Eyes on Me by @dreaming-marchling (Marchling on AO3)
Summary:
Buck stood up straighter so he could really meet Tommy’s eyes. The cloudiness was getting to the point where the tiny details of Tommy’s face were beyond his ability to make out and he hated that. The frown was big enough that Buck could see it but was the little line between Tommy’s brows furrowed? Was the muscle in his jaw clenching?
Buck couldn’t see those things anymore and that made him feel like he was mourning a death.
He met Tommy’s eyes and said, “One of the most common side effects of being struck by lightning is cataracts.”
---
Rapidly developing cataracts start clouding Buck's vision leaving him to rely on his family and his new boyfriend while he waits for surgery to remove them.
In the wake of the intense loneliness and distress Buck feels during the lawsuit, he turns to drinking to numb his mind in the unending, agonizing evenings alone. However, even once everything is resolved and he is back with the 118, Buck finds he can’t stop, spiraling deeper into a hazy pattern of denial and drinking that leads to a culmination involving the entire firefam.
Read it on Ao3
Buck wasn’t sure how it had come to this.
It had started during the lawsuit. Everything was so painful during those days, and he’d been so alone. Only Maddie was around to talk to, and Buck didn’t want to dump it all on her. He spent days on end alone in his apartment, unable to figure out what to do with himself. The minutes, hours, days dragged on, impossibly agonizing to bear. He couldn’t go to work, to the 118, pretty much his favourite place, his home. He couldn’t even call Eddie, his best friend in the world, the best friend who, at the time, was so pissed at him that Buck was sure that Eddie hated him.
So he’d turned to the only thing that made the bad feelings go away. Or as near to making them go away as possible; even numbness was preferable to those horrible emotions, the nights alone, lost in his misery. At first it was just a six-pack of beer in a night. That quickly turned into one and half, and then two six packs. Soon, beer wasn’t cutting it any longer and he changed to mixed drinks, rum and coke being his go-to.
He wasn’t sure when he switched from mixed drinks to drinking straight from the bottle; hell, he couldn’t even remember when the mixed drinks had stopped being mixed and become just rum. All he knew was that at night, when things became too painful to bear, the alcohol brought him a sense of numbness and detachment from his feelings, and he was extremely grateful to escape from them for a few hours, even if it meant a wicked headache or dry heaves the next day.
Presently, Buck was back with the 118. Things had been rocky at first, but eventually everyone had forgiven him. Even Eddie. And yet; Buck couldn’t help but feel like his luck would reverse once more. The weight of this anxiety pressed on him, combined with unpleasant memories and flashbacks, and more often than not, Buck returned to the bottle at night.
At first, it had just been after shifts or between days off, to make sure he wasn’t hungover for work. But eventually, the anxiety keeping him up at night, Buck started self medicating even on nights before shifts. He grew quieter at work, irritable, nursing a bottle of Tylenol and anti-nauseants on the really bad days. People noticed, but he played it off like he was just feeling under the weather, or that he’d been sleeping badly, which wasn’t actually far from the truth. He was pretty sure some of them didn’t buy it, but he maintained the lie obstinately, and most let him be. He started avoiding situations in which he was alone with Eddie or Hen, feeling like they were moments away from interrogating him but didn’t want to do it in front of the others. He avoided Bobby’s eyes as often as possible as well; considering his background, Bobby was sure to catch on sooner or later. Buck knew he needed to stop, that what he was doing was not the right way to deal with his anxiety and worries, but it was just so effective. And who was it hurting, really?
But then there came a day where it went too far. The night before a shift he’d had an argument with Maddie about something stupid and inconsequential, but it had riled him up. In an attempt to work off the feelings, Buck had gone for a jog, and somehow tweaked his previously-crushed leg in such a way that it sent pure agony through him, to the point where he’d had to stop and order an Uber to take him home. After limping inside and taking one of his old pain pills, Buck lay on the couch, miserable, in pain, plagued with flashbacks to his recovery after the accident. Without conscious thought, he reached for the mostly full bottle of whisky on the table and began to drink. Hours later, he was blissfully unaware as he passed out, still lying on the couch, his arm trailing off and reaching towards the nearly empty whiskey bottle that had fallen over and was dripping slowly onto the floor.
Buck was still completely unconscious the next morning when they found him. He hadn’t called in to work, and when he hadn’t shown up, they’d gotten worried. He didn’t hear the pounding on his door, the shouts for him to open up. He didn’t hear the key being inserted and turning as Eddie used his spare, didn’t hear them bustling in. He didn’t feel them shaking him, voices telling him to wake up. He didn’t feel them checking his pulse, pulling his eyelids back, checking to make sure he was alive. He had no clue that he’d been lifted and dragged to the bathroom, a dead weight in Eddie and Hen’s arms as they somehow wrestled him into the bathtub.
Buck was completely oblivious until a cold spray of water came down on his face, and even then it took many moments for him to properly react. Consciousness seemed to take a while to come, and he groaned, trying to flinch away from the water, but his position didn’t allow it. After a few moments he spluttered as the water came down even more onto his head, soaking his hair and plastering his clothes to his skin. Finally opening his eyes, he peered blearily up through the spray and felt his heart lurch as he realized he wasn’t alone. Eddie and Hen were staring down at him with what he could only imagine was deep disapproval, and he felt shame lick at him as he slowly realized what must have happened.
Once he was fully conscious, they helped him stand. As he stood, leaning heavily on the shower wall, Hen left the room to give him privacy and Eddie silently helped him out of his sopping clothes, then left him to shower. It took a long time; shame and a hell of a hangover made Buck’s movements slow, his head pounding, nausea rolling through him. His leg still ached, and he knew that he was going to get questioned the second he left the bathroom, which made him seriously consider just staying in there forever. He reluctantly finished showering and toweled off, seeing that someone had set some clothes for him on the toilet with his phone on top, the wet clothes Eddie had helped him out of draped over the towel rack, now dripping steadily on the floor.
After Buck managed to dress himself in the T-shirt and shorts that had been left for him, slipping his phone into his pocket, he clumsily threw the wet clothes over the shower curtain rod so they’d drip into the tub instead, then peered at himself in the mirror. He looked terrible; he was pale with dark circles under his eyes, and he looked absolutely exhausted. Buck ran a hand over his face and tried to think of a reason to delay the inevitable, but he came up blank. So, feeling like he was heading for his own funeral, Buck opened the door and moved slowly out of the bathroom, limping a little on his sore leg.
He had just been thinking that at least Bobby wasn’t there; as unpleasant as it was, he could deal with Hen and Eddie, but he didn’t think he could deal with Bobby’s disappointed expression. Unfortunately for him, as soon as he lifted his head to look into the kitchen, he saw that of course Bobby was there, standing at his counter. Chim was there too, the four of them standing around, waiting for him. Somehow the sight of them in full uniform was even more intimidating, and Buck swallowed hard. He felt his heart sink even more than it already had, and he dropped his gaze to the floor as he limped towards the kitchen island, feeling everyone’s eyes following him.
He pulled himself into a chair and looked down at his hands, worrying his fingers as he avoided all their gazes, his heart pounding. The bright sunlight streaming in through his wall of windows was sending sharp pains through his head but he tried to ignore it, tried to ignore the way his mouth and throat felt parched, the way he longed for a drink, at this point a drink of anything, just to wet his throat. As though answering this thought, someone slid a glass of water in front of him and he chanced a glance upwards to see Hen looking over at him. He quickly averted his gaze.
“Thanks,” Buck muttered, his voice thick and hoarse. He tried to clear his throat, but it wouldn’t clear. He lifted the glass with a shaking hand and took a sip; the cold water fell upon his parched mouth and throat like rain over the desert and he let out a shaky breath of relief.
“How long has this been going on?”
Bobby’s voice broke through the silence and Buck winced as his head throbbed from the sound. He couldn’t meet Bobby’s eyes. He didn’t want to admit that anything was going on at all, but he didn’t really have a choice. They’d all seen for themselves; hell, they’d had to wake him out of a drunken unconsciousness. There was no point in denying it.
“Since the lawsuit, I guess,” Buck mumbled, staring at his water glass. There was a pause, and Buck continued to look down, not wanting to see their disappointment, their disapproval.
“So at least six months?” Hen asked, and Buck nodded, watching the way the water in his glass crawled up the sides as he turned it in his hands, his gaze never rising.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
Eddie, this time. Buck did not miss the undercurrent of “why didn’t you tell me?” in Eddie’s tone, but he couldn’t respond to it. Why hadn’t he told them? Because he hadn’t thought it was a problem at first. Because once he’d realized it was, he was too afraid, too ashamed to admit anything was happening. Because he’d thought he could handle it on his own, even when it had become clear that he couldn’t. Because he, most of all, didn’t want to admit it to Bobby, whom he and Hen had found in the exact same way a few years prior. Because he was sure that Bobby would be disgusted with him, frustrated that he hadn’t learned from Bobby’s own example. And he hadn’t told Eddie, his best friend, because Eddie had enough to worry about with Christopher and his other problems to have to concern himself with a drunken Buck.
Unable and unwilling to relate all of this, Buck shrugged, still staring down at his glass. Anxiety was gnawing at his heart along with the shame and his hands continually turned the water glass, a nervous motion he couldn’t stop. He felt trapped by their gazes, unable to move but unwilling to stay. He wished the floor would open up under him and swallow him whole, just so they couldn’t see him anymore.
“I’m sorry,” Buck said to his water glass, feeling like the weight of the world was pressing down on him. “I’ve been stupid. I’m sorry for worrying you all.”
“You’re not stupid, Buck,” said Hen, and while Buck appreciated the words, he wasn’t sure he believed them. He shrugged again, swallowing hard as tears threatened. Buck sensed Hen coming closer, turning his head away from her as she put a hand on his back. He automatically wanted to pull away from her touch, but something stopped him. He’d been hiding this for so long, so sure that everyone would reject him instantly if they’d known his secret, that the fact that Hen was offering him even this small gesture of comfort gave him a tiny flicker of hope that not all was lost.
“We’re not judging you, man,” Eddie said, as Buck continued to fight against his rising urge to cry, desperate to hide his feelings. “We’re just worried about you.”
“We knew something was up,” Chim added. “We can tell you haven’t been yourself lately. When you didn’t show up for work today…” He trailed off, and Buck understood. If they’d already suspected what had been going on, then they must have had some inkling at what they’d find.
“I’m sorry for worrying you,” Buck repeated, his voice more hoarse as he fought to control himself. “You all have more important things to worry about than my stupid choices.”
He chanced a glance at Chim, whom he had pegged as the least likely to pull an emotional reaction out of him; Chim’s expression was clearly one of worry, and Buck quickly looked away again, having misjudged his assessment, tears threatening even more. Did he even deserve their concern? This was his own fault, after all. He was the one who had started drinking, knowing full well it was not a problem-solver. But then he couldn’t seem to stop, even though he’d wanted to, even though he’d been internally yelling at himself for weeks, trying to figure out how to fix this.
“Buck, addiction is not a choice,” Bobby said gently, once again proving he knew exactly what Buck was thinking. But of course, it made sense that he would know. Buck felt a sudden, intense connection with Bobby, knowing that he must have felt exactly as Buck had at some point before. “We’re here because we care. And we are going to get you help.”
Finally, Buck couldn’t handle it anymore. He looked up, meeting Bobby’s gaze across the counter. He saw nothing but concern there, nothing but a man who clearly cared about him, who understood what he was going through. He glanced at Eddie, and then Hen; the same expression was mirrored on their faces. He understood then that they weren’t there to chastise him, but to help, to offer support. Overwhelmed, tears finally spilling over, Buck buried his face in his hands as he broke down, his shoulders shaking as he tried to hold back his sobs.
A moment later, he felt Hen’s arms wrap around him from one side, Eddie’s from the other. He heard footsteps and felt Chim join the hug from behind. Shakily, Buck clutched them back, holding onto Eddie and Hen’s arms, ducking his head as they pressed in on him. Though he was shaking, tears running down his face, Buck suddenly felt slightly lighter. He hadn’t realized how truly terrified he’d been of losing his family, but he knew now that he should have known better. They wouldn’t abandon him for this. They had never abandoned him before, even when he thought they had in the series of events that led to him filing the lawsuit. He’d been so afraid that things would fall apart again that he’d completely forgotten that he had people he could rely on, people who would have his back.
“Thanks guys,” he croaked after a long while, sniffing and taking shuddering breaths. They backed off enough to let him breathe, but Buck was happy when neither Hen nor Eddie withdrew entirely, each with one bracing hand on his back.
Buck wasn’t sure what to say to fill the silence that fell. He knew they were on his side, yes, but he was starting to feel embarrassed that they had found him passed out, that they’d had to revive him like that. He supposed that if Bobby could get over the embarrassment of it, he would too, but for the time being he felt extremely awkward. He swiped at his tears and took a sip of water to delay the moment he’d have to speak, though he was saved a moment later. Buck felt a sharp stab of pain in his temples as Eddie and Hen’s radios suddenly went off inches from his ears on either side, and he let out an involuntary gasp, flinching away from them. Feeling him react to the sudden sound, both Hen and Eddie stepped back, angling their radios away from him as he winced and put a hand to his forehead, trying to listen to the call coming in without overloading his hungover brain.
“We need to go,” Bobby said, as dispatch finished relaying their message. “Chim, Hen, go to the truck, we’ll be there in a minute.”
“Right, Cap,” Chim agreed, shooting Buck a sympathetic smile and moving over to the door, waiting for Hen. Hen squeezed Buck’s shoulder and gave it a wordless pat, then followed Chim out the door and down the hallway.
“Eddie’s going to grab the bottles you have left for now, okay?” Bobby asked Buck, who nodded, avoiding their eyes again as shame bubbled to the surface once more. Eddie, responding to Bobby’s words, moved over to the counter to pick up the one bottle of rum that was visible.
“There’s more in the bottom right cupboard,” Buck said dully, not watching, but listening as Eddie opened the door, hearing the clink of glass bottles as he gathered them.
“I’ll text you later, okay?” Eddie said bracingly, and Buck glanced up at him. Eddie was standing there, holding his last few bottles of rum and vodka, but all Buck could see on his face was worry and concern, no trace of teasing or mocking whatsoever. Buck nodded, attempted a smile, and then Eddie was gone as well.
“It’s going to be okay, Buck,” Bobby said, and Buck slipped off the chair to stand as Bobby moved to his side. “It’s not going to be fun, but I promise you can do it. If I can, you definitely can.”
“Thanks, Bobby,” Buck said, his eyes cast downwards. Bobby pulled him in for a brief hug, and Buck squeezed him tight, trying to put his gratitude into the embrace. “And I’m sorry, again. For missing work, too.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Bobby said, pulling away, his hand lingering on Buck’s shoulder for a moment. “We’ll get through this as a team.”
Buck, unable to speak, nodded once more. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Bobby squeezed his shoulder and turned to leave, but then paused and turned back, looking thoughtful.
“I have a meeting later this week, and it’s not far from here. Would you like to come with me?”
Buck swallowed hard and looked up at Bobby, looked up at the man he regarded as a father figure, one of the most important people in his life. He knew that none of this was going to be easy, but somehow, the thought of sharing it with Bobby made it seem a little more bearable.
“I’d like that,” Buck agreed, his voice shaking but genuine.
Bobby smiled, nodded, then turned and left the apartment, closing the door behind him. Buck limped over to his balcony and looked down, watching Bobby hurry from the building and jump into the truck. Whoever was driving hit the sirens and then they were away, leaving Buck alone with his overwhelming emotions once more.
Buck made his way back inside and looked around his empty apartment, feeling at a loss. He knew what he wanted to do, but thanks to Bobby and Eddie, there was no longer any alcohol in his apartment. He had mixed feelings about all of this, and he knew somewhere in the back of his mind that that was all part of the addiction.
Addiction.
He turned the word over in his mind as he forced himself to drink the rest of the water Hen had given him, then moved to the sink for a refill. It was funny how, in the weeks and months this had all been going on, he’d managed to avoid labelling his problem with that word. He’d acknowledged that he was drinking too much, that he was not helping his problems in a constructive way… but he had never called it an addiction, or alcoholism. He supposed it was an important step to acknowledge, however much he loathed to admit it, that he was an alcoholic. Just thinking the word was a shock to his system, his heart clenching, feeling like he’d been punched in the gut.
Buck sighed heavily and ran a hand through his damp curls, shivering as a droplet of water slipped down his neck. He was exhausted. He knew the best way to feel better was to sleep the hangover off, but he also knew he needed to replenish his fluids and have something to eat. He peered into his fridge and found a container of leftover lo mein, threw it into the microwave and drank the rest of the glass of water while the food heated. He poured himself another glass of water and sat down at the table with his food, slowly making his way through the container, even though all he wanted to do was pass out again.
Finally, after he’d finished his food and the third glass of water, Buck allowed himself to succumb to the fatigue. He limped to the bathroom and got himself another pain pill, as the throb in his leg was not relenting, then forced himself up the stairs so he could sleep in his bed. He didn’t want to face the couch yet, didn’t want to face the place where they’d found him.
Buck fell over into his bed, not bothering to change, and pulled the duvet over his head, sighing as he settled in. He felt emotionally spent and so full of confused, conflicting feelings that all he wanted was to sleep the day away. Just as he was drifting off, his phone chimed in his pocket, startling him - he’d forgotten it was there. He groped around under the blanket and found the phone, moving it towards his face and squinting into the bright light it gave off under the darkness of his covers, saw Eddie’s name above the text.
It’s gonna be okay. We won’t let you go through this alone.
Buck’s heart was heavy, but he smiled. Maybe things really would be okay, with Bobby, Eddie and the others at his side. Just maybe. Buck drifted off with the phone still clutched loosely in his hand, and his dreams, when he had them, all carried an undercurrent of hope within them, as though his conscience was telling him it was all going to be alright.
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