I prefer when my thoughts are more articulate than this, but I've been thinking about a world in which actions have consequences. Being with Tommy is amazing. Buck is having the best time. Tommy is so cool and so good and so hot and Buck can't believe he's this lucky. Except, having a good relationship makes him reflect on the bad ones. And there have been a lot of those.
He dated a girl in high school. She was fun, everyone thought so. Super animated, with strong opinions and she always wanted to do stuff. Yeah, sometimes she got a little too animated, but it happened. And yeah, sometimes Buck stood a little too close and she'd hit him, but she was so small and he was so big, and really, she didn't mean to hit him. Not like that.
Buck himself wasn't that great. For a few years, he got blackout drunk whenever he got the chance, but it wasn't a weekly, let alone daily, thing. A little too often, maybe, but he was young! That's what you do when you're young! And sure, there were a lot of alchohol he couldn't touch even now, because it tasted like vomit in his mouth.
But he handled that and he didn't do that anymore. Except for that one date with Tommy, where Tommy wanted to be adventurous and got a mixed drink, and when he kissed Buck, it took a lot of effort to not gag directly into Tommy's mouth.
But the alcohol was largely a non-issue.
The cheating was an issue. God, the cheating was a big fucking issue. Tommy worked with Lucy. If he didn't already know, surely he'd know eventually. If Tommy knew Buck was a cheater, would that be a dealbreaker? It should be, right? Mature people thought cheating was bad. Of course cheating was bad, but there's bad and then there's bad. Bad as in I never want to see you again bad.
Buck had to admit it wasn't the first time. He'd never had sex with someone, but there had been kisses. He'd never initiated! But that probably didn't matter in terms of unfaithfulness. Someone had kissed him, someone he wasn't dating.
He had a string of girlfriends who probably wouldn't call him their boyfriend. Really, they only wanted one thing, but Buck wanted that, too, so he didn't look at it too closely. Having something was better than nothing.
Besides, he was good at it. He was great at sex. He never came first, could always get it up when he needed to, always willing to experiment and try everything twice.
And sure, things got a little complicated once he made it to LA. Being a first responder put him in a lot of vulnerable situations, with a lot of vulnerable people, but he also met a lot of people! The lines were all kinds of blurry, which made it hard to navigate sometimes, but he did his best. Looking back, maybe he could've been a better boyfriend to Abby, Ali and Taylor, but he doesn't know what he could've done different.
Sometimes he thought about that therapist, the one he'd slept with. He was older now, but he still wasn't sure why it left a bad taste in his mouth, especially all these years later. One time he thought about it too hard, which had him dry heaving? Which felt like a weird reaction? Especially so long after the fact. He definitely shouldn't have had sex with her, but it was just a dumb thing he did.
He's not the same guy anymore. He's really, really not the same person. Sometimes he looks in the mirror and the sight of himself gives him pause, because in his mind, he's still the lanky kid who arrived in LA, and all this, the muscles and the scars, none of that feels permanent, not in the way it should. It's like the kid Maddie left behind can't seem to be overwritten. He's somehow stuck in time and unmoored all at once. His sense of self is all over the place. When someone tells him he is something, whether that's a hero or kind or smart or annoying, he takes it as gospel, because who is he to say what he is? Tommy calls him kid and Buck thinks, sure. On bad days he feels ancient, but this is the oldest he's ever been and if Tommy thinks that's young, maybe it is. And it's not like Tommy is the only one who calls him that.
And he knows bad things have happened to him, but they don't feel real. How is he supposed to conceptualise dying when he doesn't remember what it felt like to not be alive. Most days he doesn't remember what it felt like to be pinned under the ladder truck, or the recovery from that. He remembers what the painkillers felt like, how alone he felt, how scared he was, how sore his throat was from screaming – but it still feels like it happened to someone else. The dreams he has about it feel more real than the actual event.
All of these things start swirling around in his head, and they don't stop. He gets distracted at work, which is very not good, and when Bobby asks, Buck doens't know what to say. He can't sit in Bobby's office and tell him he missed a step today, because he was thinking about how bad of a person he is and how he shouldn't be anyone's partner, let alone Tommy's, who he has a date with tomorrow night.
It gets so bad that Tommy is the one who sits them down and tells him, ”If you don't want to be with me, you can tell me. I want you to tell me.”
And Buck shuts down. He sits there, eyes on the floor, nowhere near Tommy, and says, ”I think I'm a bad boyfriend.”
And Tommy sits there, like, ”Excuse me?” because Buck is a fantastic boyfriend. He listens and learns and cares and goes out of his way all the time. He's been distant lately, but even when he's distant, he still shows up.
Buck is the one who nearly blows up the whole thing. He stumbles through a long and tangled explanation, with twists and turns he doesn't mean to take.
It only gets worse, when after all that, the only thing Tommy asks is, ”You were assaulted?”
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