Work Text:
Eddie woke to the scent of sun warmed sand and gasoline singing the air. Dust of the airbags hovered like snow. Each particle crystallized like shards of glass on his skin that he inhaled until he swore his lungs were going to bleed from a million cuts.
Eddie breathed in on a wheeze and those cuts screamed, seizing in his chest, and stealing all the moisture in his throat to try and soothe the burn as he coughed. A weak, feeble thing that tasted like copper on his tongue before it bellowed into a bark that made him lurch against the hard band across his chest and black out again.
When Eddie woke again, he realized he was upside down. Gravity felt wrong and his limbs were dangling from strings he couldn’t control. His fingers were too heavy. His shoulders were screaming. His hips begged for a release from his weight.
He was upside down.
Why was he upside down?
Why…
Tearing his eyelashes apart felt like cracking through fiber glass. His vision swam at the topsy turvy twist of being the wrong side up and Eddie groaned as the unyielding cut of the seatbelt dug into his chest, locked in place to keep him from falling. Blinking felt impossible and each pass stretched through syrup of unconsciousness as Eddie stared out at the nothingness of dirt and sand. The same sand that had rained down on them as they twisted.
Buck had screamed then. A short, yelp of a sound before everything went dark.
Buck.
Eddie’s breath hitched somewhere wrong in his chest like the oxygen got trapped on the fragments of his broken ribs but he didn’t care. He needed to find Buck. Buck had been there. Buck had been beside him, smiling and laughing in the way that made Eddie’s chest go warm inside. His ribs would expand if he lingered in the warmth of Buck too long and Eddie would greedily gulp the sunshine and air he could suddenly breathe whenever he was around him.
He’d been laughing.
He’d been smiling.
Then he cried out and there had been nothing Eddie could do to stop it.
“Bu…” The air trapped in Eddie’s chest fell out from his lips on a gasp. “Bu-k…”
He had been right there beside him. He’d been smiling. He’d been laughing. He’d been feeding Eddie cheese puffs and Eddie had been basking in the warmth of getting to spend the last two hours with him before they got back to LA and he had to tuck it all away in a box again.
Buck had been there in the car with him.
A car.
They’d been in a car.
The windshield was cracked. A spiderweb splintered the glass and dusted beneath them, cutting into his knuckles as his body swayed with every labored breath he took.
Where was Buck?
All Eddie saw was darkness. There had been stars when they’d been driving. Stars before they had been burned away. But now there was only darkness.
Eddie turned his head and spotted him. He was strapped in the seat, same as Eddie, and dangling from the seatbelt holding him in place. His arms were hanging on either side of him, his wrists curled at an odd angle where his hands were deep in the pits of glass shards. His bright, smiling face was slack and lifeless.
Blood. There was blood.
It caressed down Buck’s face like dark pearl rain drops. Blood carved lines from his birthmark, his forehead, and getting lost in his curls where the glass was glittering in hair like a threat.
Ice shot through him, cutting up Eddie’s veins and stealing with little control he had left.
Buck wasn’t moving.
“Buck!”
Buck wasn’t moving!
He wasn’t moving and there was blood and Eddie—
Eddie moved too fast, reaching for him, gasping his name, and the pain from before lanced through him like a battering ram and he blacked out again as the nausea tunneled him away.
It was the sound that roused him again. The snick of the nylon of the seatbelt giving way and the sharp thump of Buck’s body falling into a heap on the roof. The sound and the way Buck’s wrist slid out from the protective curl of Eddie’s fingers wrapped around his still warm skin looking for a pulse.
The whole frame of the car shook with the weight of Buck’s too long limbs dropping like a stone after him and Eddie hissed through the pain vibrating through every inch of his body. He was in agony but Buck wasn’t awake yet.
His head, his neck.
They had to protect Buck’s neck. He could have spinal damage. He could have brain damage too but spinal was something infinitely worse. Spinal meant paralysis or even death if Buck turned his head wrong and there was just enough of a fracture in the delicate vertebrae of his neck. Spinal meant losing Buck. Spinal meant—
Buck started to move but the movements were all wrong. It was like there was no skeletal effort. Like he was a doll being neglected across the dirt beneath them.
“Buck…” His name scraped out past Eddie’s lips like it was dragged from him.
Dragged from him.
That’s what he was looking at. Buck being dragged. Fingers were gripping onto his jacket, sliding, and pulling him away and Eddie’s heart skipped in his chest.
“He-Hey! Hey!” Eddie cried out because they needed to be careful. Buck was hurt and they were dragging him like he was already dead but he wasn’t! He wasn’t! He couldn’t be!
They had to be careful! There was sand and dirt and debris and Buck was bleeding and he wasn’t moving except for the god awful sounds of his too heavy limbs hitting the roof of the car as he was maneuvered whichever way the fingers were dictating.
Was he breathing? Please tell him he was breathing!
Boots. Eddie saw two boots. One pair. One pair of boots with dried mud and sun worn leather and fingers trying to drag Buck away.
A sound keened at the back of Eddie’s throat before he even realized it was coming from him. A sharp, bright keen as a waterfall of emotions flooded his system into over drive.
They’d been driving.
They’d been laughing.
They’d been smiling.
Then Buck had screamed and Eddie couldn’t get the wheels under him and the car had gone airborne.
He remembered reaching over as his stomach dipped. He remembered bracing his arm across Buck’s chest and digging his nails into his skin from how tightly he grabbed at his shirt.
He remembered the headlights blinding him in the rearview.
No.
No!
Eddie flapped his arm out to try and grab at Buck, holding on tight to anything he could reach as his… his…
His heart lurched up into his throat as Buck slid through the window like he weighed nothing at all and was dragged away from Eddie’s clawed fingertips.
“No!” Eddie’s lips felt swollen and heavy. “Give him… give…me… back…”
Blackness was creeping in his vision as he watched someone crouch down to sling Buck over their shoulder.
Eddie still didn’t know if he was breathing.
“Please…”
Panic tasted like blood on his tongue as Eddie tried to fling his body right side up. Buck was hurt! Buck wasn’t moving! Buck was bleeding!
Buck was gone.
Buck was gone.
He was…
“No!” Eddie pawed at his belt but he couldn’t get it. He couldn’t get it and he was twisted upside wrong and the world was in a different direction there was a scream building up in his throat that wouldn’t release because Buck! “Buck! Bu-ck!”
There was only sand and dirt and the car and Eddie.
No smiles. No laughter.
Eddie’s chest cavity was empty.
He fell in a sudden drop of twisted limbs and broken fragments inside his lungs and then everything went dark for Eddie again.