Word Count: 2,787
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with 911, Fox, or anything else related to that particular universe.

Maybe it was because he had to pay attention to people, or the model, or he'd made many sketches over the past almost-three months, but as soon as the man walked in that week, Eddie knew something was different. Eddie had spent so long trying to capture the slope of his shoulders that it was clear there was a more distinct slump this week. His lips also seemed thinner, pressed together with tension at the corners, and his eyes were even more distant than usual as Natalie walked around him and explained methods to ensure body proportions were accurate when drawing all the features they had been working on individually. Eddie still thought his skills were atrocious but he knew he wasn't as lost in his own pain now, and that Athena wasn't glowering at him so frequently. He supposed, if nothing else, that being here once a week had been helping him unwind after his shifts on the other days too.

Still…

The man shrugged out of his shirt like he had been doing for almost a month and Natalie started outlining her explanation on the paper behind her like always, but Eddie was still fixated on analysing why there was such an aura of sadness or resignation or absolute defeat in the posture and facial expression. Surely he couldn't be the only one who noticed it? They'd all been staring at the same guy for three months. They all had to be alert to it, right?

It wasn't until he actually tried to focus on his page, tried to divide the paper into sections as Natalie had and made some rough strokes with his pencil, that he began to really process that some of his reference sketches weren't working this time. The change in the shoulder positioning was throwing off how he'd developed the man's arms, and there was also a tweak in the tilt of his head and neck that threw off the angle of his mouth and nose.

When he flicked through his previous pages, identifying the features he'd focused on previously, and then glanced up at the model, he felt his eyebrow rise and his lips part slightly when he realised what was different.

Or, perhaps, what had caused the change.

The half-half Mark was now solid black.

It was a stark stripe, smaller than his tattoos and yet just as obvious. Eddie felt his heart twist at the realisation because he could remember exactly how he'd felt when his Mark for Shannon had blackened a year after she'd left, when he'd realised her feelings no longer matched his and their bond was over. And he could remember the pain when it had scarred, the way he'd clutched at his chest and stared at his wrist. Even now, he struggled to look at the scarred Mark. Even now, he kept it hidden as much as possible beneath the band of his watch.

But for the model in front of him, the positioning of the Mark near his shoulder wasn't so easy to conceal when he didn't have a shirt. The curl of his shoulders that hadn't been there a week ago meant the blackening had to be fresh.

Eddie knew all the pale pink stripes meant he must have had a lot of flings, but Eddie hadn't glimpsed any other coloured Marks except for the one on his shoulder. Whoever had been important, whoever had shared the man's feelings, had left the relationship and it was clear the man was suffering. The knowledge of how that pain felt made it harder for Eddie to concentrate when his thoughts kept drifting to his feelings and memories about Shannon. The same feelings and memories about Shannon that had led him here, to this drawing class, attempting to move past them so that it stopped interfering with his work.

He was holding the pencil so tightly in his fist that he snapped it in half. The crack echoed through the silence of the room and for a moment, he thought he'd broken a tooth with how tightly gritted his teeth were.

When he realised there were multiple sets of eyes on him, he fumbled through an apology and exited the room to find somewhere that had enough air to breathe.

He stalked the deserted corridors of the community centre, leaning against a wall at the far end of a darkened hallway and tilting his head against the solid surface. He breathed in, forced himself to hold it, and breathed out. He knew he was too-rapidly approaching the anniversary of Shannon's death, too easily lost in shifts and calls and taking care of Chris and sketching in the evenings to let himself think about her for too long, but he wasn't ignorant to the passing days and weeks and months.

His heart still thumped uncomfortably hard in his chest after he regained some sort of control over his breathing and jaw, hands curled by his sides because he still wanted to hit something. Athena had been firm in essentially banning him from anything resembling violence outside of the job, concerned that giving into the aggression outside of the job would make him more furious when he was on shifts. She kept saying he needed to learn how to let the emotions go with peace and it sounded like some sort of hippie nonsense. He wasn't going to argue with his commanding officer, though. Athena was terrifying if you crossed her.

When he eventually gathered himself enough to return to the room, a few people glanced his way before resuming their drawings. He found a fresh pencil placed on his page and his gaze flickered to Natalie, who gave him another of those calm, reassuring smiles. He nodded his thanks and sat again, trying to focus on the task at hand.

It wasn't easy, and he wasn't pleased with what he'd produced by the end of the class, but some of the fury that always simmered at the bottom of a well had settled by the time everyone began packing up. He didn't feel like he was going to explode on the drive home or cry into a pillow once he'd curled into bed. He supposed that meant the outlet of drawing had worked.

"You okay tonight?"

He looked at Natalie as he folded the sketchbook into his bag, moving slower than usual. Ordinarily he felt like he was rushing to get home, but tonight he didn't want to race. If he let himself start feeling the stress, he wasn't sure what else it might unravel.

"I'm okay," he said, offering a smile that he didn't really feel but knew she was being polite and he respected her for checking in. He knew this class wasn't the place to start divulging his feelings about his dead wife, though. He didn't want to talk about how Athena had demanded he find a better way to manage his emotions. Natalie was gentle, and kind, and he appreciated her care – but he wasn't going to start picking everything apart now. Not again. Not when he needed to get home to Abuela and Chris.

She nodded, but she didn't look like she believed him. "Drive safe," she said and he echoed her wish as she left the room.

Maybe it was deliberate, or maybe it was an accident, but when he finished zipping up his bag, he realised it was just him and the model left. The guy was finishing the buttons on his shirt with his right hand, reaching for his leather jacket with his left.

"Hey." He swallowed around the knot in his throat because this was… He didn't do this. It was like dissolving a barrier that had been around the guy for months, stealing into a site he wasn't meant to enter. Which was part of his job, but not exactly something he did in his personal life.

The guy straightened, eyebrow raised as his blue eyes actually met Eddie's for the first time in months. He was always so guarded during classes that sometimes Eddie forgot he was still a complete stranger.

"Uh…" Smooth, Eddie, smooth. He twisted the strap of his bag in his fingers, bit the inside of his cheek. "Are you okay?"

The eyebrow lowered, a pink tongue darting out to tug his bottom lip between a pair of perfect white teeth, the faintest twitch at the edge of his lips. "I think the lie we're telling ourselves tonight is 'I'm okay'?"

Eddie's breath caught a little at the rich amusement coating the man's words, the lilt to his voice that was warm even as he called Eddie out on the lie he'd told Natalie. It was harder to focus on the blue eyes now that they seemed to be seeing beneath some of the layers of his armour, trying to expose the parts Eddie was always trying to protect and never wanted to deal with when he fought so desperately to remain in control for Chris.

"I'm taking that as a 'no', just so you know," Eddie said, looping the strap over his shoulder and trying to remember he looked at suspects that were covered in tattoos and had eyes that promised evil retribution if they ever got out. How or why he felt like such a floundering idiot in front of a guy that seemed like pure innocence was beyond him.

Those pink lips he'd spent too many hours sketching curved in front of him, left eyebrow quirking upwards again as arms were pushed inside the sleeves of his jacket. The leather stretched across his shoulders and accentuated the curve of biceps that Eddie had memorised a month ago but found impossible to shade on paper. "Does that mean I should take your response to Nat's question as a 'no' as well and start worrying about you getting home safe?"

His stomach absolutely did not flutter at the thought that someone he didn't even know might actually care about him getting home safely.

"Do you always answer a question with a question?"

The man laughed, a quiet rumbling that spread through his chest, and his eyes crinkled at the edges. Eddie wanted to dig out his sketchbook and start trying to capture that image on a blank page. "You just answered a question with a question."

Eddie tried not to pout. It really would be unbecoming of a man in his thirties who had been to war and saw horrors more often than not.

"So you're not okay," he said slowly, leaning against his table and forcing himself to remember that he had a point to all this. "Do you want to talk about it? Get a drink?"

The man was smiling at him, something clearing in his eyes for a brief moment. "Thanks for the offer, but I have to get to work."

"Work?" He glanced at his watch as the minutes ticked past eight o'clock. "You go to work after this? Now?"

"Not all of us can have day jobs." The man shrugged, hands disappearing inside the pockets of his jacket.

Eddie frowned. "Being a bit presumptive there, aren't you?"

"You work nights?"

His fingers fiddled with the strap of his bag again, knowing he was entering into the sort of territory he didn't want to bring into the classes. Work needed to stay separate for his own sanity. He'd already thought too much about Shannon tonight and-

He scrunched his eyes shut, exhaled, and found the best version of an internal centre that he could before he opened his eyes again. He tried to ignore the curiosity that had entered the sparkling ocean depths in front of him.

"When it's required," he said finally, and the man looked no less curious but he granted him a nod and checked his watch.

"Well, gotta go." He flashed a smile that wasn't as genuine as the laugh before, and Eddie could tell that now because his eyes didn't wrinkle at the edges. "Same time, same place next week?"

Eddie rolled his eyes, fighting against the smile that tugged at the edge of his mouth. "I hope your job's not stand-up comedy because that was awful."

The surprised huff of laughter returned and Eddie decided he needed to secure the sound and hold it within his heart.

They walked out of the centre together, Eddie sizing up that the man had a few inches on him and was definitely broader across the shoulders. He probably had a similar build to Nicholls, and Eddie wasn't ignorant to the swell of muscles beneath the guy's skin from all the time spent in class. He was strong and could more than hold his own against Eddie in a sparring match.

"So, uh… Drive safe," he said, eyes flicking between the ground and the guy's eyes. He got slightly distracted by the way the outside lights caused new shadows to fall across his face, highlighting the shape of his cheekbone. Groping around for his keys seemed like a good distraction so that he avoided staring.

"You too," the man said quietly as Eddie kept moving forward, turning towards the right where he'd parked his truck down the street. "Hey?"

Eddie looked over his shoulder, bottom lip catching between his teeth.

"Thanks for…staying back to check," the man said, eyes dropping and throat swallowing around some obvious hesitation. "I don't know your name but-"

"Eddie."

The man's eyes lifted towards him again, something resembling a dimple in his cheek as he apparently bit down on the urge to smile. "Well then, Eddie, just…thought I'd say thank you."

Some of the nerves he hadn't been able to get rid of dissipated, realising that the veil which separated him from the man he was meant to draw might have been tugged loose but it wasn't so bad to humanise him, to see him smile and laugh and appreciate something as simple as checking if he was okay.

"You're welcome…?" His inflection rose and his head tilted in an obvious display of lacking a name too.

"Buck," the man – Buck – said with a faint smile as he ducked his head in evident embarrassment. Eddie wondered if it was for the same reason – three months of sharing a room with someone and failing to know their name had to be a first for him.

"Then you're welcome, Buck," he said with a nod, twirling the keyring around his index finger. "Drive safe and I hope your shift goes well."

"Thanks."

He managed to make it to his truck without turning around repeatedly, wondering if he was just imagining what felt like the weight of Buck's eyes on him the whole time. Eddie's job demanded he look out for and look after people. He wouldn't have been able to go home after seeing that black Mark, after seeing the shadowed eyes, and not check if Buck was okay.

The fact he still had lingering impressions of Shannon leaving him was something he'd just have to grin and bear.

"Dad?"

He looked towards Chris sitting at the table, feet kicking beneath his chair while he worked through his Math problems. "Yeah, kiddo?"

"Are you happy?"

He blinked, eyes sweeping towards the pasta dish he was almost finished making, and then turned a frown back towards his son. "Happy?"

"Yeah." Chris put his pencil down, eyes fixing on Eddie across the room. "You don't seem so sad anymore."

Oh.

Oh.

He turned down the heat on the stove, just to avoid anything burning, and moved around the kitchen to his kid. He folded his arms around Chris' shoulders from behind his chair, pressing a series of noisy kisses to his curls that left Chris laughing and pushing him away.

"You know I love you, right?" he said, chin resting near Chris' temple as small hands circled his wrists. "More than anything?"

"Yeah, I know." Chris tilted his head, eyes raking over Eddie like he knew it was all a deflection to avoid answering if he was happy or sad like it was that easy to quantify. "I love you too."

He kissed Chris' forehead, squeezed his shoulders lightly, and then returned to the food while Chris finished off the last couple of Math problems.

The question haunted him for the rest of the night, though. The sweetness in Chris' tone had burrowed beneath his skin and stayed there.

It made for a restless night as he stared at the ceiling, pushed at his pillow, kicked at the blankets. Even in the dark, he thought he could feel the photo of Shannon gazing at him, judging him, laughing at his inability to maintain control.

He wondered when he'd stop being so angry at a dead person.

~TBC~