Chapter Text
“Buck, you’re done for the day. Pack it up, go home, and get some rest. The station will still be here when you’re healthy, and ready to come back.”
Chim’s word echoed in Buck’s brain, a relentless siren drilling into his bones. Apparently, he’d looked like crap – enough to catch almost everyone’s attention. He felt so small between all their worried looks and questions of concern. Like a bug under a microscope.
And so, he did what he always did; he hid. He pretended he was fine. But it wasn’t enough. Not this time.
It had already started. He was losing it. Losing everything, just like he thought he would. If he was really being honest with himself, that was a huge part of why he kept taking the pills to begin with. That debilitating fear of coming down. Like he’d be falling from a cliff and have to drag himself back up.
He could feel it all growing into something heavier than he’d ever intended, but also the only thing that could truly keep him going. Keep him moving. Keep him at work. Useful. Keep that dark cloud that loomed over him at bay. The cloud that threatened to consume his mind whenever it brought him back to that house in New Mexico. Or to the lab.
He'd managed to convince himself that he could hold it all together, keep it balanced. Take the pills at home and let himself fall into that fog, but remain clear headed and alert and himself on the job.
Eddie’s visits had forced a crack in that façade he’d so carefully built up.
“I was worried the man I knew didn’t make it out of New Mexico.”
It was in that moment, standing in front of his best friend with that fake smile plastered on his face, that Buck realised. Maybe he hadn’t.
The ride home from the station felt so much longer when he wasn’t driving. The uber didn’t really add any significant minutes, but time stretched anyway.
Now, he was standing inside his house. Front door closed behind him. Lights still switched off from that morning when he’d left. Not that he’d had them on before that. The shadows were so inviting these days. When did that happen?
His duffle landed on the floor with a deep thud, a deafening boom interrupting the silence.
Instinctively, Buck urged to go into his backpack that hung just around the corner, reach his hands in, empty the contents of his prescription bottles onto his palm and down them.
But there were no pills left. He was running on empty. And he was far too aware that that’s why he was in this predicament in the first place. Stuck at home while the rest of his family was out saving lives. Doing what he should be doing. What he needed to be doing.
But Chim sent him home. He wasn’t well. He wasn’t healthy enough to be there. To have their backs.
Buck’s mind spiralled with the overwhelming fear that he might never be well enough to come back.
A bone-rattling chill clawed at his neck, trickling down his skin all the way to his toes and cutting off any other thoughts he’d had. He brought his arms up and they trembled as he wrapped them around his chest.
The cold weighed down on him, a blanket of ice sticking to his skin. His feet scraped the floor as he shuffled forward, entering the dining room at a snail pace.
He wasn’t sure what made him think of it, but he knew what the most appetising solution to his problem was - the fastest was to be surrounded by a soothing warmth.
Doing everything he could to ignore the way the room spun, he dragged the back door open and trudged out onto the back porch.
The hot tub was easy to start up, and Buck could remember how quick it would reach that deliciously scorching temperature that had steam rising from the surface. But he didn’t wait the ten or so minutes it would take to get there. The chattering of his teeth decided that he couldn’t.
They also decided that removing any layers would only increase the chill gnawing at the inside of his ribs. The moderately warm standby temp of the water was better than the wind that slashed at his cheeks, latching onto stale sweat.
His hands slipped on the edge of the tub as he struggled to climb in. His balance was failing him, but he managed to regain it enough to lower himself into the bubbling waves.
Buck simply sat there, leaning his head back against the moulded acrylic seat and waiting for the idea of euphoric warmth that he’d had in his head to become a reality. But even with most of his body submerged in that supposed bliss, the ice was unrelenting.
It pulled at his vision now. It twisted the bright beams of sun that shone through the canopy, spotting his view with growing black splotches.
Panic rose in his throat but dissipated just as fast. He wanted to get out now. He knew he should. But his limbs felt detached and so, so far away.
The black splotches grew, spreading until the world around him disappeared.