Chapter Text
Since learning that the strange man in the house was him, he hasn’t been told much else. Only that he went by Buck. Evan promptly told him that he could have picked a cooler name. Buck told him to shut up.
Besides avoiding questions, Buck was breathing through the pain of washing his side. He was bent over the sink, red ink trailing down the white ceramic.
“How old are you?” Evan asked.
Buck shook his head. “Old. Too old for this.”
Evan knew from experience what ‘this’ meant. He also had experience in pushing it anyway. “Why are you here?”
“Classified,” Buck coughs through the word. He saw Evan go to repeat the question, and shushed him, clarifying that he was ignoring him. He straightened up and lifted his shirt.
Evan gasped at the map of bruises spiralling from the wound. The torn skin was red and black. “There’s nothing stuck in there,” Evan said slowly.
“Thank god,” Buck said, as he pressed a clean cloth to it. “Getting shrapnel out is not fun.”
“What happened?”
“When’s Maddie coming?” Buck asked, trying to fold some gauze while holding a cloth to his stomach.
Evan gave him a square of gauze. “Later.”
“Not tomorrow?”
He huffed and gave him another single layer of bandage, then began cutting pieces of the sticky stuff to hold it down. “Don’t know, don’t care. Did you come here in a spaceship?”
Buck paused. “Have you stopped reading textbooks already? I’m still on Earth. What on earth do I need a spaceship for?”
“What if there were a spaceship that could also time travel?”
Buck patted down the bandages and let his shirt fall. Manoeuvring around Evan, he cleared the counter into the small trash can in the corner. They trooped downstairs, and Buck grabbed the last two pizzas that Evan had been saving, which cleared any doubts.
“I can’t believe you’re actually me.”
“Impressed?”
“You’re big,” Evan said. “Are you a cop?”
“Nope, not a cop.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” he asked, because if Buck didn’t have a cool job and was single, then things were looking bleak.
Buck read his mind. “You’re lucky you have a job at all with your track record-”
“-Hey!”
“-And you’re worried about getting laid when you’ve discovered that time travel exists?”
“So why are you here?”
Buck made a frustrated noise and left the kitchen. Evan didn’t like him, but he followed him nonetheless. Evan walked out the front door, and Evan had to scramble to pull his boots on and tug on the first jacket he saw. “Are you here to save me?” Evan asked once he managed to catch up.
“I didn’t mean to come here. I was aiming for 1990,” Buck groused.
“I wasn’t even born then.”
“Consider the fact that not everything is about you.”
“Where are we going?”
Buck rounded the house. “My pod. Should be around here.”
The only place they were walking towards was the forest with too few trees. “What if someone saw it? Or heard it crashing?”
Buck didn’t answer, but that was fine. Evan could keep going. “Why did you need to go to 1990?”
“To save someone.”
“A rescue mission!”
Buck looked at him and smiled for the first time. “Here we are.” He hooked his finger and pulled out a chain around his neck. The pendant blinked bright blue. Buck waited. Evan looked at the forest ahead and wondered if this was another staring-at-the-living-room situation.
Buck cursed. “I knew it. Since nothing in my- our life goes right, my pod has been damaged. This is where you come in.”
“Yeah?” Evan perked up.
“Like all technology in the future, pods are coded to the owner’s DNA. I’m a pilot of sorts, which means this is my pilot, but it won’t let me in because I’m injured,” he pointed to his wound. “I need you so I can get in there and fix her.”
“Seems like I’m saving you.”
Buck deadpanned. He began a rant, but Evan was too eager to listen. He reached up and touched the pendant. The pod whirred into existence, and Evan’s mouth dropped open. It was a black aircraft that hovered a few feet above the air. Its edges were the same bright blue as the pendant. It even smelled like steel and possibility.
“Wow.”
Buck nodded in approval. He helped Evan into the pod, which surprised him until he realised that Buck needed him in the chair to make things work. He would be angry, but it was all too cool to hold a grudge. He carefully avoided the pool of blood near the seat and sat down. “Oh my god.”
“Yeah, yeah, let’s see what’s wrong,” he said, sidling Evan and swiping the screen. The layout of the pod was shown, with some parts outlined in red. “Some minor shield damage. Coolant leaks.” Buck leaned heavily on the seat, muttering about finding painkillers after this.
Evan went to touch the triangle button, and Buck slammed him back into the seat. “Don’t touch anything! I know this is all very exciting compared to the TV you don’t even bother to sit through, but that’s the reactor. It has a quantum signature, and firing it up will lead them right to us.”
“Who are they?”
“Uhm, Stephen and Brian.”
Evan kicked his feet at the machine. “Backdraft, I’ve seen that one. Come on. I let you into the house, and your jet too.”
“Love that you’re keeping score,” he said with an exaggerated happy grin. “I’d say I’m ecstatic to need your help, but I’m not. I had no intention of crawling back to the house and revisiting this,” he waved at Evan’s face. He noticed the deep cut in Evan’s lower lip, two stitches to keep the gash together long enough to heal. “Jesus. Okay.”
He turned back to the screen and clicked on more things. “I’ve isolated the damage relays,” he went on.
Evan looked around. It felt like the pod was getting smaller. He worried his busted lip. It was a week ago. It had stopped hurting, and school had let up, so with nobody to comment on it, he had forgotten all about it. Buck didn’t have the school nurse’s pity or his dad’s disinterest. Buck seemed disgusted. Evan bit back the urge to scream.
“The ship should start repairing itself,” Buck said, moving back from the screen after a few minutes.
“How long will that take?”
“Not sure. By tomorrow morning, hopefully. You don’t have to see me again.”
That got Evan thinking. “Wait, so do you remember this?
“Remember what?”
“If this is happening to me, then it has already happened to you.”
“That’s not how it works.” The pod was not big enough for Buck to stand upright. He leaned on his knees and looked Evan in the eye. “This is classified, so I’m only going to say this once. There’s only one place in time where you belong on a quantum level. That’s your fixed time. These new, happy memories today will reform and realign only after I’ve returned to my fixed time.”
“Then, by being here, you may have just changed my whole future?”
“Honestly? Your future is pretty tragic either way,” Buck laughed.
Evan couldn’t tell if he was joking.