Evan becomes Buck. He passes the firefighter exam with flying colors and lands at the 118 with a broad smile. Sure, he’s a probationary firefighter, and he’s heard stories about the varying experiences of other probies in this particular house, but he’s practically bouncing.
He can see his nameplate, sparkling and brand-new on his – his, and in all his time running from place to place, he’s never really had anything besides the Jeep that’s his and for the first time he has this sense of belonging to something lodged in his chest – locker, and he can’t help but smile broadly at the sight.
His footsteps are light as he walks up the stairs carrying his duffel bag full of supplies and the few uniforms that he has. Each step fills him with apprehension and dread. What if they don’t like him? What if something happens today and he dies? What if he has to give all of this up before he even has a chance to enjoy it?
He reaches the second floor and sees a bunch of people sitting around a table eating what looks to be a home-cooked meal. The man at the head of the table – older, hair cropped short to regulation length, eyes that crinkle slightly when he smiles – turns to look at him with an inquisitive stare. He doesn’t look particularly surprised to see Buck standing there, which is a good sign – he’s in the right place, probably.
“Uh, hi,” Buck says, lifting a hand in greeting. The scent of tomatoes and fresh herbs wafts into his nose; his mouth waters. “I’m Evan Buckley. New recruit?” His hands instinctively come together. He wants to wring them, but he manages to keep himself from doing so beneath the heavy gaze of the firefighter in front of him. “I was told to report to Captain Nash.”
The group of firefighters look at him, then look at each other like they have no idea who he’s talking about. The older man is the first one to speak as he asks the man sitting to his left, “Do you know a Captain Nash?” At the man’s shake of his head, he continues around the table asking the same thing. “Do you know a Captain Nash?”
With each no, Buck wilts. Maybe he has the wrong address? Or maybe the wrong shift? He frowns, his hands itching to reach into his duffel and pull out the small slip of well-worn paper that has his assignment. He can’t even make it to his first shift properly – he’s doomed himself to fail before he’s even begun and –
The man breaks out into a cheerful grin. “Take a seat, Evan,” he says, pulling the empty chair closest to Buck away from the table as the others laugh good naturedly.
“Ah – Buck, everyone just calls me Buck!” he manages to stammer out before he collapses into the chair.
“Welcome to the 118, Buck,” someone says as full serving dishes full of food begin to make their way around the table.
Buck looks on in wonder at the firefighters all piling their plates high with amazing smelling, definitely homecooked food. He’s never sat at a table like this and felt so warm on the inside, like someone’s taken a fuzzy blanket and stuffed him with it. “This is amazing. I-is it always like this?” he asks, failing to keep the wonder out of his voice.
Does it always feel like coming home? Is the question he can’t bring himself to ask.
“Always,” the woman to his right says with a kind smile.
The guy across from him grins. “So long as Bobby’s in the captain’s chair, anyways.”
“Then I might be in the right place.” Buck pulls a bowl filled to the brim with freshly cooked spaghetti closer to him and plops a huge serving onto his plate.
The first bite he takes wraps him in comfort and safety in a way simple spaghetti has absolutely no right to do, and he knows, deep down, that this really is the right place for him.
Now he just has to keep himself alive long enough to enjoy it.