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“I need to see hands! Empty hands!”
That’s what the sheriff had said. The words had echoed across the dry desert air on a bellow that pulsed across Buck’s temples with a pain that made him cry out as he dropped the cattle prod and lifted his hands to his head. His core strength had given out as the adrenaline started to sizzle away beneath his skin, shifting with every breath stealing lance of white hot pain as his ribs moved unnatural in his chest cavity. Buck started to bow to the ground and he could only drop an arm down to hold himself up right but the sheriff had said hands up and after everything, after surviving everything, Buck wasn’t about to let Maddie find out that he’d been shot by local law enforcement for not complying.
Get up. He had to get up.
Buck couldn’t crash yet. The sound of guns clicking into deadly focus filled the stunned silence and he had to get up. Help was there but he wasn’t safe yet. Eddie was…
Buck hugged an arm around his middle and pushed his feet underneath him. His thigh muscles screamed at the added load of doing all the work of but Buck had broken ribs, abdominal trauma, and possible internal bleeding he was fighting against. All his strength was fading faster than he could blink as dark spots crept into his visions and his knees, his back, his sides were all aching to the point of burning. He could feel where the seatbelt caught him across his torso with every breath he took.
Eddie placed Bonnie’s gun down on the ground with a grunt before he lifted both hands in the air.
“Cover them,” the gruff voice of the sheriff.
Eddie. Eddie, who hadn’t taken his eyes off Buck yet. Eddie, who looked bloody and bruised but alive and staring at him like he was seeing him for the first time.
Eddie was alive.
Eddie was alive!
Buck could’ve cried if he wasn’t so focused on trying to stay upright.
“Sheriff—” Bonnie gasped as if to plead her case and Buck flinched so hard, he nearly passed out.
She was too close. She was too close to Eddie. She was too close to Buck.
She was too close!
Buck let out a ragged breath that tasted like copper on his tongue.
The sheriff stomped across the invisible current pulsing between Buck and Eddie and Eddie jerked his head around, keeping his eyes fixated on Buck like he was afraid to look away.
He was too far away.
Bonnie was too close.
“I take it that’s your friend,” the sheriff said as he patted down Eddie’s torso.
Eddie murmured something back that Buck couldn’t hear. There was too much ringing in his ears to hear Eddie’s voice and Buck was afraid to blink too in case Eddie was nothing more than a desert mirage meant to fill Buck’s lungs with sand.
The apology. The screaming. The protective arm over his chest before everything went black.
Buck’s last memory of Eddie had been screaming. Screaming and fear and then nothing. Nothing but silence.
His heart thumped against his breastbone reminding him to breathe.
Buck tried.
It was getting harder.
Something crawled down his cheek then. Something too close, too intimate, too unknown like a caress of fingers from his temple to his jaw. It whispered across his skin and made him tremble until he couldn’t quite stop as he tried to shiver away the feeling.
Bonnie was staring at him, her eyes locked on him with an intensity that turned Buck’s too hot skin icy cold.
She was too close.
A scream built up into a knot in his throat and Buck tried to swallow it away but it wouldn’t leave. It was choking him in a moment and he couldn’t stop the tears from burning behind his eyes as he found himself caught in her web.
No. Nononono—
Eddie’s eyes widened.
“Buck!” Buck’s name exploded from Eddie’s lips like a shot. He elbowed the sheriff off him and limped forward like he wanted to break out into a run.
Buck’s stomach dropped to his feet as he watched the sheriff snarl at Eddie’s back before his face dropped into shock. He drew his gun back out of his holster and Buck wheezed in a breath to call out a warning that got trapped somewhere in his throat.
“Torres!” The sheriff snapped.
A grunt of pain rained down on Buck like pieces of rubble on his too raw skin before the sound of a body hit dirt and a unforgiving arm wrapped around his windpipe.
“Let her go!” Earl shouted in Buck’s ear, yanking him up too hard and too fast against his chest that Buck couldn’t hold back the whimper of pain as his body begged to be allowed to curl into a ball. Earl bit out a curse and picked Buck up off his feet with surprising strength before he dropped him back down into a better position in front of him. Buck’s knees buckled beneath him but he didn’t go down. Earl didn’t let him. “Let her go now!”
The sharp, unfeeling prongs of the cattle prod pushed against Buck’s throat and stayed there.
Eddie froze. His coffee brown eyes narrowed with anger even as his lip trembled and those bloody, cut up hands Buck had stared at more times than he could count lifted in front of him.
“Buck…” Eddie breathed his name like a prayer.
Earl’s arm tightened around him.
“Earl!” Bonnie gasped. “B-Baby, what are you doin’?”
“She had nothing to do with this!” Earl declared through a weathered voice suddenly brought back to life by sheer desperation. The two prongs on the cattle prod dug into Buck’s throat like two jabbed fingers trying to crush his windpipe. Every swallow, every wince was met with the unyielding pressure of wrongwrongwrong. Buck grimaced as he tried to pull away but Earl simply followed, letting Buck sway onto the edges of his feet before he yanked him back around and dragged him further away. “I followed these boys from the diner. I ran them off the road. I took the boy. It was all me.”
“Earl!” The sheriff’s aim was unwavering and Buck was too on edge, too close to splintering apart because somehow the two guns from the sheriff and the deputy weren’t comforting at all. His heart was hammering against his ribcage, battering every fragmented shards of bone, until he nearly couldn’t breathe. Buck pawed at Earl’s arm but his weak fingers were met with a tight band of coiled, trembling muscles. “Let Buckley go!
Buck choked as the prod went too far into his throat and Earl eased up only enough for Buck to sip a gasp that fueled the tears he was trying to so hard to hold back.
He was so tired! Everything hurt and he didn’t know how much more he could take.
Eddie mouthed his name, holding his hand out as it to steady the impending spiral he knew Buck was heading towards.
He was alive.
Eddie was alive.
Buck hadn’t let himself stop to consider if Eddie was dead but knowing that he was alive and yet being unable to touch him was unbearable. He was alive but he wasn’t safe and Buck couldn’t take much more of this.
“I wanted to give Bonnie our boy back, Sheriff,” Earl said and if Buck wasn’t so close to the edge of what he could handle, he would’ve caught on the break in the man’s voice. “I couldn’t protect our family, I couldn’t save our son. She needed me and I failed her. I did what I had to do for my family.”
“Earl…” Bonnie’s eyes glistened as she lifted her hand to her mouth.
Earl breathed like all the air filled his lungs for the first time.
“I brought our boy back, Bonnie,” Earl said. “Me. You understand? Just me. Only me.”
Bonnie’s eyes flickered to Buck and the caress of cobwebs dusted across his skin again. He cringed, trying to shy away from her gaze, but all it did was send Buck further into Earl.
Bonnie nodded.
Eddie realized what was happening before the others did. His brows cut down into a sharp line over his dark eyes as his lips peeled back into a snarl.
“Don’t listen to her, Sheriff!” Eddie flung out his arm as if to throw away his own crawling cobwebs off his skin. Bonnie spun to Eddie with a gasp, jumping back at the intensity of his anger, and Earl jolted as if to go to her before realizing he was stuck with Buck as his hostage. “She tried to kill–”
“No!” Bonnie bit out before she lifted a trembling fist. “I was—”
“Quiet! Both of you!” The sheriff snapped but it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter because all Earl saw was Eddie towering over Bonnie and Bonnie playing scared.
Buck barely felt the cattle prod leave his throat before the shock was burning into his hip. Electricity scorched through Buck’s muscles like poison, searing into his tendons and pulling at his entire leg until it felt like he was being stretched too thin and so close to splitting. Bright, hot pain ribboned up and down Buck’s side and Buck’s whole vision went white as he screamed. It only lasted a few seconds but Buck wailed as he collapsed back into Earl so that his nightmare was the only thing holding him up. His own tears burned as they fell down his cheeks and carved into his skin like erosion sinking into his body until he was close to withering away. People were shouting and Buck was bawling through the aftershocks and there was nothing anyone could do except watch as Buck fell apart.
“Do I need to repeat myself!” Earl bellowed as he held the cattle prod out and let a shock snap in the air.
Buck keened as he tried to get away, flinching as the words tumbled out of his mouth. “N-no… Please no! I-I can’t! I can’t! Ed-die… Eddie please! Please!”
Eddie looked like Buck slapped him.
Humiliation should’ve burned into Buck’s cheeks too but he didn’t care. He didn’t care! He just wanted to go home! He just wanted everything to stop hurting!
Earl swallowed before he shoved the cattle prod back against Buck’s throat.
“Bonnie, honey… you go up on into the house. You lock yourself in there.” Bonnie took a step back and stopped, looking to Earl and then the others as if to see if any of them would stop her. Earl hoisted Buck up as if he was a trophy ready to be hung. It made every ache and pain in Buck’s body flare into agony. “Go ahead. They won’t follow you.”
But Bonnie didn’t move. Her eyes cut to Buck again and he wanted to scream! He wanted her to stop looking at him! He wanted them to just let him go!
“What about Derek?” Bonnie asked and Buck felt the way Earl’s shoulders dropped.
“He’ll…” Earl’s voice gave way to his own grief before he swallowed again. “He’ll be up to the house in a few minutes, hon.”
Bonnie beamed at Earl. “Okay. You two don’t take long now.”
Bonnie took another step and the sheriff and his deputy widened their stance. “Bonnie—”
Eddie snatched Bonnie before she could get any further. He held her at an arm’s length away, one bruising hand wrapped around her thin arm while another was clamped down tight on the back of her neck. Bonnie cried out as her nails clawed at Eddie’s arm but Eddie kept her pinned like a rapid animal.
“Diaz!”
“Hey!”
“Get your hands off her!” Earl lurched forward, curling over Buck as he seethed at Eddie, and the cattle prod dug under his jaw until Buck could only whine, high and thin, from between his teeth.
The sheriff’s gun shifted to Eddie then back to Earl before sliding over to Eddie.
“Diaz! Let her go now!”
“We are done!” Eddie bit out. “Let Buck go now!”
Buck couldn’t feel his fingers.
“You want to test me, son?” Earl demanded. He jabbed Buck’s head up until the cattle prod was directly under his chin. “We can listen to him scream all night if—”
“Earl! Don’t hurt him!” Bonnie cut in. Buck huffed out a whimper at the sound of her voice. “He promised us! He’d–”
An electric shock to the head could cause blindness, seizures, TBIs. It could kill him if the current interrupted the blood flow from his carotid just right.
“Both of you! Earl, lower your weapon and—”
Buck couldn’t go back. He couldn’t go back. Please don’t let him go back.
“That’s how this work, right? You have my heart so now I have yours. Let him go before I put her in the ground!”
Buck’s breath hitched somewhere in the too big space of his chest cavity.
“I said let her go!”
His ears were ringing.
“Diaz! Let us handle this!”
The numbness was crawling up Buck’s spine before he could catch it.
“No, we are done with whatever sick messed up game these people have going on here! Let Buck go!”
Nausea clamped down tight on the back of his throat as the world went grey.
“Let her go!” Earl’s voice sounded so old as his bellow wavered.
“Earl!”
Buck’s feet tripped over themselves as Earl started to drag him backward towards the silo.
“It was me! She had nothing to do with this!”
He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t go back!
“Earl!” The sheriff barked, swinging his gun back onto Buck and Earl. “Don’t move! Stop moving!”
Bonnie yelped as Eddie shook her. “Let him go!”
“Don’t make me–” The cattle prod lifted away from Buck’s skin but Earl still pulled the trigger for the electricity to snap in the air like the threat that it was. Buck sobbed as he tried to jerk away but he couldn’t break free.
“Don’t!” Eddie screamed and Buck couldn’t breathe.
The world went green then black in a terrifying shift across his vision. It was like the car accident all over again. One minute he could see Eddie, hear Eddie screaming, and the next it was darkness and the world was twisting upside down.
“Buck!”
Buck’s lungs tightened in his chest before he was falling.
He didn’t pass out. Not completely. But it was a near thing as his pulse points punched beneath his skin and his entire body felt like it was floating away through his nose. His legs gave out from under him as his body shifted into a deadweight that Earl wasn’t prepared for. He tried to hold Buck up but the pain was a distant throb that sparked across the blackness of Buck’s vision.
The prongs on the cattle prod dug into his jaw as he slipped free from Earl’s hold.
The ground was unfeeling in the way it caught his body.
Eddie’s shout was not. The words were too garbled through the cotton stuffed in Buck’s ears to decipher but the feelings were not.
Panic.
Eddie didn’t panic.
But he was then. It was sharp and crisp like a too cold breeze in the air that sent a shiver down your spine and left feeling unmoored.
Time was moving too slow and too fast all the same time. Buck was caught in amber— it’s amber not ember, you idiot— and it was hardening around him too fast for him to break free.
A crack shattered through the chaos and the ricochet of the gunshot ribboned through Buck on an aftershock he couldn’t catch his breath to crawl away from.
His pulse roared in his ears as Buck rolled onto his back and the black washed into green and then grey again. Colors swam to the surface like smudged, hazy watercolors blending together. Gentle, warm fingers swept over his brow and cupped his cheek.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. You’re okay.” Buck blinked as he tried to clear his vision. His heart twisted into a sharp spin before hammering against his ribs while his blood skittered through his veins like it was crawling up his arms. Static adrenaline fizzled out and fear, raw, unfiltered fear seized Buck’s throat and threatened to strangle him. “Mama’s here. You’re okay.”
The sharp lines of clarity crashed into focus of the other half of Buck’s nightmare as Bonnie smiled down on him.
Buck’s breath stuttered again as he flinched while the world collapsed around him. No! No, it couldn’t all—
“Get away from him!”
Bonnie yelped as Eddie ripped her off of Buck with an unkind grip on her soup soiled shirt. She snarled and Buck could only watch as desperate hatred washed over her expression before she launched herself at Eddie with her nails bent into claws. The sheriff grabbed her before she could reach them at the same time that Eddie scooped Buck up and pulled him back into his arms, curling around him to protect him from her attack with his own body like an unmoveable shield.
Bonnie screeched as she was forced onto her stomach, writhing and kicking into the dirt, while the sheriff pulled her arms behind her back and cuffed her.
“You can’t take him! You can’t!”
Buck couldn’t stop shaking as he tried to shy away from the cobwebs of her stare.
“Look at me, Buck,” Eddie said, his warm, calloused palm curling against Buck’s cheek. His touch burned into Buck’s skin like a brand, searing away the too soft phantom of Bonnie’s. It was real and alive and familiar yet new and Buck was too raw, too thin to do anything but jolt at the feeling of it. Pain lanced through him as all his muscles seized and Bonnie sobbed out his name— no. Not his name. Derek.— as the sheriff hoisted her onto her feet.
The sound that fell from Buck’s lips hiccupped out of him on a whimper and the pressure behind his eyes built all over again.
“Buck? Buck!” Eddie pushed into Buck’s vision like an eclipse, shadowing Buck completely until only Eddie was centered in his focus. “Just look at me, Buck. Look at me. Okay?”
A gentle thumb swept underneath Buck’s eye, wiping away a tear he couldn’t stop and Buck gave his lungs permission to breathe.
Eddie.
Eddie was alive.
Eddie was real.
Eddie was there.
Fingers pressed underneath his chin right against his fluttering pulse point as Eddie gave him permission to latch onto him in the duststorm around them.
“You’re going to be okay,” Eddie said like a promise.
Buck groaned as oxygen filled in his broken chest.
“You’re going to be okay,” Eddie said again, the words quieter than before like it was just the two of them.
Another tear slipped past Buck’s lashes before he could catch it and Eddie swept that one away too.
“You’re going to be okay,” Eddie said for a third time, more to himself like he couldn’t quite believe it either; like he couldn’t quite believe that Buck was alive, Buck was real, Buck was there.
But he was.
They both were.
“Eddie…” Buck breathed because he hadn’t let himself consider but he hadn’t known either.
Eddie was alive.
Eddie was real.
Eddie was there.
“You look like hell,” Buck said because if Eddie felt as bad as Buck did then he couldn’t even begin to imagine what he must have been going through.
Eddie exhaled and Buck watched as a flicker of emotions danced across Eddie’s face before he could catch them.
Something like…
Eddie wheezed out another breath as his lips stretched into a smile. “You should see the other guy.”
You have my heart so now I have yours.
It was nothing.
It meant nothing.
Right?
Buck laughed. “I am the other guy.”
Another gentle thumb beneath his eye before it moved up to press a soothing circle into his temple.
It didn’t mean anything, right?
“Yeah,” Eddie breathed, his face softening. “I know.”
He was okay.
Eddie was okay.
Okay.