Work Text:
Soulmarks are an interesting thing. It's long since been known that they appear once you turn 20, and they will be the last words your soulmate says to you before they die, in their handwriting. What has still never been discovered, is why they appear. For a lot of people, the marks are often "I love you." "good night, love" "I'll see you when I get home", common, everyday phrases. For all of those beautiful, romantic soulmarks, there are equally enough that are somewhat less.. romantic. “I fucking hate you” and “I want a divorce” or “I cheated on you” and “please take care of the kids” or “oh god we’re going to die”.
The thing is, when the soulmate dies, the soulmark dies too. There's usually a sharp, searing pain as it fades to a greyish tone.
Some people are protective of their soul marks, and wish for them to be covered - there is a whole industry that's surrounding covering them up - from makeup, to sticky cover patches and band, and even tattoo cover ups.
Some people are less bothered about this, and will make little effort to hide them, perhaps a tendency to wear longer trousers or skirts, or long sleeves. There are others that will freely display them, and make no effort to cover them up. Whichever option is taken, it is generally considered rude to ask people about their mark.
Evan "Buck" Buckley, is one of those people who passively covers his. It's on his right bicep, curling around his arm. It's short, a simple "hey, are you hurt?"
He hears the phrase multiple times throughout his lifetime, and each time it sends a horrifying jolt of fear down his spine until they continue the conversation onwards. Buck starts hearing it a lot more in his career as a firefighter. It always leaves him slightly rattled, even if it isn’t exactly how his arm says.
Watching Eddie get shot, in the middle of LA, sets a burning fire across his whole body. Maybe it's the adrenaline, or maybe it's the heat of Eddie's blood splattering across his face.
His brain tells him to move - is screaming at him to move , but all he can see is Eddie dropping to the ground in front of him, blood pouring onto the street.
It’s not until Mehta forces him to the ground that he realises he has to do something. He can see Eddie lying there, hand twitching, almost reaching out towards Buck.
He pulls himself free from Mehta’s grasp, rolling over underneath the fire truck, he can’t help but grimace. The asphalt is rough against his skin, and his chest tightens at the memory of being trapped underneath the fire truck. He can hear himself calling out to Eddie, reassuring him he’s coming.
He reaches out, grabs Eddie’s arm and just pulls, wincing as he hears Eddie's grunts of pain on being moved on his damaged arm.
Buck gets him lifted into the truck, down on his back, and administering anything he thinks will help keep Eddie alive a little longer.
The sirens are blaring as he presses on Eddie's gunshot wound, reverently trying to stay upright as they fly through the streets.
He feels a hand gripping his and turns to look at Eddie, who’s looking at him with concerned, pained eyes.
“Hey, are you hurt?” He looks down at his shirt, which he realises now is covered in blood.
“No, no, no, I’m good.” Buck says, and then his eyes shoot back up to meet Eddies, terrified, as he realises what the other man had asked, as he watches Eddie’s eyes roll back into his head as the man passes back out again.
“C’mon, c’mon!” He hears himself begging the driver to go faster and faster.
“Just hang on. Hey, three minutes away, you’re so close.” He’s begging Eddie to please stay with them.
He knows though. He knows those were the words. He can feel it, a bone deep, visceral knowledge overcoming him.
“We’re so close… I need you to hang on.” Buck begs as one of the others places a mask over Eddie.
He feels them slowing down as they get into the hospital entrance, and he’s the first to get out, and helps pull Eddie out of the door to the truck as the doctors and nurses run to meet them.
Eddie gets rolled away into the hospital, and Buck just stops, as the other firefighters and police rush past him.
“You okay, Buckley?” Mehta asks, voice gentle, but Buck can’t bring himself to answer before the man goes to follow his own team.
He’s the only one left near the truck when he can bring himself to answer the Captain’s question.
“No.” And he’s not. He feels like the answer has been ripped from his own soul.
He’s in his own bedroom, bloodied trousers on the floor when a searing pain rips through his bicep, and for a moment he wonders if he’s been shot, too.
His left hand flies to where the pain is on his bicep, and he knows, even without looking down that his soulmate will have turned to a faded deathly grey.
The scream that rips out of his throat is visceral, and it has Taylor flying up the stairs to find him, sobbing against the foot of his bed.
His hands were shaking even more than they were at the hospital.
“Buck, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
Buck can’t help the way he flinches away from Taylor.
“He’s - he’s gone -!” the words are a guttural cry around body wracking sobs. He only grips his bicep even harder.
Taylor must see the grey words of his soulmark at this point, because her face falls as she pulls him into a hug.
He doesn’t know how long he stays there, sobbing, in Taylors arms, but he does know the sky has gone from blue to black when he finally opens his eyes again, sobbing abating.
Buck finally finds himself able to take a breath that doesn’t immediately want to escape as a sob, but it’s a damn close thing.
“I need - we need - Christopher - someone’s got to-to tell him.” Buck reaches a shaking hand back behind him onto the bed for where he knows he took it out of the pocket of his trousers.
There’s a message from Hen, sent only 5 minutes ago.
Still in surgery. No more news yet.
His hands are shaking too much to even contemplate responding.
Buck is so confused.
Eddie must have died. He had to - he’d felt it. His soul knows he died. It’s been long enough that if he had died and not been able to be recovered then they would have told them.
Maybe, just maybe, he’d also lived?
Buck knows that Hen wouldn’t lie to him, not about this. Buck grits his teeth, and takes a few shaky, but steadier breaths.
“Okay- okay.” He starts detangling himself from Taylor. “I’m okay - I can do this.”
Buck pushes himself to stand, and heads towards his dresser to pick out some clothes that he doesn’t associate with snipers in the middle of LA, his best friend's blood on his face or the state of his wounded heart.
It takes him another ten minutes to coax his shaking hands into being dressed again.
Opening the front door to the Diaz household that evening is one of the hardest things he's ever had to do.
Carla’s eyes are nothing but sympathetic and understanding, as he explains to her what's happened, although he leaves out the part where it's his soulmate.
He takes a deep breath, and heads down the corridor to see Christopher, turning into the bedroom.
“Hey, Buck.” Chris says, tone light, but there's something off about it, like he knows something is wrong.
“Hey,” Buck greets, the word raw in his throat.
Buck kneels in front of Chris, and he knows his face must be saying a lot because the next words out of Chris' mouth are:
“Where's dad?”
“Um, he.. he's, uh, he's-he's not coming home tonight, Chris.” It’s not the first time he’s had to tell someone that someone precious to them won’t be coming home, but this one hurts the most.
They could have sent Bobby, Hen, hell, even Athena, but they’d all known that it had to be Buck.
“Why not?” It's such a simple question, really. And yet, it's so hard to answer.
“Well, um…, well he-he got hurt at work today.” Each word he gets out of his mouth feels like a punch to his stomach.
Chris bites his lip before speaking again.
“In a fire?”
“Um.” Christ. It's hard having this conversation while looking in Chris' eyes. He swipes his tongue over his bottom lip and pushes himself upright, moving himself to sit next to Chris. He uses the moment to pinch the bridge of his nose in an effort to stave away the tears.
“Uh, no. No, not in a fire.” Buck continues. Looking at the side of Chris's face now, he's not sure that this is better than looking the kid in the eye. Buck takes a shaky breath in, and he knows he's so close to losing it.
“Uh, the truth is, someone hurt your dad.”
“On purpose?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Bucks voice is softer now, the words feeling less raw as they leave his throat.
“A bad guy?” Chris asks, with a level of innocence only a kid could have, and Buck can't stop the tears that spring to his eyes.
“Mm-hmm.” He sniffs and presses his lips together, fighting back the sob that wants to escape. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, a b… a-a bad guy.”
Buck wipes a traitorous tear from his face, as Chris leans forwards, asking him a question.
“Is he gonna be okay?” Fuck, his eyes are stinging now.
“You know, your dad is, uh, he's tough as nails. He's a fighter, right?” Another traitorous tear escapes his eyes and he aggressively wipes it away with his hand. God he wishes he could keep it together. “So, uh, he's with the doctors now.”
As a firefighter, he knows better than to promise everything will be okay. More than often, it won't be.
They train you on it. Reassure, but never make promises. Of course, it's easier said than done.
Buck knows that Eddie must have at least coded, while at the hospital. No-one has notified him yet, which a part of him hopes that Eddie is still alive.
But knowing the man has at least already died once today, means he cannot truthfully say to Chris that it will all be okay.
Because he honestly doesn't know if it will be.
“Like the ones that fixed you?” Chris' optimism breaks and warms his heart.
“Uh-huh,” Buck agrees. “Yeah, like the ones who fixed me.”
“Then he's gonna be okay, right?”
Buck wishes he could say yes, but before he can formulate an answer, his phone dings, startling him.
He scrabbles to get his phone out of his pocket. There’s a message from Bobby.
Out of surgery. Doctors say it went well.
At least he can finally give a more truthful answer. He heaves out a shaky sigh of relief.
“Uh, yeah, I think so, buddy.” Buck loses his grip on his phone. “I think so.”
The dam breaks, he finds himself sobbing again. He leans forward to put his head in his hands, to hide it from Chris, when he feels an arm on his back, pulling him in.
Buck has cried enough today, god knows he's got the dehydration headache to prove it. He can't help it, though. At least he's sobbing in relief, at least.
“It's gonna be okay, Buck.” Chris reassures him, and Buck hates that Chris is reassuring him in the first place. He's supposed to be reassuring Chris.
The pair of them sit there for a while, gripping each other, holding each other together.
The next couple of weeks are hard.
And then Eddie blindsides him with the conversation at the hospital.
Buck wonders, when Eddie says, “you might have noticed, I almost died, again,” he wonders if Eddie knows he did die.
That Buck had lost him, had thought he had lost him, permanently. Forever. That the pain he had felt searing into his arm that afternoon still has him waking up, gripping his arm, a sob ripping itself out of his chest.
The thing is, Buck can’t bring himself to tell Eddie that he was his soulmate. Maybe it’s because he’s seen the word inscribed on Eddie’s hip, that was definitely not the last words he said to him.
He considers, however, that he’s no longer Eddie’s soulmate. He knows he's got a new ring of words around his upper thigh, but he cannot bring himself to look at them. He cannot bring himself to look at those words and know that Eddie isn’t there in his final moments.
He does start being more particular about the length of his sleeves on his shirts, and invests in some covers for his faded soulmark. It’s not that he wants to hide it, exactly, but his teammates have seen his soulmark, and will absolutely have questions, taboo around asking be damned.
Buck is at a BBQ at the Grant-Nash’s when someone finally finds out, well over a year later.
One of the kids had bumped into Maddie while she was holding a glass of wine, covering his pale blue shirt in maroon. He grimaces as the stain makes the shirt cling to him.
“You can borrow one of mine, Buck.” Bobby surprises him by appearing at his side.
“Ah, Bobby, it’s okay, I don’t need-” Buck tries to turn down the offer.
“It’s not a problem, Buck. C’mon, let’s get you dry.” Bobby offers, and Buck takes the hint and follows the older man into their house.
Buck follows Bobby into the house, and waits as he searches in a drawer in his bedroom for some shirts.
Bobby pulls one out, and gestures for Buck to take his stained shirt off.
Buck takes his shirt off, and has his hands reached out to swap it for the clean one, when he notices Bobby’s gaze stuck on his bicep.
He takes the clean shirt from Bobby’s hand without much fight, and Bobby still has his gaze caught on Buck’s arm, swallowing heavily.
Buck glances down at his arm, and then realises. He hadn’t covered his soulmark today.
Bobby has seen his faded soulmark. Fuck.
“Buck…” Bobby looks at him, lips tilted downwards in sympathy.
“It’s fine, Bobby.” Buck clenches his jaw, and pulls the shirt on. It’s a little tight, but it works.
“Buck, when did this happen? You’ve never asked for bereavement leave?” There’s guilt all over Bobby’s face - that he didnt realise that one of his team had been suffering.
“I-I didn’t need it.” He hadn’t, technically.
“Buck, your soulmate died. You deserved the time to grieve-” Buck cuts Bobby off.
“I didn’t need to grieve. I still don’t.”
“Buck, it’s grey.”
Buck purses his lips, and swallows heavily. He’d said he hadn’t needed to grieve. He hadn’t needed to grieve the death, but he had to grieve what could have been.
“I know. I thought I had been shot, when it went.” He hopes his careful intonation is enough.
He can tell it is, because Bobby’s eyes flicker towards the outside of the house as they soften.
“Does he know?” Bobby asks softly.
“No. And h-he’s not going to.” Buck’s voice is firm, this is one thing he isn’t budging on. He tugs on the right sleeve of the shirt, and takes a deep, calming breath.
Bobby looks like he wants to say something else, but they hear the sounds of Christopher’s crutches echoing through the house.
“Alright, kid. You know we’re here if you need us.” A smile accompanies Bobby’s sentence.
A shaky nod is all Buck manages to get back out, before heading to the door of the bedroom. He takes a deep breath, and heads back out to the garden, cheerfully directing Christopher to the restroom on the way out.
He grabs a beer from the kitchen, and stands just outside the back doors, taking in the scene in the garden.
Eddie, eyes bright and cheeks pink as he laughs with Karen and Hen. Maddie and Chim grinning at each other over Jee-Yun’s head. Athena and May in a discussion over something in the corner.
He can’t help but glance back over to Eddie’s form, just as the other man catches his eye, a bright grin coming over his face. Buck can’t help but grin back, and steadfastly ignores the tingling he can feel where his new soulmark lies on his thigh.