#forgive the artistic license with ticket stubs

[leashybebes]

more of this, which i'm calling exes with detriments until i find the right heartbreak song to nab a lyric from (what shh i know myself)

Buck tries, is the thing. He really, really tries. Well, first he gets drunk on Eddie's couch and spends the night staring at the ceiling.

Then he tries. Because he can't get Tommy's face out of his head, the quiet devastation in his eyes as he left the loft, left Buck behind. So he calls. Tommy doesn't answer, but then Buck didn't really expect him to. He's kind of proud of the message he leaves - he doesn't beg, but he lays it out nice and clear: we had a good thing going, we care about each other, you said something dumb and hurtful but this isn't the way you end a six month relationship. Talk to me, please.

He doesn't hear anything back, and his next message a week later is a little less composed: seriously, Tommy? Don't you think you owe me a single conversation where you haven't just fucking blindsided me? Okay, okay, maybe moving in together was too fast, and I-I-I spooked you, or whatever, but Tommy, please. We need to talk about this.

Still nothing.

He enlists a reluctant Eddie, who he knows is doing his best to be Switzerland, but who he also knows is loyal to him first and foremost. Eddie reports back with a shrug.

"He won't talk about it with me."

"God, what the - okay. Okay, so how does he seem?"

"I don't know, Buck. He seems like Tommy. A little quiet, a little tired."

Buck's frozen for a moment because what the fuck? He's coming apart at the seams and Tommy is a little quiet?

"Okay," he says. "Okay. Thanks for trying."

So Buck blows the lid off things, and goes to Tommy's house. There's no truck in the driveway, no answer when he knocks. He knows Tommy's not on shift though, so he sits in the Jeep outside the house for an hour and thirty seven minutes. That's how long it takes for him to hear the growl of Tommy's truck. He breathes out slowly. Okay. He's doing this. He's going to make Tommy hear him out, he's not going to let their last memories of each other be - be that fucking mess.

Except Tommy - Buck can hardly believe it - Tommy sees the Jeep. He sees Buck. They make fucking eye contact. And then Tommy just…keeps driving. Right past Buck, right past his own house, turns left at the end of his own street and disappears.

For a second there's nothing but roaring static in Buck's ears. And then, you fucking asshole, he thinks. You cowardly fucking asshole.

Buck drives home and he's so mad. He's so fucking mad. He grabs everything Tommy had left here over the months, every gift Tommy had given him, every photo of the two of them, the faded Dodgers shirt he's been wearing to sleep in because it still just about smells like Tommy, the fucking Lakers tickets. He shoves in the book on the history of the helicopter that he'd read before the tour of Harbor so he'd have something to talk about with the guy he was so inexplicably obsessed with without knowing why, the receipt from the first time Tommy actually let him buy the beers, the ticket stubs from the shows they went to at the Bowl, all the little pieces of them that Buck didn't think twice about hanging onto because he thought they meant something, he thought they were the start of something.

He excises Tommy from every inch of the loft and doesn't give himself time to think about how he'll regret this when he calms down, just throws himself into the Jeep, the box onto the passenger seat, and drives back towards Tommy's. He's going to leave the box on the doorstep and hope it gets stolen or trashed by raccoons or there's a flash flood and Tommy comes home to a shredded cardboard box and some waterlogged memories.