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Buck feels his skin crawling. His organs are tensed and uncomfortable, and the hot pressure at the back of his throat is embarrassing. This shouldn’t be affecting him. This should be fine. Yet, here he is, on the verge of crying over paperwork, of all things.
Eddie and Hen are sat around the table, trying to tell Buck what to do and how to fill it out, but he doesn’t understand. It’s late, he’s been overwhelmed recently (stress about having to fix his suspension on his jeep, remember to confirm an appointment before the end of the month, and do this fucking paperwork) and he wasn’t all that keen on doing this in the first place. Eddie had invited him around for dinner, and he’d been bombarded with unfinished reports as soon as the dishwasher had been filled. And he can’t leave now, because he knows this is good, that he needs to do this, but he doesn’t fucking understand and it’s turning his cells into battery acid that he can taste on the back of his tongue.
“Lucky we got you do to this now, Buck. You wouldn’t have this finished by Sunday,” Hen says, filling out some of her own reports. She means nothing mean by it. It’s just a small jest – a true one at that – but it does nothing for his self-worth. Eddie is looking for something – the booklet they were handed out to help fill out this new version of the call report. New policies created new ‘i’s to dot and ‘t’s to cross, and it was awful. All new terminology. It’s a totally new process and Buck is so lost. He feels stupid and useless. He was supposed to read to booklet. He’s had plenty of time, he just hasn’t gotten around to it. There were videos on it too; there were so many options, yet Buck hadn’t used any of them.
Eddie pulls up a blue-covered A4 booklet, and Buck shrinks into himself. “Found it. Ok, so, where were we?” Buck looks down at his sheet, and takes a breath. He doesn’t know. He’s spiralled a bit too far.
“The analysis,” Hen provides. Buck nods. Sounds familiar. Eddie flips through a few pages, until he finds the one he was looking for. He reads out a passage, filled with legal words and run-on sentences that he really should understand but he just doesn’t. Hen nods along, though, so he just stares down at his sheet and tries to apply what Eddie’s saying to what he should be writing.
The passage comes to an end, and Buck still hasn’t written anything. He looks up at Eddie, who is looking back at him expectantly. “So… what do I have to write?” Eddie sighed. There was a smile on his face, but Buck knew that it was frustrating him. Hen seemed to be fine with all of this. She’d been writing the whole time.
“Just write down why you think whatever happened, happened.” Buck stares back down at his sheet. He looks back up at Eddie.
“Like, what happened before we got there or…”
“Yeah, just why it happened.” Eddie says, waving a hand. That’s not what Buck asked though. Not what he meant to ask, anyway.
“Like, factual, step-by-step breakdown or more analysing people’s thought processes?”
“What?” Hen asks, a laugh on the edge of her words. Buck grits his teeth. He needs this to be more specific.
“It’s too vague, I don’t know what—what it’s asking. Does it want facts based on what I saw, or what I personally feel happened?” Hen and Eddie just stare at him. Buck wants to scream.
“Can I read yours?” he asks, but Hen shakes her head.
“It needs to be in your words, Buck. What you saw.”
“I know, I know. I’m not going—not going to copy, I just wanna know how you’re writing it.” Hen smiles at Eddie in a way Buck doesn’t understand. A conversation is happening over his head and his hands are shaking. Gripping the pen harder, he reads Hen’s. Examples. Examples is what he needs.
He hands Hen back her sheet. “Yeah?” she asks. He nods. He writes down his answer only a little hesitantly, only to be stopped half-way through.
“Pencil, Buck! Pencil!” Eddie says, tapping the table frantically. Buck’s chest stops moving. Fuck. Yes. He knew that.
“Shit, sorry, yeah. Ok.”
“It’s ok, it’s just easier if you make a mistake.” He knows that, he does. He’s just not thinking. His mind isn’t working and he doesn’t know why.
“I know, I forgot, it’s ok.” Eddie and Hen hum in agreement, but Buck still feels stupid.
Eddie’s flicking through the book again. Buck doesn’t want to look up. “What else is there?” Eddie asks. Buck looks down at the overwhelming blank sheet.
“Uhh…” He feels incompetent. It’s embarrassing. His confidence is the only thing that keeps him palatable. Without it, he’s just an awkward and blundering idiot. He doesn’t understand. He feels like the class is giggling behind him as he walks up to the board.
Hen and Eddie don’t mean it, either, which is what makes it worse. He’s just insecure and overwhelmed. He doesn’t want them to realise either. It’s pathetic. He’s just glad he’s good enough at pretending he’s not offended when they laugh at his idiocy. They think it’s a bit. That he’s putting it on. Purposely obtuse. He wishes he was.
He wishes he could put his headphones in and listen to music, but Eddie’s got a record on. It’s some awful pop-y music though, and it’s almost worse than silence. Any other time, Buck wouldn’t care, except now when he can’t concentrate on anything at all and it’s taking everything in him to stay sane.
Hen’s asking Eddie a question, so he’s safe for a moment. She’s using the proper terms, and Eddie is giving her quick responses that she understands immediately. No clarifications, no misunderstandings, nothing. And Buck doesn’t even understand Hen’s question, let alone the answer.
Buck flips the page and comes across an acronym he doesn’t recognise. “Eddie? What does this stand for?”
“It just means who held the primary role in the accident?” Eddie says, as Hen nods. That doesn’t clear anything up.
“Primary role?” Buck asks, and hears Eddie sigh heavily from across the table.
“I’m gonna get a drink,” he says with a laugh. It’s the same tone he uses when Chris asks where babies come from or when women try to hand him their numbers at scenes. It’s the ‘I don’t have enough patience to deal with this right now’ tone, and it makes Buck shrink into himself even more. He thinks about cliffs and knives and arsenic teeth.
Hen laughs along too, and regretfully tells him that she has to drive. Buck wants to rip off his skin.
Picking up his phone, he checks his messages, responding to a few people with short sentences. He taps through people’s Instagram stories, not really taking any of it in. His sister’s texted him something about going to the cinema to see some movie, and Buck just swipes the notification away. He can’t deal with that at the moment. His head is swimming in tar and he’s slipping through the cracks between his fingers.
Eddie comes back, whiskey glass in hand, and sits back down. “Ok. Done any more while I was gone?” Buck shakes his head with a rushed laugh. He feels like he’s disappointing everyone.
“None at all?” Buck takes a breath and tries to rid the shake from his chest.
“No,” he says. It comes out strained. “You’re stressing me out here,” he says, a forced laugh on the edge of his breath. He's scrolling too fast through Instagram for it to be believable he was actually looking at any of it. He was just staring, avoiding looking up. He barely trusts his voice not to break; he knows that if he looks at Eddie now, he will not be able to stop the tears.
“Wait, really?” Eddie asks, stopping half-way through his shuffling of paperwork.
Buck rushes another laugh, “Yes! But it’s fine—it’s ok.”
“Sorry, I don’t mean to…” Eddie says, but if Eddie apologises like this, Buck won’t be able to make it through this.
“It’s—it’s fine, let’s keep going.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, come on.” He can’t dwell. Can’t let them see how this is getting to him. When he was younger, he would just run off to his room. Deal with his parents shouting at him for being rude and a spoiled brat – that he would have to do his homework eventually! I don’t care if it's hard! – and pretend he wasn’t hating himself even more for doing so. But he can’t run now. Because Eddie and Hen will ask. They’ll want to know why and Buck can’t deal with that. Can’t open that box. Doesn’t know how to even approach the topic. He can’t.
Pages are being turned once more, and Eddie is scanning through pages quickly. “Ok, where were we?”
“Primary role,” Buck offers weakly, and Eddie nods as he remembers. “Ok. Ok, here we go. Do you wanna read it?”
Buck nods as he takes the book offered to him. Gives him time to compose himself. But as he looks down at the massive page with tiny writing, he suddenly regrets his decision. “All of this?” he asks. Eddie shakes his head with a smile and leans over to point at a sub-section titled ’Primary’. It’s long, but significantly better than having to read the whole page.
Reading the first few words, the formality of it trips him up a bit. Reading was never really his strong suit, much less understanding instructions from it. Eddie and Hen begin talking about play-dates and school, and that paired with what Buck now recognises as Ed Sheeran is totally ruining his ability to read. He pulls his knees to his chest, cradling the book up near his chin as he puts his fingers in his ears.
He re-reads the first sentence three times before he gives up and moves onto the next one. It’s slightly more comprehensible, but he still isn’t taking it all in. He’s overtly aware that he’s acting juvenile. He feels like a child having a temper tantrum. But he also feels like if he doesn’t do this, he will burst into tears, which is objectively worse.
The second paragraph is an example – something Buck has come to realise is very helpful in his understanding of this. He’s still skipping words and backtracking on phrasing, but it’s giving him a basic grasp of the concept. It’s better than nothing, and after he understands the general gist, he unplugs his ears and hands the book back to Eddie, staring at the wall across as opposed to the man himself.
“You understand?”
Buck nods. “Yeah, thanks. Sorry, I read really slow.”
“Don’t apologise for that, Buck. It’s ok, you don’t have to apologise,” Eddie says, with such genuine concern that it makes Buck feel sick. His hands are shaking again, and he nods.
“I know, it just—makes me anxious, I don’t know, let’s move on,” he says, rushing the words out.
“That’s ok, you don’t need to apologise for it, Buck, it’s—”
“I know, I know, just—what else do I need to do?” Buck’s tapping his foot on the floor. Eddie’s care is so nice – it’s much preferable to the (gentle) teasing of earlier – yet it is killing him. He has such a loose grip on his composure, and Eddie’s kindness is just asking for him to break down.
“You need to fill out the final statement bit.” Buck nods.
“Ok. How?”
Eddie nor Hen laugh, instead they tell him exactly what he’s writing. Tone, details, everything. “There’s a section in the book here, do you want to read it…?”
Buck shakes his head immediately. “No—no, can you read it?”
Eddie nods, smiling softly, and reads the passage out loud. The music is lowered, and Buck notices Hen over by the record player.
“Thank you,” he says quietly, and hopes they know he means it.