how strangely words like this still fit across my mouth
buddie, explicit, 10.6k words. angst with a happy ending. double whump.
challenging myself to post something new for every night of chanukah this year. night one is for my dear comrade in angst demi @vibecheckd :)
There’s something beautiful in being able to argue with someone well. A good argument feels like fencing. It’s fluid, it’s a give and take, and it’s light on its feet. Each party is out to hit but not to kill— each party has decorum. There’s a basic understanding that you’re being civilized, that you’re fighting just to win, not to defeat. Most importantly, the weapons and armor are only donned for the fight and taken off right after. A good fight makes both parties better in the end.
This is not that.
This is a back-alley brawl. This is lethal, explosive, mean. This is a shitty kettle screeching its shitty whistle after taking way too long to finally boil over.
They get back from a pretty exhausting rescue– two teen girls trapped in a burning building, one of whose wheelchair had warped from the heat. There wasn’t time to assess the safety of the floor and also rescue her, so Eddie had jumped across a questionable expanse of floor to get to her. They’d both been fine— clearly, it was the right move. Eddie knows what he’s doing. Chimney had sighed at him, but he hadn’t said anything. Which Eddie takes to mean it was fine.
Buck, however, does not seem fine about it. Buck’s already been super weird to Eddie since Bobby died. Past his normal amount of weird. It’s like everything Eddie does bothers him, but he won’t say it. Before Texas, Eddie could count on Buck being around, no matter what. Now, Eddie’s lucky if Buck asks him about the weather. Eddie, for his part, isn’t engaging. If Buck wants to be weird and distant, fine. That’s not on Eddie to fix. He’s got enough to deal with.
(Eddie wants nothing more than to fix it. Eddie wants nothing more for things to go back to how they were. And the fact that they neither can nor will is fueling all his ugly feelings. It’s easiest to filter them into anger, so he is. It’s worse that he’s aware he’s doing it.)
Except now Buck is shouldering past him to get into the locker room. He actually shoves Eddie, so now Eddie has to deal with it.
He follows Buck into the locker room and plants himself behind Buck, scoffing, “Can you just spit out whatever your problem is instead of all this posturing you’re doing?”
Buck slams his locker shut. “Of course you want to do this here,” he mutters.
“I’m not the one who’s bringing it here, Buck. So, c’mon, what’s your problem?” Eddie crosses his arms across his chest.
“My problem?” Buck turns around to look at him, eyes cold and furious. “I’m not the one who almost put his foot through an unstable floor.”
“Seriously? You’re mad I made a decision instead of waiting for things to get worse?” Eddie’s absolutely incredulous.
“Your call is not always the right call. What the fuck were you thinking—”
“Last I checked, you didn’t have a paramedic license. Or even an AEMT license! Or any medical certification!”
“—you could’ve gotten us all killed, did you think about that?” There’s an angry shake in Buck’s voice that Eddie would think was worry if he didn’t know better.
“That girl would’ve died. She didn’t. None of us did. It was the right move–”
“It was impulsive and dangerous, Eddie, and you know it.”
Eddie throws up his hands. “And now I’m getting a lecture on impulsivity from the guy who regularly jumps into the line of fire every time he’s a little bit sad.”
Buck sneers. “That’s where you wanna go with me? You really wanna play the messy personal life game?”
“Oh, fuck you. You don’t get to act superior to me, and you sure as hell don’t get to act all worried about me now, after you’ve been avoiding me for weeks. You don’t get to act like my life is such a mess just because yours is. Sorry that I’m actually fine right now. Sorry that I’m good at my damn job regardless of who my partner is.”
If there was a line, Eddie just set a world record long jump across it. Buck’s face goes neutral, like he just shoved a concrete wall between his emotions and Eddie. His posture gets eerily straight. “You,” he says, voice too calm and too flat, “are too much of an arrogant control freak to actually be anyone’s partner.”
Buck walks for the door. He brushes past Chimney on his way out.
Chimney’s eyebrows raise at the expression on Buck’s face, and they all but disappear into his hairline at the expression on Eddie’s. And, yeah, he probably doesn’t look great right now, but he can’t handle whatever advice Chimney’s about to offer him.
So Eddie rolls his eyes. “I’m already over it, Chim. And he’ll be fine tomorrow.”
Chimney’s expression hardens. “No, Diaz, I don’t think you are. And I don’t think he will be.”
He’s getting last named. Isn’t that just fucking wonderful.
“And,” Chimney continues, voice still carrying its Captain Han steel, “I can’t have two of my men screaming at each other in the middle of my house. Especially not where everyone can hear it.”
Ah. Fuck.
“You’re gonna be switching with Jensen on B-Shift for the rest of the week, so that you and Buckley can both cool off.”
Eddie’s anger flashes through him. “Why the hell am I the one getting switched? He’s the one with the problem.”
The look Chimney gives him in response is ice cold. “Buck’s not the one who breached protocol today.”
Eddie scoffs. “Understood, Captain Han,” he says, managing to keep his voice prickly instead of outright venomous.
Chimney sighs, stern face giving way to weariness. He opens his mouth to say something, then decides against it. Instead, he turns and leaves.
I would be really happy if you rebloged this!!! /nf
My boosty
Now explaining why it's so important for me:
First of all I want to become independent from my mother. I still live with her and I want to leave so so bad. She's not physicly abusive and.... not really mentaly. Well, she doesn't intends to. But my mental health is in shambles because of her. It's really bad. Also our finance situation is pretty strange so I don't want to use her money. Even if I use them, I don't like doing it
Second of all. My health!!! Both mental and physical
I have hypermobility and my kneecaps have already got misplaced three times with the help of my poor muscles. I need orthoses for my knees to simply walk without risk of it breaking and getting misplaced again. I have a pair right now and usually they last half of the year before they wear off, sometimes if I'm careful with them they can last for a year. But that means that I need money for them twice a year
Also I need therapy. I have depression, high anxiety, diagnosed PTSD, undiagnosed autism. I suffer from suicidal thoughts and self harm. And cherry on top I was SA'd by my own father (also I have a feeling that I am hypersexual but not sure) . I am not okay
To finish this I want to say this that somewhere in the future I will find a normal job. But I don't know when. I am not even sure if I'll be able to go to uni in my mental state. So as a start I want to open those commisions
