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My big brother rode an Indian Scout, it was black like his jacket
American Spirit hangin' outta his mouth, just like our daddy
Evan loves Maddie, he really does. She’s his older sister and she loves him a lot more than most sisters would love their brothers. Daniel is his favourite though. He’s sure every person who has an older brother thinks they’re cool, but they aren’t Daniel cool.
Daniel (who has survived dying like, twice, which is totally metal) wears black denim and leather jackets and drives a motorbike that their Dad gave to him when he was 16 and didn’t want a car. Evan hoped he’d get the same, but Dad said he didn’t have enough money to cover the insurance.
(He supposed he was kind of…accident prone, but still. At least Daniel let him drive it here and there when their parents weren’t around, while he was still in town. It was the main reason why Daniel called him Buck and not Evan, which was awesome.)
Daniel was so cool that he even smoked, despite their Mom telling him off for it. Of course, Daniel always said back that she let Dad do the same and they’d get into their old argument once again before Daniel would storm off before he would scoop him up and they’d steal their parent’s car and go for a drive in the early hours.
Buck loved that time - he never thought it would end, if he was honest.
He kicked started that bike one night and broke Mama's heart
He pointed that headlight west, out where the wild things are
One day, however, it did.
One night in the late autumn before the winter holidays, Buck was up late, having been icing a black eye he’d gotten from getting into a fight at school. Being 13 meant according to his Dad who had been the one to pick him up, that he was a teenager and should damn well act like one and not act like a little boy - what did he know though? Stupid old man he was.
He wanted to talk to Daniel about it, as he figured his brother would agree, but he was over at a friend’s house and Evan wasn’t exactly going to walk over there just to whine about their parents. Of course, dinner came and went and Daniel wasn’t home and while his Mom was angry, she also was worried, which in turn, worried everyone else.
Maddie was the one to find the note - pinned to his bedroom door with some of Evan’s magnets he’d gotten from the science fair that year. It had his cell number, as well as a letter talking about chasing dreams and not wanting to be stuck in a small town anymore.
His Mom cried, as did he when he fled to his room. Maddie came in at some point, but he didn’t realise till he was hugging her waist, big gasping sobs escaping him.
He'd call me up every couple of weeks from South California
Talk about the desert and the Joshua Tree and his pretty girl stories
It took another year for his parents to buy him a cellphone and another 4 months before he finally called the number Daniel left behind.
Somehow, his brother knew him by voice alone and he seemed to be with some friends because the screech of ‘MY BROTHER’S ON THE PHONE!’ was meant with a bunch of whooping and ‘fuck yeah’s’ in the distance.
He never forgave him for leaving them in the dust so fast.
And how he bought an Airstream trailer and a J-45 guitar
Said, "Little brother, you'd love it out here, out where the wild things are"
The phone time, of course, was only sporadic given Daniel was a nomad and Buck was a walking risk assessment, but Buck also treasured those phone calls like he did their in person time as he was growing up. Daniel talked about anything and everything on those - girls, the desert, his Airstream, his gigs in the shady bars he drank in.
‘Man, Buck, you’d love it out here.’ He can remember Daniel saying that once, most likely after Buck said how bored he was. ‘This would totally be your scene. All rebellion and no slowing down.’
He only wished that in hindsight Daniel remembered telling him that.
Oh, it's hearts on fire and crazy dreams
Oh, the nights ignite like gasoline
He wondered if he ever called Maddie and told her all of this stuff as well, but Maddie still complained here and there (when she wasn’t with Doug, her new boyfriend) that he hadn’t heard from him, so he figured it was best to keep his mouth shut for now.
He also wondered if their parents knew as well, but he didn’t ask. He didn’t want to make them upset and ever since Daniel left, they were quick to either cry (in his mother’s case) or yell (in his father’s case) and he didn’t need any more of that on his plate.
At night, though, he would dream. Dream he was floating in the air, like a fiery comet, all the way across the country to where Daniel said he was hanging out that week.
And light up those streets that never sleep when the sky goes dark
Out where the wild things are
He’d land on Daniel’s Airstream on his back, the stars above him making the desert expanse dotted with grass and wild palm trees look like a vast, blue and black nothingness.
Daniel would hop on top of the trailer and chuckle, ask Buck what took him so long, before scooping him up and they would stumble off the roof and onto the road to sit around a campfire and talk like nothing happened.
Buck always fell asleep just as the sun was coming up, lighting up the desert just as his eyes fell closed and he would wake up in Pennsylvania to Maddie or his mother knocking on his door to wake him up. Those days generally got him into a funk, but he soon learned that he had a lot more time with Daniel somehow in those days - even before he finally called home again and got cussed out for it.
I called my brother from the back of that plane the second I made it
We started drinkin' on the strip in LA and then it got crazy
When Maddie finally got married, she and Doug took him on their honeymoon to LA. Of course, his parents put up a stink about it, but Maddie, being an angel, shut them down real quick. He wasn’t staying with them anyway - he was about to turn 18 and Daniel had already offered to put him up for the summer before he came home for his last year of high school.
He didn’t even wait to call him once they landed, practically shooting off the plane and leaving Maddie and Doug along (a choice he would regret later in life) while talking to Daniel, who was waiting on the other side of the gates and caught Buck as he crash tackled into him with a speed the latter was pretty sure made them look like lovers in a rom-com (kinda gross, but cel a vie or whatever), both of them acting like young kids again.
Of course, that behavior didn’t improve as he rode on the back of Daniel’s bike though LA to a cheap Mexican restaurant that he knew on the main strip that was a hive of activity compared to back home - the first of many margaritas Buck would consume being brought the second they walked in there.
Ended up at a house in the hills with some Hollywood stars
Kissin' on a blonde in a backyard pool, out where the wild things are
He doesn’t exactly know how they did it and later in life, chalks it up to being in his late teens, but the all nighter they pulled had been one of the books and it would be the best memory that Buck would have of Daniel to come. Buck hadn’t seen his brother laugh so hard in a long time and only heard it in videos since he’d left, so seeing him surrounded by people that seemed to love him made his heart thump just that little bit faster in his chest.
He’s still riding that high when Daniel and his friend group that have now become Buck’s friends too, take him to a house party in the hills when he’s halfway through his vacation to give him the ‘Hollywood’ experience. Of course, that night passes in a blur of smoke and colours the likes of BUck has never seen - but he does end up getting laid for the first time in his life, so he’s really not up for criticising it all that much.
(TBH, he never thought his first sexual encounter would be in a pool with a blonde who could pass for a Playmate, but hey, Daniel at least spared him the embarrassment of going home with him fully naked given he’d jumped in wearing his only clothes for the day.)
Couple iron horse rebels, wild as the devil, I knew I had to move back east
Said goodbye to my brother at the end of that summer, but I knew he'd never leave
Inevitably, it happens. The summer ends and his parents start pestering him to come back east where he belongs in order to finish school and get his GED. Daniel doesn‘t want him to go and Buck doesn’t want to go either - but he really has no choice and unfortunately, it means that Buck finds himself back at the airport where he started.
Oh, it's hearts on fire and crazy dreams
Oh, where the nights ignite like gasoline
Daniel’s hugging him tighter than he’s ever been hugged by him in his life and Buck almost wonders that if he attempts to hug him back just as hard, they may just explode into bits and pieces or better, bond to each other like glue and can’t be unstuck.
Despite their rebellious streaks being able to mesh together to make chaos and of course, the things they got up to in those short 3 months, it almost feels like a real goodbye. Not a see you later type, but a permanent one, which is stupid as they’ve already made plans to see each other after Buck graduates. He’s going to come back to LA, whatever it takes.
And oh, them Indian Scouts, man, they're built for speed
And oh, they said he hit that guardrail at half past three
He’s at graduation and stepping across the stage to receive his diploma when his parents get the news. His mother’s scream still echoes in his ears sometimes as it did though the auditorium, making it fall silent. Maddie’s sobbing also sometimes shows up in the form of background noise, but it’s his father doubled over in his chair, pale as a ghost that clues him in that something’s wrong. Something is really wrong.
He can’t run from the truth though, not as he’d run off the stage only to collide with Maddie, her hands fisting into his graduation gown as his mother screams to the heaven’s that Daniel’s dead. Daniel’s /dead/. He doesn’t remember much after that.
(He finds out later that Daniel had been traveling down to surprise them at their family house and was going so fast he’d lost control and hit a guardrail. His Dad is the one that finds him in a heap and instead of consoling him, berates him for punching holes in the wall.)
Lit up those streets that never sleep when the sky goes dark
We buried him out in the wind 'neath the West Coast stars
That’s when things took a turn. His parents stopped caring and only paid attention to him if they had to, which was usually when he injured himself. Maddie became withdrawn and distant, which also messed with his head a lot. There would be some nights where Buck would look out the window and imagine himself falling down a dark void, no light anywhere to be seen around him like there was when Daniel was alive.
It was a bad set of months for all of them.
Out where the wild things are
Out where the wild things are
Eventually, they have to plan a funeral and if it wasn’t obvious enough how much their parents had been affected, it was Maddie who was tasked with doing so. To their credit, their parents were lucid enough to allow Maddie to bury him in California (Buck may have also threatened to do some really, /really/ bad things if they didn’t), but they didn’t attend the ceremony when it came time.
No, in the end, the real end, it was just him and Maddie, holding hands and watching as Daniel’s ashes were buried in the desert where he could see the stars.
At least, looking up at them as they started to appear as they got in the car to drive back to the airport and catch a flight home, Buck hoped he could, because he knew, deep down under all the grief and sadness, Daniel was finally exactly where he wanted to be.
Out where the wild things are.