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When Buck is shot, the feeling is foreign, so he doesn’t realize what happened at first.
He’s standing as they load Charlie and his mother into separate ambulances, hands close to his sides and slight frown curling down on his brows and tugging on his lips as Eddie looks around. His mask he was wearing is now clutched in his hands, which are in front of his stomach as he watches them close the doors to where Charlie is going to be thoroughly checked over. Later, he would be able to recognize the things wrong with his surroundings as they get ready to transport the boy and his mother to the hospital.
Right now, he’s standing as Eddie furrows his brows just like him, mask shoved into his pocket temporarily. His gaze is unreadable to most, yet Buck can tell he’s relieved and worried just like him, “Should’ve gotten here sooner.”
“That kid is just lucky he met you,” Buck shuffles a little where he’s lingering between the ambulance and ladder truck, relief washing over his back from Charlie being saved from a dangerous and harmful situation. He’d have some trauma to work through in the future, but Buck has a good feeling that he’d manage to get past it.
“Diaz, wanna ride with the kid to the hospital?”
Buck glances over at Eddie when the man is asked a question, brow subtly raising as he waits for his response briefly. He has to squint because there is a blinding glint in the distance, most likely from the sun, but he watches as Eddie nods.
His bottom lip does that slight pouty curl that Buck is fond of as he shifts his shoulders, looking around briefly, “Yeah, that’d be great—”
A loud noise hits the air, and Buck’s ears are suddenly ringing. His body, specifically his shoulders, are thrown backwards with a sharp impact that leaves him reeling. He feels numb in his head, although he can tell that Eddie is staring at him with an equally slack expression, red flecking every inch of his face, some on the dark material of his uniform.
He feels unsteady on his feet, pins and needles in every muscle, starting at his upper half and slowly traveling downwards, wracking each part of his body rapidly, like his entire body has fallen asleep right where he stands.
He falls to the asphalt, blinding, white hot pain beneath his eyelids and scratching in his skin. He feels feverish, and he’s suddenly hyperaware of the fact that the pale gray and white button-up he’s wearing is being soaked. He stares blankly at Eddie, face and brows twitching, chest heaving because of the weight against his lungs.
Everything he hears is muffled, but he can recognize that Eddie has left his gaze. He can’t tell what’s going on, his senses are shrouded in a dense, thick fog, his hand scraping futilely against the concrete.
His eyes roll back into his head as he hears Eddie scream, voice raw and ragged, “Buck!”
All he sees is black. He drifts deep into that pit of unconsciousness, but Eddie is right there to drag him out. There’s the pressure of a hand wrapped tightly around his wrist, fingers brushing against his palm, and he’s suddenly crying out in pain because his wound is being dragged against the concrete; it hurts, and hurts, and
hurts
.
“Buck!” Eddie repeats, big brown eyes wide and frantic. Buck squints up at him, but his vision is doubled and the sun hurts him, too, so his eyes fall shut again. “
Buck
!”
The world is tilting on its axis, and his eyes and head are suddenly throbbing, but he’s drifting off into that fuzzy feeling with lack of awareness as Eddie grabs the backs of his thighs, hoisting him up because he’s running on adrenaline, and Buck wonders what’s going on and why it requires Eddie to drag and carry him. Desperate hands cling and grab his shirt and pants, and the open air and warm sun fanning across his skin is gone, instead replaced by comforting shade despite the panicked shouts and screams around him.
His shirt has ridden up in the back and his skin presses against cooled metal, before he’s shoved down and up against what he can vaguely identify as seats. The sunshine isn’t beating down against his eyelids, so he opens them slightly, lashes fluttering despite the pulsing deep in his skull.
Eddie is above him, frantic with his actions, hands uncharacteristically trembling just the slightest amount, but enough for Buck to see it. Captain Mehta’s shouts to ‘
back up, back up!
’ ring in his head as the ladder truck shakes around them.
Reds, oranges, and yellows all skim right into the edge of the wide-open door, and Buck watches helplessly with blurred vision as Eddie shields his face and eyes from the licking flames. The door is torn off by the flaming ambulance as they back up, before Eddie has to drop himself lower as they pass by the blaze again.
His attention then turns to Buck, although it takes his lagging brain a moment to realize that’s what’s happened. Eddie is shouting at the other firefighters in the truck with him as they speed up, his gelled hair now wild, slick crimson smeared across his cheekbones and in the brown strands.
“Stay with me, Buck, it’ll be okay,” His tone is put together as he speaks, entirely unlike his appearance as he digs his teeth into the plastic, ripping it away. Buck grits his teeth, eyes fluttering again, chin dipped slightly towards his collarbones as Eddie presses his palms into burning skin.
Buck cries out again, gritting his molars so hard it feels like his teeth are going to break. The packing of the wound hurts so, so badly, but he knows even in his pain-riddled mind that it’s necessary. Tears prick at the corners of his vision, stinging, not unlike the sensation deep below, inside of his skin.
His stomach flips and bile threatens to rise up, the pain downright nauseating as Eddie presses the gauze into his skin. He can finally identify the wetness against his skin, deep in the fabric of his shirt, as blood. Buck can also identify the blood as his, pouring from his shoulder, bullet lodged deep inside of his flesh.
“‘ddie,” his words are drawn-out and slurred, quiet and rasping, his head going back and forth with his lip quivering, wet tears pooling in the lines of his eyes, tracking down his temple and onto the seats below. “
Eddie
,
Eddie
,
Eddie
,
Eddie
…”
“Buck, hang on, for me,” His hand squeezes his other shoulder for just a moment, before he’s going back to making sure Buck doesn’t bleed out inside of the firetruck, big body shaking and pooling red on the cooled metal, warming it up. “We’re so close, just hang on.”
He fumbles, coordination off with wide blue eyes, and the hand belonging to his good arm wraps around Eddie wrist and watch, squeezing so hard that the clock digs into his skin, turning his knuckles white. Eddie stares at him, always seeking, as his eyes threaten to roll back and lead him towards the dark and blind comfort of unconsciousness.
“You
can’t
die on me, we’re so close to the hospital,” Eddie spits, jaw clenched tight, and he puts more of his weight behind the pressure to Buck’s shoulder. Buck’s slipping, and slipping, and slipping. He holds on with a tight grip.
His lashes flutter again, black ripples at the edge of his vision, tugging and pulling with all of its might; insistent and hungry. Buck squeezes tighter onto his watch and sleeve, jaw slack, Eddie’s name repeated on his lips and the tip of his tongue.
“
Won’t
… I won’t,” sharp and pearly white teeth form a wobbling smile, full of fear yet incoherent, “M’not.”
He didn’t remember starting to cry, consciousness rapidly fading away from him, but hot and wet droplets are on his cheeks and making his eyes burn, and he’s already struggling to keep them open. He’s fighting, but Buck has never been too good at winning.
“
Buck
,
you’re so close
…”
Eddie’s strangled voice is leaving him in the inky black of his mind, swallowing him whole. The whites of his eyes are the only things there before they roll back into his head, eyelids shut, mouth fallen open to take gulping breaths as he lets himself be consumed.
-
The cold porcelain of the sink, in his palms and beneath his fingertips, is one of the only things grounding him, keeping him there and not launched back to gunfire; the thick, metallic tang of weaponry and the acrid stench of blood, suffocating him and dragging him down deep.
The mirror in front of him does not hold a man he recognizes.
The grit of sand in his wounds, rubbing against his exposed cheek, thick with the crimson liquid escaping him and the other soldiers nearby. A photograph of a little boy, stained with the very thing keeping him alive, leaking from corners of his body he never thought it would.
Eddie stares at himself in the mirror, coated with the blood belonging to a man he trusts with his life. His hair is unruly and clumped together, some strands fallen against his forehead. Buck’s life-force is bright and warm, yet now cold on his skin. There’s smears on his forehead and cheeks, on his chin, thickest on the bridge of his nose. Splatters are on his throat and the radio clipped next to his neck, on his navy blue uniform now stained with a reminder of past events.
He’s twenty-something all over again, thrown right into the middle of combat when he should be at home with his kid, doing anything but being shown the force behind a bullet. His stomach shifts with nausea as reality sinks in.
He doesn’t process the quick run to a toilet in a stall, but soon enough he’s emptying his stomach, acids burning his throat and making the raw feeling worse. Sweat is slick on his forehead and nape of his neck as he leans over the bowl, hands trembling. He wipes his sleeve of the bile when he pulls away; the blood has most likely ruined the fabric anyway, so he decides he’ll add onto it while he’s still wearing it.
Eddie Diaz does not panic.
He kept himself composed enough when under the eyes of people he will see in the future while fighting fires. Now, in the privacy of a hospital bathroom, Eddie can take his time to fall apart temporarily before he has to put himself back together. The tile beneath his kneecaps aches, and he has a sick thought that the ache will not be as bad as the feeling Buck experienced on that road.
He rises to his feet.
The blood drying on the vast planes of his face is starting to discomfort him even further than he already is. His mouth tastes bad, but that can be a concern for a later date. He makes sure the toilet flushes before he pulls away, wandering mindlessly to the sink. He images dark curls and yellow sundresses and blood on the asphalt as he turns the knob for hot water on the sink, cupping his palm beneath the dispenser for soap.
He scrubs his palms, finger, and knuckles. Blood flakes off into the water and white porcelain, turning the clear liquid from the tap pink. He scrubs the soap into each crack of his knuckles, each line in his palm; he scrubs until the heat from the water burns his raw skin.
His hands stay under the stream while the water runs clear, and then he brings them up to his face, covering his eyes. No longer can he see the haunted expression on his face in the reflection, dragging his palms down his face, blood smearing onto his hands previously clean. He scrubs just like he did with his hands, cleaning his face of Buck’s life leaking from his body and spattering onto those around him. He picks the pieces of himself up and cups them in his palm, sharp and biting. He takes the pieces of himself he left to crumble, for just a moment, and pieces them back together with flimsy glue.
When he looks up, the red on his face is gone, all evidence washed away down the sink by tap water in a hospital bathroom. The blood is no longer visible, but it feels caked on his skin, deep in all of his pores, not unlike how he felt when recovering from the bullets shot through his own body. He is clean, but he does not feel like it.
When he leaves the bathroom, he feels scrutinized by the gazes of people he knows. Hen and Bobby stare at him from their seats in the shitty chairs of the waiting room, seeking for any cracks in his armor, prying at him like needles. His stomach is empty yet lurches as he approaches them, hair wet and most likely dripping onto his nose, because Eddie did not try himself properly.
He drops down in the empty seat next to Hen.
Hen shuffles closer until she’s pressed up against the arm of her chair, which limits them from coming any closer to each other, and Eddie knows for a fact that this is how she will comfort him as he waits, and waits. It works, just the smallest amount, but anything will work to stop this ache deep in his ribs.
Eddie crosses his arms against his chest, and waits. He doesn’t think about what he will tell his son if Buck does not make it. He doesn’t think about what Maddie’s face will look like if she’s given the news her baby brother did not make it. He doesn’t think about how he will never feel whole again, because a part of him will die with the man who laughs at penguin documentaries, and cooks for his friends and family until it is perfect. A part of him will never return if the man who sues departments to fight for his job and jokes about his best friend punching him after making up dies.
He does not think about it.
Hen reads his mind, because she squeezes his knee, the heat of her palm burning his skin even through the fabric of his uniform. “He’s going to make it,” her voice is firm, even though Eddie knows that she’s feeling the same thing that he is. A part of their heart is currently being operated on with his life hanging in the air.
Eddie feels his heart clench and the ache deep in his ribcage gets worse, “I hope so.”
They fall into silence for a while. Eddie stares at the nurses and doctors that pass by, talking in hushed tones and clutching lab work or clipboards, and he wonders how Buck’s operations are going, how much blood he lost on the drive to the very hospital they both are in. He watches as people shuffle in and out of the waiting room, either settling in chairs to wait like him or leaving to rest at home, hugging and squeezing family members before they exit the waiting room.
Buck’s life dangles in the air.
Maddie arrives, soon enough, tears tracking her makeup down the apples of her cheeks as Chimney holds her, shielding her from the world. He rocks her back and forth in comfort, hands skimming up and down her back, consoling her when words can’t. She whispers words he cannot interpret into his neck, and sobs.
She cries for her baby brother, who has a bullet lodged in his shoulder and can die on an operating table at any minute. She cries for the boy who fell out of trees and broke bones to get the love from their absent parents. She cries for the little boy who she taught to ride a bike and raised as her own, being barely a teenager before she had to become both a mother and father. She cries in Chimney’s arms as the family Buck helped build waits for news of his life.
Eddie waits.
He waits without knowing that in a few hours, he will have to cradle his son as he cries, scared for the man who comes over every week to make dinner for him and his dad. In a few hours, he will have to tell his son that their best friend has been shot, and there’s a chance he might not make it, but the doctors are doing everything they can. He will have to pick and choose what he will say before he walks into his son’s bedroom, making sure the words don’t betray his doubts.
In a few hours, Bobby will text him that Buck pulled through; he’s alive and well, and recovering in the hospital, and Eddie will make sure he has the privacy of a locked door before he cries, sobs silent and shoulders shaking. In a few hours, Eddie will cry for nobody to see or hear, out of relief and fear for what is to come.
He will cry, because Buck is alive, but there will be pieces of him exposing his soft and hollow insides, and his nerves will be raw and open, because he nearly had to live in a world where Buck was not there.
In a few hours, Eddie will fall asleep with dreams of blinding smiles and dark hair, long lashes fluttering and cervical collars around mothers and wives who die before they have the chance to divorce their husbands. Blood splatters on hot asphalt, tears trailing from the corners of green eyes with sobs of leaving again and wanting more time. He will dream of lighter curls and bullets in shoulders, crying and repeating his name over and over again. He will dream of both of his best friends bleeding out on roads.
But now, Eddie is sitting in an uncomfortable chair inside of a hospital’s waiting room, listening for news of the status of a part of his family; dead or alive. He does not know of the future, but he knows that a world without Evan Buckley is something he won’t know how to handle.
The next day, he sits vigil by Buck’s bedside once he’s moved into a room.
The chair by his bed is equally uncomfortable, but he decides he will wait on Buck to wake up because Maddie and Chimney can’t always be there. They have an infant daughter to take care of, and jobs to work while they wait on Buck to wake up and tip his scale over to alive, so Eddie sits vigil. He watches Buck breathe and heal and recover in a medically induced coma, and stares.
Eddie watches Buck’s chest slowly rise and fall with each breath, wires in multiple parts of his body helping him as he lays there. He watches Buck live, and he misses him. Buck’s body is in this hospital bed, recovering from a bullet wound, but Buck isn’t really there; he isn’t smiling and talking about the most recent thing that interests him, like black bears or natural disasters.
He called his tía Pepa to take Christopher for him while he waits on Buck in the hospital, and she willingly complied, having been working from home due to the pandemic anyway. He sent his son off with a kiss to the crown of his head and a promise to tell him any important news, good or bad, and hugged him for a long time. He rocked him back and forth comfortingly before they were out the door, and he followed them out and got into his truck to drive to the hospital.
He leans over the side of the bed and presses his fists to his mouth, waiting and watching for any change, good or bad. He will be there to see if Buck improves or if the monitor starts to drop into a flat line. He will be there, waiting and watching for any progress of Buck’s recovery. He tries to ignore the lingering fear at the back of his mind.
Sometimes, Eddie will squeeze Buck’s hand, the one without wires in the back of it, and watch him carefully to see if it rouses him. His eyelids don’t twitch, a sign he is waking up, so Eddie leans backward into the uncomfortable cushions of the chair by his bedside and goes back to waiting on Buck to wake up.
Eddie grieves a man who is still alive right in front of him. He isn’t religious, hasn’t really been ever since he had so many bad things happen to him, but he prays. In that hospital room, he prays that Buck will live and wake up, even if he’ll have some physical and mental traumas to work through. Eddie prays that he will live so he can help Buck work through things already familiar to him from the past.
He chews on his nails like the man who’s in a medically induced coma right in front of him; he bites at the skin like a hypocrite who tells Buck to stop doing the very thing he’s doing right now.
Eddie Diaz is a hypocrite who bites his nails and leaves people he cares about, but right here, right now, he isn’t leaving. He will stay and grieve with a haunted look on his face, wishing that the bullet on that open road was not fired at Buck, but rather him.
Hen squeezes his shoulder in some way of comforting him that won’t work; all he can think of as he sits there, with her lingering behind him, is that Buck was shot in the same exact shoulder she’s touching. The phantom burn of stomach acid in his mouth is unwelcomed as he sits in the chair like a statue. His best friend, at any minute, can flatline and be there no longer.
“Eddie, you need to go home.”
Eddie looks up at her with an unreadable expression, eyes red-rimmed with dark circles beneath. He has cried when both him and Buck are alone, though he would never admit it, and he knows Hen wouldn’t ask. He rings his hands together in his lap, before bringing a hand up to white-knuckle one side of the chair.
He shakes his head, brows knitted as he clenches his jaw, teeth aching, “I can’t. I have to be here.”
Hen’s thumb brushes over his collarbone before she pulls away, the place where her hand was before now burning hot, like an iron pressed to his skin. She looks at him with something in her eyes Eddie can’t identify, “You’re a mess. Go shower, pick up Christopher, maybe even talk to Ana. You need to focus on something else.”
The thought of leaving Buck alone makes him queasy, fingers twitching, a slight tremble to his hands as he rests both of them in his lap. He doesn’t want Buck to be on his own without Eddie to be there for him. If Eddie isn’t there watching him, something will go wrong.
But he knows he has to. Somebody else will watch for him, and he knows Hen will probably be the first to take his spot. Eddie drops his gaze to Buck, frowning, before he exhales steadily, “Okay. Text me about any updates, please.”
He’s stubborn, but he knows when to pick and choose his battles, and this is one he won’t win. Hen Wilson is a force to be reckoned with, and Eddie knows that going up against her when she knows he’s not well won’t end with him winning. This fight isn’t worth fighting, so Eddie rises from his uncomfortable seat with a grimace from the pain, and Hen gives a slight pat to his back to send him off.
“Of course,” she nods in understanding, gaze softening, and Eddie leaves the room. He can’t be there a minute longer now that she told him to go, stomach flipping with a sickness he knows isn’t really there. He leaves Buck, just like he left countless other times; out of fear and grief.
The fear and grief are in other forms now. Before, he grieved the life he could’ve had, the fear of responsibility and fighting to provide hanging over his head. Now, he’s afraid for other reasons, of seeing his best friend dead or alive. He grieves a man who is still breathing with a beating heart pumping blood throughout his system.
-
Buck wakes up.
The first thing he notices is his dry mouth and the throbbing pain in his shoulder. His eyes are shut, but the second thing he’s aware of is that there’s a hand squeezing his tightly, rough and calloused. The hand is warm and comforting, but he also processes that it is not Eddie, Hen, Chimney, or Maddie. Even without sight, he can identify each and every person he loves by touch alone.
The second thing he notices is that Bobby Nash is the one holding his hand. He opens his eyes, lashes fluttering, and he notes that the man in front of him looks immensely relieved. Bobby’s gaze softens at his expression.
“Hey, kid,” his voice is soft, a little worried. Buck wonders how bad he must look for Bobby to speak so kindly to him. “I got you some ice chips. Here.”
Buck goes to lean up with an exhausted smile, but a wince of pain is punched out of him, and he stays laying where he is with gritted teeth. Bobby gently pushes him back down into the comfort of the bed and helps him out, giving him the ice chips carefully so his mouth isn’t as dry.
When Buck’s done with the cold and his mouth isn’t as parched, he settles into the comfortable hardness of the hospital bed, glancing down at his shoulder, at the wires going through his hand, and the IV putting fluid inside of him. Bobby raises a brow as he asks, “How are you feeling?”
Buck looks at him wearily, “Like I was hit by a bus.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
Those words make him remember. He remembers ringing in his ears and blood pooling on the asphalt; shouts of his name and pressure on a bullet wound. He remembers Eddie’s arms shaking as he struggles to lift him up and shove him into the safety of the ladder truck. He remembers teeth retrieving gauze and sobs of his own, but he won’t let Bobby know what all he can envision in his mind.
“I got shot,” Buck says simply instead, brows furrowing. His voice is rough, laced with exhaustion, and he wants to go home already. He’s been in enough hospitals for the entirety of the 118 alone. He’s hyperaware of the skin peeling from his chapped lips, but he knows Bobby will be disapproving if he tugs his bottom lip between his teeth and makes it bleed.
Bobby nods, gaze unreadable, and Buck shrinks underneath it. “You got shot,” he confirms.
Buck’s hand is weak, shaking a little from lack of use, but he lifts it up and fidgets with the tape on the back of his hand. His skin is warm and full of life, but he looks paler than usual, and he guesses that his face is around the same appearance-wise. He tries not to use the arm belonging to the shoulder that a bullet was lodged in; it hurts so, so badly.
To distract himself, he looks around the room, strangely empty. “Where’s everyone else?”
The cold and white walls of his hospital room make a shiver wrack down his spine, but Bobby is there, warm and solid. His hand is back in Buck’s hand, and he gives a comforting squeeze, before he talks again.
“Heading on their way here, most likely,” Bobby says, and it makes Buck remember how Bobby texted quickly before helping Buck eat some ice chips; he probably texted the group chat they share with the rest of A-Shift, Maddie and Athena included.
Buck worries his bottom lip between his teeth, hesitant to ask, but he does anyway; “How’s Eddie?”
He pretends he doesn’t notice how Bobby’s gaze becomes unreadable again, soft around the edges. He gives a slight squeeze to Buck’s hand before pulling away, and it makes Buck’s chest ache deeply in a way he knows is not physical, “He’ll probably be later than the others,” is all he says.
He looks away as Bobby stands up. He hears voices in the hall, familiar and belonging to those a part of his family; Maddie’s voice is the most identifiable of all, even on his tired ears, so he settles further down into his pillow and gets comfortable.
When Maddie comes in, the first thing his sister does is hug him like he’ll disappear if she moves away. She’s careful with his shoulder, knowing it must hurt, and tucks his face into the crook of her neck with tears brimming in her big eyes. She hides his eyes in her shirt, and he feels safe, despite the throbbing in his shoulder from worn-off morphine.
After Maddie pulls away, lingering close because she doesn’t want to leave him, it goes in order of; Athena, Hen, and Chimney. Chimney and Hen both hug him long and tightly, paying attention to not shift him uncomfortably, and he appreciates it deeply. Eddie is still nowhere to be found.
Buck knows why Eddie cannot be seen in the room with him.
Bobby engulfs him in another hug; one belonging to a father who hugs the child he feared for. It would never be put into words, but he knows they’re both aware. They don’t pull away from each other for a long, long time. When they finally do, Buck is sure to ignore the slight glisten in his eyes as he talks with him.
Eddie is not in the hospital room.
Hours later, after everybody has left to give him some rest alone to process what happened with some morphine in his system, Buck notices that there’s a lingering shadow outside of his door. It takes him a minute, probably just a trick of light, but he knows exactly who it is. The height and shape is something, someone, that he can recognize anywhere.
He calls out tentatively, “Eddie?”
There’s no response, but the shadow stays there. He wants to see him, that ache in his chest and ribs lingering. He needs to see Eddie, but he’s so tired. The pain medication they’ve been providing him makes him drowsy, so his eyes flutter.
Buck’s words slur, but he tries again, “Eddie?”
The shadow in the doorway lingers, just for a moment, before it goes away. Buck tries to ignore how the ache in his ribcage increases tenfold whenever Eddie leaves. He always leaves. He stares at the doorway with a disappointment he can’t describe in words, and he waits; he waits for Eddie, always and forever. Eddie does not come back, but Buck is tired.
He waits, and waits, with drooping eyelids and weary muscles. Eddie will come back, he just knows it, but he has to wait. Maybe he couldn’t believe that Buck was truly alive and awake, so he went to check before he went to go pick up Christopher. Buck’s eyes have black ripples around the edges, tugging him down.
He gives in.
-
Eddie hears Buck’s voice, but he leaves. He doesn’t return until Bobby texts him that Buck is being released from the hospital, which stirs him to finally act. He gets into his truck and drives, drives, and drives. He drives to the hospital and turns into the parking lot, hands clutching the steering wheel so tightly it hurts. When he gets there, he drives around despite ample parking space; there’s plenty of open parking spots, people neatly in the lines, but he’s not ready.
He sees Bobby’s car leave, and he knows he has to park. He lines his truck up perfectly, neat and clean, and pulls the keys out of the ignition.
The heat is bearable, but he knows if he sits in his truck, the sweat will start to drip. It’ll be slick on the nape of his neck and in the crevices of his body. Today would be a good day, despite the Los Angeles heat crawling up his spine. The sky is clear and there’s not a cloud in sight, the sunlight highlighting and glinting on windows in apartments and the hoods of cars.
There’s a glint from the sun, and then the bang of a bullet. There is blood splattering on his face, making him eternally filthy. His skin is dirty; his face is still smudged with what keeps Buck’s heart beating.
Buck’s cries of his name, over and over and over again, haunt him just like the begs for more time from Shannon in that ambulance. Buck cries, clutching onto him like his life depends on it, and Eddie stares at the entrance to the hospital. People walk in and out, not knowing who Evan Buckley is; not imagining a life without him.
He thinks of blue eyes, wide and desperate.
He shoves his keys back into the pocket of his jeans, necklace dangling down towards his lap, and he opens the car door. He gets out and closes it behind him, unsteady on his feet yet standing tall. He thinks of fire and blood and ripped-open gauze as he locks his truck behind him, heading towards glass doors with unspoken promises.
When he heads inside, air conditioner fans across his skin, forgiving and kind. He doesn’t have to ask the nice lady at the front desk with glasses sliding down her nose the number of the room Buck is staying in. He hasn’t been in the hospital in days, but he knows the exact floor and number of where Buck is.
He leaves the elevator and heads down the halls, blue and white and gray. He passes by the closed doors to other hospital rooms, giving people and their families privacy. He looks up at a flickering fluorescent light above, just for a moment, and keeps walking. He imagines promises of staying alive with blood gushing between his fingers, with eyes rolling into the backs of heads. He imagines blood a deeper red than a memorable birthmark.
When he stops in front of Buck’s hospital room, he hesitates. He imagines a body in a casket, familiar yet cold, slick with the blood once pumping through his veins. He lingers, right outside where he can see the man he has grieved day after day, even when working.
He hesitates for just a moment, but he enters. Buck’s arm is in a sling, shirt clean and soft with a comfortable pair of sweatpants. He wonders if Bobby or Maddie were the one to stop by Buck’s apartment to grab him a change of clothes before he was released from the hospital. Buck is distracted, but not for long; he looks up at Eddie with piercing eyes, before his gaze softens. Eddie reads him like an open book, fingers tracing easily across the pages. He smiles widely up at him, even with the dark circles faintly underneath his blue eyes.
“Eddie,” he seems happy to see him. He doesn’t know that Eddie’s arms ached for days after he had to hold Buck’s body weight up himself. He doesn’t know the sobs alone behind a locked door he forced himself to rush through when waiting on news of his recovery. He doesn’t know.
Eddie’s gaze softens just like his did, hands twitching by his sides, yearning to reach out and touch, “Buck.”
Buck grins; it isn’t hesitant and weak on the edges like before, but genuine. He looks up at Eddie like nothing happened, even if he’s probably pained and thinking of what had happened before. He most likely knows that Eddie is taking him home and managing his discharge papers and medication because Bobby told him. Eddie doesn’t think about how Buck recovering with him isn’t a question.
“Hey. I need to talk to you, before we go,” Eddie says. Buck furrows his brows, confused with worry tugging at his eyes, but Eddie gives him a look to silently assure him that everything will be okay.
Buck looks up at Eddie, cocking his head, “Is it something about my meds?”
“No, no. It’s something else,” Eddie stalks over out of the doorway and heads towards the bed where Buck is sitting, placing his hands on the edge with slight space between them before he sits down. He rests his palms on his knees as he gets comfortable, brown eyes staring into blue, “It’s important.”
Buck looks at him, prying quietly, gaze perfectly readable and obvious. He wants to know what Eddie needs to say, but he’s afraid. He’s so obviously afraid it makes Eddie’s chest ache, feeling tight.
“I had some time to think when I was at home. It got me thinking about all the times one of us has nearly died,” he’s going off the script he’s practiced in his head alone at home, or in the bunks of the firehouse. He isn’t citing words he tried to pick and choose over and over, but rather speaking his mind and heart.
He’s given a look in response, brows knitted, a frown evident on Buck’s face. “Yeah, but we’ve always survived. Even now,” he motions with his good hand to his bandaged and slung shoulder.
Eddie gives him a look in return, “Let me finish.”
Buck, who always listens and stays, falls silent again. He looks at Eddie with such reverence and attention that it makes him uncomfortable. He always does, but it feels tenfold in this small little hospital room, right when he’s about to be sent home. Buck is a kind audience, so Eddie continues.
“After the will, it really hit me how often we nearly die. This isn’t the first time for me, and certainly won’t be the last,” Eddie remembers mud and the earth burying him, coating his front, drowning him with the thick sludge. He thinks of water and desperate hands swimming to the surface as he fights to come home to his family. He thinks of what he heard; that Buck tried to dig with his bare hands for him. “That wasn’t even my closest.”
“You still lived. You always will,” Buck butts in again, his voice firm and insistent, and Eddie turns his head further to look at him. A slight smile tugs on his lips, curving his cheek, even if inside his heart is thrashing with turmoil from memories of snipers and dragging bodies across concrete.
Eddie continues, “After the well, it had me thinking about what would happen to Christopher if I died. I went to my attorney after a while, and I changed my will. I wanted to make sure that someone would be there to take care of him if I didn’t make it.”
Buck looks at him with a confused expression, so Eddie keeps talking. He knows what’s coming, so his words are gentle, “If I were to die, you’d be made his legal guardian, Buck.”
His jaw goes a little slack and shock spreads across his face. He leans forward and closer to Eddie with a confused expression, asking, “What?”
“It’s in my will that if I pass, you’d be there to take care of him.”
Buck’s chin drops down to his chest as he stares at his single working hand, brows knitted as he thinks over Eddie’s words. The gears are turning in his brain before he looks up, licking at his chapped lips. “How.. How does that even work? Don’t you need — consent, my consent?”
“My attorney said you could refuse if you wanted to,” Eddie does a simple shrug of his shoulders, like he isn’t changing Buck’s life and their relationship for the foreseeable future. That slight smirk to his face lingers; it stays just like he is.
Buck stares at him with an unreadable expression; the first one this entire time, “You knew I wouldn’t,” he states.
“Nah, I knew you wouldn’t,” Eddie shakes his head, that slight smile on his lips becoming more genuine, and he hopes Buck isn’t able to see right inside his mind. Buck’s frown deepens, and he looks back down at his lap, fingers messing with the pocket of his sweatpants.
“Why did you pick me? I— I always take risks, there’s probably better options.. What about his grandparents— he has grandparents, right?” Buck continues to avoid eye contact with him, fidgeting with the soft and comfortable fabric he can get his hand on. He swallows, throat clicking, and Eddie reaches out to squeeze his good shoulder, the one without injury. Buck looks up at him swiftly.
“After Shannon left, they made me feel guilty. Tried to get me to give Chris up to them, but it wasn’t what I wanted. It still isn’t what I want now, so I chose what I did want.”
Eddie looks at Buck meaningfully, hoping his point will get across. Buck swallows again, dryly this time, mouth parched as he tries to figure out how to reply to Eddie after he rocked his world and the foundation holding it up.
He speaks tentatively, the words hard to get out and off of the tip of his tongue, “If you were to— if that happened, wouldn’t they fight for him?”
“They would. But nobody would ever fight for him as hard as you would,” he admits, following Buck’s gaze as he tries to look at anything but Eddie. His thumb brushes across the skin of his throat, then his collarbones. He wonders if his touch burns just as much as Hen’s does on him. Buck trembles subtly in his hold, and Eddie gives another squeeze. “I know you’d do everything you could. That’s what I want for him.”
Buck’s gaze drops when Eddie’s eyes aren’t so sharp and clear, glued to his. He trembles even with the reassuring pressure and heat of his palm against his shoulder, on his skin through the fabric of his button-up. He picks at a stray thread on the seam of his sweats.
“Why are you only telling me now? You had an entire year,” the words are accusatory, but Eddie knows they aren’t. Buck’s tone is scared, mixed with so many other things that Eddie can’t interpret right now. His hand stays stuck to his shoulder.
“Because, Evan,” Buck’s head shoots up, “A week ago, you were shot, and all I could think of was that one part of my family —of me— could be gone. You always take risks, and I know this wasn’t something in your control, but it just hit me. I don’t know how to live in a life without you anymore. I had to let you know it.”
He stares at Eddie, and Eddie stares right back with an expression he hopes conveys everything he wants to say but can’t in words. Buck is here, and Eddie is too, ready to leave with him. He holds him in his hand, rough and calloused from war and work and love, and keeps him close, just in arms reach. Buck stares at Eddie, and watches, gaze unreadable.
They are in this hospital room, and Eddie knows that Buck will leave with him. Eddie will keep track of his medication and fret over him without admitting it, and Buck will let him. They sit, side by side on the hospital bed where Buck recovered from being shot.
They’re here together, and they will leave together.