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This Feeling I’m Feeling
Humans are strange beings.
The fact that our emotions can control the colour that our hair and eyes change to is something science has never been able to explain, and yet, from the moment we are born all human beings are able to express their emotions through their hair and eye colour. Sure, every person is born with a specific hair and eye colour as decided by their genes, but these colours change based on the emotions expressed. There’s a very handy chart that every child is taught in school which gives a name and emotion to each colour which everyone memorises from the moment they are old enough to understand what the colours mean. Most are obvious: yellow is happiness, blue is sadness, red is anger. Some are less than obvious: teal is calmness, purple is anxiousness, grey is self-doubt.
Children aren’t able to control their emotions very well, which leads to their hair and eyes changing multiple times a day. Kids can go from yellow one moment to blue when they trip and scrape their knee, then back to yellow seconds later when they get back up and keep running. Teachers are truly God’s gift to the world for being able to handle so many emotional children all day long. As a child grows, they enter puberty and learn that they can choose to express only certain emotions. This is a difficult thing. The changing of colours is a subconscious act and most don’t even realise they do it until it’s done. Learning to control which colour one expresses is difficult, but rewarding, and by the time someone is an adult, they tend to have the ability down perfectly.
It comes in handy for those like first responders, who have to remain calm and collected at all times. It would do no one any good to see bright purple or grey or the orange of worry and blood-red of fear as firefighters ran into a burning building. So, they learn to always emit a constant teal when on duty.
Unless you’re Evan Buckley, then you are a constant ray of sunshine who makes sure to always be a bright yellow when he is helping patients.
And it’s not just the colours that express emotions, but the brightness of those colours too. Embracing emotions gives you a beautiful glow, one that radiates from you. The most emotional people have the brightest glows and brightest colours.
And some have no colours at all.
There are three reasons for no colours: you’re dead, you’re dying or losing the will to live, or you’re Monochrome. Monochromes are those who choose not to [or who cannot] express their emotions. Some cannot feel emotions at all, but mostly these are those who hide their emotions away from the world for no one to see. They get their names from the way their entire being becomes monochrome, as though they were plucked from a black-and-white movie and shoved into a technicolour world. Their hair, eyes, and even their skin becomes, well, monochrome. Not an ounce of colour to be seen. They hide their emotions for different reasons. Some have been hurt before because of their emotions, some are just cynical assholes who don’t want people to see what they are feeling.
Eddie Diaz was the former. His whole life, his father always told him that he had to “step up and be a man”, which meant there was no crying when he skinned his knee, no longing for the love of a kiss from Mami or a bedtime story from Abuela. No playing games with your sisters and having fun. Just working to provide for your family. Eddie started to lose his colours at the age of twelve, but he got them back when he met Shannon. She instilled this light into him, these colours he had never felt before, and for a long time he had been the most colourful person in the world.
But then Shannon left. Eddie’s colours started to fade again. Heartbroken, hurt, never wanting to feel that way again, Eddie made the decision to become Monochrome. He never wanted to experience such aching, such pain, ever again. The only way he felt he could do that was by becoming colourless. The only time any slither of colour ever shone through was when it was just him and Christopher at home, because that radiant young boy was a carousel of colours and Eddie was never going to let anything dampen that brightness, not even himself.
To the rest of the world, however, Eddie Diaz was Monochrome.
Then Eddie met Evan Buckley, and things changed.
To say that the past year had been difficult was an understatement. One minute, Shannon was there and the next she was gone. Buck nearly died twice, once in the ladder truck bombing and then again from the embolism, and then the tsunami nearly ripped Buck and Christopher away from Eddie before their time. Before Eddie had any time to process anything, Buck went and filed that stupid lawsuit and when Eddie needed him most, Buck wasn’t there.
Even for a Monochrome, that was a lot to handle, and Eddie took out what emotion he could on cage fighting until he couldn’t do that anymore. He exploded at Buck in the grocery store, where his eyes had for a brief moment become a mixture of fiery red and deep blue before he blinked the colours away. Then Buck was back at work and Eddie was ignoring him, not because he wanted to but because he had to. Because he knew he would just explode again if he didn’t and he couldn’t do that.
It wasn’t like Eddie wanted to ignore Buck. He cared a lot about Buck still but after everything that had happened, Eddie was hurt. He didn’t want to be hurt again, that was the whole point of being Monochrome. No one was meant to hurt him now, but somehow Buck had slipped right past his defences and struck him hard.
It was all getting to be too much.
It was only going to get worse.
Buck had been back for nearly a month now. After Halloween and Bobby letting Buck back on calls, things slowly started to go back to normal. Though Eddie was keeping him at an arm’s length, not letting himself get too close lest he do something stupid, he was slowly starting to talk to Buck again and was coming to trust him again when on calls. Though slow, they were getting back to being themselves.
Because he had been keeping himself so far away from Buck, Eddie hadn’t noticed it.
He hadn’t noticed Buck’s colours were fading.
He didn’t notice it until Hen came running up the stairs and practically slammed her fist down on the dining table, getting the attention of Eddie, Chimney and Bobby, who were the last ones eating lunch.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said, sitting down at her usual seat, “Buck’s colours are fading.”
There was a clattering of dropped cutlery as all three of them snapped their heads to Hen, eyes wide in disbelief. Her hair was bright orange with specks of blood-red, worry and fear evident in her eyes. Everyone at that table knew the signs. They knew what fading colours meant.
Buck was giving up.
“When?” Chimney asked, but Hen shook her head.
“I only noticed a moment ago as I was helping him with the stock take. His hands are completely colourless,” she explained.
Eddie felt his mind screech to a halt as the implication of what that meant hit him like a ton of bricks. Buck was the brightest person any of them knew, aside from their kids. His colours were always the most vibrant, emotions always the strongest. Despite everything that he had been through, from the family he never spoke about to the tsunami, no matter what they experienced, Buck was always there with brightness and colour to light up their worlds. Buck fading was something none of them even thought possible. How had they missed that? How! They were meant to be his team, his family! Had they really been too far gone in their anger to notice Buck losing his colour, losing his light? Had he been so caught up in his own issues that he hadn’t noticed Buck slowly slipping away?
How had he not noticed his best friend losing the will to live right in front of his eyes?
Oh, yeah. He hadn’t been there.
It was like a slap to the face, and Eddie knew he wasn’t the only one who had that reaction. Bobby’s hair was red, the duller type of red which everyone knew meant one thing. Guilt. He buried his face in his hands.
The problem with everyone being able to see someone else’s emotions through colour was that those emotions were always much, much stronger when visible.
“We need to do something,” Hen stated, “this is our fault.”
“No, it’s my fault,” Bobby admitted, blue streaks slowly mixing with the red in his hair, “if I had just been honest from the start, none of this would have happened.”
“Passing the blame around won’t change things,” Hen insisted, and she was right. It would get them nowhere. It didn’t matter who caused the issue, the others let it continue without saying anything. Everyone was to blame. It only took Buck’s colours fading for them to realise it.
“So, what do we do?” Eddie asked.
Everyone made a conscious effort to change that day. What was done was done, and they couldn’t go back and change it, but nowhere down the line had anyone, regardless as to how angry they had felt about the lawsuit, meant for Buck’s colours to start fading. Sure, they had been upset, they had been angry enough to want to not be near him for a bit, but forgiveness had always been a part of the plan. They had always intended for Buck to come back to them, right back when the embolism happened. There was always a space for Buck on the team, in the family. Always.
They had done a shitty job of showing it. But that changed.
Bobby took the first step. He pulled Buck aside and spoke to him, saying that he was sorry for everything and he hadn’t realised how far things had gone until it was too late. The talk seemed to have gone well as Buck was seen smiling for the first time in a long time when he left the office. Hen and Chimney did what they could too, going back to how they used to always joke about with Buck or invite him over for movie nights or for dinner. Maddie had already known that her brother’s colours were fading, but sworn to secrecy by Buck, she hadn’t told anyone until Chimney brought it up to her.
Everyone made an effort to change. They spoke to Buck, telling him that if he needed anything he could go to them, and apologising for not having been there when he needed them. One would think that with colours so visibly on show, helping someone with depression feel better and work through it would be easier, but if anything it made things more difficult. There was only so much they were able to do, but no matter how much they tried, Buck wasn’t getting better. It wasn’t a case of making someone laugh and bringing their colours back. It took time, patience, and sometimes it just didn’t work.
Eddie felt as much to blame for Buck not getting better as anyone else did. He got his head out of his ass and apologised for his behaviour, invited Buck over for dinner and beers and to spend time with Christopher. Those days had become just as frequent as they had been before once again, but not even Christopher’s bright bundle of light and happiness could help. Sure, there were days where Buck looked better, where he smiled again and joined in with the team when they were laying around between calls, but the colours never returned. They just kept fading.
Even Christopher noticed. As they were playing LEGOs together before Christopher’s bedtime, Eddie just in the kitchen doing the dishes after their weekly Saturday Night enchiladas, he heard Christopher ask “Bucky, why are your hands grey like Dad’s?”
“...I-It can happen sometimes, Superman. When someone is really sad.”
“Why are you sad? Can I cheer you up?”
“Thanks, buddy, but this isn’t the kind of sadness a Christopher Cuddle can cheer up, I’m afraid.”
It was at that moment that the clock chimed for eight pm. Buck quickly ushered Christopher to the bathroom to brush his teeth with a promise to read him a bedtime story. Eddie found himself frozen to the spot in the kitchen, still scrubbing the same plate dry. He didn’t register Buck tucking Christopher into bed or reading him a story until the man had left his son’s bedroom and was standing directly in front of him.
“I should get going,” Buck said hesitantly.
“You can stay if you want, crash here?” Eddie offered, but Buck shook his head.
“Nah, I-I’ve been in your hair long enough tonight.”
“Buck-”
“N-no, really. I’ve got lots of laundry I need to get done before we’re back at work on Monday.”
Eddie knew he messed up only after he said “okay, if you’re sure”, because very soon Buck was putting on his shoes and grabbing his car keys and driving off home with just a wave goodbye.
Eddie sighed as soon as he closed the door, letting his forehead fall against the wood with a thunk . What happened? What caused such a rift to form between them? And why couldn’t Eddie jump the divide that had formed and bring his best friend back? Had things really become so broken between them that they couldn’t fix it? Eddie didn’t know the answer to that final question, but he did know who to blame for it all.
Himself.
He had promised when Shannon left two years ago that he would never let himself feel again, never let himself be hurt by his feelings again. Look where that had gotten him. He was losing the best thing to have ever happened to him, after Christopher. He was always there, a constant supportive presence who Eddie came to rely on, to care about. Buck was as much a part of his family as anyone else. He was the one Eddie counted on to stand by his side, whether it be at work or at home, he always knew Buck would be there. If he had just said something, just asked for help, none of this would have happened.
Buck wouldn’t be fading.
At some point, Eddie moved from the front door to his bedroom. He found himself standing in front of the floor-length mirror at the foot of his bed, the one he only kept there because he didn’t know what else to do with it. Staring back at him was a shell of the man he used to be, his entire body and face black and white, dull and emotionless, lifeless almost. Where had all his colour gone? Had he really thrown it all away? Was there any way to fix things, to bring Buck back before it was too late? Eddie’s knees gave out beneath him. He collapsed to the carpet, leaned back against the foot of his bed and there, Eddie - for the first time since he became Monochrome - cried.
He wasn’t sure how long he was sitting there for, head in his hands, tears streaming down his face, but it was long enough that the door creaked open and Christopher hesitantly approached, sitting down next to his dad. His mop of curls had gone from the bright yellow they had been when Buck was over to a muted blue, his eyes behind his glasses much the same. As soon as he noticed Christopher was in the room, Eddie scrubbed away his tears and took in a deep breath, trying his best to school his features. No colour had come through, the mirror opposite him helped show that, but regardless when he turned to Christopher Eddie did his best to keep himself as collected as possible. “You okay, buddy?” he asked. Christopher shrugged.
“Are you okay, Dad?” Christopher asked him. Eddie froze. He hadn’t been expecting that.
“I…” in that moment, as Eddie looked at the orange of worry starting to swirl in his son’s eyes, something inside Eddie snapped. “No, I’m not okay,” he admitted.
A voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like his father was shouting at him, telling him to get a grip, that Christopher shouldn’t have to deal with Eddie’s problems. But with everything that was going on, Eddie couldn’t bring himself to listen, to keep lying. More tears started to fall. “Buck is losing his colours, and I’m sad because I can’t help him like I want to, and I have no idea why I am suddenly feeling this way.” Eddie hugged his knees, staring at his reflection in the mirror before him. He wanted to shatter it, destroy any evidence of the emotions he was feeling. He felt weak.
A small hand appeared on his arm. Eddie turned his head. Christopher was staring at him, blue now replacing the orange. “You feel this way because you care, Dad,” he said simply, “that’s why it feels so bad. It feels new, but don’t be scared. You’re sad because you miss your best friend.”
Christopher said it so simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and it made the tears return.
“I know how you’re feeling,” Christopher continued, “losing a friend can make you really sad, so you need to help me help Buck, and you’ll feel a whole lot better too.”
“You think so?” Eddie asked. Christopher nodded.
“You can’t keep hiding in your black and white world, Dad. You need to let some colour inside so we help Buck.”
“It’s not that simple, buddy. I-I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Can you try?”
Could he try? It had been so long since he allowed himself to be colourful, so long since he had shown the world how he felt. Christopher was the only one ever allowed to see his eyes glow yellow or his hair shine bright blond, in the closed doors of their house where no one else could see. Could he try to let some colour back into his life? If doing so meant helping Buck, if it meant getting his best friend back, could he do it? Could he try?
“... Yeah, yeah I can try.” Eddie said with a small smile. Christopher’s hair turned yellow again. He hugged his dad tightly and Eddie pulled his son into his lap, pressing a kiss to those glowing curls.
They stayed there a little longer, just the two of them. Eddie didn’t want to let go and Christopher didn’t want to move, at least not at first, but at some point Christopher piped up. “We should go to Bucky’s. He left here sad. We need to cheer him up.”
“That’s a good idea, buddy,” Eddie told him. It was getting rather late, but Eddie wanted to see Buck and he knew Christopher was not going to take no for an answer. They got up from the floor and hurried to get their shoes on, Eddie stopping just long enough to pack them both an overnight bag and make himself look presentable before they climbed into the car.
The drive to Buck’s was quick at that time of night, but the elevator ride up to Buck’s floor was excruciatingly slow. Once they were at his door, Eddie knocked, and Buck opened just a few seconds later, confusion plastered on his face when he saw Eddie and Christopher. He looked terrible, eyes red and puffy from crying yet hollow, empty.
“Hi, Buck,” Christopher said cheerily as he let himself into the apartment. Buck didn’t stop him, he just said hello and then turned back to Eddie.
“Can we talk?” Eddie asked hesitantly. Buck nodded, stepping aside to let Eddie into the apartment and then closing the door once they were all inside. Eddie quickly got Christopher settled on the couch with some cartoons on the television, then gestured up the stairs where things were a bit more private, or as private as they could get in the loft. The space wasn’t really built for its privacy unless you were alone. Nevertheless, Buck and Eddie climbed the stairs up into Buck’s bedroom and they sat down on the bed, shoes kicked off and to one side.
“Are you okay?” Buck asked him. Eddie nodded.
“I’m fine,” he lied, “but I know you’re not.” In an instant, Buck’s face fell, gaze averted. His hair remained teal, calm and collected just like how they had been taught at the academy to project whenever faced with a situation where they couldn’t show their emotions, but Buck was always special. He was one of those rare few who could change more than hair and eye colour, whose emotions were so strong that they bled out of them into the very fabric of the clothes they were wearing and changed their colours too. Buck’s hoodie changed from the navy blue of the LAFD to blood red. Fear. Eddie took a deep breath, a silence enveloping them as he tried to figure out just where to start.
“I chose to become Monochrome after Shannon left, the first time.” Eddie eventually said, and it got Buck’s attention as he turned to face Eddie for the first time since they arrived. “Her leaving hurt, and paired with how my dad always told me that I had to be a man and not be emotional, I just felt it was easier to not show my emotions. If I kept them hidden, no one knew how I was feeling and it kept me from getting hurt again.”
Eddie’s fingers began to pick at the loose threads on the cuffs of his jeans just to have something to do as he pushed onwards despite wanting nothing more than to stop talking. “I was hurting long before you filed the lawsuit,” he continued, nearly crumpling at the way pain shot across Buck’s face. “I was mad, at Shannon for leaving again, at my dad for drilling into me that I had to be this emotionless provider, at the whole freaking world. I took that anger out on cagefighting, on myself, a-and I know for a fact that if I had just told you how I was feeling, you would have been there. But I didn’t. I didn’t, and then I got mad at you for not being there when I needed you.” He sighed and ran a hand down his face.
“It’s not your fault. It took me long enough to realise that.” Looking back up, Eddie nearly faltered when he saw more tears gathering in Buck’s eyes. He reached out and placed a hand over Buck’s. Their hands were the same shade of monochrome, and it made Eddie want to vomit as the extent of things were so plainly laid before him. “I’m sorry, for not being there for you when you needed me, for being emotionally unavailable to the point you probably don’t even think to turn to me if you need help. I thought that I had made the right choice being Monochrome, but Christopher showed me differently. He showed me that I can’t keep hiding in my black and white world anymore.”
Eddie shuffled just the slightest bit closer, but it was enough to make their knees touch and that little bit of contact felt grounding. “Evan, I know that you’re struggling right now. I know that your colours are fading, and I know you know what that means-” a horrible, sickly shade of grey flashed through Buck’s hair almost instantly. Shame, Eddie knew the colour to be. “No, Evan, you have nothing to be ashamed about,” Eddie insisted, his hand moving from Buck’s hand to cup his friend’s cheek instead, brushing away a stray tear when it fell.
“I want to help you, I want to be there for you, but I know you need someone with colours, someone who can help you to get your colours back.” Closing his eyes, Eddie took another deep breath. “So, I’m going to be that person.” Buck’s eyes snapped upwards, wide and swirling with so many colours Eddie couldn’t make out the meaning of what it meant. He let out a huff of a laugh, shaking his head. “I am probably gonna suck at it,” he admitted, “but some things are more important. Some things are worth showing colours for.”
Tears were flowing freely now. Buck quickly scrubbed them away with the back of his hoodie sleeve.
“Evan, is there anything I can do to help you?” Eddie asked.
Buck sobbed. It was as if the dam finally broke and everything Buck had been feeling for the past year hit him like a sack of bricks. His hair, eyes, clothes, and even the bedsheets they were sitting on turned blue, the sadness seeping out of him like it was what his body was made of. In an instant, Eddie was pulling Buck into a hug, wrapping his arms around buck tightly and gently rocking from side to side as he whispered sweet nothings into Buck’s ear.
“I need help.” Buck eventually croaked.
“Okay, how can I help?”
“I-I don’t know!”
“Okay, okay,” Eddie cooed, pressing a kiss to the bright blue curls, “we’ll figure this out together, okay? You and me.”
Neither of them knew how long they were sitting there for, Buck crying in Eddie’s arms and Eddie doing his best to comfort him. Eventually, Buck fell asleep, and after checking on Christopher - who had passed out on the couch downstairs - Eddie joined Buck in the bed and held him as close as he could. The next day would bring questions, it would bring more talking, and some phone calls, but for now, Eddie just held Buck as he slept and, for the first time in a very long time, colour began to appear.
Things got worse before they got better, as things tend to do.
It certainly wasn’t an overnight fix. No amount of hugs, from Eddie or from Christopher, could return a person's colours to them instantly. It was, however, a start. The next morning Buck and Eddie called Bobby, they called Maddie, and they called Frank, the colour-emotion therapy specialist assigned to the LAFD. In between work and home - Buck moved into the Diaz household shortly after their heart-to-heart as Buck didn’t want to be alone anymore - they attended therapy sessions, both together and separately, and got things on track. Progress was made, however slowly.
Together, their colours began to return. Eddie fought through his own demons to be able to support Buck, but also so he could be more open with Christopher. Eddie wanted to be a different him, a brand new him, Eddie 2.0 Hen had joked once. Instead of hiding from his emotions, he tried embracing them instead. The first day everyone saw his hair turn a bright yellow as he laughed over Chimney tripping over his own shoelaces was one of the best days Eddie’d had in a long time, but it was made better when Buck’s own hair turned bright yellow too.
Buck’s colours took a little longer to return. He had to fight himself, his inner fears and his lack of self-confidence, and that was hard to do, but he did it. He put the work in and, slowly but surely, learned to love himself for who he is. There were as many bad days as there were good days, if not more so, but slowly the colours brighten once more. Colour returned to every part of his body, hands back to the way Eddie had always known them, if a little duller than before. It was a work-in-progress, after all.
In between all of that, there were tears. There were long nights curled up on the couch together. There were cuddles underneath mountains of blankets. There were days where one could barely leave the other’s side. But there was also laughter. And light. Nights out with the 118. New recipes taught in the firehouse loft, or in Abuela’s kitchen. There was Eddie experiencing emotions for what felt like the first time, and Buck explaining them to him.
One of those emotions was pink. It was more prevalent with each passing day, always directed at either Buck or Christopher, or Abuela or Tía Pepa. The colour came with hugs, kisses on the cheek or forehead, a home cooked meal after a long day, or sometimes just a phone call. It was an emotion Eddie tried to figure out all on his own, but one day, whilst at a barbecue at Bobby and Athena’s house, Eddie found himself sitting outside on the bench with his family and friends around him, Buck sitting next to him and Christopher on their laps. As he watched Buck talk animatedly with glowing yellow hair and more light to him than anyone had seen in months, the pink came back. Eddie could feel the way the garden went silent around him, and Chimney piped up.
“Dude, your hair is pink again,” he said with a smirk. Eddie couldn’t help but give a laugh.
“Yeah, I know,” he said with a shake of his head, “I like this feeling I’m feeling.”
“I know the feeling you’re speaking of,” Christopher piped up, “the feeling that you're feeling is love!”
Eddie turned to Buck. He watched pink overtake the yellow in Buck’s hair, and without saying a word, Eddie reached out and linked his hand in Buck’s.
Love.