#lightning fic

Someone’s yelling at Eddie and he could not give less of a fuck.

What he’s really focused on is that a few paramedics from the 134 are fully restraining him like a feral animal, despite the fact that he informed them in no uncertain terms that if they continued to do so, he would fucking fight them. For some reason that wasn’t the calming negotiating tactic he figured it’d be.

“Calm down, Diaz! Jesus, we have to get you in an ambulance so we can take you to the hospital!”

Or something like that. His hearing is a little spotty and his attention is completely torn away by where there are people in the street placing pads on Buck’s chest. Eddie watches it jerk up with the motion that will haunt his dreams, crashing back to the ground, rainwater splashing around him, forever disturbed by the flurry of motion around him. Eddie manages to get an arm free, head swimming with the quick movement, but he tries to ignore it as much as possible. When someone tries to grip it back in their grasp, he swings because he warned them, and Eddie is nothing if not a man of his word. Eddie thinks he connects with someone because there’s a grunt and he sees stars in front of his eyes, but he’s one step closer to getting closer to Buck.

There’s a crackle of the radio and Eddie hears something that sounds like ‘requesting Capt—’ in his relative good ear – relative being the apt description – but he can’t find it in himself to care. He’s only thinking of one thing, only has one goal and that’s to get to Buck.

“Diaz!” Someone shouts and it’s loud and angry enough to break through the sheen of panic he’s feeling. “Sit down!”

“—I’m just saying, I’m starting to not be able to feel my feet.” Buck is saying. “Maybe we should start packing extra socks in the rig for moments like this. We would all benefit.”

“Yeah, why don’t you just write that on your clipboard I know you always have hidden under your seat.” Hen offers, clearly unimpressed but more than amused. “I don’t know why you bother to hide it, we all know it’s there.”

Buck glowers at her, eyes narrowing. Hen returns the gaze and after five seconds of unrelenting eye contact, Buck crumbles in the way they all expect. He lets out a dramatic sigh and reaches underneath his seat, unearthing a clipboard. Eddie was certain he got rid of them all, so it’s unnerving that Hen knew before he did, but that really was the way things were these days. He tells himself he isn’t jealous, but it’s been a while since Eddie wasn’t able to immediately read everything from a single expression from Buck, and he decidedly does not care for that shit at all.

“We all benefit from dry socks.” Buck mumbles just on the funny side of petulance, Eddie leaning over to see him quickly write ‘extra socks in rig’ in his chicken scrawl that typically requires a symbologist to decipher. He smirks at other notes, which include ‘snack box 4 chim’ and ‘book 4 kids’ among other things. Eddie knows his face is twisted into something almost painfully fond – something Chris has ceremoniously decided to call his ‘lame dad heart eyes,’ oh how Eddie loves this transition to teenage behavior – but it’s the quiet moments like this where Eddie lets himself feel things that he doesn’t want to put a name to.

It isn’t until he notices Hen sitting across from him in the rig, a knowing smirk growing on her face in a way that feels like one of those lesbian goddess of knowledge things that she always jokes about, but Eddie isn’t sure it’s even a joke anymore. There’s something about the way that it’s coming from Hen, a private moment that she’s allowing him to feel safe when he isn’t sure his own head is, like she is saying I get it without mortifyingly saying the words out loud. Eddie guesses if anyone would get it, it would be her, but it still doesn’t mean that he’s quite ready for that realization.

“I thought I took all your clipboards away.” Eddie chides when he can’t bare to keep eye contact with Hen any longer. “You’re a menace to society with them.”

“He’s a menace to society when he steps out of his apartment.” Chimney snorts. “The greater city of L.A. is actively in danger when you get a clipboard.”

Buck gives them all an unimpressed look. “You may have taken the clipboards you know about, but I am a man of means, as Hen puts it. I can buy socks and clipboards.”

“I think I would kill someone for dry socks right now.” Buck says as they collect themselves in the truck, his head leaning against the window as rainwater drips unceremoniously from his hair. The snickers follow his words, Eddie being the first to lead the charge, because the thought of Buck killing anyone intentionally is, well, hilarious. Accidentally, much more plausible. He seems to pick up on the undertone, because he scowls at them. “Fine, I think I would sleep with someone for dry socks right now.”

“That’s more like it.” Chimney laughs, clapping his shoulder as he moves to the seat across from the man.

“Let’s all remember our radios are open lines and none of us are immune from the HR department.” Bobby says evenly from the front seat, but Eddie can see the exasperation in the lines of his face.

Buck makes a face, frowning in a way that twists his nose. “I would give a—”

“—respectable price to trade for goods and services like the upstanding citizen you are.” Hen finishes, rolling her eyes. “Let’s not forget, you get a paycheck and can, what’s the word, pay for them with money.”

“I can’t pay for them now.” Buck offers, gesturing to the open cab. “None of you are socks salesmen.”

“That you know of.” Chimney offers. “I can see Eddie here selling a pair of socks to a surfer in thong sandals.”

Here's a little something from lightning fic, which I haven't updated in ages but have been slowly chipping away at. Set sometime after recovery ig

“I used to–” Buck’s voice is no more than a whisper, an earnest confession in those quiet liminal hours under the cover of night.  “I used to fantasize about that," Buck admits, and keeps his eyes down and his body very still, very tense. "Dying, I mean. I’d fantasize I'd get too hurt in a fall or–, or hit by a car or a bus or debris from outer space, or–” He smiles, and his throat works several times. “Or struck by lightning.” He smiles, and there are no laugh lines around his eyes. He breathes in, and the sound is sharp. It pierces right through Eddie's chest wall.  “And I thought that, only then, my parents would see–” Buck breathes out, noisily, a soft gasp of a cry punched out of him, aborted before it's fully formed. “They’d see that they loved me. That they’d regret not loving me before. That they’d feel bad for it. That they'd pay.” He stares into thin air, his eyes dry.  “I felt so vindictive, I–I used to–... Serves them right, I’d think.”  What starts as a laugh bubbles out of Buck’s throat; by the time it pushes past his white downwards lips, it's nothing but a choked off sob of pain and guilt. Eddie’s hand clenches convulsively, blunt nails digging into his leg.  “At the time, I-I didnt–” Buck’s throat works again, and Eddie’s gaze follows the path of his Adam apple under paper thin skin, up, down, up. “I didn't know about Daniel. That they already knew exactly–... That they were paying already. I-I didn't know they’d lost a kid already. Their kid. Their kid.”  Buck’s tongue darts out to lick white, dry lips, and Eddie’s gaze follows that too. He stays silent; lets Buck shed, at his own pace, layers upon layers of vulnerability.  Buck’s gaze, though, slides to the right — involuntarily, it seems, his eyes still glazed over — and settles onto the dinner table, onto the still open notebooks, the discarded blue, red, green pens of Christopher’s abandoned homework. “And I-I-I can–… I can't imagine.” Eddie’s mind conjures an image of Buck. Dirty, bloody, shaken, haunted; his son’s red glasses hanging around his neck, and Eddie thinks he can imagine just fine. He’d lived it, for hours upon hours. But he never gave up, and he never stopped fighting. Eddie’s hands spasm again, with the need to reach, to touch.  Buck’s eyes clear, then, lose that worrying and absent, glassy look. The next instant, unbidden and belated tears give them a new shine in the low light. His lashes dampen, the reddening corners of his inner eyes too.  Eddie blinks. Once, twice. In that soundless moment, he doesn't dare breathe. He aches, though, in the softest, most vulnerable part of his soul.  And inside his chest cavity, behind the bars of his ribcage, his heart breaks for Evan.  The urge to reach, to touch, to hold, stronger by the second, he wishes, not for the first time, that he'd been there from the very start.

Haha I have something way longer than a tease but I just. couldn't stop writing haha.

This follows directly from the last snippet I posted from the lightning fic :)

Real, real, real.  Buck hesitates, still, and finds his hand reaching for his phone before he knows it. He unlocks it and there’s Jee Yun, looking up at him from his screen, mirth in her eyes and a giggle on her little scrunched up face.  Warmth spreads from deep in his heart and fills his veins with a burst of affection and relief. She’s here. She’s real. He feels Christopher’s watchful gaze on him, feels him wiggle his toes against his ankle.  “I’m okay,” he tells him, “you okay?” Christopher nods. “I’m good.” “Yeah?” Buck presses his foot flat against Chris’, pushes as Chris pushes back. “I’m just gonna check in with Bobby, okay?” Chris nods again.  Buck opens his arm, inviting Chris in, whose weight settles back against his left side. Warmth spreads. He opens his messages thread with Bobby, too, and starts typing.  Did u know, he sends.  In ancient china they used to prescribe garlic To help with digestion and respiration And with depression, he almost adds, but stops himself. He thinks that might worry Bobby. Christopher, too, who’s reading over the bend of his elbow.  They ate it with raw meat  And it *might* have improved male potency No proof about that tho Beside him, Christopher snorts. Buck’s heart fills to the brim with love at the little sound, but it still waits in trepidation for the three little dots to appear on Bobby’s side of the conversation.  Eventually, they do appear, and Buck is hit with a wave of emotion, so intense his nose stings and tears prick his eyes. He feels so, so grateful.  Real, real, real, his mind chants.  He still has the presence of mind to angle the phone away from Chris, just in case Bobby answers his innuendo with one of his own.  Digestion, respiration, AND potency? Then I suppose it *might* be just what you need ;-), Bobby sends back. Buck feels so light, he’s giddy with it.

Out in the kitchen, Eddie's wooden spatula scraps against the bottom of the pan. Its contents sizzle: onions, garlic, and red peppers now, too, Buck’s nose tells him.

Tagged by @wikiangela <333

Tagged by @hippolotamus and @devirnis tysm <3

From the lightning fic I haven't updated in agesssss:

"Just keep swimming," Christopher says, his voice hushed and conspiratory and so assured, certain that Buck will know exactly what he means, serene like he doesn't have the shadow of a doubt that his friend will in fact keep swimming. "Wherever you are, keep swimming," he insists, "because you have to come back."

Tagged by @try-set-me-on-fire @panbuckley

Tagging @shortsighted-owl @mysteriouslyyounggalaxy @alyxmastershipper @indigo2831 @hippolotamus @rogerzsteven

I'm still writing the lightning fic but the middle chapter is giving me hellllll so here's something from way down the line

He's awake! Yay

MacArthur park is barely a ten minutes drive from his loft. Buck imagines that he can see it, standing on his balcony, that he can just peek the very top of broad leaves, pine trees, palm trees, sneaking between the high rises.  MacArthur park is just about a thirty minutes walk from his place. Half that, if he jogs. He used to run there all the time, often at the crack of dawn, before a shift, when the park is empty, silent in the brimming way early mornings are; when every bird sings sweetly to welcome a sun that shyly peeks through the foliage to gently warm his skin. Sometimes he would go after a long shift, when the vast majority of people is already at work or on the commute there, and the park is filled with the whispers of the wind between the leaves, with the joyful sound of small children playing out in the open during those hours of freedom when the world is just theirs. He would run there, around the lake, between the trees, grateful for the small bout of nature, for so much Life so close to home.  This is where I died, he thinks. His heart doesn't lurch, his breath doesn't quicken, his hands don't shake. This is where I run, he could have said, with much more emotion.  Down south, just past 10th Street, is where Eddie got shot. Also a ten minute drive. 

I was tagged by the fabulous @hippolotamus @panbuckley @try-set-me-on-fire @rogerzsteven

From my In Another Life episode tag (if you can call it that lmao)

–––––

The rain has stopped, and, despite the gloom, pockets of bright blue sky boldly surface in the east. 

Towards the west, still high over the horizon, the sun tries to shine through thin but dense grey clouds. The sun is so pale and transparent, its light so feeble, Bobby mistakes it for the moon, for a second.

He remembers, just nights ago; the moon had been full, and despite the stress that entails in their line of work, they had laughed under its light.

The moon doesn't produce its own light, Buck had said. Moonlight is actually sunlight; sunlight that shines on the moon's surface and bounces off.

He tries to find solace in knowing that above the clouds, above the earth, in the depth of dark space, the sun shines bright and hot, unimpeded and free.

–––––

This fic is becoming a monster with a life of its own and it'll eat me alive soon I think. The entire point of it was just to write the ambulance ride and then buck waking up hahaha it slipped from my hands