carve scars beneath my eyes (buddie | explicit | 5.5k | for bottom eddie week day 1 | caning and marks)
It starts with a call to an apartment, a panicking woman in a bathrobe rushing out the door as they arrive. Eddie exchanges a Look with the rest of the team, because Josh had said over the comms that the caller had mentioned something about going too hard, and the 118 was nothing if not capable of smelling a good story.
Inside, they immediately identify the problem: a petite brunette lying facedown in the bed, groaning slightly as they enter, blood trickling down a deep slash cutting across her thigh to the back of her knee.
"I didn't mean to!" The first woman says, tears streaked down her cheeks. "I was just-- it was a new toy, and I thought it wasn't a big deal, we'd done, well-- other things, and it was fine, and I--"
"Linds," the woman on the bed groans, and the first woman flies to her, grasping her hand. "It's fine, it was an accident. I asked for you to go harder, remember?"
Eddie watches as Hen rounds the bed to look at the broken skin, brows furrowed. For some reason, he hesitates a step before following her, eyes caught on her other side, the welts rising on tanned skin, thin and uneven. For a second, his mind goes perfectly blank.
Then, a shoulder brushing his, and he startles forward as Buck moves past him, shooting him a small concerned look as he fully enters the room.
Right. Eddie swallows. The patient.
"The cut doesn't look too bad," Hen observes. "It just looks scary because it's pretty long."
"Didn't hit anything deep," Eddie confirms. "Must hurt like a sonofabitch, though."
The woman on the bed laughs, breathless with pain and-- something else that Eddie chooses not to think about. "Oh," she says. "Yeah, that's kind of the point."
Eddie doesn't shiver, because Eddie is a professional. Eddie keeps his eyes on the cut, on dabbing away the blood so Hen can apply bandages. He doesn't look at the other welts on her, the thin raised lines, the way they look painful, must be painful for days. The way that was kind of the point--
"You need to be careful with stuff like this," Eddie's eyes dart over as Buck talks, a familiar, casual note in his voice that makes something dangerous spark at the back of his mind. "I know it doesn't look like much, because it's so skinny, but it's gonna hurt more than a paddle, because of the distribution, you know?"
And Eddie's hands freeze over the patient as his gaze catches on Buck's hands, what he's gesturing with. Slender and dark, the handle held deftly in his palm. Buck holds it like it's a halligan or a hose, like he's held it a thousand times before.
