#oops sorry

[skeptiql]

You get used to the guilt when you're finally important, he'll say

[birdifulhuman]

I loved @somerandomdudelmao rottmnt apocalypse series, and then learned recently they have their own original webcomic called Marble Sky and I've come to love Ward so much. I kiss him so much. he's silly and I hope nothing bad happens to him ahaha

[lllostgirlll]

“stop liking my posts! this isn’t instagram! re-blog them!!!”

me using the like button as a form of bookmarking: 👁️👄👁️

[operationslipperypuppet]

balnor, the one of this timeline, the one who is a green knight, keeps dreaming of people he does not know.

his brain constructs adventures for him, ones he never knew, ones he never could have possibly had. he’s fighting alongside a green knight, one who is tragically young, one whose armor doesn’t quite match the sigil on his own shield, but who is eerily familiar.

at first he thinks he’s seeing his sons face in these dreams, on that knight. the love he feels for his son is certainly in those dreams. and they began shortly after robert started on the path toward green knighthood, the path that led his boy to become the young stag.

he tries not to dwell on these dreams, he’s from the feywild, he knows that dreams and wishes are among the easiest of traps. but he can’t help but wonder how his mind created those three people, with their laughs filling his sleep like music and their power almost frightening.

one day he sees the friend of his son, gildry kindleaf, and he’s taken aback by familiarity of the voice and face of the young knight. he shrugs it off, but his dream that night features a fourth person, with bright red hair and younger than anyone with such magic should be.

but one thing about those dreams he has, the ones that feel like memories, that are offered to him by time and magic and perhaps a meddlesome wizard from planes away, is that they’re happy. they’re always happy. they’re full of adventure and triumph and love.

because this balnor? the one of this timeline, the one who became a green knight? doesn’t have bad dreams.

[stylespresleyhearted]

a clegan au where gale and john met in college after john flew to visit his distant father who was neighbor’s with the cleven’s and he ends up staying out there because he falls in love with gale but gale’s dad is a pos addict and they’re both relieved when he dies a few years later. john and gale who get married and create a life, their own home, and adopt a little girl together. gale who carries all his father’s demons, is struggling mentally at a time where he is supposed to be happiest (he has an amazing husband and healthy, beautiful daughter) gale who begins gambling and using and as things get worse he decides to take off in the middle of the night; refusing to drag john and their daughter down with him. But sometimes gale can’t resist calling home to hear john’s voice, asks to speak to their daughter even though john never allows it for good reason. Gale who misses and loves them so much and after a few months away calls and vows that this is it, he’s going to get clean and do better. And he does, slowly gaining John’s trust back until finally he’s allowed to see their little girl again. Until finally he’s able to move back into their home with them even though John makes him sleep on the living room couch. Until Gale starts wooing John again, taking him on dates, holding his hand, etc making him fall in love all over again (not that bucky ever stopped he’s just scared of being left again)

[greenygay]

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

good omens poem two. (a nursery rhyme, because you begged me to think of the children and this is obviously what you meant.)

Crowley Crowley little star Fifteen minutes broke your heart You Fell and then you fell for Fell And so you kissed Aziraphale Crowley Crowley little star Driving alone in your car.

[lolobizarreadventuresshatpost]

Rock paper scissor

[penfondeler]

He did an oopsie please forgive my boy 🙏

[junebluues]

i really like how alien stage has characters we can relate to in some way shape or form. i think with that it makes it easier to latch onto them and be more distressed when they get killed off. and i also really love how most of this is an up to interpretation thing but everyone mostly believes the same exact things about the characters you know. its a lot of theorizing and analysis and i really like that in a series because it makes me think. alien stage means so much to me because of the state i was in when i found it. it really helped me through a lot in my life. i grew so attached to the creators and the characters that i'm so sure i won't really ever stop being a fan.

i remember watching the very first trailer and being so excited when i saw it was an entirely new series from vivinos with different characters i knew i would love. before round 1 dropped i was basically at an all-time low because i had been dropped by someone i cared so much about even if she was a horrible person to me and as weird as it sounds i found comfort in mizi's situation in a way. i knew it wasn't the same but watching someone you've known since childhood go away in front of you like that is heartbreaking. and i understood all of it.

when round 2 was released i understood till too. to love someone only to have them love someone else, to put all your time into making them notice you just to watch as they fell for someone else. i don't know why he became my favorite character but he kind of just did? something about him intrigued me. but ivan was an entirely different story. i saw more of myself in him than i ever did in till. when i first watched his round, i cried. i knew how he felt and it really hurt me. after that i stopped watching for a while but he never left my head. when i learned more about how ivan and sua were similar, i found myself relating to both of them on certain levels.

i think something about seeing myself in all the alien stage characters even in minimal ways helped me heal. it somehow helped me realize that yes, my trauma is actually trauma, and yes other people can feel how i feel towards love and affection. alien stage has been one of the biggest comforts to me since its release. it made me feel seen. it helped me feel like i wasn't alone. i really believe it showed me things about myself i wouldn't have realized otherwise. i would absolutely love it if i could go in extreme detail on how i relate to all the characters but this might get way longer than it already is and more odd... oops

[televisionlassie]

The reason I find Jason to be boring is because people are so scared to hold him accountable. You can’t claim to like anti-hero’s or claim that Jason is an anti-hero if you’re going to excuse everything that makes him an ANTI-hero.

There is no doubt in my mind that I would like him a whole lot more if people accepted him as a character that does bad things. I understand he has trauma and his own reasons but trauma is only an explanation, not an excuse. While I like consuming content of the batfamily being a family, when it’s not based in pretty much an entirely different universe it doesn’t make any sense.

Pretty much all of the batfamily (except Bruce because he’s can actually be pretty awful to Jason) has reasons to hate or be mad at Jason.

Jason went out in a Nightwing outfit and killed people to try and ruin Dick’s image, and all the shit he’s done to Dicks other siblings. You really think Dick would just be cool with the fact that Jason beat one of his little brothers and shot another one?

Cass has a moral code probably stricter than Batman, she would HATE Jason for killing. And again same thing with the siblings.

Tim I just don’t understand why he would ever forgive Jason. Jason beat the absolute shit out of him, plus you gotta admit that guy is too much of a cocky bitch to ever just forgive and forget

Unfortunately I can’t say much about Steph as I can’t think of a single time where they actually interacted in canon. But I don’t think she would be too fond of the guy who beat up her best friend and shot Damian.

Duke I think has had one personal interaction with Jason and while it wasn’t too friendly I don’t think he would hold that big of a grudge.

Damian I think would be more understanding but it’s hard to forget how he was shot by Jason and had to have his SPINE replaced because of Jason.

I’m not trying to hate on Jason, he honestly makes me sad because he is filled with wasted potential. It’s not even that they never make him do bad things, it’s that there’s never any lasting consequences.

Many times when I see people who hate on Jason they bring in the death penalty argument, which as much as I hate and believe is stupid, still has some tiny bit of validity. The reason it sucks is because the world of DC comics is not even remotely similar to our real life. Criminals in real life don’t have plant powers or convoluted plans to distribute their weird ass poisonous gas. If they did, they wouldn’t even spend a night in jail because they would be shot on the spot. If Jason did just kill these types of criminals, then he would not be considered an anti-hero, just a hero. But that’s the thing, Jason doesn’t just kill the Joker, or the Riddler or any of the Rogues, he kills the type of criminals we would see in our real lives. THAT is where the validity lies in that argument, it’s not just that Jason is killing supervillains but that he is killing the type of people that we are fighting against the death penalty for. Obviously this argument means nothing to you if you are pro-death penalty but I just wanted to explain.

Jason would be so interesting if he was treated like the character he is supposed to be. A young traumatized person who does bad things for the right reasons but still has to face the consequences.

And if people really want to give him a character arc where he eventually stops killing, it shouldn’t just be he gets tried of killing or tired of arguing with Bruce, but that he sees how his way of crime-fighting can do more harm than good.

It’s just so frustrating to see how people just act accept anti-heros for what they are. It like people are so scared of making or admitting a character to be immoral, that they just erase the consequences of their bad actions to make it excusable.

Anyways, thank you for coming to my rant, Jason Todd fans this wasn’t me hating on your babygirl, I’m trying to help you.

[baggy-holmes]

you sleepin’ on the twin size bed in my childhood room with me?

[arc-archernar]

Milgram: Deep Cover Thoughts (Spoilers)

(some of the post written a few hours after, mainly bc deep cover released in between 2 of my mocks)

(all of this is personal opinion and interpretations, take this with a grain of salt or pepper or your choice of powdery food flavouring)

AHJDHR JUST FINISHED WATCHING DEEP COVER

its so good i thoroughly applaud the animators for their work. the colours and the design and ajdhkdhrr

i love staring at how they draw eyes like wtf??? that animation budget must be really high like the transformation and the BLOOD-

okay onto more lore-y thoughts:

(this part is me rambling at my screen trying to form a coherent theory of what happened, there are a lot of random stray thoughts here)

kotoko seems to be the 'punish > solve the systemic issue' type of person. we see that in the way she interacts with the brown-haired girl that she saved. when the girl grabbed onto her we see her conflicted eyes. to me it seemed partially out of desperation??(could just be the adrenaline high of her murder, we also see her sweaty so theres that. murder takes a lot of energy guys), or like she doesnt know what to do with herself. like she wants to push the girl away but felt like she could not (maybe knew that if she pushed her away she might harm the girl even more psychologically...). after that we see her barely acknowledging the brown haired girl in the park, seemingly more interested in the article on her phone than the girl she saved...

also, i found a post where someone translated the article!

to paraphrase, the son of a newspaper company's CEO was found dead (shocker, probably Kotoko's victim). The article goes on to talk about how a female university student had killed him in self defence due to getting into a scuffle as she caught him kidnapping a minor (so. definitely kotoko. probably). The minor agreed with the student that it was self-defence. The company's CEO then came out with an independent report all the injuries that they found on his son, which indicated that more than proportional violence was used, and then announced that the victim retracted her statement. The article then mentions all the rumors that exist about this murder...

interesting.

then that scene. that face of absolute fear on the girl and the uncaring apathy on kotoko's face. we clearly see the young girl trying to wear the cap, we see her basically modelling herself after kotoko. who can blame her? that's the person who saved her from... a life of suffering, probably. So to see kotoko ignoring her like that would absolutely destroy her.

so is kotoko just that heartless? no. or at least, i don't think so. remember the article? 'the victim retracted her statement'. this can happen for many reasons, such as being coerced, forced, bribed, etc. no matter why she did it, this would cast a lot of questions to the credibility of this case. maybe kotoko was legit mad? like 'if you don't want to be saved, i can't save you'. or she thought distancing herself from the victim would be the best thing to do, cuz otherwise people would argue that the two of them conspired together to murder a person and pass it off as a 'heroic deed'. by distancing herself, more of the 'blame' if it ever comes would fall on her. maybe she thought this was the best course of action in this scenario, so at least the girl would seem less 'co-conspirator' and more 'young child who was coerced'. either way, even without counting kotoko's bloodlust in the background, this is a fucked situation.

and yes, the prison seems to be composed of 5 direct and 5 indirect killers, kotoko being an indirect one. we know that she has actually, physically killed a person. the fact that she's in the prison for an indirect murder means that she didn't even consider that guy as a person (lol) or a being worth caring about.

so my running theory of what happened is:

(this part is just consolidation of the theory, above is rambling)

kotoko went after a the newspaper CEO's son, and found him kidnapping the child in that warehouse. then, she beat him up and possibly killed him with excessive force (i.e. the force she used was 'not proportional to the violence about to be inflicted onto her' or smth, im paraphrasing here but that's the gist. and i really mean 'possibly', ill elaborate later). after that, she reported the case to... probably the police? and claimed in court that she found CEO's son kidnapping a minor, then the interaction got violent and she had no choice but to kill him, with the help of the child's testimony. after that, she was released with no charges. (assuming that when the translation says 'the verdict...' it means that the trial has concluded, the judging body(japan doesn't have a jury. for serious criminal cases, they have a 'saiban-in'. look it up for more info abt this) has deemed kotoko free of all charges or smth, and now she walks free.)

but after THAT, the CEO got an independent investigation that reported those injuries, and they believe them to be inflicted not in self-defence but with intent to harm. this is where the idea that she might have killed him to sate her bloodlust comes from. while i do agree on some aspects, remember this is an 'independent investigation', and this is a CEO whose money speaks. also, what you're telling me is that the forensics who looked into the body did not believe the wounds were due to 'excessive force' (bc if that was the case the trial should have gone very very differently), but the group that you independently hired did. i mean, a little bit suspect about the level of validity of that claim, don't you think? (this is assuming that everyone in the trial was competent at their job and no foul play was present. if not, ignore this section.)

the CEO also claimed that the child retracted her testimony (that would be perjury, since that would be admitting that you were lying to the court. japan seems to have laws against perjury, but im not very sure how enforceable it really is, or if people actually get charged with it.). this casts doubt on the verdict and both kotoko's and the victim's credibility in the eyes of the public, you know how the public is. and in a case like this, where the one trying to get someone in jail is someone with money and influence to do private investigations and press conferences, the impact it can have on the life of the other party can get insanely negative. they could have their lives absolutely ruined by this, being publicly shamed this way, while the CEO walks away looking like a caring father 'just looking to avenge his child'. i think the following are plausible:

1st case scenario: im not a legal expert, so REALLY don't blindly believe this, but if this means the child is legally retracting her testimony that she made in front of the court, during a trial, this would require the child to reach out to the law enforcement entities to get it passed, and that might warrant a re-trial of the original trial. in other words, in this scenario kotoko is seriously fucked (probably). so kotoko avoiding the child and/or being pissed is.. personally i think there are better ways to handle this situation, one of which is get yourself a damn good lawyer and hope for the best, kotoko- but not unordinary.

2nd case scenario(more likely in my personal opinion): of course, there's always the case that all this is made up. in which case, kotoko would still have a reason to avoid the child, in that it's the most logical course of action to avoid unnecessary harm to the child. if she acts friendly to the child in public, there's a chance that the child will be seen as a co-conspirator to the 'murder'. also since its a guy with money who's speaking out, it's likely that public opinion would wholy turn against her. and the child, who helped defend kotoko in court, well... even more harrassment, probably. death threats, likely.

in both cases, her and the child would probably receive harrassment, which i think is a possible motive for the child getting killed. (i'm assuming that the child was the one who kotoko feels like she's killed, because she was put in milgram for indirect murder to complete the 5:5 ratio)

And then she becomes a furry.

yay? well, i think the wolf is supposed to be a symbolic of the monster that she now sees herself as. remember, if the version of events i described above is true then she probably faced a lot of social isolation. she has to distance herself from the victim that she helped and got close(? somewhat attached? like cmon she may be distracted with the very important life changing article but she doesn't outright ignore her, and that the chlid showed up to meet her implies that the child had an expectation that kotoko would be accepting of her company... right?) to, and many of her peers probably isolated themselves away from her (being a victim of a crime in japan can often be just as hard on a person's social life as being the perpetrator of said crime, so im not surprised if she was socially isolated by others AND herself). the lack of social support is the start of a mental downward spiral.

also, she keeps referring to herself as a tool and that she needs a next 'target'. so somewhere along the line, she stopped viewing herself as a person but merely a tool to enact justice with. because that's all she is now, she's caused the death of someone she swore to protect, the emotions are too overwhelming, please just give me something - anything - else to focus on; she's a monster, but if that's the case then so be it, she will be a monster with a purpose: eliminating the dregs of society, because that way at least she's of some use to society, otherwise-

otherwise, she's just a regular old monster.

[slytherinslut0]

your writing makes me want to lick my screen in a good way

lick on me next

[buddiedreams]

loml | 3.9k, G, pre-buddie

Eddie is leaving him. Buck handles it... exactly as expected.

read here on AO3

Eddie joins him on the couch a minute later with two mugs of coffee, passing one off to Buck as he takes the iPad back. “You sure you want to stay for this? I promise, I am capable of picking a place to live.” Eddie sips his coffee, waving a hand around. “I picked this place.”

Buck scoffs. “Don’t you lie to me, Eddie. I know Pepa found this place. I’m telling her you took credit!”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t get a chance to respond before his iPad is alerting him to the meeting time on Zoom. Buck shuffles out of frame, clutching the warm mug like a lifeline. Eddie and the voice of the realtor fade into the background as he lets himself just kind of… float.

Disassociating, Dr. Copeland had told him a while ago. He hadn’t ever realized that’s what it was, but as soon as she’d put a label on it, it made sense. It was particularly bad after his leg injury, when he’d lay in the hospital bed for hours and hours floating on pain medication and lose track of time, and even who had been there to visit. No one had ever brought it up to him, although he suspected they all assumed it was fogginess from the pain and the medications. It got worse once he was home in the loft, barred from being back at the 118, with nothing to do but wallow in his apartment all day. He’s not even sure how much time he lost just lying in bed then staring at his ceiling and feeling absolutely nothing.

It’s been a while, though. He’s been in a good place, or so he thought. And he wants to be happy for Eddie, of course he does. Chris deserves the world and it breaks Buck’s heart to be missing out on so much of his life like he has been for the last three months, so he can understand Eddie wanting to do something about it. But moving to El Paso? That feels rash, even for Buck, who has a clear and discernible pattern of not thinking things through. 

Although, it’s not like Eddie really has a reason to stay here, anyway. Especially not with Chris putting down roots in El Paso, making friends and settling in for virtual schooling, which Eddie had spent hours on the phone working out with Durand, since he didn’t want Chris to have to adjust to an entire new school the year before high school. The thought of Chris and Eddie staying in EL Paso makes Buck want to throw up, which he absolutely will not be doing in Eddie’s living room, while Eddie is on a call with a realtor. Except… He blinks, refocuses, and realizes that Eddie is silent beside him, and the iPad screen is dark.

“Where’d you go?” Eddie asks, softly, like he’s worried he’ll spook Buck. Shit. Eddie wasn’t supposed to see him like that. 

He shoots Eddie what he hopes is a reassuring smile and shakes his head. “Just zoned out. You get everything sorted out?”

Eddie frowns. “Uh, yeah, I guess you could say that? She suggested virtual tours, which… I don’t know. I kind of need to be in a space to visualize it, so I think I’m going to narrow it down to a few choices and take a trip down.”

Buck nods, just once, and sets his now cold coffee on the table in front of them. “Just let me know when you need a ride to the airport, I can drop you off.” He clears his throat, wiping his palms on his pants as he stands. “I-I should go. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

He’s sure Eddie says something as he’s all but fleeing from the Diaz house, but he can’t slow his brain down enough to even register any words. He’s not even sure he’d want to hear whatever Eddie had said, anyway.

He spends the night deep-cleaning his kitchen, since he has nothing better to do, and resolutely ignoring his phone. He doesn’t even think about checking it until just before he gets into bed, and his chest hurts when he realizes that Eddie hasn’t so much as texted him. Except it shouldn’t hurt, or at least, he should be used to the hurt by now. Everyone important in his life has left him, so why would Eddie and Chris be any different? There’s something fundamentally wrong with him, and he’d thought for the longest time that maybe Chris and Eddie had seen it and were okay with it, but apparently it just took a few years for them to figure it out. Hell, his own sister hadn’t even stayed, why would Eddie and Chris?

Logically, he knows Chris didn’t leave him, specifically. He knows Chris is taking after his father and running from his problems instead of talking them out. It seems to be a Diaz trait, at least from what Buck has been able to piece together over the years. Doesn’t make it hurt any less, though, and it sure as hell doesn’t make him miss Chris any less. It’s like a gaping wound in his chest that he can never quite stem the bleeding from, hands slick and sticky as he tries to hold himself together while half of his home is in Texas. 

Bitterly, he thinks that at least both parts of his home will be together soon.

Their next shift is nothing special. Eddie doesn’t bring up the move to the team, so Buck keeps his mouth closed and his words carefully trimmed so he doesn’t accidentally drop that bomb in the middle of their shift. He’s had enough bombs at work to last a lifetime, although this one might hurt worse than the actual bomb. 

Eddie asks him to come over after work, and Buck is weak, okay? He’s fucking weak for Eddie’s stupid brown cow eyes and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it, so his dumb mouth is saying yes before he can come up with a reasonable excuse. Although, if he’s got a finite amount of time left to hang out with Eddie, he should probably learn how to stuff his feelings down far enough to enjoy their remaining time.

“What’s going on with you, man? You keep zoning out, I hardly ever seen you do that. Are you okay?”

Buck blinks down at the now warm beer in his hands, frowning. He hadn’t even realized he was disassociating this time, much less doing it so obviously in front of Eddie again. “Uh, y-yeah. I’m fine. Just, y’know. Haven’t been sleeping well. I’m sorry. What did I miss?”

Eddie scrutinizes his face, and it takes everything to keep from squirming under his best friend’s critical gaze. “Talk to me. Please?”

Buck can’t help the scoff that tears past his lips, but he does regret it immediately. But hey, everyone’s got a breaking point, right? “Why? We haven’t talked about this giant pink elephant the entire time, why would we start talking about it now?”

Eddie frowns. “Chris? What is there to talk about?”

Buck stares. He can’t help it. He knows that Eddie hates talking about his feelings, and that suggesting therapy would go over about as well as a punch to the face, but… he can’t really be this blind, can he? “What isn’t there to talk about? Your teenage son fled to a different state because he didn’t want to talk about his problems. And I don’t know which part of that is worse: the fact that you’re moving back to a place you hate instead of talking to him about your issues, or the fact that you let him in the first place.”

Eddie has the audacity to roll his eyes, and Buck can feel a hysterical laugh caught in his chest. What the fuck is happening? “I don’t hate El Paso.”

Buck sets the bottle on the coffee table harder than he means to, flinching at the loud noise in such a quiet room. “That’s what you got out of what I said? And you know what, that’s besides the point anyway. You moved here to get away from El Paso!”

Eddie shrugs. “What else am I supposed to do?”

The hysterical laugh rips its way out of Buck’s mouth and he’s up pacing before he even consciously thinks about moving. “Instead of buying a plane ticket to move to fucking Texas, buy a plane ticket to bring your teenage son home and show him that running away from your problems doesn’t solve anything! God, Eddie, you’re so worried about not doing anything wrong with him that you’re ignoring your job as a parent. You’re supposed to teach him that this won’t get him anywhere, that he should be confronting his issues and talking them out, even if it’s not with a therapist, because letting yourself stew in bad thoughts is a recipe for disaster. You and I know that better than anyone. Be a fucking parent, Eddie. Be his parent.”

When Buck finally looks at him, Eddie’s arms are crossed tight over his chest and he’s staring at Buck with perhaps the coldest expression on his face that Buck has ever seen. Buck realizes startlingly quickly that he’s overstepped. Massively overstepped. He’s fifteen miles past the line and his feet are cemented to the ground, because there’s no way to shove his outburst back into his chest and keep it there, like the caged animal that it should have remained. 

“You’re out of line, Buck. He’s my child, and I will parent him as I see fit. You don’t get to tell me that I’m shirking my responsibilities, you’re not a parent. You don’t know what it takes.”

And if that’s not a slap to the face, Buck’s not sure what is. Because as wrong as it feels, Eddie’s right. He isn’t Christopher’s parent, and he hopes to whatever higher power there is that he never will be. He’s the backup plan. He’d known that, sure, but he’d let himself get too comfortable, because Chris feels like his kid. He feels like he’s been ripped in half this whole time because his son is in another state and hasn’t so much as texted him in the three months he’s been gone, despite Buck’s attempts to reach out. But Christopher isn’t his son. He’s Eddie’s son, and while Buck might think Eddie’s approaching it wrong, he has no concept of how a parent should treat their child. He’s had the shittiest role models, on top of the mountain of abandonment issues he’s got.

And that’s the kicker, isn’t it? Christopher isn’t his son, he never was, and Buck was always going to end up alone. Chris and Eddie were always going to move on and maybe be a family with someone Eddie fell in love with, or just by themselves. Buck was just filling a space for whoever came next. Story of his fucking life, turns out. Just filling a space destined for someone else. He filled the role of brother for Maddie, of son for his parents when he couldn’t save the son they wanted. He spent his early twenties being a stand-in for all the people he slept with, who probably went on to fall in love and move on with their lives. And here he is, past thirty and still stuck in the same spot he’d been at 26. Tired, depressed, and destined to be alone.

As Buck’s world comes crashing down around him, he sucks in a shaky breath and grabs his jacket from the back of the couch. He doesn’t bother looking at Eddie as he leaves. He can barely stop the clawing in his throat from spilling out in a sob, because he feels like he’s nineteen again, fleeing in a hand-me-down Jeep without anyone in the world to care about him. Except this time, he flees back to a loft that feels as hollow as his chest. 

He can’t figure out what to do to keep himself busy and, quite frankly, all he wants to do is curl up in his too-big bed and cry. It’s not like he has anything better to do, anyway, so he changes into his comfiest pair of sweats and an old, ratty LAFD tshirt and crawls under the blankets. 

He’s not sure how long he’s laying there before he hears keys jingling in the startling silence of his apartment. He doesn’t even know who he assumes it should be. Maddie has no reason to be here, Bobby even less of a reason since they don’t have a shift until tomorrow, and they didn’t have plans. It’s sure as hell not going to be Eddie, not after what he’d said before leaving Eddie’s place. He burrows further under the blankets until just the top of his head is poking out, and listens for any clue as to who it is. The footsteps on the stairs sound heavy, so that rules out Maddie. 

��Buck?”

Buck nearly flinches as he realizes it’s Eddie’s voice. He really doesn’t want to have this conversation right now, he really doesn’t think he can handle it. He knows how far he overstepped, he knows Christopher isn’t his, and he can make that clear, but not right now. Not when it still feels like there’s a knife digging into his chest, stuck right where his heart is supposed to be. He can’t listen to Eddie tell him that he needs to take a step back, to stay in his own lane where Eddie’s son is concerned. 

“Buck?” It’s softer this time, like Eddie’s afraid he might be sleeping. He could pretend to be sleeping. It might get him out of the conversation, at least for the time being. He could maybe organize his thoughts enough to convince Eddie to keep him around, to still be his friend even after he moved to Texas.

“Buck, come on. I just want to talk.” There’s silence for a moment, then a couple of quiet steps. “To apologize,” Eddie corrects, and Buck can hear the frown in his voice. But… apologize? What does Eddie have to apologize for? He digs himself out of his blanket cocoon enough to peek an eye toward Eddie, who looks… well, miserable feels kind of mean, but if the shoe fits. 

“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Buck says, quietly, his voice a lot scratchier than he’d anticipated it being. Has… has he been crying? 

Eddie scoffs. “Yes, I do. I shouldn’t have said that you don’t know what it takes to be a parent. I’m…” Eddie groans, dropping onto the end of Buck’s bed heavily. “I was mad because you’re right, and I know that you’re right, but… I don’t know if I can do it.”

Buck shuffles around until he can sit back against his headboard, arms resting limply on his knees. “You’re not wrong. I’m not a parent, I don’t know what it takes to raise a kid, much less a teenager. I overstepped.”

Eddie turns to look at him, frowning. “You didn’t, Buck. I know we don’t exactly talk about it, but you are a parent to Chris. You have been for years, even if none of us ever acknowledged it.” Eddie laughs, though it’s devoid of any humor. “God, I don’t even know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there. It would’ve been a disaster if I’d been parenting by myself this whole time.”

He rolls his eyes. He can’t help it. “Eddie, you don’t have to lie. It’s fine. I get it. But you should go talk to him. I really don’t think he meant for this to be a permanent thing.”

“No?” Eddie asks, softly, almost like he’s afraid of the answer.

“No, of course not. His entire life is here, man. All his friends, our family, Carla. Eds, he loves LA. He just needed some space, he doesn’t need you to move halfway across the country for him.”

Eddie hums, a small smirk on his lips. “You’re just trying to get me to stay, aren’t you?” he jokes, but Buck can feel his face falling.

“I mean, of course I don’t want you to go. Everyone always leaves me, and I thought—well, never mind. It doesn’t matter. But if I thought it was the right move, I’d tell you. I wouldn’t lie to you, not when it’s about Chris.”

Eddie’s gaze snaps to him, and Buck can’t help but shrink. He hates admitting to his abandonment issues, but… it’s not like Eddie is unaware of them. After all, he’d encountered Buck in the throes of his abandonment from Abby. 

“Oh, Buck, I-I didn’t even—”

“Think about it?” Buck interrupts, shrugging. “I didn’t expect you to. He’s your son, Eddie. It’s not about me, and I’m an adult. I can deal with my own issues. Christopher should always be your priority.”

“You’re important too, Buck.”

“It’s not about me!” Buck scoffs, shoving his way out of bed to pace at the foot of it. “Chris is your son, Eddie. You need to be there for him, and you need to trust that whatever you think is right is what you need to be doing. You’re a good dad, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. If you think you’re doing the right thing, then I’m positive you are. Whether I like it or not doesn’t matter. I’m an adult, I’ll handle it.” Buck’s shoulders slump as he sits back down on the edge of the bed, suddenly sapped of all his energy. “Chris is more important. I miss that kid like crazy, but if Texas is what’s best for him, then I’ll keep missing him. A-and you.”

“I… Buck, I need you to look at me, okay?”

Buck shakes his head. He doesn’t think he can bring himself to move again, much less see whatever expression is on Eddie’s face when he inevitably tells Buck to fuck off.

“Please, Evan?”

His eyes snap over at that, and he feels like he’s been thrown back to that hospital room again, sitting next to a very injured Eddie while being told that Eddie gave him the most important thing in the world, that Buck had a responsibility now. One that he’s going to lose sooner than he’d like.

“I’m not leaving you, Buck,” Eddie says, voice firm, but it feels hollow. Maybe Buck just feels hollow. It seems irrelevant right now. “I’m not leaving you. I will be back, and I’ll bring Christopher with me. Okay? But you’re right. I need to be there for him, I need to do what I can to fix my mistake before it’s too late, and I can’t do that from California. So I’m going to rent out the house here and stay with Sophia and her family. They’re only 20 minutes from my parents’ place, which is far enough to give Chris his space, but close enough that we can still work on… everything.”

The thought of strangers in the Diaz house makes his skin crawl. Still he forces what he hopes looks like a smile and nods once. “I’ll be here.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Eddie leaves two weeks later, to the day. It’s a Thursday, and a day they both have off, even though Eddie is officially on a leave of absence effective yesterday. His two suitcases and his carryon are tucked carefully into the back of Buck’s Jeep and Eddie is in the passenger seat, rattling off a list of things he needs to do once he gets to El Paso. Buck isn’t really listening, just sort of letting the cadence of Eddie’s voice wash over him, trying to reconcile the fact that this will be the last time he sees Eddie for… who knows how long.

The traffic at LAX is, predictably, horrible. Buck had expected nothing less, though, which was why he’d insisted they leave with plenty of time to park and get Eddie inside before his plane boarded. Surprisingly, he finds a parking spot relatively close to the entrance, and dutifully takes Eddie’s second suitcase and follows him across the road to the airport.

He vividly remembers the last time he’d been here, dropping off someone he fully expected to see again. He hadn’t gone past the glass doors that time, and he already knows he won’t this time, either. He can’t. If he so much as steps foot into the airport, he knows he’ll be buying a seat on Eddie’s flight in three seconds flat, and he can’t do that. He’s barely keeping it together as it is, he can’t afford to follow Eddie like a lost puppy all the way to Texas.

Eddie pauses at the entrance, and Buck clears his throat and passes the second suitcase to him. “Guess this is it, huh? You’ll text when you land?”

Eddie smiles. “Yeah, Buck. I’ll text you when I land.” Buck nods, and Eddie scrutinizes his face for a moment before frowning. “I’m coming back, Buck. This isn’t permanent.”

Buck doesn’t want to fight. He really, honestly doesn’t have the energy for it. And he really doesn’t want to fight when this might be the last face-to-face conversation he gets to have with Eddie. So he just nods and forces a smile onto his face. 

“I know. You don’t have to keep saying it, I’ll be fine. I’m a big boy, I can take care of myself.”

That only seems to deepen Eddie’s frown, but Buck just really cannot handle anything serious right now. His nerves are already fried, and he’s positive he’s not even going to make it out of this stupid fucking parking lot before he breaks down. He pulls Eddie into a tight hug, long enough that he gets a little bit of comfort from it, but not long enough for Eddie to recognize just how tightly coiled he is right now.

“Text me when you land, and let me know how you get settled in, okay? I’ll see you when you get back.”

Eddie looks like he has more to say, so Buck takes a couple of steps back. Eddie seems to get the message, sighing and nodding. “Sure, Buck. I’ll text, don’t worry. And Chris and I will see you soon.”

Buck stays standing on the sidewalk for as long as he thinks he can get away with, watching Eddie’s retreating figure weave through the airport, until he loses sight of him getting through the security line. Even after that, Buck remains rooted to the spot, unable to shake himself from his stupor enough to stumble back to his car. He has to, eventually, though, so he manages to swallow back the rising panic long enough to cross back to the parking lot and get into his car.

He knows Eddie isn’t coming back, is the thing. He’d been so sure Abby was coming back, sure enough that he’d promised to wait for her, even when she had seemed hesitant about it. It’s the exact opposite, now. He wants Eddie to come back with every fiber of his being, but he knows deep down that if Chris is as acclimated to Texas as Eddie’s parents have said, that Eddie will end up moving so that he doesn’t disrupt Christopher’s life. Because that’s the right thing to do, as a parent, Buck knows that.

Doesn’t make being left again hurt any less. Especially when he’d been so sure Chris and Eddie would be the ones to stay.

Turns out, maybe Buck just isn’t worth staying for.

[mulatto-macchiato]

I’m still laughing cause of the Moon animation and I can’t breathe right

MAN 'BOUT TO TURN ME INTO A WEREWOLF WITH THIS FULL MOON