#posting this clip made me realize the conversation I’m writing right now is redundant and I can cut it

[try-set-me-on-fire]

Tagged by @devirnis and @rewritetheending for wip Wednesday! Buck’s still going to die

"Do you think this is the last time we'll all hang out together like this?" Buck asks, in Bobby's backyard, at the party celebrating Hen passing her practical. He gets indulgent smiles in response, honest reassurances, and he can’t clarify that he doesn’t think any of them will leave him but that he is a man with a timer he can’t see the numbers on. He smiles back, and lets Eddie squeeze his hand in comfort, and hugs Hen tight, and helps Bobby clean up sort of to be helpful but also, mostly, just to be close to him.

And then he is reminded that he is not the only person who can die. He’s not the one helping Karen and her coworker, busy knocking down the surrounding flames so they can get out, and it’s smoky and all a disaster in there anyway so he doesn’t get a good look at her until he’s escorting her out of the building. It takes several increasingly desperate are you sures after he’s asked if she’s feeling okay to discover the shrapnel, but he gets her onto a stretcher before things can get any worse than a chunk of metal embedded several inches into her side. He watches as Hen, the strongest person he has ever, ever met, crumples when she sees her wife injured. He watches her be strong anyway, climbing into the ambulance to do anything up to and including throttle the universe itself to keep her alive until she gets to the hospital. He holds her in the waiting room as she weeps gratitude into his shoulder and he looks across the room at Eddie looking back at him and thinks he was wrong, he was wrong entirely. It’s not going to be easier if they aren’t married yet. He dies and Eddie is destroyed. It’s too late to pull away because they were both in this from the start. He imagines someone else holding Eddie like this, as he’s off in surgery or some colder, more final room, and his knees almost buckle.

Karen is okay, will be home soon. Hen comes back to work.

Tagging @jeeyuns @wildlife4life @alyxmastershipper @forthewolves @bigfootsmom @rogerzsteven <3