Work Text:
Of course he’d heard the stories. People thousands of miles away had heard some of the stories, a firefighter trapped under a ladder truck, a tsunami that tore apart the pier and thousands of lives, a capsized cruise ship off the coast. Plenty of people had heard the stories and Tommy had heard more details than most. But it was different, still, hearing them come from the lips of the man who had lived through it all.
“This one?” Tommy asked, grazing fingers across the faintest scar on Buck’s throat, barely raised pale skin.
Buck’s Adam Apple bobbed against the knuckles of Tommy’s fingers, the vibrations low and rhythmic. “First date gone wrong. Really liked her… got nervous and forgot to chew my bread. She had to give me an emergency tracheotomy.”
“In the restaurant?” Tommy asked, pulling back slightly to properly look at Buck, who was propped by pillows, looking far more relaxed than Tommy had expected.
A nod, “On the floor. Wasn’t a shining moment, if you can believe it.”
Tommy hummed, placing a kiss at the base of Buck’s throat, further down than the scar. His fingers continue their dance down his skin, memorizing tattoo shapes and navigating constellations of freckles. They’d done this a few nights now. The two of them, laid in bed, wasting time and speaking in hushed tones as they wrote the maps for the other’s body. It had started with tattoos, Tommy’s curiosity sated slowly by stories of ink flow and traveling and a tone of sadness that Tommy wasn’t yet ready to push.
Then it furthered, moving to a more carnal discussion on body parts and muscles and what parts could do what.
But tonight, tonight it was scars. Tommy had a fair few of his own and they’d already run the gamut of his. Most were from his time in the army, a few from growing up as a rough kid who didn’t know when to stop, and a small few from his time in the air. It was quick work, most stories not even worth the air from his lungs, but Buck had held onto every word like they were precious treasures. It made embers burn inside of Tommy’s chest.
Then it became Buck’s turn. Tommy should’ve known, right from the start, that it wouldn’t be as simple or nearly as fun. Most of Buck’s stories held laughter or tragedy… He seemed to have spades of darkness surrounding him. And yet, Tommy dove right in.
Moving down, Tommy pressed the pads of his finger into the odd shaped scars near Buck’s pecs. They were small, irregular, and fainter even than the tracheotomy scar. Tommy would hazard the guess that whatever had caused them had been momentary and they’d only scarred from refusal to allow the marks to fade and heal properly. A sound left Buck’s throat, but Tommy didn’t remove his gaze, trying to imagine what caused the speckled scar tissue to appear as he waited for the story.
“Eddie got shot… a few years ago. LA asphalt.” Buck inhaled slow and Tommy nearly opened his mouth to stop him, to apologize, but Buck continued his voice strong. “Not sure who did it, but another firefighter tackled me to the ground. He tried to keep me there, but I was crawling to get to Eddie. Never even realized how hard I was pressed into the ground. By the time everything was settled and Hen had taken me home to clean me up, it took her an hour to pull all the gravel from my skin.”
Tommy pressed fingers against the divots one last time before he swiped across to a gnarly scar on Buck’s upper arm. It was hidden when his arms were down.
“Motorcycle crash when I was about seventeen. Had to get a bunch of stitches because my bone popped the skin.”
Tommy looked up at Buck’s face, unsure if he was hearing correctly. He was. Buck was smiling. “What’s funny about that one?”
Buck shook his head, blunt nails scratching into the hair just above Tommy’s neck, near melting him to the spot and making him forget his questions. “It’s not funny, really. But it was the last accident I had before I left home. It just feels… special. Marks a new chapter in my life.”
Tommy hummed softly, understanding that at least. He’d felt the same when they’d discussed the scar across his knee from surgery, officially ending his career in the army.
“This one?” Tommy whispered, ghosting fingers across the waistband of Buck’s boxers, where a small litter of scars were housed.
Buck hummed softly, thinking, fingers still scraping Tommy’s skull like he knew he’d found the exact buttons to press to control Tommy. “High school was rough.”
Tommy nodded and moved down, finding Buck’s calves. The left one was worse, covered in overlapping scar tissue of varying intensities. Some were angry and red, flame licked in color. Some were whitish, ghostly, haunting. And others were pink as the blush that lit up Buck’s cheeks whenever Tommy called him attractive in some manner. They were in various thicknesses as well, some flat to the skin and others raised up, high above the rest, as if they were towering over the others like dreaded enemies.
Only somewhat gently, Tommy dug the pad of his thumb into the worst of the mutilated mess, earning a hiss from Buck’s teeth. “And these?”
Buck cleared his throat, taking a moment, shifting ever so slightly that his leg fell away from Tommy. It could be an accident, it could’ve been on purpose, it was impossible to tell.
“Most of them are from the firetruck. It just about crushed my leg… The doctor said that it was a genuine miracle they didn’t need to amputate it with how badly it was ruined. There were…. A lot of surgeries, after that. Casts and pins. Got the pins removed. Had some blood clots, as well. It was… a whole mess of things. That’s…that’s where most of the scars come from.”
“And the rest?” Tommy pushed, feeling both awed and sickened by the stories. He remembered seeing the 118 on the news when the truck had pinned Buck down. He remembered pitching in with most of the other houses to send a donation to the firefighter that had been injured. He never did look too closely at the face in agony, though. All it ever did was make his skin itch, unable to help someone hurting so bad. And now… he knew that someone. Intimately. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to watch those tapes or imagine Buck in those scenarios. He’d rather not think of them.
A sort of hiccuping cough left Buck’s throat and Tommy flicked his eyes up to his face, tearing them away from the shimmery skin of his leg.
Buck forced a faint smile, shrugging as if he could shrug off the darkness that suddenly shrouded him. “Tsunami… My leg was healed by then, but I was on blood thinners. My arm healed up pretty well, after everything, but my leg was already so much scar tissue it just…built some new layers. I can pick most of them out, based off the size and shape. Debris isn’t nearly as precise as a surgeon.”
It was a joke that felt flat to both of them and Tommy slid back up and pressed a soft kiss to Buck’s lips, trying to ease the pain he’d caused. Buck did return the kiss, but it felt drawn, more distant than their previous ones.
“Is that all of them?” Tommy asked, voice a tad raspier than it had been.
Buck nodded, eyes sweeping across his mostly nude body before they stuck on his chest. His voice sounded odd, a bit hollow, as if he wasn’t all that present. “Pretty much. A lot of the ones from when I was a kid faded as I grew and aged. The litchenburg figures don’t actually last for most lightning strike survivors. So… this is what’s left.”
Tommy hummed this time, gliding fingertips across Buck’s chest and making him shiver. He returned his gaze to his boyfriend’s eyes. “You’re beautiful anyway.” And he leaned in to kiss Buck, never noticing his left hand slipping from Tommy’s shoulder to press against the freckle-like scars on his collarbone, grounding him to the moment