Not Quite Alright || Buddie

Making it Right

He walks inside, going to the room where their class is. He sits on the opposite side of the room to where him and Buck usually sit. He sits in the second row back, near the aisle that separates the two sides of the room.

He's a little early, but he's not the first person in the room. He sits there and he waits. He tries not to watch the door like a hawk, but judging by the pain in his neck, he's not doing a great job. Each time it opens, another person walks through that is definitely not Buck.

More and more time passes, and then class starts, again, no Buck in sight. Maybe he skipped, or maybe something absolutely terrible happened to him and the last conversation Eddie ever had with him was him saying he didn't want to be friends with him anymore.

Eddie can't hear a word the professor is saying. His mind is too filled with all the things that could have possibly happened to Buck, because either Buck is mad at him enough to skip class, or something bad happened.

Or maybe not everything is about him. Maybe Buck slept through his alarms. Maybe he's sick. A normal sick, not the deathly sick that Eddie is imagining. Or maybe he just didn't feel like coming to class for a different reason.

Maybe despite his feelings for him, Eddie isn't his entire world and maybe he really doesn't care all that much if a guy he met only a few months ago doesn't want to be his friend. Maybe he's fine and he's just-

Eddie is so busy thinking about how little he might actually matter to Buck that he doesn't hear the door open... but he does hear it close. Everyone hears it close. It's a heavy door. At least that means Eddie isn't the only one to turn around to look and see who it is, he doesn't look suspicious.

It's Buck walking through the door. He walks about halfway down the aisle before picking a seat, setting his stuff down. Not once does he look at Eddie or even glance in his direction. Like his existence doesn't even register to him. And it doesn't seem like he's trying to avoid his gaze, he does it so effortlessly.

Maybe Eddie really doesn't matter all that much to him after all.

But Eddie still looks at him. He glances back quite a few times during class. He's actually surprised no one around him calls him out on it. Buck looks... tired. He's wearing sunglasses as he stares down at the paper in front of him. He rubs at his forehead like something is wrong.

Eddie wants to get up in the middle of the professor speaking and just go over to check on him, ask if he's okay, see if he can help.

He wouldn't have to think about doing that if he wasn't such a fucking idiot. He'd be sitting with him right now. He could just lean over, whisper to him without anyone else even registering that words had been spoken.

The class feels torturously slow and also as if nothing had happened. Eddie doesn't remember a word of what they were learning or what their assignment was. He spent pretty much the whole time looking at or thinking about Buck.

So when everything is done, Eddie feels too sick to speak a word to anyone, especially Buck. So he stands up, and walks out into the aisle to make sure no one else is blocked from leaving, but then he just stands there. He watches Buck stand up, grab his stuff, and again, not even look in his direction, acknowledge that he was there.

It's like he's not even mad at him, he's just simply indifferent.

So Eddie stays there, letting people push past him, his shoulders being moved from side to side each time someone moves past him on either side. He watches as Buck leaves the room, then he slowly does the same to make sure he doesn't run into him in the hall.

The second he gets out the door, there are tears running down his face. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to stop them because he doesn't know how to make any of this better.