“What’s all this?” Buck asks, approaching the dining table and the mountain of photographs. Hen hands a stack off to Chimney.

“Bobby found some old team photos in his office,” Chimney says. “You’re looking at history.”

There’s scattered polaroids, press photos, and newspaper clippings around the table. The two of them laugh in a bittersweet kind of way as they flip through the pages of old articles and team photos.

“Look at this one, Chim.” Hen leans over to show off one of the pictures with a sad smile. “It’s us and Eddie.”

Buck’s head snaps. “Eddie?”

Which is ridiculous, because his Eddie isn’t the only Eddie, and his Eddie lives somewhere in the Pacific Ocean with gentle eyes and soggy hair and calloused hands.

Hen tilts the photo in his direction. They’re sitting on the back of the ambulance, covered in soot, smoke, and dust, but still, they’re smiling. Hen in the middle, Chimney on one side and—

There’s no way.

“I know him.” Buck reaches for the photograph, trying to get a closer look. It’s definitely Eddie, his Eddie, he could recognize those brown eyes anywhere, though his hair is dry and rather short, not the shiny, messy waves he’s used to.

The legs are also new. Two of them. One leg propped up, the other sticking out, his shoulders dropped. It’s the same soft smile he knows, just a few years younger. Smoke in his lungs and tired eyes, Buck’s never seen him so content.

“Did Bobby tell you stories or something?”

“No, I know him,” he insists.

“Not possible,” Chimney argues. “He was gone before you ever got here.”

Buck turns his head. “Gone? What do you mean gone?”

“Buck,” Hen urges with her gentle, older sister voice, a nice way of saying please shut up about this.

“He was our probie after Sal and Tommy left,” Chimney says. “But he—he didn’t—”

Hen gently pulls the photo from his hands, “There was a bad call. And he didn’t make it.”

And Buck, he wants to laugh from the shock of it all, because holy shit if only they knew Eddie is just a few miles west drowning in some unmistakable guilt and grief, begging to touch the sand with something other than his hands.

Eddie was a firefighter. With the 118. Buck’s friends were his friends, their families were the same. Eddie had a life before the guilt, the grief, and the sea.

“How did he die?” Buck asks, tentatively.

Then, like some sort of cruel irony, Hen says, “he drowned.”

Eddie counts the ceiling tiles in his office and waits for something, anything to happen. A confused dad trying to figure out how to install a car seat would be a welcomed phone call right now, though a pile-up on the freeway might be more exciting. He never hopes for fire, but he hopes that if there is a fire, someone will let him know. Eddie hates social media, but a Twitter notification would be welcomed.

Twenty-six tiles, he counts. Twenty-six ceiling tiles. Tiles ten through thirteen are water damaged and there’s a section missing from tile nineteen where cables run from the ceiling to the floor. There should be twenty-seven, but one tile broke and still hasn’t been replaced, and he’s unsure if the hole it left behind should be counted in the tally.

He refreshes Twitter. Still no fire.

No fire, no earthquake, no paper jams or heart attacks. It’s a waiting game. Waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for his computer to beep, waiting for midday to strike so he can wander to the break room to grab for his lunch break. Eddie keeps a radio on his desk and waits for the calls to come. He listens to the jumpers, the rear-ends, and electrocutions, but that’s all he can do. Listen. Listen and wait for his turn to say something useful.

Eddie counts the ceiling tiles in his office and this time there’s twenty seven. 

(Last week the 147 successfully resuscitated two cardiac arrest patients.)

He counts again.

(Last night the 133 staged for six hours outside a hostage situation.)

Twenty six. He counts again. 

(This morning the 118 pulled a surfer out of the ocean.)

Twenty five. He counts again.

“Eddie.” He looks down. May interrupts his counting from the doorway, still standing outside but leaning forward into the room, ear piece still attached. “Sue said she wants to talk to you.”

“Good talk or bad talk?”

She shrugs. “Guess you’re about to find out.”

One knock, two knocks, three, the door swings open before he reaches four. Taylor and her bright red hair and blazer don't quite match the image in his head, but she’s handing over the keys before he can think about it too much. 

“All yours,” she says, stepping aside to let him in, without so much as a formal introduction, “paperwork’s on the dining table.”

He lets Christopher inside first, giving him the chance to wander and take it all in. “Thank you,” he says, looking for a pen only to find one in her hands being offered to him. It only takes a few moments to sign the highlighted lines and hand the packet back over.

“Don’t thank me, this is the easiest rental I’ve ever done,” she walks towards the door, just as eager to leave as he is to come.

He decides to ask, rather bravely, “Should I be worried that you’re so eager to ditch this place?”

“I never lived here,” Taylor says. “A family friend owned it and gave it to me. I lived a bit further out of town. But now I’m leaving for good and I’d rather not deal with any of this,” she gestures to the empty living room, “Honestly, I’d sell it to you right now if you wanted.”

The offer shocks Eddie, and for a brief moment, he considers it. The structure, the permanence, it could be nice to call someplace home and actually mean it. Maybe she wants the same thing. Maybe his Texas is her Alaska, or maybe he’s thinking too much about puzzle pieces and destiny.

It’s stupid. He knows it’s stupid. But he’s had this empty notebook for years and everyone says journaling is good for your mental health and he’s already bent the spine and opened the first page and if he sits here much longer his pen will dry out.

Frank says there’s no way to screw up a journal, but still, Eddie can’t bring himself to put those first words on the page. Every time he tries, he closes the notebook and walks away. A paragraph, a sentence, even an indented word seem all too overwhelming, and there’s so much he could write, he ends up writing nothing at all. 

Start small, Frank told him, bullet points are just fine. 

Okay. Bullet points. Just one bullet point.

Eddie makes a circle on the page. He circles over it once, twice, a few more times for good measure. It leaves a matching circle on the other side of the page and for some reason, that’s his breaking point, at least for the night. 

He leaves the pen uncapped at the desk and decides to try again tomorrow.

im excited for people to read "strangled by the red string of fate" because you are all insane and seem to like when i write angst. the general premise: soulmate au, eddie doesn't believe in soulmates, but buck does. where's the angst, you ask? they're not each other's soulmates <3 whole thing was inspired by this one post that said "what are soulmates if not a very special kind of mutually tightening noose?"

here's an excerpt:

“Do you believe in soulmates?”

Eddie sets down his book and sighs into his cup of coffee, black, slightly cold but he can’t be bothered to microwave it. “I believe Cap asked you to do the dishes.”

“I’m being serious,” he says. “You asked me first.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You kinda did.”

“I didn’t ask, you told me. Unprompted.” He continues to dodge. “The dishwasher is full, you’ll have to do it by hand.”

Buck leans against the counter, towel hanging from his hand. “Just. Humor me.”

A sigh. “Fine.” He holds his book against his chest and sits up. “I believe Chris when he says there’s a monster in his closet, I believe my sister who swears on her life that there’s a ghost in her apartment, but I also believe my niece, who says my sister is crazy. And I believe this—” he waves his hand for emphasis, showing off the red band “—doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

“Harsh,” is all he says.

Eddie lets out a breath. “It wasn’t supposed to be,” he shakes his head, resigned. “It’s just—how can a tattoo on my finger tell me who to love?”

“It’s not all bad,” Buck shrugs. “It’s like, definitive proof that someone will love you. It’s comforting.”

“It’s horrifying,” he counters.

“It’s good to have something to believe in.”

Eddie laughs at the nightmare of it all. “Yeah, but this? You never get a choice. You don’t choose your soulmate, it’s just—it’s something that’s forced on you. We’re all being strangled by the red string of fate.”

Buck nods at his dramatics, hesitant to comment. “To each their own,” he says, staring at the mark on his own hand for a moment before turning back to the dishes, “but I like knowing someone could love me.”

“I’m not trying to crush your beliefs,” he says, a little guilty, “but you met your soulmate. And she didn’t seem to care that you were it.”

He returns to his book, something sci-fi, something dystopian. With all the noise, he couldn’t give a summary to save his life, but he thinks he understands what it means to live in a doomed society.

“Chimney, this is our new guy,” Karen introduces him.

“You must be Buck,” he says, extending a hand. “I’m Chimney. Don’t ask why.” He introduces himself as if he isn’t the most famous astronaut still in the field.

Chimney, former astronaut, and one of the best guys to ever set foot on the ISS. Most people are lucky to make it to space once, but Chimney’s made three trips to the ISS. He was first choice to join the Mars mission team, but he turned down the offer and accepted a spot on Karen’s mission control team instead.

And really, he’s a nice guy. He’s quick to solve problems as they arise, friendly with the whole team, and he knows this program better than anyone—anyone except Karen—but it’s intimidating to be the new guy seated right next to the NASA superstar.

“I’ve heard a lot about you.” Buck shakes his hand.

“It’s all a lie,” he says, “unless it’s something cool, then that was definitely me.”

it's basically soulmates but cursed. soulmates are real, but buck and eddie are not each other's Universe Assigned Soulmate. it's a whole lot of fate vs. free will

The universe claimed Shannon to be his soulmate, and he believed it because he was supposed to. He married her because they were having a child and he was supposed to. He stayed too long, through broken promises and death, because he was supposed to. 

In truth, he discovered, the universe doesn’t know a damn thing about love, destiny, or sacrifice. There’s love and there’s coincidences and sometimes they’re the same thing. 

Maybe he loved Shannon, or maybe the red band was some sort of cosmic aphrodisiac. Either way, she gave him a scar he wishes he could remove. 

He seems to have plenty of those these days, knives and bullets and lost love. Twin scars on his shoulders, on his wrist, on his hip. When he was nine he crashed his bike and left a skid mark all the way up his shin. There’s a burn mark on his palm, because fire is fun to play with and teenage boys are stupid. A thin line at the edge of his right eyebrow from the first time he got punched; bullies hit hard, but he hit harder.

Physically, the gunshots hurt the worst, the sniper outweighing all the rest, but the band on his pinky torments him the most. He’d sever the finger to free himself from that thread. He’d break the bone himself, rip the flesh clean.

A bullet tore through his shoulder. He watched his reflection die in a pool of his own blood. Buck dragged him to safety, blood, bones, and all. There’s still a scar on his pinky, and he still doesn’t believe in soulmates.

Things are different now, since the bullet, since the scar. Eddie’s couch is just a couch, no longer a makeshift bed. There’s no girlfriend in his contacts, and the idea of dating someone new is honestly sickening. 

And then there’s Buck. Buck and Taylor. Taylor and Buck. In a relationship. With each other. She was a friend, nothing more, until Eddie got shot, and suddenly it was more. Somehow a two day coma changed the entire course of their relationship, entirely unknown to him until she appeared at his ‘welcome home’ party with hand around Buck’s waist. 

He prayed for another coma. 

Of course he wants Buck to be happy. He’s his best friend, his partner, and he deserves to be happy. But he’s seen the misery that follows Taylor Kelly. He remembers the first time they met, remembers Buck’s complaints when he realized they were just being used for a story. He remembers the immediate backtracking and, “She’s actually a pretty cool person. No, I’m not just saying that because we hooked up.” Then she left. Now she’s back. It’s all too complicated and messy and really, he doesn’t care about the inner workings of Buck and Taylor’s sex life.

He hardly talks about her, some days Eddie forgets she exists.

so basically maddie never shows up in the s2 era because she faked her death to escape doug. except the circumstances are very suspicious, so the fic is essentially buck trying to find her/prove that she's still alive

He’s surrounded by a mess of postcards, photographs, newspaper clippings, and letters, all laid out in a very particular order, except the order is always changing because the story is always shifting and—okay—the more he listens to himself talk, the less he believes his own story. 

Eddie sits at the table and picks up a headline: “The Mysterious Disappearance of Maddie Kendall”

“You should buy a corkboard,” he says, “and some red string. You know, connect all the dots, get a sharpie, circle all the important parts.”

Buck’s first thought is not a bad idea, which says a lot about his current state of mind.

“You probably think I’m crazy,” Buck sighs. “Even I think I’m crazy.”

But then Eddie takes a postcard in his hand, the last one Maddie ever sent, and, against all expectations, he says, “I think you might be right.”