Chapter Text
The entertainment news were at it again. Some of the pictures were grainy, kind of unclear and you could only just barely tell it was him inside the car. It was just that Buck was distinctive and he hadn’t been trying to hide who he was that day. On a day when he was trying to go incognito, Buck would cover up the birthmark above his left eye with the expensive make-up that a stylist had recommended to him — the kind that they’d used back in his soap opera tv-days when he’d had to play his own identical twin whose only difference was the lack of mark. He would wear his aviator glasses and maybe a hat on his head and his clothes would be comfortable and worn and of course, Buck wouldn’t be driving his Jeep. It didn’t stop some people from noticing him and asking for pictures or autographs if he was out and about and someone got a closer look at him, but it kept some people unaware which gave him anonymity. Buck didn’t really mind that kind of attention because it felt like he was bringing people joy and maybe because it made him happy too.
“After months of silence, we finally have a Buck sighting,” the E!News reporter said as the pictures were shown going from the first grainy ones showing him driving his car to the more clear ones.
He was getting out of his Jeep in a few and then the next ones had him going into the bookstore. After that came when he exited the store with a small white canvas bag. A few pictures of him inside his Jeep driving away came next.
“Buck was seen out shopping at a bookstore in downtown L.A. This is the first time anyone has seen Buck since the picture revealing his Soulmate Mark was leaked a little over three months ago. That breach of privacy coincided with the end of filming for season three of HBO’s Serendipity whose season finale will be airing this Sunday. It has been complete silence from Buck since the incident three months ago.”
“Well can you blame him?” the other host of the show said. “Buck has always been a private guy when it came to his Soulmate Mark. Always keeping it covered up. No one even knew where his Mark was until that picture came out.”
They showed the picture. Buck couldn’t look at the screen. He couldn’t be reminded of how stupid he’d been to let that picture be taken when he hadn’t had it covered up. He’d been so stupid to trust her and to imagine that he’d found someone that could be his friend and that he could let in.
He’d missed a bit of what the E!News hosts were saying, but when he looked back up they were still talking about him but at least they had moved on to talking about Serendipity . That’s what all the pictures had been about anyway. It wasn’t that Buck hadn’t needed to go to that bookstore, he had a PA that could have gone and picked up the books for him, not to mention that there was always the option of getting anything shipped. The whole thing had been very calculated exactly so that the entertainment news cycle could talk about him and the show. Buck had even known exactly where the cameras had been situated. Everything in Hollywood was a calculated business arrangement.
The hosts finally moved on to something else, a young singer had gotten caught with his pants down — literally. Buck didn’t even know who the guy was, but he let himself chuckle before turning off the tv.
It hadn’t been too bad. His publicist said that until Buck actually spoke about what happened with his Soulmate Mark, it would be subject for speculation since all the public knew was that the pictures had been leaked. Going out and getting his picture taken began a conversation without Buck having to speak out or explain anything. It got people talking and it promoted the show too.
The leak had happened at the worst possible time for him. No one knew how it had been leaked or by who. None of them knew that for Buck the whole thing had felt world ending. At least, because filming was done, Buck had been allowed to disappear for three months. Buck had even been booked to a bunch of talk shows to talk about Serendipity that week, and no one had been mad when Buck pulled out from every single one. It was just that everyone did understand on some level.
Soulmate Marks were personal, they were the most personal thing that a person could have. They were the connection to your other half, the thing that linked you so completely to someone in a way that was magical and unexplainable and they were supposed to be yours and your Soulmates and no one else’s. At least, that’s what it used to be.
The age of the internet had changed things. Before then, there had been matching services where you would provide a picture of your Soulmate Mark and then the matching service would work to figure out if they had someone with the same Soulmate Mark in their database. Even if they had a match, it took months to figure it out and the whole thing wasn’t popular in the first place. It was always a long shot. But then the internet grew into popularity and with it the option to have your Soulmate Mark added to a world wide database. Maybe it wasn’t romantic, but people were impatient and most people did put their Marks on there with the hopes to meet their Soulmates faster.
There was still some anonymity in that it was a computer program that matched up the Marks and then informed the people involved. But once people were comfortable with sharing their Marks like that, it became more and more common — especially for younger people — to just show off their Marks. Social media made that even more prominent. It didn’t help that a lot of celebrities didn’t hide their Soulmate Marks. Some because they had found their Soulmate and wanted the world to be aware, and others because they liked the attention, and some because they hoped to find their Soulmate that way.
Being a celebrity with a known Soulmate Mark came with its own hardships especially for those that hadn’t met their Soulmates yet because some fans were crazy enough to fake Soulmate Marks. It wasn’t easy to fake a Mark and make it look like it was the real thing, but even if someone did manage to do it, it wouldn’t take much to disprove it and just a touch alone was enough for the Mark to be discovered as fraudulent.
For Buck, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to find his Soulmate, it was that he wanted it to happen organically. He wanted to run into them somewhere and just know because that’s what it was supposed to be. He wanted his fingers to skim over the matching Mark on someone else’s skin without having first seen a picture of it on Instagram. He’d wanted his Mark to be for the eyes of his Soulmate and the very few people that had ever gotten so see it. It had always felt like one of the last things that Buck still had when everything else about his life was public and scrutinized. Someone had taken that away from him.
And while at first in the days following the release of the picture, Buck had felt destroyed and betrayed, a week into it he’d wondered if the silver lining would be actually finding his Soulmate. Of the nine people that had come forward, none were the real deal. Buck hadn’t even had to meet all of them because the fake Soulmate Marks hadn’t been good enough. One Mark belonging to a woman named Ali had looked like it could be the real deal and Buck had been convinced to meet the woman. His first impression was that she was pretty, he wouldn’t have minded if she was his Soulmate. She hadn’t even seemed like a crazy fan and the Mark was definitely a real Soulmate Mark, it just didn’t actually match Buck’s even if it came close. They’d known the moment their hands touched in a handshake, when nothing happened. No tingles. No warmth over the Marks.
“I didn’t think it would be you,” Ali told him. “My friends, they’ve all seen mine and when they saw yours they were sure it was the same. Figured I had to try, I guess.”
She was genuine, and Buck liked her eyen more when at the end of their meeting she reached out and touched his arm.
“I do want to say, I’m sorry about what happened to you. No one’s Soulmate Mark should be leaked like that.”
He’d thanked her and then she was on her way and Buck hadn’t had to meet anyone else that contacted his agent about possibly being a match for him. It was either that his Soulmate somehow hadn’t seen the picture, or that knowing it was Buck had put them off. His sister thought he was being ridiculous in thinking that way.
“You didn’t even want to meet them this way. I don’t understand...are you disappointed?”
“No. I guess I figured something good might come out of it,” Buck said and they didn’t talk about it again.
Maddie had met her Soulmate already and something about that made her less pushy about Buck’s own thoughts about the whole thing. Buck had expected her to be mad on his behalf when the picture was leaked, and she was, but then she hadn’t pressed and pushed and tried to make him talk about his feelings and about what his options were. Instead, she’d been supportive and let him call the shots and when he told her that he was going to leave the spotlight for three months and literally not even leave his house she’d only offered to stay with him for support instead of trying to get him to confront the whole thing head on.
A text came through on his phone and Buck glanced at it.
Chim: Saw the pictures. I didn’t know you could read.
Buck laughed out loud. Chim was Maddie’s Soulmate. He was a firefighter/paramedic with the LAFD and he was one of the few people that Buck had met after becoming famous that didn’t shy away from teasing Buck. Buck had liked him almost instantly and he’d known that he was perfect for his sister.
Buck: Maybe that will finally make them figure out how fake this is.
Chim: You are okay with all of this, though? Them talking about you again.
It wasn’t a question of whether he was okay with it. He had to be. Promoting the show was written into his contract and while Buck had managed to get out of a number of interviews back when the pictures were leaked, that didn’t keep the studio and the show runners from needing him to show up. In some ways, it was nice that the scandal meant Buck didn’t actually have to do much. He did have one interview to do and at least it wasn’t live so they could cut around things, and they’d asked him to do a Q&A over Twitter. Stepping out and getting papped hadn’t been the worst thing.
Buck : It isn’t a big deal. Hope the finale on Sunday distracts them some.
Chim: It’s gonna be a cliffhanger isn’t it?
Buck: 🤷♂️
Buck laughed when he saw the gif that Chim attached to his next text. It was from Serendipity and it featured Buck’s character, Jasper, throwing up the middle finger.
There were other texts on his phone. There were always texts on his phone, but Buck didn’t want to deal with other people so he ignored them in favor of getting up and walking to his kitchen to figure out dinner. Cooking had been an easy escape in his time away from everything. It was nice to just be on his own reading and following instructions and then getting to eat the end results and know that his own hands had made it possible. It was a skill that was entirely different from everything else he did and needed to do for his job.
Buck had never set out to be an actor. He’d fallen into it like people fell into other jobs. It was just that for a while all he’d done was go from place to place — Buck didn’t like to talk about how a part of him had moved so often in search of his Soulmate — and he’d wound up in L.A. and somehow found himself working as a PA on a set. And then, he’d found himself showing up for an audition and surprising everyone including himself by getting cast. Buck hadn’t known what a high it would be to act, to become someone else and embody those emotions and display them for all to see. He hadn’t known that he’d been training for it his entire life and that he did owe some of his skill to how much pretending he’d done growing up. He had no regrets about his choices or where he’d ended up.
Being a working actor in Hollywood hadn’t been easy off the bat and for a while after that initial role he’d settled into work on a Soap but his agent had sent him on audition after audition and Buck had become a much better actor by then. He’d taken a few classes to improve himself and it all paid off when he had a big break that really made him a household name.