for a moment, he does, fingers tangling in the front of eddie's shirt, rain-slick and cool. he holds on hard enough that eddie's shirt will probably be wrinkled, probably be folded at the front in the shape of buck's grasp. it's okay. it'll be clean again after a wash. buck has always known that he can only leave marks that can easily be smoothed away.
still, for this second, he leaves a mark on eddie. and then he shoves.
eddie stares at him with wide, frantic eyes, hair damp and pressing to his face. his limbs tremble as he faces buck, arms outstretched as if he wants to-- to, what, grab onto buck? to pull him back in?
it makes buck want to laugh. it makes buck want to-- to shout, to scream, a bubbling kind of helpless, impotent rage that he's never felt towards eddie. because he knows why eddie's doing it, is the thing. and that makes it all the worse.
and still, his voice comes out small: "you're being mean."
eddie's lips tremble, his eyes waver. he opens his mouth, closes it. "buck," he says, with his mouth that buck knows the taste of, with the voice that buck has swallowed and made a part of him.
buck wishes he can vomit it back out, this thing he can never unknow, the taste of eddie and the give of his skin and the way his fingers tremble when they touch buck's face. they weren't buck's to get, and now he can't give them back.
"you can't--" his voice breaks off, he takes a little step back, the rain soaking into his shoes. eddie jerks forward, and buck shakes his head. he goes still. "you can't do this, eddie."
"i just wanted-- you, i just wanted to fix it," eddie says, helpless.
buck shakes his head again. again. "i'm not yours to fix," he says, gentle because he knows it'll hurt worse than anything else. eddie flinches back, concrete pavement and a decade and two kisses between them.
"i don't want you to go," eddie whispers, voice almost lost in the rain.
i don't want to go, buck wants to say. but he knows, he knows, he knows that there is no other way this ends. he's known since the words slipped out, since feeling eddie's hand on his wrist in the rain, since four years old and asking his dad if he loves him.
(philip's laughter, a hand through his hair.
"whatever love is," he answers.)
he has to go, because there is nothing worse than staying.
"i know," buck says. the sky rumbles above them, and buck remembers well collapses, train crashes, lightning strikes, a car turning around the corner. death, death, death. he takes another step back, watching the distance grow between them.
stormborns
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