Chapter 4
Buck has to adjust the seat when they climb into the Jeep. He’s annoyed to find his face flushing for what feels like the four hundredth time at the reminder of what a state he’d been in last night. He’s in borrowed flip-flops, half a size too small. Actually, nothing he’s wearing is his own.
Taylor seems completely at ease when he glances over. He can’t quite sort out if he loves or hates that about her. Is she really the most unbothered woman on the planet? Or is she just that good of an actress? Does she act around him? Is this all an act? Does she care?
He squeezes his eyes shut to try and stop the thoughts. She must care. She did all that for him. Last night. This morning. Nobody does that if they don’t care. It would be too much work. Too much commitment. Unless it's a long con. Unless she really just likes screwing with him.
“Babe? Do you want me to drive?” He opens his eyes and she’s staring at him. Her face is neutral, like she really is just asking. For no reason. With no motive.
“N-no. No, thank you,” The words are hard to get out. It’s not just the headache even after Advil, or the cakey mouth after two glasses of water and a coffee. Sometimes the words just get stuck in his mouth and he can’t get them out. Or when they do come out it’s hard to stop.
“Okay,” She gives him a smile and turns back to her phone. He wishes he knew what that meant. Or why it feels like everything has to mean something this morning. Or even that he’d said yes. He’s so tired and his brain and eyes hurt and- he squeezes them shut again.
“Maybe?” She says softly. He tries to remember how normal breathing feels.
“Yeah,” It comes out as a whisper. The passenger door opens while his eyes are squeezed closed. So does the driver's door.
“If we waited for a red light this would have been a fire drill,” Taylor finds herself commenting as she waits for Buck to unbuckle.
“Chinese fire drill. It’s racist in origin,” Buck mumbles as he climbs out. She holds in the self-satisfied grin. She knew he’d know what she was talking about. Buck trudges around the car and takes her still-butt-warm spot in the passenger seat.
“Have you ever played?” She asks as she adjusts the seat once again. There’s no need to debate the merits of its origin. She’s read the NPR article too. She puts the car in reverse and turns her body around to back out of the driveway. The Jeep is so much bigger than her BMW. It does feel powerful though.
“There’s not a lot to do in Hershey. It would be a lot more dangerous here than it was there. We did get yelled at a bunch though. Mrs. Garrett hated that game.” Buck’s staring out the window as he talks, but he’s talking so she’s calling it a win.
“It does sound like something you’d get calls about if it got popular again out here,” She hums as she turns out of Eddie’s street.
“Road rage, cars getting rear-ended, pileups from over-eager drivers. Angry 9-1-1 calls. Kids getting sideswiped. It would be a nightmare. Don’t tell anyone to play.” He lists off. She can see him thinking through all the scenarios. It’s keeping him busier than she thought.
“Who would I tell to play?” She adds with a laugh. It’s genuine. Hopeful that this means their day is salvageable, even after a hard night. “Do you think I’m going to be reporting on a gallery opening and end my segment with ‘And in other news,” She drops her voice. It comes out lower than her usual reporting tone and a bit more transatlantic, “ I’d like to recommend a trendy new game to my viewers in the sixteen to twenty-two demographic. It was popular in 2013, you guessed it, it’s a little game called Chinese fire drill. You heard that right. Racist and dangerous.’” Buck huffs out a laugh at her put-upon reporter voice.
“They never should have named it that. It was one of many derogatory names Americans gave things after World War I to describe things that were confusing or disorganized. It’s really-” It’s not that Taylor tunes him out exactly, it's just that she actually has gone down this Google search rabbit hole herself before. She really did read the NPR article. But it’s worth it to hear Buck's info dumping. It’s one of his default settings, but he tends to cut himself off, shut himself off when he feels like he’s being a burden.
He tires himself out with it. She can tell he’s losing steam by the end of his monologue. He gets stuttery-er when he’s tired. She lets it taper off. The silence feels less charged now than when they got in the car. She turns on the radio after a few minutes of it. Lets Taylor Swift fill the space, low but there.
The coffee helped, but the exhaustion lingers. She doesn’t have to be at the office until one-thirty and it’s only seven-fifteen. She supposes that is the pro to needing to get a kid to school. The day starts strong and early. She’s already ready for a nap though.
Buck’s head is still pounding when they turn into his neighborhood. Taylor looks tired when he sneaks glances at her. It feels better though. Her looking tired feels better than her looking nothing. More human. Safer.
Thinking about how they got here, what happens next, it still makes his chest hurt. It’s a little easier to just, not think though. This time. His brain is offering that little respite it doesn’t always. Thinking about work. About stupid things he did in high school. At least that let other thoughts in. They take up a little bit of the space the panic used to.
The garage is busy when they pull in. People starting their days. It feels kind of like a walk of shame, the trip from the Jeep to the apartment. He’s familiar with that trudge, the return to the outskirts of his space. There’s a specific feeling, an exhaustion that washes over him during an actual walk of shame. It’s fun while it's happening, it’s good, what he wanted. And then its over. And he’s back to his space that feels the same as he left it, different from being left.
This time, Taylor’s walking too. Bundled in a mismatched combination of hers-his-Eddie’s clothes.
Taylor locks the car behind them. She takes Buck’s hand when they round the hood, and walks next to him to the elevator. He’s not shaking like last time they were in this garage. The air still feels heavy, heavier still in the cramped elevator.
“It's your day off, what are your plans for today?” She asks as they enter the loft, kick off their borrowed shoes.
“Dinner with Maddie. I’m out of groceries. I should go for a run. Laundry. Nothing special,” It’s his house, but not sure where exactly to go. He probably shouldn’t have more coffee, shouldn’t make a pot. The table? The couch? Back to bed? “What are your plans?” He settles for instead. A glass of water probably wouldn’t hurt, something to do with his hands.
“I have a meeting at one-thirty,” Taylor goes for the dining table, parking herself on the seat there. Buck follows her lead, and leans back against the island to face her. “I can stay here till noonish. Or I can go.”
“O-oh,” Buck sort of just assumed she’d collect her things and go. She’s good at that, the quick goodbye. She’ll end a date to hurry back to work. Or she’ll check her phone, and it’ll be obvious she wants to leave, but she won’t. She’ll pretend she’s not, but she’ll be wanting to go. She doesn’t seem like that now. She just seems, tired. “I, uh,” he’s not sure what he’s supposed to say.
“I’m gonna need a nap,” She says, looking up at him. He’s got that wide-eyed panic look he wears more often these days. Too broad. Okay. Options it is. “I can stay here, take a nap, with or without you. Then go home around noon to get clothes that don’t make me look like I’ve been stoned on the beach all night. Or I can go now, if you’re fried and just want to be alone. I don’t know what's best for you. I like to be alone when I’m having, I don’t know really any kind of feelings. I know that’s a me thing though. I don’t know what you need right now. But I’m here. Unless not here is better.”
“I, uh,” Buck can’t really find any words. He kind of just wants to cry, honestly. It should be a simple question. Stay or go. Except he doesn’t know what he wants. And he should know what he wants, right? And it should be his girlfriend around. Right? Or no. It should be to be alone. To have time alone to man up and deal with his feelings. Except he doesn’t believe in manning up that's stupid and sexist. Except he does believe he needs to pull it together because he’s a nightmare friend and boyfriend right now. That shit last night was so needy and exhausting and embarrassing and-
“Okay! Breaking it down.” Taylor cuts off his spiral and hot shame washes over him when he realizes his eyes have begun to spill tears without his knowledge or consent and she’s totally noticed. “Plan A, I’m gonna go put new sheets on and then climb into you're big bed and turn on Community and fall asleep to Troy and Abed. You can come too, or you can do what you need to do and just know I’m around. Does that sound bad? Worse than now?”
“No. No, th-that’s good.” His voice is croaky and wet and he wishes he could just pull it together. But Taylor’s smiling at him, and she’s already getting up from the table.
“Okay,” She says as she moves towards the stairs, “I’m gonna go up. Do what you gotta do.” She adds with a yawn.
Buck finds himself leaning against the counter long after the sheets are clean and Jeff and Troy are navigating the airstream back to Greendale. His thoughts still won’t, won’t finish, or work. He settles on a run eventually. There's a pair of shorts in the dryer. It probably means something that he doesn’t change out of Eddie’s underwear and t-shirt. Leaves the Diaz hoodie hung over a dining chair, throws on a windbreaker instead.
His body’s tired. The bone-weary kind of tired. He runs the same loop he always does. His watch says me makes good time. Taylor’s asleep by the time he gets home. Clean sheets means another shower. Eddie’s pajamas and hoodie back on. Taylor shuffles closer, tucks herself into his side when he climbs into bed.
The shower didn’t wash away the icky-muggy-disappointed-exhaustion, but the run tired out his body he’s pretty sure he can sleep. His alarm is set for two, enough time to become human again before dinner with Maddie. He probably won’t sleep that long. But maybe he can sleep now. Taylor sighs against him. It’s good.