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body type: al dente / I failed sixth grade home ec

[carys-the-ninth]

The problem with commercial F/M romance is that it's written by the most heterosexual women alive and reading it you feel yourself slowly suffocating from the Gender of it all like a fish in a eutrophying lake. And what we actually need as a culture is F/M written by insane bisexuals violently allergic to heteronormativity

[sennamaticart]

Dress Code

[sennamaticart]

Don't take it personally!

[memewhore]

Penguin escapes killer whales by jumping onto a boat.

[is-the-owl-video-cute-deactivat]

Antarctic penguins (and most other Antarctic animals for that matter) are very interesting because they lack a natural fear of humans since, of course, humans are not a natural occurrence on the continent. It is one of the few places on earth where it is completely normal for fully wild animals to be comfortable around you. In fact, most react as though humans are just especially large penguins as those are the only flightless biped native to the area.

As far as this gentoo penguin is concerned, it was saved by a float of large yellow penguins also hiding from orcas.

[crystalepicness]

[sarkos]

Penguin Diogenes

[byjove]

me: why are the pillows always so fucked up

my cat:

[thillius]

This looks like a painting with like the composition and lighting

[chloematis]

And now it is :)

[ghostlandtoo]

how to be alone

Buck unpacks, and the house feels less like a mausoleum to his friendship with Eddie and more like a house someone is living in. Buck is living in, because he took over the lease. It’s still a novel thought. He didn’t think his furniture from the loft would be enough to fill up a two-bed house, and the room that used to be Christopher’s is still empty, but Buck keeps the door closed and ignores it. Maybe he’ll turn it into a guest room, once he saves up enough for a mattress.

He sends a picture of the living room to Eddie, doesn’t add a caption, and then leaves his phone facedown on the table while he scrounges for dinner. There’s eggs, and bacon, and a chilled champagne bottle. The dinner of champions, Buck thinks to himself. He leaves the champagne in the fridge. Like, man, what was Tommy thinking that was for? Insane move, and Buck knows a lot about insane moves.

There’s dinner, and a shower, and Buck speeds through his nightly routine. He has a shift in the morning. He only grabs his phone as he’s about to crawl into bed for the night, and finds that Eddie replied to his message during the last few hours. looks good, he said. Buck’s thumbs hover over the keyboard. He hearts the message, sets his alarm, and closes his eyes, like he’s thirteen and pretending that it’s easier to fall asleep if he acts like he’s asleep. Annoyingly, it works.

He still goes to Maddie’s semi-regularly, because he’s worried about her, because he misses her, and because he’s still not used to being lonely. When he was a kid, the loneliness was a physical thing chewing him up from the inside out. It was only when Maddie was with him, letting Buck annoy her as she did her homework or talked on the landline with her friends, that it left him alone.

Buck’s used to being alone, is the thing. He spent a long time alone, just Buck and the Jeep and miles and miles of asphalt. Most of his friends forget about that, he thinks, because Buck never brings it up around them. He’s told Eddie the most, about the cold nights he’d spend sleeping in his Jeep, nights in a parking lot being woken up by a cop, paying for a Planet Fitness membership so he could use the showers. It was a lifesaver when Tinder really kicked it off, and a couple of halfhearted messages meant Buck had a bed to sleep in.

It wasn’t all bad. He has to remind himself of that fact. Sure, Buck spent seven years bleeding over the countryside, lugging the aching wound of his body from place to place until he finally found something that could sew him up. It wasn’t all that bad, because Buck ended up in Los Angeles, with the 118, with the family he never knew he could have. Buck’s not alone anymore. 

So he goes to Maddie’s house and cooks dinner for the four of them—five, he joked once, pointing towards Maddie’s stomach with a smile, and she had curled a hand around her belly protectively. Chimney stops grumbling because Buck stops sleeping on his couch. He kisses Maddie on the forehead when he leaves, hugs her extra hard anyways, and does the same to Chimney just to hear the way Chimney groans and shoves him away.

He drives back to the empty house with a lightness in his chest. He’s not lonely. He’s just alone. There’s a difference.

*

Eddie calls him, because he’s at the grocery store and doesn’t remember the brand of box mac’n’cheese Buck always bought for Christopher, and Buck has to talk him through the ten-step process of elevating said box mac’n’cheese. It’s comfort food. He asks who needs comforting, Eddie says Christopher had a bad day. Buck had hummed, still waking up from his nap, and it spills out of Eddie like an avalanche.

It’s a whole barrage of worries, Christopher at the center of them, and Buck listens to Eddie agonize over his decisions, over leaving Los Angeles, because he doesn’t have a job and Christopher is acting like a different person and his parents are acting like he’s an interloper on their happy family, and Eddie is 800 miles away and Buck’s chest hurts, listening to him talk. He misses him. The mac’n’cheese is because Christopher got a bad grade on a history test. It wasn’t a bad grade. It was a C, which is worrisome but not bad, except Eddie’s parents got into it with Christopher after school, and Christopher called Eddie to get him, but he’s still stonewalling Eddie and he’s just sitting in the passenger seat of Eddie’s truck in the parking lot while Eddie grabs their dinner.

Just talk to him, Buck says, and Eddie goes no no no, what if I fuck it up? I’m gonna fuck it up, right? And then Buck is talking Eddie down from a panic attack while they’re 800 miles apart, and Eddie is in a grocery store in El Paso and Buck is in his bed in what used to be Eddie’s bedroom, staring up at water stains on the ceiling.

Eddie puts himself back together. He thanks Buck, his voice rough, and Buck stays on the line all through the check-out process, Eddie’s walk to his truck, long enough to hear Christopher ask what took so long and Eddie to reply he had to phone a friend. Christopher yells hi, and Buck says it back, and for a moment, for a moment, he forgets about Texas at all.

*

Buck doesn’t withdraw. He’s still present. He still goes to work, throws himself into every rescue and call with his usual aplomb, does his best to keep Ravi as Ravi in his head and not guy who’s taking Eddie’s place. Bobby has a harder time dealing with Eddie’s absence, which Buck didn’t expect, and he thinks about telling Eddie all the name mix-ups except he thinks that make make Eddie go quiet, close-off. So Buck keeps it to himself, helps Bobby in the kitchen, constantly underfoot so no one can think about their missing piece.

He helps babysit the kids. He goes to the construction site of the Grant-Nash house, gives his opinion on their design choices. He buys Ravi some disc golf equipment as an apology, even though Ravi totally did him dirty by using Tommy as a get-away card, but Buck figures he owes him for the ketchup packets and packing peanuts.

It’s the rest of the time, the empty stretches, the periods Buck would fill by hanging out with Eddie. There’s no Eddie, just Buck, so he figures out how to content himself with that. He goes on hikes, finds himself at street fairs he saw advertised on Instagram, looks up recipes with a serving size of one, doubles it anyway, and eats the food at the kitchen counter so he doesn’t have to look at an empty chair. He goes on bike rides, avoids the beach, and stops at every food truck he passes. Some are winners, some aren’t.

Sometimes Buck catches sight of himself in a reflective surface, and his eyes always fall to the empty space behind his shoulder. It’s only just Buck, every time, and as the days go on, Buck pretends that he looks happier. There’s a smile. There’s the healthy flush from exercise. He’s alone, and he’s happy, and that should be enough.

*

Buck has been in love before. He knows the feeling. And when he misses Eddie, it’s nothing like the way he missed Abby. Maybe it’s because they’re such different people. Maybe it’s just a different kind of love. Once, Buck could imagine an entire life with Abby, the whole nine-yards. Buck imagines a life with Eddie, and it’s the same life Buck is living right now, except Eddie is in the space behind his shoulder. 

He isn’t in love with Eddie. Not in the way everyone thinks he is.

He loves Eddie, because Eddie is his best friend, and that love sometimes feels like a fire chewing up his insides, and Buck desperately tries to contain it, tries to keep it from spilling out of him and spreading to everyone else. He suppresses it, fire blankets and 2.5 attack lines, beats it back, but the source is still burning. Buck tries to keep it from eating away at the whole of him, reducing him to nothing, because Buck still has a life, even if Eddie isn’t in it. Even if Eddie is 800 miles away.

The fire keeps burning. Buck ignores it, and even if every call from Eddie is another fuel source, another chance for the fire to spread, Buck misses him too much to stop it. He answers the phone, the fire in his chest blooms, and Buck spends the rest of his night choking back tears from the pain.

*

He wakes up on one of his off days to no missed messages. Buck takes his bike out, coasts down hills and through the neighborhood. He runs into a woman at a coffee shop and they chat, idly. She’s interested, he could be, but Buck still lets her down easy anyway. He keeps riding, until his thighs burn and he’s at risk of needing to call someone to get back home.

He’s still in the neighborhood, Eddie’s neighborhood, now his, and he knows it better than he did when Eddie was living there. On his bike, man alone, no room for a passenger because it’s not even the type of bike where someone could stand on the spokes, and for once, Buck finally feels the sheer size of Los Angeles around him.

He’s alone.

The fire in his chest burns and burns and burns.

*

Eddie calls, and Buck answers, and the sleep-soft sound of Eddie’s voice is enough to suffocate him. Buck lays on the bed, imagines Eddie in the space across from him, the way tiredness eases the lines in his face, the way he goes soft and quiet, and only in front of Buck.

Eddie talks until he doesn’t, until the quiet sound of his breathing evens out into sleep, and Buck knows it, recognizes it. He stares at the empty pillow across from him.

“I love you,” Buck says. He ignores the way Eddie’s breath hitches on the other end. 

Buck stretches his hand across the empty bed and feels just the cold sheets. He thinks he’s going to burn alive, a flashover, and there will be nothing left of him. Except the fire. That’ll keep on living, even when Buck is gone.

He listens to Eddie’s breathing. Tucks his hands back to his side, closes his eyes, and just pretends. It works, until the morning, when Buck wakes up and finds the call dropped, and the morning light shows the empty space on the other side of the bed, and it’s just Buck in a too-big empty house.

He’s alone, and he’s lonely, and they’re not the same thing but right now they are, Buck feels it down to his bones, and he doesn’t think he’s ever going to get used to the ache in his chest.

[blurds]

this is the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks

[luxshine]

The “Thunk” will always kill me.

[magicratfingers]

Werewolf boyfriend

[yeahokayillreblogthat]

yeah okay ill reblog that

[redpinkwine]

Hello most beloved reaction face

[littlegreen]

buck coming out to eddie scene is crazy work actually. eddie comes over like buck i need to stay here in your zero bedroom apartment with no couch for the next couple of days so i can Not have sex with my girlfriend. and buck says. eddie this all seems very unfortunate for you. for unrelated reasons i have to tell you now that i’m bisexual. and eddie’s like. wow that is so awesome for you buck. this changes nothing, you’ll always be my bestfriendcoworker. i need you to know this. and buck says wow. eddie i’m so relieved to hear that. even though he, in truth, is not relieved to hear this at all. and then eddie makes it worse and is like buck you should call that guy. i really want you to do that. even though he, in truth, did not want buck to do that at all. and buck, who was actually not planning to call that guy, is trapped now because eddie told him to do something and he’s under a magic spell that makes him do whatever eddie says. and eddie, who came to bucks apartment to do emotional infidelity in the first place, is also trapped. because well. he can’t just break up with his girlfriend now. that would look Insane.

[danielwaldorf]

it is so funny to me that buck is a fitness guy but he does not give a single fuck about sports. like that rules. refers to mma as half naked men pummeling each other. repeatedly refuses to play basketball until he has a gay reason. he said ew i'm not playing your little games these muscles are for saving lives and flexing for my bestie. evan buckley you are my hero

[danielwaldorf]

"but he played football in school" that boy did not have a passion for the sport he saw the whole school cheering for teenage boys tackling each other and getting concussions and participating in group huddles and he said I Have To Do That Or I Will Die. "em this is just your opinion" yeah and my opinions are correct. he was desperate for a sense of value and belonging and also he was also constantly getting hurt on purpose no fucking shit he was on the football team it was that or join a gang and he couldn't find any in suburban pennsylvania

[catgirltoes]

It's the twentieth anniversary of Canada's first gay divorce tomorrow!

[catgirltoes]

Happy Twenty Years of divorce to M.M. v. J.H. whose case established that it is possible to get gay divorced in Ontario. Love loses!

[ink-the-artist]

man

[ink-the-artist]

i like it too :)

[ink-the-artist]

[appleandsinnamon]

[ink-the-artist]

[ohevoyev]

sorry. what the fuck was that?

[koko2unite]

he gaggy on my rogers until I whoopsy-doo

[seabassapologist]

[mrkanman]

king minos: get this monster out of my sight!! put it in a labryinth so i never have to look at it again!! gods holy fuck!!!

the minotaur, born like a day ago:

[animal-moments]

[kaoinim-deactivated20220927]

[wolfwoodbignaturals]

ps5 brain monday

[what-even-is-thiss]

Oh so THIS is the ps5 post. I can see why you all imprinted on it now that’s hilarious

[partyybeetle]

happy 1 year ps5 brain monday

[porterr-robinson]

v.2