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2025.
Eddie is kicking at a stray pebble in the parking lot when Buck pulls in and parks next to his rental truck, and it’s hard not to grin when the other man bounds out of the Jeep with that wide smile of his. “Hey, you,” Eddie says, tugging the taller man in for a tight hug.
“I’m not late, am I?” Buck asks worriedly, to which Eddie just pinches his side.
“No, Buck, I just don’t have anything to do while I’m waiting for the paperwork to work its way through the system, so I got here early,” he teases, just to see that blush paint his fr—his mate’s cheeks again. “How was work?”
The good-natured teasing gets Buck to relax a bit, and soon he’s launched into a story about some cat who actually got stuck up a tree…and the owner who also got themselves stuck in an attempt to rescue their pet. In a different tree, somehow. Eddie listens intently, but every now and then, when Buck makes some wild gesture or grins like that or even just turns to look back at him, he can’t help but feel a towering wave of love crashing over him. It’s like his heart beats in sync with Buck—it has since the day they met, even with all of Buck’s peacocking and blustering, but somehow it feels even more in sync now that they’ve been properly mated.
There’s not a lot of good he can ascribe to the short time spent in Texas, but he can at least thank it for making him realize some hard truths about himself. Even if that realization had come by way of his sisters nearly busting down his door with several bottles of wine and two terrible movies and begging him for a long-overdue wine and movie night.
Begging meaning they just sat down on his couch and poured three glasses off the first bottle and turned on the first movie without saying a word.
And now he gets to have this. He gets to have Buck in a way that he’d been yearning for all along but didn’t realize until he’d been stupid enough to chase his son off halfway across the country.
Well.
“...and then the cat just makes its own way down the tree, while Bobby’s up in the other tree trying to get the guy to grab the rescue harness, and the guy just lets out a wail about how embarrassing this is,” Buck rambles, waving his hands in such wide movements he nearly smacks the coffee pot out of the waitress’s hands as she scoots past them. “And he’s yelling at Hen that the cat doesn’t like women, but the cat just jumps up on her and starts purring in her ear.”
Eddie snorts, shaking his head as he guides Buck to one of the booths by the window. “Poor guy. Did Bobby finally get him down okay?”
Buck nods, now drumming his fingers on the table. “Yeah,” he says, still grinning like a ray of sunshine—Eddie’s ray of sunshine—and brushing his foot against Eddie’s. “Apparently it’s a new station record for most ridiculous call involving a pet, according to Chim. Last one was during Gerrard’s day.”
“What about that one with the snake in your probie year?” Eddie asks, gently tapping Buck’s foot with his once, twice, three times. I love you in a code that maybe only he knows right now, but there’s so much time to teach it to the other man.
“That’s what I said!” Buck replies, and oh call Eddie a moon-eyed lovestruck sap, but the bright twinkle in the other man’s blue eyes makes him feel like melting. How had he denied himself this for so long? “But Chim said that one was too straightforward to really qualify as ridiculous.”
The waitress appears at their table like magic, smiling down at them like Buck hadn’t nearly covered her in fresh coffee only moments ago. “You two decide on what you’d like to order?” she chirps.
“Sorry about earlier,” Buck starts off, grinning sheepishly at her.
She waves a hand, shaking her head. “Oh, you’re fine, sugar. Didn’t do any harm. Now, let’s start with drinks?”
Once ordered, it doesn’t take long for the waitress to bring their food and drinks out—breakfast tea and pancakes with bacon and eggs for Eddie, and coffee with a stack of pancakes nearly the size of Buck’s head that he promptly drowns in maple syrup for him.
“Anyways,” Buck says around a mouthful of pancake, gesturing to Eddie with the fork. “How’s your day been? What’d you and Chris get up to?”
“Chris decided to go back to the Wilsons’s with Denny, practically told me he’s sleeping over there, so we get the house to ourselves tonight,” Eddie hums, sipping at his tea. “But, uhm, there was something I wanted to talk with you about.” Buck freezes, looking up at him with those wide eyes, and Eddie can practically see the way the other man is already spiraling in the whites of his eyes, so he reaches out to rest his hand on top of his. “It’s nothing bad, Buck, honest. I just wanted to check in with you about how—how your heat went for you.” The fear morphs into confusion on Buck’s face, so Eddie squeezes his hand to try and reassure him. “Just want to make sure there wasn’t anything that you didn’t like, or didn’t help. Or if there’s something you did like, so I know. For next time.”
There’s something tense still about the way Buck is sitting now, shoulders drawn up just the slightest bit, some dark shadow clouding his eyes. He takes a long time to respond, almost like he’s carefully measuring out what words he’s going to use, and a cold sort of ache settles in Eddie’s chest. “It’s okay,” Buck says finally, in the tone he uses when he’s trying to be flippant about something but he’s really on the edge of something painfully vast. “I know this one was a bit abnormal. Didn’t go exactly like they’re supposed to.”
“Like they’re supposed to?” Eddie asks, shifting so he’s actually holding Buck’s hand. “I mean, I know it lasted longer than usual because I wasn’t there, but—” Buck shakes his head, still just staring at a spot on the table between them rather than meeting Eddie’s eyes.
“No, n—no, I mean—it didn’t—I know you were just being nice this time,” Buck mumbles, and suddenly it feels like the whole world has shifted by one inch, just enough that things feel familiar but off. Disconcerting. “I know the—the sex is supposed to hurt.”
“What?” Eddie blurts out, and Buck reacts by shrinking, curling into himself like the suddenness of Eddie’s reaction has physically struck him. His hand slips out of Eddie’s, but he’s too shocked to reach for it back. “Sorry, Buck, just—what do you mean, it’s supposed to hurt?” That gets Buck to look up at him, confusion and fear and something deeper written clean across his features, and he opens his mouth to reply, but nothing comes out for a long moment.
“I mean—I—” he finally stammers, searching Eddie’s face like he’s searching for the right thing to say, when Eddie only wants him to tell him the truth. “It did the last time,” he finally says, like it’s normal, and Eddie can’t help but glance down at the curve of his neck where he’d once had a scar from a previous mating bite, and oh.
Oh.
“Buck,” Eddie says softly, because Buck is already wound tight like a caged animal that he is trying to coax out. “Buck, how many heats have you had?”
“Three,” Buck says simply. “One when I was thirteen, one a few years ago, and this one.”
“So you’ve been on suppressants a long time, then, right?”
Buck just nods, playing with his fingers, the hems of his sleeves, the ridges of the stamped design on the fork handle, and Eddie knows he needs the movement. Or, at least, he thinks he knows that, because there is something Eddie has never seen in Buck before—a sort of fragility that feels like Eddie will shatter something if he touches him. “My parents,” Buck says softly, quietly. “They put me on ‘em once I presented, before they even really started. The first one was when—when Maddie left. With Doug.”
Oh.
“Why did they put you on them so early?” Eddie asks, already preparing to notch another tally in the Buckley Parents Are Awful column.
Buck closes his eyes then, shrugging. “They said all omegas were on them. That it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to go into heat in school or something and embarrass them.”
Yup. Tally made.
“Okay,” is all Eddie can say to that, because he’s been to therapy. He knows it wouldn’t be helpful for Buck for him to start raging about the Buckleys being more concerned about their image than their son, and he can’t even begin to imagine someone doing that to Chris. The idea of anyone trying already has him trying to stamp down a boiling sort of anger, because how could they fail at the first rule of parenting? “So—”
“They said I was being too loud,” Buck continues, and his eyes are open again but he’s not looking at anything, not anything tangible. “And everything hurt, and every time I’d look at them, they’d just—they’d just turn up their noses, so I just grabbed a bunch of water bottles and protein bars, and I—I just hid in my room until it was over. Stayed out of the way.”
“Oh, Buck,” Eddie breathes, and he does reach for the other man’s hand now to squeeze it, but instead of Buck squeezing back, his hand is just…limp. What is there to say about the image in Eddie’s head of a young Buck trapped in a room all alone, biting a pillow to keep from making too much noise so his parents won’t be embarrassed?
“It’s okay,” Buck repeats, like he’s told himself that over and over and over again until the wound scars over and stops hurting so sharply, because the alternative is living like an exposed nerve, a stretched-tight rubber band threatening to snap with every breath.
The waitress takes a step towards them from the counter, but Eddie catches her eye and shakes his head. Thankfully, she gets the message, because she turns back to the kitchen window to chat with the cook, so Eddie turns his gaze back to his mate.
He reaches out to cover Buck’s limp hand with his other one as well, only earning a flicker of movement in the man’s eyebrows in response. “Do you want—”
Again, Buck interrupts him, and his hand twitches in Eddie’s as he says, “The last one was because of the lawsuit. When I couldn’t talk to you guys.”
Eddie’s breath catches at the mention, mind filled with a chaotic spread of memories of the tsunami, of Chris’s nightmares, of Shannon’s death, of all that pain and anger and betrayal, all capped off by Buck sitting there across the table while his lawyer exposed wounds everyone had tried to keep covered up. And Buck just keeps talking.
“I didn’t really realize it at first, you know? Thought it was just stress, because the lawyer was being an asshole, and I couldn’t say anything to you, and—it just felt like my skin was too small for me all the time,” Buck says, and Eddie knows the look on his face now. He’s seen it over and over again, especially after getting back from Afghanistan. The thousand-yard stare, something he’d once thought was a silly name but now knows is a perfect name for what it is. “So I went to a bar near the station, because I thought maybe one of you guys would be there, and I could apologize, or something, but—but you weren’t there.”
2019.
The music is loud when Buck walks into the bar, something unrecognizable save for a thrumming bass line he can feel in his bones, matching the burning surging just under his skin. Bodies press up against him as he makes his way to the bar, each contact confusing in the warring urges they create to push everyone away and pull everyone closer, so he just ignores it.
The only thing on his mind right now is the way everyone had looked at him from across the table as his lawyer had laid every single one of their sins, both perceived and actual, bare like some sort of gotcha. The anger in Eddie’s eyes, the disappointment in Hen’s and Chim’s eyes, the quiet sort of resignation in Bobby’s. Somehow the worst is Bobby’s, because he knows exactly how low a point his captain had hit because he’d been there when Bobby looked him and Hen in the eye and asked for help, and seeing Bobby just sit there and take it makes him feel like he himself is plunging the knife into the man’s back.
So. Time to drink.
He’s almost done nursing his fourth drink—something a little sweet and fruity and full of tequila that the pretty bartender behind the bar had given him with a quiet warning about drinking too many shots too quickly—playing with the wedge of grapefruit placed on the rim as garnish when someone slides into the stool next to him.
“Fancy meeting you here, Evan,” someone drawls, and he glances over to see Tommy Kinard leaning against the bar and grinning at him.
The burning under his skin now feels like it’s leaching into his muscles—or is that the alcohol?—and he finds himself turning to face the man more fully before he can catch himself. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” Tommy replies, leaning in closer so Buck can hear him over the music and crowd, and there’s a waft of something stronger than the chaotic mixture of scents filling the air around them. A waft of warm redwood and the smoke of a forest fire, something Buck has smelled many times before at work, but somehow stronger now. More potent. “Didn’t figure you’d be anywhere near the station after all the shit your lawyer said about everyone.”
“I like this bar,” is all Buck can come up with in protest, and Tommy’s grin just grows even wider.
He leans forward to clap Buck on the shoulder, scent rolling over him like a wave, and something in Buck’s body just gives. “So you came here just for the music, then? Or did you have something else in mind?”
Suddenly Buck is so, so warm, and Tommy’s hand feels good on his shoulder, and all he wants to do is tip forward and let the other man envelop him like a cocoon. “I think I might be a bit tipsy,” he admits, and Tommy’s hand squeezes his shoulder.
“Maybe you’ve had enough to drink, then,” he says, hand shifting from Buck’s shoulder to his bicep to lightly tug him out of his seat and towards the door.
—
The trip away from the bar passes in a blur of overwhelming warmth and desperate hands, Buck trying to bury himself in the electrical fire-soaked redwood scent oozing out of Tommy’s pores in the back of the taxi while the other man’s grin hasn’t shifted and he’s whispering something in Buck’s ears that he doesn’t have the brainpower to understand. One of his hands is on Buck’s back, burning like a firebrand, and all Buck can do is try to nuzzle into where the scent is strongest, in the curve of Tommy’s neck before the hand disappears from his spine and reappears tangled in the hair at the crown of his head and he’s pulling Buck’s head back with a sharp yank that makes him yelp. “Not here, Evan,” he warns, voice tightly controlled, and Buck melts under the intensely evaluating stare he’s getting.
Another hand slides down his spine before pushing its way under his ass with a tight squeeze, drawing another stifled moan out of Buck. Tommy leans in, crowding Buck back against the seat with a low growl. “Careful,” he hisses against the shell of his ear. “If you get too wet here, you’re gonna have to pay to get it cleaned up. Omegas shouldn’t be messy like that in public, should they?”
Buck shakes his head with a low whine, going lax between the alpha and the car seat. His eyes flicker to the front, and his cheeks flare bright red when he catches the heated gaze of the driver through the rearview mirror. Tommy’s nose dips into the curve of his neck then, scenting him deeply, and Buck can’t help but let his head fall back for the man as the haze of his heat swamps him again.
—
The next thing Buck is even slightly aware of is being shoved against a wall and pinned there by the alpha’s larger bulk, Tommy’s hand still tangled in his hair and Tommy’s lips pressed hard against his own. Buck can barely breathe, but he manages a low whine as Tommy’s teeth scrape over his lower lip, the sharp pain quickly fading into this all-consuming need now piloting his limbs. Tommy growls again, a sharp, possessive rumble that vibrates from his chest into Buck’s and makes his knees weak.
“Fuck—” he gasps, but the other man’s lips are covering his own before he can even hope to catch his breath, and this time Tommy is biting at him. The hand in his hair releases its grip, both hands now making their way to the collar of Buck’s shirt and pulling. He can feel the fabric strain as it digs into the back of his neck, but then it gives in a sudden jerk, the sound of it ripping masked by another growl from the alpha.
“Bed,” Tommy snarls, yanking back from Buck so completely that he barely manages to keep his knees from buckling completely underneath him before the alpha is using the grip on his shirt to pull him away from the wall and shove him further into the apartment. His hip bangs painfully into the corner of a counter, but Tommy keeps pushing him onwards despite his quiet yelp and the way Buck’s feet tangle themselves together for a moment.
He’s barely caught his breath before the other man is shoving him into the bedroom and pulling him close again, this time tugging at his clothes until more seams give way enough for Tommy to fully strip him down. Buck shivers and tries to lean in for another kiss, but this time the alpha places a hand on his cheek and pushes him away with a snort. “Enough of that,” Tommy says before his hand moves to grip the back of Buck’s neck and spin him around.
The bed looks comfy enough, but there’s this strange sort of anxiety that settles in the depths of Buck’s stomach that he can’t quite discern. It sits like a cold sort of pit in the core of a body that otherwise is so hot, and it’s like there’s an alarm bell ringing in this back of his mind that’s been muffled, swallowed by blankets of need and desire until he barely even knows there’s an alarm going off at all.
A hard shove sends him stumbling forwards, interrupting his fractured thought process as he hits the mattress chest first. There’s another growl from behind him, hands gathering up his ungainly limbs and pushing him further up the bed, arranging him the way Tommy wants. Then the other man is climbing into bed with him, but when Buck moves to roll onto his back, Tommy stops him with a firm hand planted between his shoulder blades.
“That’s not how a good omega presents themself, is it?” Tommy hums. “Is it, Evan?” Buck whines, the disapproval in the other man’s voice landing like lead weights and lingering even as he scrambles to get his knees under himself, to lift his hips in the pose that’d been drilled into him as the proper way. Tommy lets him, but once he does, the other man’s hand presses back down against his upper back until his chest meets the rough fabric of his bedding. “I’m not going to have to tell you how to do everything, am I?” Tommy asks, disappointment still clear in every word he says, and Buck shakes his head frantically.
I can be good, I can be good, I’m sorry, please echoes on repeat through his skull, but the combination of alcohol and his heat has left his brain too fuzzy to turn the words from thought into sound, so instead he just tries to sink further into position. The hand on his upper back follows the same track it had in the taxi, trailing fire down his spine before it dips between his cheeks and a finger presses into him, aided by his slick. Buck tenses for a moment, but then there’s a quiet tsk from the other man, and he forces himself to relax into it, pressing back into the hand with a soft moan.
“You’ll do,” he hears, Tommy’s voice sounding so far away for a moment, before the alpha is blanketing him and the finger is removed. Every point of contact between them feels like it’s setting Buck on fire anew, but he manages to bite back the needy whine that threatens to slip free and presses his face into the bedding. He barely gets any warning before Tommy’s hand is spreading him open and he’s pressing into him with a low growl. He’s going a shade too fast, body struggling to adjust to the sudden stretch and burn, but when he tries to lift his head, Tommy’s other hand lands on the back of his head and forces him back down. Buck reaches back, hand flailing for Tommy’s thigh to try and get him to move slower, but the hand on his hip snags his wrist and traps it against his back as Tommy’s hips meet his ass.
Catching his breath is hard with his face pressed into the bedding, but he barely gets the chance to even try before Tommy is moving, pulling out of him and thrusting back in with a low grunt, setting a brutal pace. Buck manages to lift his head just enough to get a full breath before a particularly rough thrust drags against something inside him that makes stars explode in the backs of his eyes and shocks a loud cry out of him. His free hand scrabbles at the bedding, and there’s an ache building in his bad leg from the position and the weight pinning him down, and his vision is getting so blurry somehow, but Tommy’s not stopping, and it’s just this mix of pleasure and pain and fullness and breathlessness and—
Buck’s orgasm takes him by surprise, but the only sign Tommy’s noticed is a low groan as Buck’s body tenses underneath him, because he just keeps thrusting , still going long after Buck has tipped over into a hazy lucidity and oversensitivity. The other man shifts his grip, letting Buck lift his head from the quilt, ignoring the quiet gasps and soft moans every hard thrust is punching out of the omega. Then Tommy is somehow bending further over him, completely blanketing him, and he’s nosing along the side of his neck as his thrusts increase in speed and power, and it’s then—scored by the banging of the headboard against the wall and the barely audible noises tripping from Buck’s mouth—that Tommy bites him, hard and unforgiving and painful, teeth digging into the thin skin over his mating gland and holding on as Tommy’s own orgasm takes him over.
The other man goes limp on top of Buck, the entire weight of his body pressing down on him until his bad leg feels like it will snap under the strain, but he doesn’t have any leverage to move Tommy off of him. Luckily—or is it unluckily?—by the time they’ve both caught their breath and the other man’s teeth have been removed from his neck, the pain has shifted into a throbbing sort of numbness, so he’s able to use the brief lucidity to think about other things.
Things like the fact Tommy had just given him a mating bite.
Something in Buck’s heart thrills at the notion, the idea that someone’s chosen him to be theirs, something his parents had long ago begun insisting would never happen. He was always too rebellious, too outspoken, too ungainly, too much to be a proper omega, let alone be a proper mate. Yet here he is, taken and claimed without a second thought, and he lets out a soft, contented sigh.
Tommy moves then, lifting himself off of Buck and pulling out of him, ignoring the quiet keen the emptiness draws out of the omega in favor of rolling onto his back and tucking his hands under his head. Buck glances over at him, only just now realizing the alpha hadn’t undressed past just unzipping his jeans and shoving them down his hips a little, a stark contrast to his own blatant nakedness. Even so, even though something deep in his gut is telling him no, this isn’t right, Buck shifts closer to the alpha, tucking himself in against Tommy’s side and nuzzling against his shoulder, soaking in the overwhelming scent of a satisfied alpha in rut. The other man doesn’t move or make a noise, at least, not until Buck’s nuzzling moves closer to his neck.
In the blink of an eye, there’s a tight grip in his hair, yanking his head back far enough and sharply enough that for a split second there’s a fear he can’t name that spikes through him. “What are you doing?” Tommy asks him, voice dark and angry, and Buck freezes. “Answer me, Evan,” the other man continues, glaring at him, and every single cell in his body is screaming danger, but there’s no other way out but through.
“S—sorry, I just—” he stammers, wincing as the hand in his curls tightens. “You bit me, I just—I should return it,” he says lamely, waving one of his hands. “Right?”
The other man watches Buck in silence for a moment, the expression on his face perfectly unreadable, before he uses the grip in the omega’s hair to pull him back and away from his side. “I don’t want you biting me, Evan,” he says finally, and it’s like the part of his heart that had been floating comes crashing down hard enough it shatters.
“But—”
“Doesn’t mean anything,” Tommy says, and he’s smirking, and Buck can’t tell if it’s the alcohol or his slowly returning heat that’s making the room feel like it’s spinning around him, but it is, and Tommy’s scent is strengthening, and the other man is rolling back over and pulling Buck back into position, and—
2025.
Eddie doesn’t know what to say.
Buck is sitting across from him, still staring at something invisible in the air between the two of them, except now there are tears streaming down his cheeks. His pancakes have long since been forgotten on the plate in front of him, just a pile of cold, syrup-soaked sponges on a plate. Through it all, the thousand-yard stare remains, deepening until Buck looks like he’s hollowed out, and Eddie aches to reach out and pull the other man in, because his mate is drowning in horrible memories that he can’t change.
Thankfully, the waitress has left them alone the whole time, and there isn’t anyone else seated nearby, a fact he knows Buck will be grateful for because it means no one else is privy to this secret that the other man has kept buried so deep down inside his chest like a slow-acting poison. So there it is, in the break between breaths, that Eddie slaps a few twenties down on the table and stands, gently taking Buck’s hands in his to guide him out of his seat. It’s probably far too much for the true cost of their meal, but Eddie cannot let himself leave Buck alone long enough to pay the waitress where she stands at the kitchen window, and he cannot let her come close enough to see the shattered pieces of the man he loves strewn across the table, so he’ll sacrifice the money to get Buck home safe and sound.
There’s an awful sort of numbness spreading from the center of his chest, mingling and intertwining with the cold nausea that set in at the beginning of the memories, and the fact that it is echoing across his bond with Buck feels like ice cold talons sinking into his heart. Buck, his mate, is lost in his own head, hands limp in Eddie’s as he leads him to the door, and then to Eddie’s truck.
He opens the passenger door for the other man, but something seems to flicker behind the taller man’s eyes, and Buck balks, digging his heels in and starting to gasp for air. His lips are moving, but Eddie can’t hear anything past the urge to curl around the man like a shield.
“Buck, baby, I’m just taking you home, okay?” he says softly, gently, suddenly struck with a memory of his own—one of the nights following the tsunami where he’d had to comfort Chris after one of his many nightmares. He makes himself soft just like he did back then, but steady so Buck has something to anchor himself to amidst the maelstrom.
Buck turns his head, looking to his Jeep, and because Eddie has known the other man so well for so long, he nods and carefully shuts the truck door. The fear etched into the tension lines of Buck’s shoulders eases as Eddie guides him to the passenger side and gets him situated, only pausing for a momentary pang of sadness when the omega curls into himself as soon as Eddie lets him go. And when Eddie climbs into the driver’s seat and gets everything adjusted, Buck is tilted away from him, hunched over himself like he’s trying to appear so much smaller than he is, and Eddie tries to squash the pain clawing its way up the back of his throat because Buck doesn’t need him to be upset right now, he needs him to be strong. For him. For them.
For the Buck six years ago, who’d gone to that bar in search of some sort of relief but ended up still so alone .
The other man is silent beside him, but when Eddie spares a quick glance when they’re stopped at a red light, the tears are still tracking down his cheeks despite the vacant look on his face. The only reactions he gives the entire drive home are stifled, aborted flinches every time Eddie changes gears, or someone honks at them, each one falling on Eddie’s heart like rocks falling from a cliff face.
It doesn’t take long for Eddie to get them home, but it takes a bit longer than he likes to get Buck inside. He can see the internal war being fought in the other man’s head, even if he can’t see the why of either side, but he knows all he can do right now is be here for him. No matter how much he wishes he could bundle his mate inside, where everything smells of them, of their family, of home and safety and love and everything he wants to wrap around Buck so tightly they become a part of him in ways even Buck can’t deny anymore.
Instead, he stands in the cold night air with his mate, limp hands held close to his chest as Buck fights the fear in his head, because this is not a battle Eddie can shoulder for him.
Finally, finally, Buck takes an unsteady step forward and lets Eddie guide him inside. When Eddie lets go of his hands and moves to gently shuck the other man’s jacket, however, Buck’s entire body goes stock still and rigid as stone, and there’s a flash of shame as Eddie remembers how Tommy had torn Buck’s clothes from him. “It’s okay,” he says softly, lifting his hands away and into Buck’s field of vision. One of the bulbs in the hallway light has burnt out, but in the dim light of the remaining bulb, Eddie is struck by the remembered image of Buck’s terror the night he’d flown back in from El Paso, and it’s in a new frame, because alphas had only ever been cruel and unkind to him in his hazier moments.
Buck’s eyes flicker over Eddie’s shoulder towards the bedroom, and there’s an almost imperceptible shake of his head, a pleading tilt to his head, a fresh wave of tears, and Eddie nods.
“Can I make you a nest?” he asks, keeping his voice low and gentle. “I’ll make it in the living room, we don’t have to go into the bedroom. You can just sit on the couch, I’ll do all the work, okay?”
Buck nods, jerky and unsure, but Eddie focuses on stamping out the urge to cheer, because Buck is responding to him now, and that means he’s beginning to surface from the flashback.
“You’re doing so well, baby,” he hums, slowly, slowly taking Buck’s hands in his again and leading him to the living room, settling him on the couch and handing him a pillow to clutch to his chest. He doesn’t know if Buck is quite at the stage to hear the praise, but it can’t hurt to try. Maybe his voice will be a lifeline. “I’m so proud of you, you know that?” The praise spills out of him now, word after word after word because he is proud of Buck, and Buck is doing well, and how can anyone ever say that the other man has ever given anything less than his all? How can they say that he is too much?
Once Buck is as settled as he can be on the couch, Eddie finally feels okay leaving him for long enough to scurry about the house and fetch blankets and pillows and clothes for the nest, even stripping their bed bare and pulling the mattress topper off so he can use it as a base—if Buck decides he can’t be in the bedroom for the night (or longer), Eddie isn’t going to let him just sleep on the floor. He steals into Chris’s room to fetch his comforter and pillow, pausing only to sniff them for the comforting scent of his son, making sure it’s strong enough that even though Chris isn’t home right now, Buck still gets to feel the teenager with him.
When he returns to the living room, Buck hasn’t moved at all, continuing to sit almost painfully still as Eddie goes about building the nest in front of him. The tears have dried up, but it’s impossible to tell if the man is actually done crying or if he just isn’t producing any more. Eddie tries to give Buck some space as he works on the nest, but every instinct in his body is screaming at him that his mate is in danger and needs protecting, and for a man twice sent into a warzone and familiar with being shot at, his hands have never shook more than right now, because at least then he had tangible objectives. Now, though, his only tangible objective is sitting right in front of him at the same time it feels so impossible to reach, and Eddie has never been good at being helpless like this.
“Do you want to lay down? With me?” he asks softly, offering up a gentle smile when Buck’s eyes flicker up to meet his, even though it’s only for a moment. Buck nods jerkily, but it isn’t until Eddie offers up his hands that the other man moves. His hands are cold against his, but he lets Eddie lace their fingers together as he guides him into the nest and they lay down beside each other.
“I was there for three days,” Buck says, voice rough as the words almost echo in the quietness of the room. There’s another twinge of sadness, of shame, that creeps across their bond, pulling at the edges of Eddie’s heart, and he closes his eyes in a silent bid to erase the entire incident from existence. He tries to keep his own emotions in check, because all he can picture is Buck feeling something through their bond and thinking it’s aimed at him, but it’s proving much harder than expected because Buck Buckley is not someone easy to dull. He’s so bright, brighter than the sun itself, but right now his glow has been snuffed out, and Eddie feels like a sunflower trying to catch a nonexistent ray of sunshine. And as much as he wants to tell Buck he doesn’t have to keep talking, he also knows that talking is its own sort of medicine.
So he just lays there, looking up at the ceiling, and listens to the painful words that tumble out of his mate’s mouth, because in his own way, Buck is asking him to witness him.
2019.
One minute he’s being pinned down in bed in some vaguely painful position as Tommy ruts into him, the next the alpha is tossing his clothes at him and telling him to get dressed because he has to leave. The scent of the other man’s rut has faded away now, leaving Buck shivering and alone in the hallway outside the apartment, only half-aware that it’d been days because his mind keeps getting swallowed up by the waves of his own heat.
He presses himself against the wall by Tommy’s door and tries to fix the way his shirt hangs off his shoulder, but the alpha had torn it nearly clean open from the collar to the hem of the sleeve, so the fabric does little more than hang there limply. His pants have barely fared any better due to the thick denim, but one of his back pockets is completely gone and the opposite front pocket is torn at the seam and left useless.
Buck has to get home.
He has to shower, to burn his clothes, to do anything to erase the shame and disgust and anger and fear and—he needs to get clean. But he doesn’t know how far he is from home, and the thought of calling an Uber in this state makes his stomach roil and churn, and he has to bend over to keep from puking.
Maddie.
She’s seen him in worse situations than this, he thinks, and scrambles for his phone. It’s nearly dead, so he quickly—or as quickly as he can with his hands shaking so badly—pulls up his location and texts it to her before hitting the call button.
Please answer, please answer, please answer, he chants in his head, but instead of cheering when she picks up, he…sobs. Just one unbidden cry, before he claps his hand over his mouth and slides down the wall to sit in a ball on the floor.
“Buck?” she asks, already concerned. “What’s wrong?”
Suddenly he is eight years old again, the night he first broke his wrist trying to climb a tree, and he’s laying on the damp grass crying for his older sister to come find him and wrap him up in her loving arms. “M-Maddie,” he gasps out, already pleading. “I—can you—c—” The words trip over themselves, and it’s getting harder to breathe, and when did his cheeks get so wet?
“I got your text, I’m on my way right now,” she says, and he sobs in relief because it never matters why he’s hurt to her, only that he is and he needs someone to hold him. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes, okay? Are you—”
The line goes dead before Buck can answer, and when he pulls his phone away from his face, the screen remains black. “Fuck,” he whispers, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them so tightly his knuckles turn paper-white. Twenty minutes. He can do twenty minutes.
“Mo-om,” comes a child’s voice from somewhere down the hall and around the corner, the shrill whine of a kid trying to needle their parent into giving them something they want. Buck tenses, breath catching in his chest as the sound of footsteps draw closer and closer.
“I told you, Sara, you can’t have chicken nuggets for breakfast because they don’t sell them that early,” an older woman says as she rounds the corner, a young girl’s hand clasped tightly in her own. It only takes a few steps before the girl’s eyes land on Buck, and she stops in her tracks.
“Who’s that?” she asks, tugging at her mother’s hand and pointing at where Buck is curled into the tightest ball he possibly can be.
The mother’s eyes meet his for a moment before she looks him up and down, and he quails under the pure disgust that soon radiates off of her. She pulls the girl behind her, wrinkling her nose as she takes in Buck’s torn clothes, and picks up her pace. “No one, honey, don’t look at him,” she says, practically sliding along the opposite wall as the pair pass him.
A cold pit settles in the center of Buck’s chest as the two of them disappear down the other end of the hallway, the image of the look on the mother’s face etched indelibly on the inside of his eyelids so it’s all he sees every time he blinks. She was disgusted by him, so much so that she’d hidden her child, and honestly? Buck can’t blame her. He’s disgusted by him. He’s just some strange man sitting on the floor in the hallway, shirt nearly torn completely off and pants barely faring any better, clutching a dead phone and probably looking like he’s been mauled, and if he had a child in his care, he’d probably do the same as her.
Buck curls further into himself, ignoring the ache in his bad knee as his desperate iron grip presses into the bone-deep bruises left behind, and buries his face in his arms. He stays that way until a familiar sugared jasmine scent winds past the cloying stench of his slick, and gentle hands land on his shoulders.
2025.
Buck falls silent once more, voice trailing off into nothingness in a way it only does when he’s overwhelmed, and Eddie aches.
He aches with the need to wrap the other man up in a hug so tight they become one being, because then Buck will always be safe and loved inside his ribcage, their hearts beating together side-by-side forever. He aches with the familiar rush of anger, the need to hunt down the alpha who had not only taken advantage of Buck’s vulnerability, not only tossed him aside when he was done with him, but had destroyed so much of Buck. The terror that had taken over the other man so many times in the short time since he’d come back home—because this, this is home, how could he have forgotten that?—makes so much sense now, because Buck has only ever been treated like a burden, a thing to use and abuse and discard when whoever has their grubby hands on him can’t wring anything more out of him.
He doesn’t realize he’s closed his eyes until Buck squeezes his hand—softly, hesitantly, like he’s scared Eddie will hurt him, and that makes him ache all the more—and when he turns his head to look, Buck is looking back at him with a worried crease in between his brows.
“I’m sorry,” Buck whispers, like he’s already mourning something, and even though Eddie’s heart is flesh and blood, he can still hear it shatter like a porcelain vase thrown to the floor.
“You don’t have to apologize for anything, Buck,” he says, trying to pack so much meaning into too few words, trying to tell the man that it isn’t him who needs to apologize, it’s all the people who dug their claws and teeth into him because he has such a big heart and would give every inch of his soul if someone asked it of him.
Buck’s worried frown shifts into something more confused, and his gaze shifts back to the ceiling, his hand twitching in Eddie’s like his instincts are telling him it’s not safe. “But I—it’s—” he stammers.
“Buck, none of that was your fault,” Eddie murmurs, fighting against every instinct in every cell of his body to keep himself from pulling the other man close and wrapping him up. “None of it, okay?”
“But I should’ve—”
Eddie cuts off the meek protest with a shake of his head. “He should’ve known better. Done better. But he took advantage of you.”
Buck looks back at him, his lower lip quivering and eyes brimming with tears once more, and God does Eddie want nothing more than to invent a time machine so he can go back and protect him, because Buck deserves so much more than what he’s had to fight tooth and nail to earn. “He—?” he whispers, cutting himself off with a sharp, ragged inhale. It’s a long time before he lets the air out, his entire body sagging and deflating when he finally does. “He h—hurt me?”
All Eddie can do in response is nod.
“He hurt me,” Buck repeats, and then he crumples, and it’s like Eddie’s watching in slow motion as the tears start to fall all over again. “He hurt me,” he sobs, his entire body shaking violently under the full weight of what had actually happened. In a jerky, sudden movement, he rolls closer to Eddie and buries his face in the curve of his neck, a needy, painful press, but Eddie welcomes it because it’s Buck. Slowly, gently, he shapes his body around Buck’s as the other man wails, pressing his nose into his curls and rubbing his back because while he knows it won’t cure the pain, he needs Buck to know that Eddie is right there, and he’s not going anywhere.
“I’ve got you,” he finds himself murmuring over and over and over again, a litany of steadiness like a lifeline for Buck to cling to after being thrown from a shipwreck and forced to swim for shore.
If Eddie could, he’d take Buck’s place in the stormy water, throw himself to the waves so the other man could stand on dry land, so his mate would never have to know what saltwater tastes like when battling exhaustion and fear. All he can do is be a safe harbor, safe haven, shelter and warmth and love, and he tries to pour all of that into the bond he now understands has been there all along, since the day they first met.
So he lies there, letting Buck cling desperately to his shirt and try to burrow under his skin, because that is love.
Buck cries for a long time, eventually tiring himself out and drifting into what Eddie hopes is a restful, dreamless sleep where he’s tucked under his jaw. There are silvered tear tracks staining his cheeks, but for the first time since arriving in the diner parking lot, he looks peaceful. So Eddie does his best not to jostle him too much as he reaches into his pocket and grabs his phone, because there’s one thing he can do.
That thing being destroying one Thomas Kinard.
Eddie:
Tommy needs to be gone.
Bobby:
He’s being transferred to the 209, effective immediately. -BN
Eddie:
No, he’s dangerous, Bobby.
He shouldn’t be a first responder at all.
It’s not my story to tell, but you have to trust me on this one, please.
He holds his breath after the last text, praying that Bobby understands the weight of what needs to be done here. The clock over the fireplace ticks loudly in the silence, counting down the seconds, then minutes, then tens of minutes, until after an eternity, his screen lights up with Bobby’s response.
Bobby:
Talked to the chief. He’s getting everything in motion to officially blacklist Kinard. -BN
Then, only then, does Eddie let his head fall back against the softness of the nest and turn his attention back to his sleeping mate, eventually dozing off along with him.
In the morning, when Chris walks in the door, he finds Buck and Eddie in the kitchen. There’s some sort of podcast playing in the background, yammering on about how the loneliest whale in the world may not be so lonely anymore, but neither man is paying attention to it. Instead, Eddie is pulling Buck close and pressing a kiss to his birthmark, laughing as Buck pinches his side, before he spots the teenager and yanks him into the chaotic mess of limbs and laughter.
In the morning, Eddie kisses the top of his son’s head—ignoring the good-natured teenaged whining—and then kisses the top of his mate’s head again, and again, and a third time for good measure. When he finally lets the other two go, Buck’s eyes meet his, and a warmth explodes in Eddie’s chest that he knows is only a shadow of the warmth and love and safety Buck is feeling right now.
In the morning, Eddie knows nothing is fixed—it never will be truly fixed—but some of the cracks in the porcelain that is Buck have been filled in with gold, and for now, it’s a start.