#yes I will continue with my vegan!Buck agenda what of it

[elvensorceress]

Wednesday wip

Tagged by @rewritetheending @messyhairdiaz @alyxmastershipper @sibylsleaves @shortsighted-owl @spaceprincessem @eddiesbleps @rogerzsteven @thekristen999 @buddierights

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idk have more of this 💕

The fifth attempt. The fifth person. 

Has sky blue eyes. And a strawberry birthmark over their collarbone and one on their cheek. They smile brightly and love kids and Eddie meets them at a restaurant that serves only vegan food. They’re friendly and easy to talk to because they’re gentle and smart and genuine. They’re passionate about family and cooking and putting love, happiness, and kindness out into the world and helping people in need. 

They kiss Eddie’s cheek at the end of the night and thank him not just for dinner but for listening and meeting them in the first place. And it’s a nice kiss. He doesn’t hate it. It doesn’t make his skin crawl. He doesn’t instinctively recoil. It’s sweet. It could hold warmth. It could maybe trigger echoes of a heartbeat. Maybe. 

A heartbeat knocked out of synchronicity with a single bolt of lightning that left its match silent. 

Eddie drives out into the darkness, somewhere, anywhere, and then has to pull over and sob all over his steering wheel. For no reason. For every reason. 

When he comes home, Chris is already in bed and Buck is stretched out on his sofa. His legs are crossed at his ankles and propped up on the arm of the couch. He has one of Chris’ textbooks in his hands. Of course he does. But he closes it when Eddie shuts and locks the front door behind him. 

“So, how was this one?” Buck tips his head, curious but somehow condescending. “Looks like you made it over the two hour mark. Unless you got lost driving around again. You know your phone has a very convenient, already installed app that will tell you directions to and from places if you plug addresses into it. Then you never get lost and stuck in traffic.”

Yeah. Because Google maps or whatever other equivalent programs always have 100% accuracy and the directions are crystal clear. 

Because lost isn’t a thing permanently attached to Eddie? 

Every time it seems like he shakes it, it always comes back and finds him. Irony of ironies. 

“Come on,” Buck urges. “You can tell me. What was wrong with this one?” 

Reminiscence. 

The smell of ozone and rainstorms. The taste of iron and metal. The bruises and burns left in his flesh. The dying, broken-winged hummingbird living in his chest that can’t fly, can’t eat, can’t touch, can’t live. The ribs cracking, breaking beneath his hands. 

The dead, un-beating heart. 

The precious beautiful heart he loves and cherishes more than his own life. 

“Nothing,” Eddie answers but that isn’t true. “Everything. One thing.”

He can’t move from the door. His legs won’t work. He can look and stare into the middle of the room but he can’t see anything but a swaying lifeless body against a thundering, flashing sky.

Buck scoffs and pushes himself up until he’s sitting and can focus attention on Eddie. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

No. It doesn’t. Does anything make any sort of fucking sense? Does it make sense that one second Buck was standing on the ladder, working a hose, working on a fire, not doing anything particularly risky or dangerous, but the next second he was dead and hanging in midair? 

Does it make any sense that Eddie can’t taste anything can’t feel anything can’t sleep can’t think can’t see anything but that moment where electricity burst through him like it wanted to end him, too? 

It did. It did end him. His own heart stopped in the same moment. It just wasn’t the same way. 

Eddie shrugs and takes off his shoes. He sets downs his keys. He shrugs off his jacket. His legs are rigid and numb. But they get him to the couch where he sits beside Buck. Not touching. Never touching. Touching is burning needing longing craving fire electricity desperation losing fading breaking. 

Buck hums, then sets Chris’ book on the coffee table. “You gonna give this one another shot?” 

It’s a science book. Because Buck will read ahead and find fun experiments to demonstrate concepts and science is always their favorite. They make volcanoes out of lemons and grow beansprouts in the windowsill and make battery circuits from potatoes. They do homework together and bake cookies together and play games and watch movies and make popcorn while Eddie goes out and tries to make his heart beat again. 

“No.” Eddie picks up the half drunk bottle of beer sitting on the table and downs a good third of what is left. 

Why would he? What would the point even be? Every single thing would just make him think of the one thing he needs and can never have. The only reason there was a chance of him feeling anything at all is because every single fucking thing about them screamed Buck and Buck and Buck. 

Buck takes the bottle and gives him a suspicious side eye but looks elsewhere when he drinks and says, “Why not? You liked this one.”

Eddie bites his tongue, bites it, and bites it and still never tastes blood. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, you immediately complained about the others.” Buck leans back against the couch and tucks one leg underneath him. He’s wearing clothes he sometimes sleeps in. Soft black lounge pants, a thin hoodie that stretches tight across his chest, and fuzzy gray socks. And a pale green henley underneath the hoodie. That doesn’t technically belong to him. But looks really good on him. “So. Why no second date? Or are only first dates your thing? You going to make your way through all the eligible singles in Los Angeles and then pick one for a repeat?”

“Maybe I’m just tired. There are reasons I was never into going out with anyone. It’s superficial and people lie and how can you ever randomly stumble into something that means anything? Or that works? Or lasts?” 

Buck hands the bottle back over to him. “What was the one thing?”

Eddie’s stomach tightens but he grips the bottle tightly and the cold wet glass at least feels something like how he feels. Saturated, frozen, fragile. “What one thing,” he asks without actually needing to know. 

“You said one thing was wrong.”

“I also said everything was wrong.”

“Yeah, but first you said nothing was wrong. So which is it? What doomed this potential progress?”

Is there ever going to be progress? Is he ever going to find someone he wants more than always coming home to his partner and his son in another world where the three of them are actually a family? 

“Come on, Eds. What’s the one thing?” 

Eddie shrugs and finishes the beer. “The same thing that’s wrong with all of them.” 

Buck looks at him expectantly. With that curious, sweet expression he gets whenever he hangs onto every word Eddie says. “What’s that?”

They’re not Buck. 

“I don’t feel anything,” is what Eddie tells him though. Which is also true. And also the problem. He stands and starts for his bedroom but can’t help looking back at Buck curled up on his couch, wearing his shirt. “I’m tired. I’m going to go to bed. You want to stay over?”

Buck’s beautiful clear eyes are glassy but he blinks it away. “Always.”