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His count was wrong. His count was wrong.
Three minutes and seventeen seconds. That's what Eddie has been telling himself the whole time. But he only started counting once he fully realized what had happened, that Buck was unresponsive on the ropes. Buck had been dead for several seconds before the clock started.
It took them forty-seven seconds to get them all organized and for Eddie to get up to Buck on the rain-slick ladder. While in the process of finally lowering him, getting hands on him, loading him into the ambulance, and starting compressions, they spent an additional three minutes and seventeen seconds. The moment his fingers first curled around Buck’s line was the moment Eddie actually started his timer. By Eddie’s count, after one-hundred-ninety-seven seconds, Buck’s pulse came back.
And then he crashed. Again, and again, and again.
The rest of the drive to the hospital took three minutes and twenty-two seconds, even pushing on the gas as hard as he could. But those three minutes didn't count. They didn't. They got him back. He’d only counted three minutes and seventeen seconds. Nothing else mattered.
Buck might have been dead for closer to eight minutes.
But Eddie also wasn't in the back of the ambulance. He wasn't working on Buck. He’d heard Hen call pulse after three minutes and seventeen seconds and his brain latched on to it.
His count couldn’t be wrong. His count could not be wrong.
Buck feels like he’s vibrating out of his skin. Smoothing his palms over his thighs seems to be enough to reassure himself he’s not actually vibrating. The Jeep’s engine has been off for a few minutes now, but Buck thinks he can still feel the rumble coming from it.
He really doesn’t want anything to go wrong for his first shift back post-lightning. But. Here he is with superpowers.
He’d like to say it came out of nowhere, but Buck can think of one recent event in his life that could explain this new ability to move faster than the speed of light.
-
It really catches Buck off guard the first time it happens.
There’s a knock on his door, someone from Maddie’s list of babysitters. He doesn’t really want to deal with it, but it’s not like Buck has anything better going on. The TV station he’d been watching had flickered out to static, then his phone died on him. Whoever this is will be infinitely more entertaining.
Buck grunts and gets up from the couch.
Then his hand is curling around the door knob.
Buck tips forward to press his forehead against the wood to fight off the sudden wave of vertigo. That’s new.
The knock comes again and Hen calls out, so Buck has to open the door, or she’ll start pounding on it and shouting, all just to embarrass him in front of his neighbors.
-
The vertigo and loss of time continue to happen after Hen leaves. Buck is so exhausted he just needs to go to the one place where no one will interrupt him.
He gets to Eddie’s door without any problems, but then, in the blink of an eye, he’s dozing off on the couch, uninterrupted for the first time all day.
Everything is quiet at Eddie’s. There isn’t as much traffic in the neighborhood, the couch cushions are warm and familiar, and the flicker of the light bulbs is nearly silent.
-
Buck knows the side effects that come with taking his ADHD meds, and he knows the side effects that come with skipping his meds.
Buck is staring down at the empty Wednesday in his pill organizer. Chris picked an orange one for him, and Buck dropped a bottle of vitamins on it a month in, so the cover for Saturday broke off. He has yet to fix it, a year later. But Wednesday is empty, so he knows he took them. And yet it really doesn’t feel like it.
Buck isn’t struggling to keep his eyes open without the stimulant. He isn’t having difficulty finishing his thoughts. Yet he feels… scattered. Like his leg is about to start bouncing under his desk and Mrs. Palmer is gearing up to yell at him again for distracting the other students during a spelling test. Like Coach James pulling him aside after Algebra to suggest trying out for the football team, and the track team. Like losing track of how long it had been since he’d left home, until he had to fill in the date on the application to the fire academy.
Buck keeps checking locks, his phone in his pocket, the ratty string friendship bracelet Maddie tied on his wrist before he left Pennsylvania. He even keeps checking the batteries in every clock in the apartment to figure out why the hands are never where he expects them to be.
With minutes passing by in the blink of an eye, Buck can’t tell what else he might be missing.
The call he’d died on had been to put out a fire at some sort of private lab. No one on the team ever made it inside the building, but whatever chemicals had exploded through the shattered window and splattered over his electrified body did something. Something weird.
He ducks out to the quietness of the outside for a late night run to combat the insomnia. The smoking trail he leaves behind finally tells Buck what this is.
Super speed.
There are metahumans, superheroes. They’re mostly on the East coast and scattered in the Midwest, but Buck isn’t alone. Surely there’s someone else going through something similar.
Does he need to contact someone? Buck is pretty sure there used to be a speedster superhero, several decades ago. But surely somebody out there could help.
His phone starts vibrating. Eddie’s photo pops up.
“The porch lights are out again,” Eddie complains the moment Buck picks up. “We replaced the bulbs two days ago. Help me.”
“I’ll leave now,” Buck smiles and heads inside for his car keys and new shoes, leaving behind the new cracks in the pavement.
Buck lasts a week. One measly week. It takes one singular week before someone finds out about the speed.
He takes a hit to the head on a call. The skin breaks and he bleeds a little. It happens while they're separated, so Eddie freaks out, and Hen has to drag Buck away, with some force, just to check out the wound.
When Buck is sitting on the back of the ambulance, Hen gently cleans the blood off, and then notices the cut is gone. Hen’s hand comes up to check his pulse, and he’s already protested it all on the walk over, but he’s exhausted after a long day of hard calls, so he lets her.
Her eyes widen after a moment and she reaches for her stethoscope.
“Hen,” Buck gently takes her by the wrist to stop her. Bobby is approaching, fast, so this has to wait for later. “Is Karen gonna be at home when we get off shift?” she nods silently. “We can talk about it then. I’ll explain it all, but I think Karen might be able to help me.”
-
“Where’s your shadow?” Hen jokes when Buck climbs out of the Jeep. He quickens his pace, a normal amount, to meet her at the front door of the Wilson house.
“Getting Chris from school,” Buck tugs the door shut behind them. “But after this I’ll meet him at the house. The whole neighborhood apparently lost power, so we’re gonna clean out his fridge and have dinner at Pepa’s.”
“Yeah, I heard,” Hen acknowledges, moving deeper into the house. “Has he heard back from the power company?”
“Not yet. Neither have the people next door.”
“Karen!” Hen calls down the hallway once she’s back out of the kitchen. “I brought home another dog!”
Her wife rushes out of a bedroom and mimes whacking Hen with the towel she’s holding once she sees Buck.
Karen started a new job at the STAR Labs in LA. She's in the space exploration division, but she’s the closest Buck can get to the researchers in that building who study metahumans and their powers.
He can’t just call up the STAR Labs receptionist and say ‘Hey, I recently came down with a case of super speed. Do you guys take appointments?’
But Karen could walk right by all that.
Once he tells her, and then shows her, she sits with a wide-eyed stare.
“Like,” he starts. “I know Superman can go pretty fast, but I think I broke whatever record he had. And I totally wrecked those sneakers.”
“Oh my God, Buck!” Karen shoots to her feet, hands latching onto the material of his shirt.
In the end, Karen can’t actually do much. She doesn’t have access to those research labs, and she doesn’t really know anyone yet who does.
Buck isn’t too sure what he’d been looking for here, so he finds he’s not too disappointed. He thanks her anyway and feels better for telling them both.
Now he wants to tell Chim. Which is a problem. Howard Han is the biggest superhero nerd Buck knows. Surely he could help, or at least tell Buck everything he knows about superheroes. But he’s also not too great at keeping secrets, so that might have to wait. At least until Buck tells Maddie.
-
Karen is a life saver because she turns up at the loft with a gift for Buck two days later.
“So I talked to someone in the Meta Research Lab, and I got you these,” the reusable grocery bag is opened to reveal a pair of work boots and sneakers. “These shoes are meant to withstand superspeed. I hope they fit, you’ll have to come in if you want custom ones,” a finger darts out to jab him in the chest. “You will have to come in at some point, though. They don’t know much about super speed. We don’t know what’s going on in your body, but that will be good information to have..”
Buck exhales a slow breath, “Alright, yeah. I can come in.” The grin she wears is almost blinding.
“Oh, I can’t wait,” she dives forward for a hug, and Buck holds on.
“Thank you. Really, Karen, thank you.”
“I… I just feel like I'm being watched lately,” Eddie confides. Late night during a shift means the majority of the rest of the team is in the bunks. The station is quiet, save for the occasional loud pedestrian outside, or the gust of wind that rattles around the rafters or the cavernous truck bay. Buck understands the sentiment of feeling unsettled recently.
“Like somebody’s sitting outside your bedroom window, or your targeted ads are creeping you out?”
Eddie scoffs and reaches out to try and shove Buck off of the couch. When he settles back into the cushions he offers, “Chris apparently accepted the system update on the stupid Hildy coffee machine, so maybe that’s just it.”
“Stupid?” Buck exclaims. “You use that thing every day and you love it! I saw all the different beans you got to try on it.”
“I don't know what you’re talking about,” Eddie gets up and starts walking away to escape Buck's list of moments where Eddie has loved the coffee machine.
Joke’s on Eddie, because Buck gets up and follows him.
-
The super speed finally catches up to Buck in the middle of a busy park.
They get called out to attend to the victims of a 55 year old man high on an unidentified drug.
The guy breaches the police containment, barreling right over officers, and, of course, comes right for Buck.
Both hands come right for his head, so Buck reflexively ducks under an arm. His feet are surprisingly with the program and he twists to get behind the man, blocking one leg from moving, and taking an arm with him.
The man yowls in pain when his arm is pinned to his back. He jerks against Buck’s grip, overbalances, and starts falling forward. The sudden change in weight yanks Buck off his feet. Fortunately, he manages to catch himself, and gets the other man pinned face-down on the ground.
“Holy shit!” Chimney shouts in surprise.
Buck’s head shoots up to see his team, “Uh…”
“How’d you do that so fast? You been training for some sort of tournament?” Chim joins Buck in keeping the guy down.
“Just good reflexes.”
-
They’re loading the man into the ambulance when Buck sees it.
The man is on the other side of the street, standing and staring, when Buck lays eyes on him for the first time. He’s a figure in yellow, hidden in shadows. But Buck can sense the speed coming off of him, can sense that he’s not standing still, but vibrating every molecule, moving so fast a regular human couldn’t see him.
Everyone is distracted by the thrashing and yelling now happening in the ambulance. Buck takes a couple steps closer and stares right back, because the bright yellow costume looks a little out of place. It’s a full body suit, along with a cowl to cover from the nose up.
“Who are you?” Buck calls once he’s close enough. The figure dashes forward to the edge of the lot.
“Does that really matter?” He crosses his arms, starts tapping his chin in thought. “Hmm, Jamie feels so unprofessional. You can call me Zoom if you’d like. No- no, Professor Zoom! That’s more distinguished, isn’t it? All you need to know is that I’m a better version of you, Buckley. You’ll never be as fast as me.”
Buck’s brow furrows. He flinches when his ears pop.
“But you should run, to make this more fun.”
The man takes off before he can decide which question to ask.
Run from what?
No one is paying him attention, so Buck feels okay heading between the buildings and taking off. He does run a lap around the surrounding couple blocks, just to take a look, but then he gives up when he can’t find the other man, or anything suspicious. Buck is too occupied with work to keep thinking about it. So he casually returns to the ladder truck and ignores the urge to check behind all the doors and in all the storage compartments.
Eddie doesn’t usually look so blatantly uncomfortable, but when he returns to the station to find his best friend, man behind for the first call of the shift, curled up on the couch, stiffly holding a mug of coffee, Buck can tell something is really wrong.
“Someone didn’t get much sleep last night,” Buck drops down onto the center of the couch. “What’s going on?”
Eddie purses his lips, “Those creaking noises are happening again. Feels like I’m hearing them here, too. I know it’s just the wind, but I don’t know how to ignore it. And don’t say earplugs again. I’m not going to sleep with earplugs. You’re insane if you think I would.”
Buck laughs, “Fine, then I’ll sleep on your couch tonight. We’ll see if we can figure this out.”
Eddie nods his acceptance before settling back into the couch, letting Buck put on a quiet baking show. Buck reaches over to reassuringly squeeze his knee, but Eddie flinches like Buck just shocked him. He slowly pulls his hand away from Eddie’s leg and hopes it doesn't get questioned.
-
Buck accidentally falls through a wall. They get to a caller's house, Eddie gets trapped in the garage with her, Ashlyn, in an attempt to get her out, and, of course, they’d been sent from a call down the street so all their equipment is in the truck at the other house with the rest of the team.
As Buck is quickly pushing against the rusted side door on the structure, he just falls right through. His palm passes to the other side, then his arm, then he isn’t leaning against anything so he trips forward.
It’s a relief that Eddie and Ashlyn have their backs to him, facing the garage door, so they don’t see him stumble inside out of nowhere. They also don’t see the wobbly surface of the metal door that cracks before crumbling into a pile of dust.
Buck takes a few steps back to stand outside, raises his halligan just for show, and calls “Hey!”
Spinning around immediately at the noise, Eddie eyes him, confused, “How the hell…”
“Door was so rusted and old it just crumbled,” Buck explains away, dropping the halligan to rest on his shoulder. “You’re free now. You’re welcome.”
-
Bobby finds out next.
He knocks a pan off the counter and Buck can’t help but grab it before it clatters to the ground.
His body freezes up once he feels the hot surface, still just a hair away from the pan’s original spot. Oh, Buck shouldn’t have done that.
“Buck?” Bobby questions, now turned around to see the mess that is only metaphorical.
Buck sets the pan back down and turns the burner off. “Do you mind if we talk about this in your office?”
In the end, Bobby doesn't have too many questions. That’s a relief because Buck doesn't have too many answers.
“You were struck by lightning, and survived. Why would I question how you returned to us?”
Buck expects to be stuck awake the whole night, keeping watch on the couch while Eddie finally sleeps. That 12 hour shift really got the better of him apparently, because Buck wakes up at midnight on the couch with a DVD title screen idle on the TV.
There’s some kind of bright, golden light coming in from the front window, maybe the high beams from a car. It’s gone before Buck can even blink. Then his eyes land on Eddie and he must just be hallucinating it.
Eddie is curled up in the brown chair across the room, not even using the foot stool to stretch out on. Buck feels bad waking him up to move him. They have the whole day off, until their next shift that evening. Eddie is only working another 12, but he still deserves a good night’s rest in a comfortable bed.
When they leave for their shift at 7 that night, Buck notices that some of the plants in the flower beds look like they’d been stepped on, some even have scorch marks on their crumbled leaves.
-
“Hey, Kiddo, what’s up?” Buck asks. He sets his phone on the counter on speaker to refocus on the stir fry dinner. Chris is breathing heavily on the other end. “Chris?”
“Are you with my dad?”
“No? I'm still on shift. I have a 24. What’s going on?”
“He said he’d be home half an hour ago and he’s not picking up. I’ve been waiting for him to take me to the library. His car’s here, but I don’t know how to drive, so…”
The pit forming in Buck’s stomach sinks right down.
Buck looks to Hen on the couch. Her features are scrunched up in concern.
“I want you to call Pepa, alright? She can be there soon. I’ll find your dad.”
“But Buck-“
“Buck, what’s hap-” Chimney sits upright and catches the cell phone when Buck tosses it at him.
“Cover for me!” He calls and hopes Chris won’t be too mad at Buck for not wasting time explaining.
He knows what it looks like to everyone else. Buck takes off, at a normal speed, and it looks like he’s abandoning his team, and his phone, when Eddie has just disappeared, and not followed through on plans with his son. An extreme reaction for a typically not very pressing situation. Trusting his gut has paid off enough in the past to follow it this time.
Buck turns the corner, ducks around the back of the building, and breaks the sound barrier between one step and the next.
-
Buck finds them just a mile from STAR Labs, in the hills, tucked into some power company’s maintenance structure. He kicks up a cloud of dust and dirt when he skids to a stop out front. Electricity fizzles through the power cables in the air above him.
Zoom is on top of the little building, Eddie is nowhere to be seen, but Buck just knows he’s here.
“Buck!” Zoom greets cheerfully, waving a hand.
“I’m here!” Buck shouts back. “What do you want?”
“Hmm,” Zoom reaches up to comically stroke his chin. Then he moves to the high tech watch he wears to tap the screen a few times. “Like for dinner? Well, I ate earlier, but I knew a place nearby that did real good black bean burgers. But right now, I want to try this thing out. It’s a pretty cool device I brought from home.”
A high pitched squeal attacks his ears. Buck reaches to cover them, but it’s like moving through quicksand.
“How cool is that?” Zoom calls. “It warps the electric currents around you and completely disables your super speed. I had to get Eddie to help set it up. He had no clue what it was, but it was a big help.”
“Why us?” Buck cuts him off. “Why are you terrorizing us? And where’s Eddie?”
Zoom rolls his head like he would his eyes, a full bodied display of annoyance. “I thought it was obvious at this point. I guess you’re not as smart as I thought.”
He jumps down from the roof to land on the ground, quickly moving to stand in front of Buck on the other side of the chain link fence. Buck can feel each heavy exhale that comes from the man.
“I want my life back,” Zoom starts, voice low. “I want my family back. I want to go back home. How is it fair that I've lost everything, while you get it all! Do you know how many different timelines I’ve been to? Where you live so easy! Every iteration, your life is perfect. The family, the kids, the job, the attention from Mom and Dad. Fuck you, Evan Buckley!” Zoom slams his hands into the fence, and doesn’t even react to the electric zap it gives him before he turns around to pace.
Buck can’t help that he takes a step back. He’s startled, he’s confused, he’s frustrated. It’s a mistake, because it only sets Zoom off again.
“How dare you! I finally find a place that I could make so much better, and here you are! Constantly getting in my way! Originally, I planned to just grab him and take him back home with me, where I could protect him this time. But we’d have to leave Chris behind, unfortunately. Chris wouldn’t make it where I’m from, I wouldn’t put him through that. And Eddie would be inconsolable for a little while, but he’s gotten over it before, and I could be there to comfort him…”
Words flood through his brain at lightspeed. Buck opens his mouth to defend, to attack, to protect, but he’s too slow in this trap. Zoom laughs and steamrolls right over him.
“But I think instead, I’ll just stay right here! This place already has everything I need. And there’s no desolate wasteland this time! You’ve got malls with actual people in them! I can stay here, take over for you, and no one will even notice! I’ve been told I’m a pretty good actor. I’ll get my family, a pretty cool job, and a cozy life in suburbia. And all I have to do is kill you!”
“You really think they’re not gonna notice?” Buck scoffs. “You’re nothing like me! You honestly think Eddie won’t know?” A new button on the watch gets pressed and the pulsing energy surrounding him intensifies. Buck's legs buckle, and he hits the ground hard on his knees.
“Well,” Zoom drawls. He squats down to be on Buck’s eye level again, and his shoulders shift side to side like he’s actually contemplating it. “With a good story, I think I can be pretty convincing.”
His hand comes up to shove back the cowl that covers most of his face.
Buck doesn’t move this time. Because he’s not surprised. The face that stares back at him is exactly what he’s been expecting.
Ocean blue eyes are reflected on this face. And they are really the only thing Buck is familiar with. Lips twist in a taunting smirk that he’s never worn before. A jagged scar cuts through the side of his mouth and cheek. Some type of acid burn scarring along his neck and on his temple has destroyed any evidence of a birthmark, and left the eye on that side cloudy.
While Buck has his own vast collection of scars, he can’t even imagine what kind of old wounds are hidden under the rest of the suit.
“Really, if I just say I was attacked, and now I’ve got amnesia? That will definitely work.”
Buck has to squint his eyes. The flood lights on the structure are nearly unbearable now, but they put the uncanny replica mostly in shadow.
Zoom - Jamie? - stands and runs a gloved hand over his short hair. “You know, there were so many versions of us that were worse off, and I just had to put them out of their misery. But I never actually decided how I was going to kill you. The very last time. How about, you just sit tight in there? And I’ll take a minute to come up with something great.”
It takes effort, but Buck manages to push himself back to his feet. He’s moving so slowly that Zoom doesn’t seem concerned in the slightest.
“Really, just a few more seconds. I’ve got so many ideas.”
An animal noise is pulled from Buck’s throat. He wants to end this. He wants to fight. He wants to attack. He wants to draw blood. And he knows exactly how to. But that’s not going to get Eddie back. That’s not going to get him out of this trap. He needs a plan.
A shrill whine hits Buck’s ears. He can feel his body instinctively pull away from the source, to cover his ears, but he’s still moving through molasses.
The floodlights explode.
Glass from the bulbs, and all the windows shatter with the force. There’s a pained yell from inside the building. Buck gasps for air and his lungs freely inflate. Every molecule in his body is vibrating fast on a frequency he can feel.
Finally.
Buck vibrates right through the molecules of the chain link fence.
He’s solid when his hands collide with Zoom’s chest, and he’s moving with enough speed and force that he feels something crunch under his grip before they even crash through the metal walls of the building.
Things go flying as they break through. Buck’s eyes catch on a metal pipe that’s now embedded in the opposite wall of the narrow room. It doesn’t take more than a shift of his body to send them in the right direction.
The pipe pierces through Zoom’s thigh. The speedster howls in pain. Buck feels the jagged edge catch his own leg.
“I’ll kill you! Evan James Buckley, I’ll kill you!” Zoom shouts. “And I’ll kill Eddie, too! There are billions of other versions of him, I can find a better one! I’ll just-”
The blood in Buck's veins is pounding so hard, it shakes his whole body.
Zoom cuts off with a gargled noise. That’s when Buck realizes he’s vibrating again. His right hand has sunk into Zoom’s chest. Whatever he’s putting pressure on gives, pops, and the body in yellow jerks before going limp.
Buck yanks his hand back. It’s covered in blood.
He killed him. Buck just… he just crushed this man’s heart and killed him.
Buck lunges to the side to cough up the bile shooting to the top of his throat.
A loose wire hanging from the ceiling spits sparks. Buck doesn’t even feel the electricity when it hits his back.
Something creaks and hits the ground behind him.
Buck looks over his shoulder, surveying the path of damage he’s left. Just outside, the fence is wobbling, almost like plastic, until it suddenly explodes. Buck ducks his head to avoid any stray shrapnel that might make it inside.
Once everything has gone quiet, save for the piercing ring that echoes in his ears, Buck finally lays eyes on Eddie.
He settles back into his bones, and his body stops vibrating at the elevated frequency.
The other man is still bound in ropes, caught in a blanket that had likely been wrapped around him for warmth. A pair of handcuffs dangle from one wrist, and they’re still closed so whatever bones are dislocated or broken on the free hand will need immediate attention. But otherwise, Eddie looks okay.
Eddie’s slumped back against a unit with a half dozen panels open to reveal countless switches and buttons. He’s gasping for air, maybe trying to avoid a panic attack.
When their eyes meet, an exhausted laugh escapes Eddie’s chest. “I just started pushing buttons. Hope I didn’t cause a citywide blackout or something.”
Buck grins and pushes to his feet. That gouge in his leg from the pipe feels worse than he thought, but Buck pushes it to the back of his mind, and runs to Eddie’s side. “Are you okay? Where are you hurt?”
Buck pauses when electricity shoots off of himself to dance along Eddie, like some sort of lightning rod. Eddie doesn’t even flinch.
There’s some blood on the back of Eddie’s head, it looks like he’d collided with one of the sharp edges of the panel doors. The skin of his wrists is red and irritated from pulling on the handcuffs. Buck quickly resets the dislocated thumb before Eddie even notices.
“I- I think you should call Athena,” Eddie says once Buck has freed him of the bindings.
“Yeah,” Buck sighs, then tugs Eddie to his chest for a long hug. “It’s time.”
The scent in the room is the first thing that assaults Buck's senses. It’s not that chemical disinfectant smell, but everything smells like ozone, so he’s probably at STAR. Surprising.
The pain in his leg is near nonexistent. Buck wishes he'd gotten the superhealing earlier in his career.
What’s more surprising is the body, settled and calm next to the bed.
Buck cracks his eyes open and is relieved to see his partner, watching him with a soft gaze. Eddie leans forward and drops his chin onto the side rail of the bed
He looks up at Buck with those big, wet, doe eyes. “Hi,” he whispers.
“Hi, Eds,” Buck croaks.
The wounds on his wrists are wrapped, and a steri-strip holds a cut on his forehead closed.
Buck’s eyes sting. “I’m sorry. Eddie, I’m so sorry. You got hurt! Fuck, Eddie.”
Eddie’s eyes widen and he scrambles upright to push Buck back down to the mattress. “This was not your fault. How could you have possibly known that was going to happen?”
Buck wonders how much of the conversation with Zoom Eddie had heard, or just what Zoom had said to him.
“We’re good,” Eddie promises. “You got there as fast as you could.”
Buck has to pause for a minute, let that sink in, before he gives in to the urge to hold his pinky out.
They are apparently on the same page because pinky fingers come out at the same time, and hook around each other seamlessly.
Eddie drags their interlaced fingers up into their eye line, to ensure Buck can see. He wants to kiss Eddie. He really wants to kiss Eddie. But he chickens out and presses his lips to the curl of his own fist. The smile that breaks out on Eddie’s face is blinding, and flushed.
“I pinky promise that we’re good.” Buck grins and yanks him in for a hug.
“Buck,” Eddie whispers, “You should kiss me-”
Their lips are pressed together before Eddie is even done talking.
Buck almost can’t believe this is real, that they’re doing this. Eddie’s lips are soft, and his breath is a little stale after a night in a hospital bed, but this is Eddie.
The glass door opening pulls them away from each other far too soon. Athena steps inside, eyeing them like she knows she just interrupted something.
“I’m glad to see you’re awake, Buck. Are you ready to tell me what happened? Because I’ve got a body that looks just like you, and I’m not sure how it got here.”
“He’s me from another timeline. He was just trying to replace the family he lost,” Buck explains succinctly. His voice comes out as a rough rasp, and Eddie pulls away to offer a glass of water.
“By killing you and taking your place,” the tense words burst from Eddie in the quiet while Buck drinks.
“I killed him.”
“It was self defense,” Eddie reassures. His eyes suddenly widen and he spins to look at Athena. “It was self defense! This guy tried to kill Buck, he kidnapped me, and he’s been stalking me all week.”
“What am I missing here?” Athena narrows her eyes and looks back and forth between the two of them.
“I guess it’s kinda a long story,” Buck cringes. “Remember how I died?”
-
Karen shows up to meet Buck at the lab on a Saturday. He feels a little bad for taking up one of her days off, but she’s quick to reassure him, again, that she needs to be here for this, and she’ll never forgive him if she misses one second of it. And he’s already in the building. Spending the night in their medical wing feels like good enough timing to bring himself in for testing, even though it hasn't even been ten hours since Zoom tried to kill him.
He hates leaving Eddie behind, but the other man is sleeping like the dead in Buck’s overnight room, and he feels worse when he considers waking him.
The Meta Research Labs at STAR are about as sterile as Buck expected, until Karen leads him into a larger room with a vaulted ceiling and bigger equipment. There, he is introduced to Dr. William O’Donnell, a biologist, and Dr. Amara Stevens, the Metahuman Specialist Karen had befriended. She is pleased to see her work boots have held up against Buck’s super speed.
Buck doesn’t feel very helpful when he tries to explain what he remembers and what he’s been told about the lightning incident, because it’s not much. And the lab that exploded on him has so far been uncooperative. Regardless, they seem to believe him without any visual proof.
“We’d just like to collect some basic data,” Stevens explains. “You may find it helpful to have that information, and it’s always good for us to expand our own knowledge.”
“Alright,” he agrees, “Can we just keep my name out of it, please?”
The testing starts with just taking his base vitals. O’Donnell seems surprised by his 22 bpm heart rate. Buck offers that it’s also gotten to over 100 even when he’s not using his powers. Stevens nods like she was expecting that kind of range and fluctuation. Or maybe she’d snuck into his room in the medical wing to observe while he was unconscious. She’s watching him like he’s the last of his species, so Buck wouldn't be shocked.
Buck tries to give them a good baseline for his numbers before the incident, but it’s hard for him to judge when some are wildly different and some haven’t changed.
When they finally put him on a treadmill, Buck feels like he can’t push it, can’t do more than an unenhanced person can do. It’s basically just a track on wheels, his own momentum will push it so it keeps up with him. Stevens reassures him the treadmill is built for enhanced speed, Superman has even tested this model, so he goes for it.
The test lasts two seconds before something cracks and Buck is off the treadmill, skidding to a stop inches away from a wall.
“Oh!” Stevens exclaims. Buck lays eyes on the treadmill. It’s smoking, wheels blackened and out of alignment, with the track torn in pieces.
“I’d say that’s faster than Superman,” Karen offers, a giant grin growing on her face.
Buck breaks into laughter, quickly trying to muffle it and apologize for the damage.
“That’s alright,” Stevens reassures. “We know better for next time.”
O’Donnell nods and hefts his large notebook up. “We can just move on to the next test.”
“I don’t like how easily you’ve been turned into a lab rat,” Eddie says from the doorway.
Buck rushes over to greet him. He presses an excited kiss to Eddie’s lips that neither of them flinch at. “Baby, I’m faster than Superman! I can’t wait to tell Chris.”
“All that super speed, huh. So…” Eddie trails off. “What are you gonna do with it?”
-
Buck turns up at Bobby and Athena’s the night after the doctors at STAR release him.
He’s not sure how much Athena shared with her husband, but Bobby must know something is weighing on Buck just at the sight of him.
“Come on in, sit down. What’s on your mind?”
"How much time do you have?"