🌌kwills91🌌

I'm so grateful to tumblr and all the beautiful gif set creators. This is just what I needed on a day of scary chronic illness shit and being snowed in.

An excellent choice if I do say so myself. Hope you enjoyed. And, honestly, you have no idea how much this means to me. Sometimes writing fanfic can feel like throwing stuff into the void and even though I know I get excited getting update emails, I never really consider that other people mught feel the same about my own fics updating, so messages like this are a really nice reminder. Thank you!! You've seriously made my day!

If they knew anything about his life they would know that Tommy dumped him three days before the tour started. Eight weeks, four days, 6 hours and, roughly, thirty-nine minutes ago. Not that he's counting. No. In fact, he's actively trying not to. Hence, the ill-advised comment scrolling.

Ravi's camera work is, as usual, incredible. He caught Buck at a great moment, when the lights were flattering. It's obvious he's singing, but his face isn't contorted with effort of some of the longer, higher, or more powerful notes. He's by far the best photographer they've taken on tour with them. Buck would even love the picture—maybe ask for a copy to be framed and put in one of the many rooms of his too big, too empty house that he doesn't go in too often, just so it doesn't look too egotistical—if it weren't for the comments.

He swipes at the screen, revealing another selection of comments on his latest post. It's nothing out of the ordinary. Just a shot of him on stage, close to the end of last night's show, sweat dripping, arms straining from the hour of holding and strumming his guitar, that had followed a technical rehearsal where he'd insisted on helping set up the equipment, with the addition of pushing himself way too hard in the hotel gym for forty minutes in between the two. He probably should have skipped the workout, but he needed to burn off the anxious energy somehow.

"Sorry, Hen. I—" he hesitates, still not used to expressing his vulnerabilities sincerely and openly, but honesty is one of those things he's been working on in therapy. "I forgot," he says finally. The shame still comes—at not being perfect, at not following orders, at not being the man he was always taught he should be, and instead being one that's easily distracted by his friend—and he tries to remember his therapists advice. Remembers to let it in, but don't let it stay. Remember to think of that shame as his father's voice and acknowledge that he doesn't have to listen to it. And even though he knows none of them can actually hear or see what is going on in his head, he still feels ridiculous, and instead of actually helping, the therapy exercise just winds up with him piling more shame on. He's pretty sure if he asked anybody they would tell him that it's impossible to be bad at therapy, but Eddie's not so sure. Maybe it's just his competitive nature speaking, or maybe there really is no helping him.

And he knows what would help. He knows who he wants to talk to about this. But he's gone, and Eddie can't even bring himself to say the words "Bobby would know what I should do." "Yeah," Eddie agrees instead. "Maybe." "Hen, back me up on this," Buck holds his arm out, hand open and palm-up, like Hen's support is something physical she can hand over. Eddie twists to find her already heading in their direction and looking like she already regrets it. "No, no," she says, with performative exaggeration, "of course you shouldn't worry about inventory, Eddie, I've got this. You sit back, relax, enjoy a cup of coffee."

Being back in L.A. has been good for them, in so many ways. Being eight hundred miles away from his parents, is definitely the biggest one. But it hasn't magically vanquished his fear that he's going to mess up as bad as he already has. He's back in therapy—given recent events, he's pretty sure they all are—but his issues are so messed up that every time he starts talking about something it inevitably leads to a tangent of some other topic that impacts him. He's spent more time looking back than he has trying to find a way to move forward.