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Ficlet prompt: don't let go

Buck can’t name this. He has no way to identify the thing that chokes him, that curls around his heart and squeezes, that floods his lungs and lies bitter on his tongue, that fogs his mind, that winds through his veins. He can’t name the beast anymore than he can name what releases it. It’s- simply put, sometimes the dam breaks. The walls he has carefully built up, the ones that hold the nameless monster at bay, they come crashing down. And they bring Buck with him. 

He’s gotten better at dealing with it as he’s grown up. He’s far from the little boy holding his own knees and rocking in his bed in the middle of the night, trying to stifle his whimpers and biting his lip till it bled to hold in his cries. Now he does it in the bathroom, fists clenching the ceramic sink, jaw clenched in a stubborn attempt to hold in the tears that sting behind his eyes, glaring at his reflection in the mirror. Now, he tries to fight it. But he still does it alone. 

His arms are shaking as he grips the counter, straining with the effort of physically holding himself together, as if, if he relaxed for even a moment, he would shatter and fly into a million pieces. He swallows hard, his jaw trembling, and stares at himself in the mirror. He looks fine. He should be fine. Aside from his eyes, glistening with unshed tears, and the visible tension of his jaw, nothing is out of the ordinary. He looks tired, sure. But that’s to be expected. 

It goes like this- Buck stops sleeping. His nights turn longer, plagued by nightmares and haunted by ghosts. Little by little, he spends more of the night lying awake, dreading sleep, than he does actually sleeping. He functions for a while off adrenaline and obscene amounts of caffeine and/or sugar. He pretends that if he can just stay active enough, he might be able to outrun the demons in his mind. He shoves them down deep, into a dark hole. He tells himself they don’t exist. 

They do. 

They find their way out eventually. The sleep deprivation sinks its claws in, ripping the defenses he has in place to shreds. It all becomes too much. In a matter of hours, he goes from hyper, to numb, to soft, to… this. No matter what, the demons always find their way out. 

Buck doesn’t know when- sometimes the cycle lasts months, dragging out until he’s worn so thin that his mind shatters him in an instant. Other times, it’s fast, quick enough that he still has the willpower to try and force it back down, that he still tells himself that giving in makes him weak. 

This is the latter. The nightmares started up about a week ago- he can’t name those, either. Not exactly. He knows that in the first one, he hurt Maddie. He doesn’t recall what exactly he did, just waking up, drenched in sweat, her name on his lips and a pang of guilt stabbing through his chest. The last five nights, he couldn’t tell you what the dreams were about. But they all culminated the same way- him waking up, tears burning his cheeks, sweat dripping down his spine, and something akin to horror curling in his gut. It’s left him on edge all week- his skin buzzing, his hands shaking, his mind distracted. 

And then tonight. Tonight, he does remember. Tonight, it was Eddie. 

“How could you?” Eddie’s voice had shaken, his words breaking. There was a shattered look in his eyes, his brows drawn together and his lower lip trembling. “How could you do this to me?”

“Wh-what did I do?” His voice sounded foreign to his own ears. They were standing in the street, no one in sight. 

“You killed me.” 

Red bloomed on Eddie’s shoulder, seeping through his white shirt. Eddie just stared at him, his expression heartbroken. 

“Eddie you’re- you’re bleeding,” Buck stammered, reaching for him. Eddie stepped back. 

“You did this to me.”

“No I- no, I didn’t- I didn’t mean to.” Panic curled in Buck’s chest. “Eddie, what’s happening?”

Eddie’s fingertips started to crumble, turning into dust and blowing away. Eddie just cocked his head, tear-filled eyes staring directly through Buck’s soul. 

“You couldn’t save me.”

“Eddie, no!” It came out as a cry as Buck lunged for Eddie again. His fingertips brushed across Eddie’s chest, but his body crumbled under Buck’s fingertips and Eddie let out a shout of pain. Buck jerked his hand away, horror turning his veins to ice. 

“It’s your fault,” Eddie whispered, and the sorrow in his eyes turned to betrayal. “You did this to me.” 

“Please,” Buck begged, tears burning his eyes. “Please don’t leave me.”

“Why would I stay?”

Buck was sobbing now. “Because I love you!” 

“How tragic it is, to love a ghost.” 

And then he was gone, a cloud of dust carried off by the wind as Buck lunged into the space where he had just stood. Dropping to his knees, another sob ripped its way out of Buck. Blood. There was blood on his hands, on his shirt, on his tongue. Dust rained down around him, coating him and filling his breaths, choking him as it seeped into his lungs. 

Eddie was gone. 

Buck had woken up drenched in a cold sweat, his cheeks soaked in tears. There was a warm presence right beside him, an arm over his waist. Shakily, he’d slipped away and stumbled his way to the bathroom as quietly as he could, swallowing the sob lodged in his throat. 

Which led him to now, clenching the cold ceramic of the sink and trying his best to breathe. Eddie’s okay, he tries to tell himself. He’s in the next room, sound asleep. Whole. Alive.

But Buck can still feel Eddie’s blood coating his hands, sticky and warm. He can taste it on his tongue, bitter and metallic. He looks at himself in the mirror and sees Eddie staring back, shattering with each passing moment, slipping away. 

He can feel himself shaking, the tremors seizing him growing worse as the minutes tick by. His jaw is aching with the effort of containing his sobs, his eyes burning with the tears he stubbornly refuses to shed. His head aches, pain lancing through his skull every few seconds. And his stomach churns, anxiety sharp and stabbing in his gut. His nostrils flare with each jagged breath, but his head is spinning. 

Buck can’t name the beast in his mind anymore than he can fix whatever this is inside him, the part of him that’s fundamentally broken. This isn’t something he can solve. This is something he has to let explode and pray it doesn’t take anyone else down with him. This is his burden, and his alone, to bear. 

But- fighting it has never done him much good. More often than not, it just makes everything worse. Which is sort of his brand, he guesses. Even with himself, he just simply makes things worse. He’ll make Eddie worse, too. Eventually. Eddie says Buck helps, he swears he does. But that only lasts so long before Buck’s true nature- the one his parents always saw- takes over. Before he, as he always does, takes something beautiful and shatters it. Before the universe realizes that Buck does not deserve this- this perfect, precious gift that it’s given him. Before it all falls apart. 

Buck shoves at the counter hard, sending himself stumbling backwards until he collides with the wall, sliding down it as a sob tears its way out of him. It’s what he does. He breaks things, he ruins them. It’s what he’s always done, it’s all he knows. He will shatter Eddie. He will take the beautiful man that inexplicably loves him, and tear him to pieces. 

He fists his hands in his own hair, twisting his curls until pain strikes through his scalp. His eyes are squeezed shut, hot tears tracking down his cheeks. His breaths are sharp, erratic. His entire being is trembling, shaking as he tries to stay as silent as he can. Quaking as he implodes. 

“Buck?” The soft voice breaks through the screaming in his mind and Buck just shakes his head frantically. No, no, no. Eddie can’t- he can’t be here. Not while the ticking time bomb that is Evan Buckley goes off. “Buck.”

He hears himself talking. “No, no, no, please, god, no, please, please.” It’s a desperate string of nearly incoherent begging that tumbles past his lips, a frantic plea to a god he’s never believed in, to an entity that’s never answered. 

“Evan, baby.” There’s soft hands on him, running over his arms, brushing down his sides. Gentle fingers tug at his wrists, trying to get him to stop ripping at his own hair. Eddie’s voice is colored with panic as he tries desperately to reach Buck. “Sweetheart, please, I’m right here, please.” A whimper rips its way past Buck’s lips and he just shakes his head. “Cariño, look at me.” A tremor runs through Buck as half of him tries to obey and the other half insists he doesn’t. 

Soft knuckles brush over his cheek and a thumb presses into the skin of his wrist, directly on his pulse. “Mi cielito, you’re scaring me, please.” Buck lets out a strangled sound, desperate for Eddie’s comfort and knowing he doesn’t deserve it. He’s scaring Eddie. He hurt Eddie. He couldn’t save Eddie. 

“Buck,” Eddie whispers tearfully, prying Buck’s hand away from his head and pulling it to his own chest, covering Buck’s fingers with his own. “Feel that, Buck. I’m here. I’m alive. Because of you, okay?”

Buck’s head spins. There are fingers on the back of his neck, pressing lightly, urging him towards the comfort of Eddie. Buck’s too tired to fight. He has nothing left. He goes until he feels Eddie’s skin, smooth and warm beneath his own, made slick with Buck’s tears. Eddie’s chin is atop his head and when Buck moves, just slightly, his nose brushes the column of Eddie’s throat. His hands are clenched into fists now, one curled around the material of Eddie’s shirt and the other pressed into Eddie’s chest, covered by one of Eddie’s. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into Eddie’s skin, his voice rough and raw with tears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Eddie shushes him softly, fingers curling in Buck’s hair and nails scraping gently against his scalp. “It’s okay, baby, I’m right here.”

“Don’t-” the words catch in Buck's throat, heavy and dangerous, “don’t let go.” Eddie’s knuckles press into the side of Buck’s head, his fingers squeezing Buck’s hand. 

“Never,” he swears, his voice hushed. It sounds like a prayer. “I will never let you go, Evan.” 

Buck can’t wholly believe him. Maybe he will someday, but for now he can hold onto those words, onto the temporary assurance they offer, onto the promise that for now, Eddie will hold Buck together while he falls apart. That in this moment, Buck doesn’t have to face the demons of his mind on his own. That Eddie won’t leave. 

“I love you,” Eddie says, his lips against Buck’s temple, brushing a kiss over his birthmark. “I love your scars, wherever they may be. I love every piece of you, both inside and out. I love you for your flaws and imperfections, not in spite of them. I love you, irrevocably, completely, purposely. I choose to love you, Evan. Every day, since the day I met you until the day I die. And by some miracle, the universe let me be loved by you.” 

“You- you don’t believe in the universe,” Buck whispers, the words gasped between tears. 

“No,” Eddie concedes. “I never did, not really. Not until I told the most incredible man I’ve ever known that I loved him and he said it back. Not until it gave me you, Buck.”

Buck has no answer for that. He can only press himself further into Eddie, let Eddie’s arms wrap around him, let Eddie catch the stray pieces of Buck that threaten to fly away and hold them all together. Let Eddie love him, even in the moments he can’t possibly believe he deserves it. 

And thank the universe for giving him someone who’s love doesn’t choke Buck, doesn’t turn him inside out or break him apart. For granting him a love that is whole, a love that comes without a cost, without requisite. A love that is pure. A love that sees him, the good and the bad, and decides he’s worth staying for.

A love that can hold him together when he falls apart.