Chapter Text
It’s been a little over a month since Buck started on the Rattlers and he’s completely miserable. The manager, Gerrard, is a complete asshole (to put it lightly), the guy that Chimney talked about moved to Boston and retired there, and the team is not nearly as familial as the Warriors. As soon as the game is over there’s no lingering, no group hang-outs, just get out as soon as you can. Buck’s been placed at the bottom of the batting order, which doesn’t affect him that much, and is just Gerrard trying to break him and show his authority. Gerrard made it very obvious that he didn’t want to send Deluca to the minors and take Buck in the trade but the owners left him no choice.
The pitcher, Tommy, is fine. He’s a good pitcher but learning pitching signals is surprisingly difficult, and he’s not exactly patient when it comes to Buck. He’s not nearly as good as Eddie at pitching and he’s aware of that, his age is bringing him down and he’s not nearly as consistent as he used to be. They don’t really get along, not helped by the fact that Buck knows what he said to Chimney during his rookie year and he’s trying to get him to turn on Eddie. He tried to pressure Buck into leaking the signals that Eddie uses and didn’t believe him when he said that Eddie would rather die than signal a pitch. Buck’s also convinced that Tommy plays negative commentary about his old team in the locker room on purpose. So yeah, he’s okay, but he’s not Eddie , no matter how much he tried to be.
If that isn’t enough, Gerrard has made it exceptionally clear that Buck is not to ‘associate with his former teammates or those connected to them’, so that means even going to Hen’s place for dinner was out of the question. The only thing he can get away with is texting and a rare FaceTime with Chris at the end of the day. That rule applied to everyone; Maddie, unfortunately, found out when someone overheard her and Buck talking about her date with Chimney and ran to Gerrard. Maddie was sacked without a second thought, thankfully when Hen found out there was suddenly a need for an additional Physical Therapist on the Warriors staff (Buck vehemently denied alerting Hen when Maddie questioned him). That also means that Buck can’t even text Maddie while there are others around.
All of that isn’t enough to distract Buck from the fact that he’s in love with Eddie. The only time he’s able to forget about it is during a game, when he can just focus on winning. Even then sometimes it’s not enough, Twitter caught him smiling to himself when the announcer was giving an update on other games and said that the Warriors had won their game 10-0. The video haunted Buck for over a week after that, the camera had been focused on him, trying to find a moment of Buck thinking about his old team. Buck wasn’t even thinking about the team, he was just thinking about how proud he was of Eddie, how proud of himself Eddie must be, and how excited Christopher must’ve been watching it.
Chimney had sent him the clip along with a text teasing him about his lack of loyalty to his new team, Hen also sent him the clip with winky-face under it. Eddie didn’t acknowledge it at all, logically Buck knew Eddie wasn’t upset with him, he had been messaging Buck in the first few weeks, but it’s like one day Eddie decided to stop messaging Buck full stop. He gets it, hard to get in the swing of things with the new catcher if he’s still talking to the enemy.
It’s the same reason why Buck stopped watching the Warriors games, he can’t beat them if he’s still rooting for them, well that’s one of the reasons. The underlying reason is that Buck is trying to avoid his feelings and it’s hard to ignore his feelings when he’s literally watching Eddie for hours. When Chris asks if he saw a play from a game he’ll either lie or ask him to send over a clip when he can. The first time Chris sent him a clip it was the new catcher getting caught off guard by Eddie’s knuckleball.
The guy they brought up from the minors, Ravi, isn’t bad by any means, he’s got one hell of a batting average and the few times they had interacted before he seemed like a good guy. The issue is just getting used to how Eddie pitches, he imagines that Ravi was warned beforehand but being behind the plate with a 95 mph ball heading towards him is a different story. Plus Eddie’s pitches have been less predictable than usual, it wasn’t noticeable to people who weren’t extremely familiar with Eddie but Buck had noticed how his pitch was a few inches from where Buck would’ve put his glove if he was still there. But he’s not.
It’s hard for Buck not to notice the creeping loneliness, it’s lurking in every corner waiting for him. When he hits a pitch into deep left he realizes that he can’t hear Chimney yelling for him to run like hell. When he forgets his KT tape one day and isn’t greeted by Hen when he gets more. When he goes to his fridge expecting to see leftovers from the last team dinner but is met with meals from his last meal prep session instead. When he’s sitting in his loft, like he is right now and the silence is almost deafening, no laughter from Chris echoing from the living room. Buck has been going to the grocery store less, food seems to last longer without the Diaz boys around. Eddie’s presence in his loft is almost burned into his mind so well that Buck has to remind himself that the silence isn’t going to end unless he ends it himself.
He almost reaches for his TV remote to distract himself when a knock on his door stops him in his tracks. Looking at his phone it was almost midnight and he had no messages. Before he could get to the door there was another knock, it sounded panicked, loud, and rapid. It was probably one of his neighbors who needed help. Buck sighed to himself before opening the door.
Of all the people who could’ve been at his door at midnight, sports reporter Taylor Kelly was the last one he expected. She was digging through her bag, not looking up to see a very confused Buck frozen in his doorway.
“Sorry I’m late, I had to take some weird turns,” Taylor continued to search for something, “I think someone tried to tail me but I lost them.” She finally looked up after pulling out a tape recorder. Her eyebrows shot up in surprise at who had answered the door.
“What?” Buck tried and failed to come up with something better to say.
“ You’re the source?” She seemed just as confused as him at least.
“Uhh,” Buck’s been out of it for a few weeks but he’s pretty sure he’d remember agreeing to an interview. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, I think you have the wrong address.”
“Shit,” Taylor started typing on her phone, trying to pull up the address she was given, “I’m on the wrong side of LA. Sorry to bother you, please just forget this happened.” She started to walk away when something she said earlier replayed in Buck’s head.
“You should come inside,” Buck blurted out, Taylor turned around with a suspicious look on her face. “No no not like that,” Buck rushed out, “I mean if someone was following you here it might be a good idea to wait here for a while.”
“Okay,” she seemed to relax once Buck hurriedly assured her that he had no ill intent with his offer, “I need to text my actual source about rescheduling, and you might be able to help with this actually.”
*****
“So,” Buck sat down across from Taylor, who was now in his living room. “What possible story could I help you with?”
Taylor took a sip of the wine that Buck had offered her before answering him. “Piece on the Rattlers’ work culture.” Buck almost laughed, of course, the second he gets traded he’s going down with the ship.
“So you want me to give a statement? Tell you everything that happens?” It’s not like he’s opposed to it, but he’s on the team . It wouldn’t be smart to speak out against the team while he’s still there. Gerrard already tortures him enough. “Why would I do that?”
“Cause you hate it there,” Taylor said so confidently that Buck wouldn’t be able to deny it if wrong; she’s not but he wouldn’t be able to lie. “You’re miserable there, it’s why I started to look into it.” Taylor looked at him like it was obvious, unfortunately, it was not.
“I’m still not following,” Buck took a sip of wine, grimacing, why the hell does he have this wine? “How did I make this happen?”
Taylor sighed before explaining. “First your battling average dropped, hardly noticeable but when you do hit the ball, you hit it hard .” Buck hard to admit, he hadn’t noticed the second part, maybe Eddie did.
“Second, you stopped stealing bases,” she continued. “You stopped caring, the player I have on record saying that he’d rather end his career trying than give up, stopped caring. You said after your MCL injury that you’re going to die with a baseball in your hand. And now?” Taylor stared into Buck, “You look like you want to be anywhere else than in that dugout. And don’t tell me that it’s because someone told you to stop, everyone knows you listen to maybe three people when they tell you what to do-”
“Four,” Buck interrupted, Taylor raised her eyebrows, “Chris usually makes me promise to not be stupid.”
“Chris Diaz?” Taylor leaned back onto the couch, Buck nodded. “That leads me to number three: You haven’t been seen with either Diaz in over a month, the record before that was a week.” Buck looked away, suddenly finding the bottle of wine fascinating. “Which tells me something is keeping you from being seen with them.”
Buck’s mind was racing too much to pick out any single thought. She was on the right trail, all Buck would need to do was confirm what she was thinking. His name wouldn’t have to be attached to it. His eyes fell on the bottle of wine again, ‘Bordeaux’ jumping out at him like a taunt. Buck suddenly realized why that bottle of horrible wine was in his loft. Eddie , Eddie drinks it. Eddie, who he hasn’t seen in over a month. Eddie, who is still important enough for Buck to pick up wine he doesn’t even like from the store because he’s used to Eddie drinking it. Eddie, who has been his best friend for years. Eddie would want me to do this .
“I’m in.” Buck looked back at Taylor, whose face had lit up like a Christmas tree, “But I don’t want my name attached to this in any way.” Taylor nodded, pulling out her phone to record. “I can get you a lot of evidence, but I want everyone to be anonymous, if it’s only a few people it’ll get traced back.”
“Absolutely,” Taylor assured, “I’ll make sure it never gets back to you or anyone else you want to protect from this.”
Buck felt a small smile creeping onto his face, his first one in a while. “Then I think we’ve got a deal.”
*****
Hours passed before they were both content with the amount of information shared. Buck walked Taylor back out to her car. Neither one of them noticed the camera flash from across the street.