Chapter Text
Buck is furious to the point that he’s shaking. There’s blood rushing through his ears and all he can think is you’re not ready you’re not ready you’re not ready you’re not ready. There’s a lawyer’s card burning a hole in his pocket and the lingering taste of the bite of food he’d managed before Bobby’s revelation.
He needs to– he should– there’s got to be a way he can–
He pulls over and parks on a random street because he can’t focus on the road and he can’t go home go home– he shouldn’t go out, he’s really trying to turn over a new leaf since his last relationship blew up in his face while he was lying in a hospital bed, but– there’s also a rectangle of card stock in his pocket screaming at him to pick up the phone.
He steps out of his Jeep so he can breathe air that isn’t full of his own exhalation. He leans against the door and sees he’s parked in front of a series of stores– a closed coffee shop, a fancy looking home goods store that has some interesting stacked bowls in the dark window front, and one shop that’s still got its lights on. It’s called Tatuar and Buck made enough bad calls in Peru to know that that is the verb for tattoo.
He is absolutely not supposed to get a tattoo on blood thinners, and he still has a firm enough grasp on his own health that he won’t, but it doesn’t mean he can’t window shop. Throw down more money than he should on a booking, consult with someone who will hold him down and give him something real and tangible to funnel all the despair and fury he’s feeling into.
The shop is nice. Kind of empty compared to other places he’s dropped in on, no pounding bass or dark corners. There’s photos on the walls of people’s finished work and sketches around them– all types, from small hand pieces to full backs. There’s a big wall of flash, and Buck can tell that there’s at least two artists in the place– maybe more– but definitely one who does some American traditional, and one who does pieces Buck can’t look away from.
They’re layered colors and geometric blacks– shapes woven in and out of each other– none of them look like anything but they all feel like the shapes that move behind his lids when he rubs his eyes.
“Welcome.” A kind voice greets him, and Buck twists, surprised by a man coming up from the back, “sorry to have kept you waiting– I sent the regular front desk kid home, and I was just wrapping up some client sketches and cleaning.”
Buck should respond. He should. It’s just– the guy in front of him is so hot . Buck had figured some things out about himself thanks to a pretty deep dive into the other side of his favorite porn sites while rotting in bed hoping his leg would be his again someday. He’d gotten off to new things and then followed it up with a pretty embarrassing take down of his ‘straightness’ in a Reddit thread.
“Okay, maybe– you’re not ready? I can give you some time, show you my portfolio.” The guy quirks an eyebrow and Buck is momentarily drawn in by the glint of the metallic bar there before the words hit him.
“I am.” He blurts out, feeling the buzzing fizzing screaming anger rush back to the front of his mind from the edges where the novelty around him had pushed it, he can’t keep the sound of it off his tongue when he speaks. “I’m ready.”
The man’s brows go up more, into the pieces of hair that curl over his forehead, tone full of disbelief when he finally replies, drawing out the vowels in “okay?”
And normally maybe Buck would back off, would apologize– tell Eddie’s it’s been a bad day, laugh and try and walk it all back, but instead Buck feels another spike because he’s tired of not being taken seriously. “I wanted to book a consultation.”
The man in front of him just looks back placidly, big brown eyes considering him, “like I said, totally understood if you need more time.”
“I don’t.” Buck bites, “I–” he swallows, licking his lips, wishing he could worry at them like he wants to, but he’d learned that lesson the hard way early on his dose when they wouldn’t clot right and it scared some lady at the grocery store. He hunts for the fight, for the words he can say to rile the guy up, to get him to argue with him, give Buck someone to raise his voice at.
Through it all the guy just looks at him, pose easy and unthreatening, head tilted to listen, and it makes the snaking guilt rear up in Buck’s chest because it’s not this artist’s fault Bobby’s been sabotaging him for weeks while Buck fought and fought and fought to get back to his family.
“I just need to do something. ” Buck would be embarrassed at the way his voice cracks on the last word if he didn’t see the man’s eyes soften as he looks at him, and it’s been a bad enough day that the kindness in his eyes makes Buck feel like crying.
“We can make that happen.” The man nods, holding out his hand to shake, “I’m Eddie.”
Buck reaches forward, glad for the contact, “Buck.”
Eddie glances at the clock on the wall, “I’m open for thirty more minutes. We can do an intro consult tonight, and depending on your idea we can then meet back up next week or so, once I have a couple sketches?”
For the first time in weeks Buck feels like there’s something fully in his hands– a decision that’s all his. Someone is going to hear him and work with him, not assume they know what’s best. It makes a knot he didn’t know was tight behind his sternum start to relax, “yeah, sure.”
Eddie gestures him over to a soft couch that Buck hadn’t really clocked when he walked in, blending with the deep navy of the wall behind it, “okay, Buck. Tell me your idea.”
~~~~~~
Buck’s doctor gives him the okay to start coming off his blood thinners, but lets him know it’ll be about two weeks before he can safely get a tattoo without risking a serious infection.
Well, actually, she says two weeks is the minimum time she would consider letting a patient get a tattoo, but that she would recommend four.
Buck votes that means two because if he goes much longer he’s going to call the lawyer just to make some headway somewhere , so he calls up Tatuar to book his appointment during his lunch break between fire marshal inspections. It’s pathetic, but true, that the thing that he’s been clinging to for the past week has been the idea he’d given Eddie, the sketches saved on his phone reminding him he is in charge of his own body even as the job he loved– loves – slips through his fingers.
Buck works normal hours now, a regular nine to five, which he still can’t get used to and feels all pinned in by, like a bug in a natural history museum. He gets an hour off in the middle of the day and he chooses to sit on a bench outside because the emptiness he feels from not having the 118 around him is suffocating. At least he always gets to finish his lunch now– no alarm in the middle of a bite.
He’d starve forever if it meant he were back at that table.
“Tatuar, how can I help you?” The person who answers is a woman– she sounds a little out of breath, maybe annoyed, but she also pronounces the name beautifully– full of warmth, and it makes Buck smile.
“Hi! I’m calling to get on Eddie’s books in two weeks? Any time after five or on the weekends works. The name is Buck.”
She makes a thoughtful kissing sound, like she’s pursuing her lips, “hmm, Buck, okay.” The line goes silent, and Buck waits expectantly, knee bouncing, hearing slow clicks on a keyboard. She’s definitely not the fastest receptionist in the world.
“I could make four on work, probably.” Buck offers, wondering if maybe Eddie’s booking out more weeks in advance than he’d guessed.
“No, no.” She tuts, “he has time, I am just seeing where I should put–”
“Abuela!” Buck recognizes Eddie’s voice in the background, “why are you– give me– hello, Tatuar, how can I help you?”
Buck can’t keep from grinning, “hi, it’s–”
“I was making him an appointment, Eddito.” The woman’s voice comes through clearly even if Eddie is the one with the phone. “He wants two weeks. This one.”
“Uh–” Eddie pauses, like he’s reading, and there’s a shuffle, “uh sorry, hi Buck, glad you’ve got the okay to come in!”
Buck’s grin grows, “me too.”
“Can you do the twelfth at eight?”
Buck checks his phone calendar, ignoring the pang of regret as he sees the empty days on it, “PM?”
“Yeah, my availability is pretty much midday or late nights.” Eddie sounds sorry, but Buck’s worked weird enough hours in his life to be unbothered.
“Eight works.”
“We can break it into two sessions if it goes late.” Eddie sounds used to clients being picky.
Buck shakes his head, “nah, I’m used to one to two day shifts, and if a truck falling on me didn’t kill me then there’s no way one night where I get less than eight hours of sleep will.”
Eddie laughs, big and warm, and it makes Buck smile in return because not everyone will play along when he’s joking about things like that. “I’ll send you the reworked sketch of that section you wanted tonight along with the paperwork I need filled out so you can make sure you have everything.”
“You got it.” Buck agrees easily, stomach already fizzing in anticipation, “see you on the twelfth!”
~~~~~
Buck hadn’t really let himself think about what it would feel like having Eddie shave his leg– the careful drag of the razor across the skin and firm grip of his fingers around Buck’s knee joint draws all of Buck’s attention to the sensations. He’s fully dressed, gym short pulled up on one leg to let Eddie have full access. Buck swallows down the tension he’s feeling now that it’s actually happening. Eddie’s going to be working on his most gnarled skin– scars and divots clear and stark against his skin.
Buck doesn’t look at his leg much now that it’s healed. Jeans go on quickly, he lounges around in sweats not shorts, and he lets himself stare at the tiles instead of his own body when showering.
The goal is to change that.
“I’m sad I didn’t get to meet your abuela in person.” He says while Eddie places the stencil, frowning at the positioning and making marks on Buck’s skin in marker so it will line up. “She seemed nice. Not the quickest with the calendar, but nice.”
Eddie huffs out a laugh, still focused on Buck’s leg, “she doesn’t work here, but it bothers her when no one picks up the phone.”
“That’s cute.” Buck smiles, looking down and catching Eddie’s eyes when he looks up at Buck from the floor, a picture Buck’s going to do his very best to not think about. Eddie just has beautiful eyelashes, and his piercings make Buck wish he could have some of his own. “It’s nice that she supports you.”
Eddie hums, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, “she’s not in love with it.” He presses the stencil on, thumbs smoothing it down, making sure the ink transfers, hands warm and sure as they move over Buck’s leg, neither stopping at nor avoiding his scars. “But she’s trying.”
Buck nods to cover up the shiver he felt from Eddie’s grasp, “the changing public perception of tattoos is fascinating– it’s hard to unlearn things that have been true for most of your life.”
“You calling my abuela old?” Eddie says as he adds a line, connecting the stencil around the back of Buck’s calf. Eddie peels the stencil off, sitting back to look at how it lays, “bend.”
Buck bends his knee.
“What? No! I mean, she’s probably not young , because that-thats’s how time works, but–”
“Twist back and forth, slow.” Eddie says, thankfully cutting off Buck’s spiral by cupping the crook of Buck’s knee. Buck obeys the instruction, watching Eddie focus on how the piece shifts as Buck does. Eddie squeezes, and it makes Buck feel like the opposite of his knees going weak– like they could hold him up forever as long as Eddie’s hand stays there, “Good.”
Buck stays still, waiting for more instructions.
“Okay, sit.” Eddie nods to the tattoo bed, “knee bent. I’m going to prep the colors. You need anything before we start? Water? A snack?”
Buck pauses, actually checking in with his body despite his instinct to wave the concern off, unwilling to faint anywhere in Eddie’s vicinity because he can recover from surgery and being crushed, but the idea of that indignity is terrifying, “nah, I had dinner.”
Eddie shoots him a little smile, and Buck wants to preen under that look, the knowledge that he did the right thing warm in his chest.
Eddie rolls over on his stool, tray of colors at his side. Warm yellows, browns and bronzes, a pair of deep blues and some white. The colors make Buck inhale shakily, looking at their stark reality, imagining them living in his skin forever, held there by white blood cells.
His mother had gotten a pinched face the first time he’d accidentally let her see the bars on his arm, “you know tattoos are forever, Evan.”
He’d let himself be cowed back then, head down, mumbling about laser removal innovations.
But that’s the point. Tattoos don’t leave.
“Let’s get started.” Eddie says, and it breaks Buck from the memory of his mom’s face.
He looks up, and the man is watching him carefully, so he shoots him a grin and a thumbs up that he regrets immediately for being goofy, and then doubles down on the awful instinct by saying “let’s get stabbin’!”
Eddie laughs, so he guesses it wasn’t too bad of a joke. Either that or Eddie’s got just as bad a sense of humor as Buck.
The first lines of the piece always feel more intense than Buck remembers. His body reacting to the intrusion by tensing, adrenaline coursing through him no matter how much work he’s done to prep himself mentally. It’s a response he can’t control, but he knows how to roll with adrenaline now. Knows how to feel it and let it run its course, to not let it make his hands shake or his skin get clammy.
He breathes through it, closing his eyes and focusing in on the buzzing sound, the stinging sensation on his calf, needles dragged across his skin putting the picture he’d described to Eddie, the one Eddie had drawn out so perfectly even in their first meeting, putting the idea into his flesh.
It makes him feel floaty, the leg that isn’t being worked on sagging into the seat, his heart racing but it’s a familiar anticipatory excitement, like hanging onto the side of the engine as they pull up to a call.
After a few minutes of settling in, making sure he can handle the pain of the location, Buck looks down at Eddie, bent over his leg, hair a little floppy in front of his face. “How’d you get into this job?”
Eddie doesn’t look up, just reaches and picks up another color, “apprenticed in El Paso, moved here when another one of the artists asked if I wanted to join her– go in on a place together.”
Buck looks at the other station, he hasn’t met the other artist yet, but he’s only been in late at night because Eddie doesn’t work weekends, “she’s the American traditional artist?”
Eddie snorts, “sort of. We both were trained in it. Fort Bliss gave us a lot of clients, and she’d been working for a few years before I started, so she’s got the flash all ready if anyone wants something with a lot of hoo-ah. It sells, even in Los Angeles.”
“The whole reason it’s a major city is ship construction for the navy, so guess that history runs deep.” Buck says, tucking one hand under his head so he can watch Eddie more comfortably. “Not an army fan?”
Eddie stills, bringing the gun back from Buck’s body, and Buck feels like he’s missed something.
“Not really, no.” Eddie says eventually, wiping at Buck’s skin, the warm lines already making Buck look down at his leg with something other than the vague annoyance he has for weeks.
“I flunked out of the SEALs.” Buck offers because Eddie clearly wants the conversation to move on. “Or, well, I was thinking about going for it, took some fitness tests and everything, but realized I would have to enlist– plus they kept talking about shutting out emotions.” He shrugs, “didn’t seem right for me.”
“So you signed up for running into burning buildings instead.” Buck can see the quirk at the corner of Eddie’s mouth.
Buck tries to keep the pang of loss from crossing his face, just smiling as wide as he can, glad Eddie’s looking down so he can’t see Buck’s expression, “exactly.”
Eddie drags the wipe across Buck’s skin, and the combination of the drag and the tingling in Buck’s skin helps tether him back to the experience, “guess you are pottery, then.”
That gets Buck propped up a little, curling so his abs have to work, “what?”
Eddie rolls back, looking at the piece so far, then meeting Buck’s eyes, “you put yourself into the kiln.”
That shocks a laugh out of Buck, “I guess I did.” He looks down at the lines of gold spreading across his skin, a web of them in an already impressive level of depth, surrounded by pink skin and streaks of wiped away purple ink. “And look where it got me.”
Eddie doesn’t let him wallow, just taps him on the thigh, “turn so I can get the back.”
Buck turns, soft material under his shin soothing as he has to press his tender skin into the bed for Eddie to wrap the gold around the back, connecting the lines from the sides. Both of them falling silent as Buck turns his head to the side away from Eddie.
He turns the image over in his mind, of him as a piece of porcelain hardened by fire. He hadn’t meant to imply it with this piece. He’s not delicate like a teacup, or expensive like the nice china that had only come out at Thanksgiving and Christmas and Maddie’s birthday.
He’d been excited when he turned ten, thinking it would start coming out at his too now that he wasn’t a little kid anymore, but the cabinet had stayed untouched, and the last time he’d gone home for the holidays he hadn’t even been trusted with drying them.
“I don’t think I’m– this isn’t about being–” Buck says into his own bicep, “it’s about trying to show that I can be broken but still good.”
“Like Stitch.” Eddie says softly, like it’s not meant to be heard.
Buck frowns, wanting to twist and look at the man, “what?”
Eddie’s hand pauses for the second time, and Buck is now sure it means he’s considering what he should say, whether to push forward. He starts again, the bite of the needle almost imperceptible under the overall feeling of Buck’s skin. “Lilo and Stitch? He– he says his family is broken but still good.”
Eddie does a little voice that is delightful even if Buck’s never seen the movie. “Is that the blue guy?”
“Yeah. Lotta people get him tattooed, Disney adults are wild for him. Watched it while sketching a piece for a guy who wanted him climbing his bicep.” And what Eddie is saying is almost certainly the truth, but if Buck had to bet he’d say it wasn’t the first time Eddie had seen the film.
“I was more of a Lion King kind of kid.” Buck admits just so Eddie won’t close off, “liked the whole running off to find your family thing.”
Eddie laughs, “my sister asked for gummy worms every time we rented that so she could eat them with Simba.”
“Ah. She is smarter than me.” Buck admits because his brain is buzzing and the heat in his leg is so different from the pain that’s taken root there since his accident that it feels like a different thing altogether.
This time when Eddie pauses it feels less like a redirect and more like surprise, “tell me you didn’t.”
“Eat a worm? I can’t tell you that because it would not be true.” Buck is so glad he’s face down because the memory of the sensation of biting into the earthworm he’d dug up is seared into his mind forever.
“Oh my god.” Eddie stops working to chuckle, “why?”
“They looked delicious, Eddie!” Buck gestures with one hand, “I don’t know what to tell you!”
The pressure of Eddie’s hand on his ankle returns, “I am gonna text my sister and let her know someone else is a bigger weirdo for those juicy bugs than her.”
“What happened to artist-client confidentiality?” Buck presses his forehead to the black leather, failing to keep the whine from his voice.
“Not a thing.” There’s a laugh in Eddie’s tone, “turn over, I’m gonna give you a breather and a water break before the blue.”
Buck groans and turns, glaring at Eddie who is peeling off his black gloves and standing, twisting to loosen his back, a sliver of skin at the hem of his shirt on the side making Buck resent the black apron for hiding the rest of it.
“Red or Blue?” Eddie asks as he moves to a mini-fridge and opens it, “or Capri Sun, I guess.”
Buck hasn’t had a Capri Sun in years, “ooh that!” Eddie tosses him one, and Buck catches it, stabbing into the pouch with glee. “Just as good as I remember!”
Eddie sips from his red Gatorade, shaking his head, “you’d get along with” there’s a slight pause, “all the kids people bring with them.”
Buck frowns as he basically inhales the pouch’s contents, “people bring their kids to appointments?”
“Uh, not often, but when they do we have juice for them.” Eddie makes a face Buck can’t quite read, “the pouch prevents them from spilling.”
Buck supposes that makes sense, so he just finishes the juice as he flexes his feet, making sure he still feels okay to continue.
Buck looks down at his leg, the gaps between the liquidy looking gold waiting for a pattern. The one on the side covering one of his longer scars is a crosshatch pattern meant to look like the metal floor of the stairs of the fire engines. It’s the first pattern he’d suggested– the texture burned into his mind as something he’d stepped up onto and down from each and every shift.
He’d thought of it as a kind of promise to himself, but looking at the beauty Eddie’s forming of the formerly broken mess of his leg, he doesn’t want the physical engine anywhere near it– he loves being a firefighter, but it’s already left enough of a mark there.
“Hey could we–” he’s never changed his mind this far into a piece before, but this is the last time he can, so he points to the section. “Can we wait to fill this part in?”
Eddie nods, reaching out with his hand up for Buck’s empty juice pouch. “You wanna move that pattern or just leave it off?”
“Leave it.” Buck says with some finality, “I can find something else.”
~~~~~~
He’s back the next night, Eddie managing to give him an appointment at nine, and Buck arrives still feeling the soaring high of the hours the night before. The crisp blue geometric lines across his calf had almost made him late as he stared at them while getting ready, turning his leg back and forth as he admired the precision of them and the way the gold seemed to shine from inside his skin.
“I watched half of Lilo and Stich at lunch today.” Buck says as Eddie gets out his inks and a couple of markers.
Something complicated passes over Eddie’s face, “only half?”
“I only get an hour.” Buck shrugs, “so I watched what I could.”
Eddie pops the cap off a marker, moving to crouch in front of Buck again, “and?”
“Finished it while eating dinner. Cried into my chicken, you asshole. Why didn’t you warn me?”
Eddie smiles up at him before looking down and scanning over his work from the day before, “pretty sure I didn’t tell you to watch it.”
“His family loves him so much, man.” Buck can feel his lip quiver, which would be embarrassing even if Eddie wasn’t currently eye level with his dick.
Eddie’s hand tightens around Buck’s thigh, “I know. He– it’s a nice ending.”
Buck wants to crow because he was right Eddie’s watched it more than once time for a job. He looks down at his own leg, at the interpretation of kintsugi on his skin, the mending and repairs celebrated and seen, not hidden away. “Broken but still good.”
Eddie squeezes again, like he gets everything Buck was thinking, “yeah.”
The ink from the marker is cool as Eddie sketches the shape Buck had sent him over night instead of sleeping, a nested set of rounded shapes that reminded him of a pilot flame.
It’s slow going, since Eddie has to keep stopping to make sure the spacing works, and it’s right on the inside of Buck’s knee, which he didn’t know was a particularly sensitive area, but Eddie’s careful line work in cool marker ink is making him rethink a lot of things he’d thought he knew about his own skin.
“You’re right, this fits better.” Eddie says as he leans back, resting his weight on his heels and looking at the piece, then up at Buck, “nice pick.”
Buck is going to squirrel away every word of approval Eddie’s said to him and lock it in a little box in his gut called Do Not Open Until Done With Tattoos because lusting after his artist is okay, but it makes it hard to also be their client in the future, and Buck really likes Eddie’s work– he’s already thinking about what he could get next.
“Okay, up. Sit.” Eddie gestures at the bed, “on your side, this leg down, other leg up.”
Buck arranges himself, feeling a bit like a dog and having to push that thought away too because there are only so many revelations he can have about himself per year, and he’s drawing the line at bisexuality, that being a firefighter truly is who he is not what he does, and that Bobby betraying him hurts more than any unkind word his parents have ever said to him.
Before he can lay his leg down fully Eddie puts some cushioning and sterile material beneath his already worked skin, which makes Buck blurt out, “you’re cleaner than the last place I went.”
Eddie quirks an eyebrow at him, “what?”
Buck gestures at his midsection where Eddie can’t see the tattoo on his skin, “I have a piece here, they barely wiped anything down.”
“Why didn’t you leave?” Eddie grimaces before looking down and beginning to work on his lines.
Buck considers the answer, wondering just how honest he should be with Eddie about his recklessness in the past, “didn’t seem like a huge deal. They’d been in business for a while, figured if there’d been health code violations they wouldn’t be in business. Plus, I hadn’t been through most of my medical training yet so I didn’t know better.”
Eddie shakes his head, “they should know– infections happen even in good circumstances. You could report them.”
Buck shakes his head, “I was the kind of drunk where I don’t even remember where I was.”
“They let you get a piece when that drunk?” Eddie grits his teeth, “no wonder they’re also not following safe standards. They don’t care about clients’ wellbeing at all.”
“Did you have to do a lot of training?” Buck wonders as he lets the bite in his skin be the only thing his body feels, “I feel like you probably have to know a lot about like blood pathogens.”
There’s the pause again, like Eddie’s considering how much to talk about himself, and Buck waits to see what he’ll let out. “There’s courses, but I knew most of it from being a medic.”
That is news, and the little blip of information makes Buck’s heart race even more than the tattoo on his skin. “Yeah?”
Eddie nods, “made getting all my certifications quick.”
Buck wants to ask for more. He wants to ask question after question, learn everything about the man tracing a slow steady line of blue across his skin, but he doesn’t. Hen told him over too many drinks once that she hadn’t liked him at first but he’d really grown on her. He’d begged her to tell him why to explain how he could be better and in the end all she said was that he got a little overeager sometimes, that he should let people come to him instead of always crowding into their space.
He can let Eddie come to him.
“I’m thinking my next piece I want a full size Stitch hugging my torso. All four arms wrapped around my ribs and everything. Maybe even make it look like my skin is a Hawaiian shirt.” He jokes so Eddie doesn’t have to find a new topic.
Eddie’s laugh shows off his sharp canines and makes Buck feel ten feet tall.