Chapter Text
“Eddie, hace años que Shannon murió. Creo que es hora de que… empezar a salir otra vez,” Tía Pepa explained.
“Tia–”
“Tengo un amiga con un hijo guapo , a quien le encantaría conocerte–”
“Tia. No citas a ciegas. Estoy bien,” Eddie groaned. He was praying that Buck didn’t understand Spanish and didn’t have to listen to this embarrassing phone call from the next room over. Eddie had the phone on speaker since he hoped Buck wouldn’t understand, and Tia always said that she could hear him better with the phone on that setting.
“¿Bien? No has tenido una cita en meses,” she paused for a moment, “al menos uno que valga la pena decirme.”
“¿Podrías reírse de de mi vida amorosa después? Estoy con un amigo,” Eddie replied calmly, not wanting to listen to his Tia berate him any longer. Especially not when Buck, the person he desperately hoped would solve that problem, was sitting in the next room.
“¿Oh, es Buck? Él es guapo, sobre qué–”
“Okay. Adios. Te amo,” Eddie interjected before abruptly hanging up. Ever since he came out to her, she would occasionally suggest Buck as a potential partner for him. He never understood why until he ended up with a huge crush on the man.
Buck looked up from his phone once Eddie returned to the living room with him. He awkwardly cleared his throat. “Podría ayudar con eso,” Buck mumbled, struggling to keep his gaze on Eddie, “...Las citas.”
It had been ages since Buck had bothered to speak any Spanish. He was pretty sure the last time he did was in a last ditch effort to get a woman to sleep with him in his Buck 1.0 days. While he wasn’t that desperate with Eddie yet, he was sure it would earn a few points in his favor.
“Verdad?” Eddie asked easily. Way too easily. He blinked. Buck knew Spanish, and had just spoken it. His brain was too busy processing that fact to even register that Buck was probably flirting with him.
Eddie rushed over to the sofa to sit next to Buck, careful to leave plenty of space between them. “You know Spanish?”
Buck slowly nodded, grinning at the frantic look on Eddie’s face.
“Oh god,” Eddie buried his face in his hands, “How much of that did you understand?”
“...All of it?” Buck caught Eddie’s gaze as he slowly peeked out from his hands. “It sounds like you’ll have to give your Tia my number, then,” he joked.
Eddie chuckled. “Oh, definitely not. She’s just bored, and when she’s bored she loves to…”
“Set you up on dates?”
“Yeah,” Eddie’s eyebrows slowly knit together, “Wait, how long have you known Spanish?”
From there, Buck explained that while in Peru, he quickly got frustrated with not being able to fully understand or talk with the people around him. He begged a coworker to teach him, so he quickly learned thanks to them and plenty of YouTube lessons. Once he got to LA, he didn’t see much need to speak it anymore, but asking people out quickly became Buck 1.0’s way of practicing. He was a little rusty, having left Buck 1.0 long in the past, but the talk of dates between Tia Pepa and Eddie brought some of his knowledge back.
After his explanation, Eddie had offered to help Buck re-learn whatever Spanish he had forgotten and to practice what he knew. Buck readily agreed.
At the start of their next shift, Buck and Eddie still had no idea what dramatic thing they should do in order to tell the 118 about their relationship. They had even asked Chris for ideas. He responded with an eye roll and said they shouldn’t be too worried about doing anything too exciting since their team probably already knew.
So, Buck and Eddie went into their shift hoping that they’d see something that would give them inspiration. The calls they saw often had a funny way of doing that– lining up perfectly with whatever lesson the universe wanted them to learn.
The first eventful call of the day came in the form of a girl’s quinceañera. A few guests had abused the bar that was open for the party’s adult attendees, and a drunken brawl ended in a woman having her hand pinned to a table with a knife.
Buck and Eddie were tasked with crowd control and making sure everyone else was okay while other members of the 118 worked on the woman with a knife in her hand. They were both talking with a few guests when a conversation between the birthday girl and one of her friends caught their attention.
“Ay, qué embarazoso. Tía Rosa y Tía Nina luchando en mi quince,” she said, burying her face in her hands with a groan.
The friend nudged her and nodded towards Buck and Eddie, “Al menos los bomberos estan lindo.”
“¿Los son?” Eddie asked, turning to face the girls. “Gracias, pero él es mi novio.”
Buck had to bite his lip to avoid laughing at the way the girls’ faces fell once they realized Eddie understood what she said. Hearing Eddie call him his boyfriend in Spanish was an added bonus.
“¿No vista Diaz en su equita?” she hissed, gesturing to the name etched into the tag on Eddie’s uniform. “Por supuesto lo entendió.”
The friend didn’t respond to her, glancing between Buck and Eddie instead. “Espera, ¿su novio?”
Buck nodded. “Si, mi novio lindo,” he added, tapping his shoulder against Eddie’s.
The girls snapped their heads towards Buck, realizing that he also understood the conversation.
“¿Sabe español también?” the birthday girl asked.
“Yo era bartender en Perú antes de ser bombero,” Buck replied with a shrug. “Aprendí algo allí.”
“Suenas bien para un gringo,” the friend quipped.
Eddie had to laugh at the lighthearted insult.
“Un guapo gringo, ¿ verdad?” Buck added, playing along.
The girls blushed but nodded their agreement.
“Since when does he speak Spanish?” Hen asked as she walked up to Buck and Eddie with Chimney at her side.
“Since,” Buck paused, trying to remember the official year, “2015, when I was a bartender in Peru,”
“And now you’re using it to flirt with people on calls? I thought we were over that,” Chim scolded with no real heat behind his words.
“More like flirting with his boyfriend,” the birthday girl chimed in before Buck could defend himself.
Eddie and Buck both did their best to hide the brief panic that crossed their faces once she said the word boyfriend. While they still didn’t know how to reveal that they are, in fact, boyfriends– they both knew that was definitely not it.
“Boyfriend?” Buck and Eddie asked in unison, a blush spreading on each of their faces.
Buck awkwardly laughed, “Definitely not.”
The girls’ faces scrunched up in confusion, but realization quickly hit them upon seeing Buck and Eddie trying to play it off.
“You’d be real cute together, though,” her friend added. Whatever their situation was, she understood Buck or Eddie didn’t want to have that conversation with their coworkers.
Buck caught Eddie’s eye as they both let out a relieved breath. The girls were kind enough to help them explain their way out of being boyfriends in front of Hen and Chim.
Hen chuckled. “I’ve been trying to tell them that, but they both refuse to take my sage advice.”
“Who knows,” Eddie shrugged, “we might actually listen someday.”
Later that night, the 118 was called out to assist another house with an apartment fire. Once they arrived, Buck and Eddie were sent into the building in search of a young boy named Quinn, one of the few residents that were still inside.
Buck walked in front of Eddie, and had bolted forward because he was sure he had heard the voice of a young child. Just as he stopped in front of the open door and turned back to Eddie, the floor crumbled beneath Buck, dropping him into a pit of flame and debris.
“Buck!” Eddie yelled into the flames. “Buck!”
“Buck! Do you copy?” He hardly kept his voice below a frantic yell as he said those words into the radio.
The silence from the radio nearly overtook the sounds of the fire roared all around him. The longer he waited, the harder it was for him to draw a single breath. His chest constricted, tighter and tighter. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. Eddie remained there frozen, ignoring the flickering flames.
No, no, no. He couldn’t lose Buck. Not again. Buck had seen his fair share of near-death experiences. He didn’t deserve another.
Eddie couldn’t lose Buck. He wouldn’t lose Buck. He’d fight like hell to make sure Buck returned home safe to him and Christopher. I’m not losing you, he thought, and began repeating it over and over in his mind as he began to look for a way to get to Buck.
His captain’s voice through the radio snapped him out of his thoughts. “118, sound off.”
Eddie waited a moment, letting the others confirm that they were safe and accounted for. “Diaz coming in from the fourth floor.” He took a deep breath to prepare himself to say his next words. “Part of the floor collapsed in front of me… Buck went down– with it.”
Eddie noted the long pause before Bobby responded. “We will go and search for him once we know it’s safe to do so. Can you get back to us?”
He couldn’t believe it. They were just going to leave Buck? Let the building shift even more and possibly crush him? Not on his watch. “Cap, I’m standing right in front of where he went down. I have my equipment, I can–”
“Eddie,” Bobby’s firm voice interrupted him. “Get out of there if you can, then we can go find him. It’s not safe right now.”
Eddie bit his tongue to avoid arguing the point further. An open radio line was not the place to start an argument with his captain. Especially not from a building that could collapse even more. “Yes, Cap.”
The entire trip outside, Eddie’s mind was screaming at him to turn around and tear through the rubble to find Buck. The thought of having to tell Chris that Buck wouldn’t be coming home because Eddie couldn’t save him nearly convinced him to do so. He pushed down the thought. Buck was okay. He had to be.
Eddie walked up to the rest of the 118 just as the captain from another house finished talking to Bobby. “What was that about?”
“The collapse you saw wasn’t the only one. This is an old building– a lot of the supporting structures were wiped out by the fire,” Bobby paused, “We still aren’t sure if the whole building will go down as well.”
The anxiety that had calmed to a simmer in Eddie’s gut roared back to life after hearing Bobby’s response. “Buck is still in there– we have to get him out.”
Eddie was shocked to see the mostly blank expressions on everyone’s faces. How were they so calm about the possibility of the rest of the building collapsing on Buck?
He then thought back to Buck telling him about his perspective of the well collapse. Buck said the team treated him like they would a frantic spouse, and it already seemed like they were doing the same with Eddie.
“Once we assess the damage and ensure that it is safe to re-enter, you can lead the charge to find him,” Bobby said, a caring but knowing look in his eye.
Eddie was undeterred by Bobby’s attempt to calm him down. “He could be dying right now, and we’re just standing here doing nothing?” he asked, his voice quickly rising, “Buck would be sprinting in there if it was one of us.”
“Eddie,” Hen warned, “We’ll find him, we just have to wait until it’s safe. Buck is tough, he’ll be okay.”
Buck let out a slow groan as he came to his senses. He remembered turning around to make sure Eddie was behind him, and then the floor fell from beneath his feet. He was thankful that the debris seemed to have significantly slowed the fire in the area he was currently in, which would hopefully give him enough time to find the missing child and return to safety.
As he moved to get up, he realized a part of a wooden beam was currently pinning his right arm down. Buck breathed a sigh of relief as he realized it was light enough to be lifted enough to pull his arm free. He grimaced as he gingerly moved it around. It was probably broken or fractured, but he had much bigger problems to deal with at the moment.
He slowly stood up, trying not to disturb the pile of rubble too much. Buck felt around for his radio, and silently cursed to himself when he realized he must have lost it in the fall. He considered looking for it, but once again, getting himself and the young boy to safety was all that mattered right now.
As he began to look around, the realization that Eddie was nowhere to be found hit him with the force of a fire engine. He was certain he saw Eddie standing still as Buck fell. Eddie had to be okay. He had to be. If– if Eddie had fallen victim to another collapse, Buck knew he had to get himself and the little boy to safety first before saving Eddie. He knew the boy was close, he had heard a shout for help just behind the door he had dropped in front of.
“Quinn!” he shouted, hoping the boy was coming around at the same time as he did, “Can you hear me?”
“Help!” a little voice called back.
Buck turned and ran towards the sound, finding Quinn lying on another pile of rubble. Like Buck, he was miraculously spared from the worst of the collapse. He had plenty of cuts and bruises, and his little legs were trapped under another wooden beam.
“Hey buddy, are you okay?” Buck asked. It was a dumb question to ask, but he couldn’t think of anything better to greet the young boy.
Quinn shook his head. “My legs hurt.”
“Okay, let’s see if I can get that off of you, then.” Buck crouched down to make sure nothing was piercing the boy’s legs before lifting the debris. To his relief, Quinn’s legs likely met the same fate as Buck’s arm: broken, but otherwise alright. He was also thankful for the fact that the beam was small and light enough for Buck to be able to pull away with his uninjured arm.
Buck slowly leaned over Quinn. “I need you to wrap your arms around my neck and hold on tight. Can you do that for me?”
Quinn nodded, doing as he was told.
“This might hurt your legs, but I’ve got you,” Buck murmured as he wrapped his free arm around Quinn and lifted him up and held him tight against his torso.
“Alright, now let’s get out of here, buddy,” Buck said.
Eddie watched as the rest of the 118 joined the other crew to survey the damage. Depending on the results of the initial search, they’d begin the search for Buck and the missing boy afterwards. Bobby had ordered him to stay behind. While he may not have said it outright, Bobby didn’t trust Eddie to do what he was told and not risk his life trying to save Buck by himself.
He could feel the anger and anxiety coursing through his veins. Bobby told him that Eddie would lead the effort to rescue Buck. Now he wasn’t even on the team.
Running towards danger in order to save lives was the literal job description of a firefighter. So why didn’t they trust him to do it?
From there, he let his thoughts spiral to even darker parts of his mind. There was nothing for him to do, so why not let his thoughts drift to every grim possibility?
He was entirely checked out by the time his team returned with the news that it was safe to enter the building. Eddie had perked up slightly when Bobby told him that he can go ahead and lead the search for Buck. Bobby had finally upheld his end of the promise.
Just before Eddie slipped his helmet on his head, an all too familiar voice violently ripped him out of the pit of anxiety he had dug for himself.
“Eddie?” Buck called, still fearing the possibility that Eddie had met the same fate as he did, still trapped in the building. He had already dropped little Quinn off with the paramedics of the other crew and made his way to the engines with 118 painted on the side.
“Buck?” Eddie whispered, turning his head so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. He had hoped he hadn’t reached the point where his mind taunted him with Buck’s voice. He let out the breath he was holding, seeing that Buck really was standing there and looking for his crew. Buck was alive. “Buck!” Eddie yelled back, and before he even realized it, he was running towards him.
Before Buck could say anything, Eddie had crashed into him, hugging him so tight he could hardly breathe. “Never do that to me again,” Eddie grumbled, his head still buried in Buck’s shoulder, “I thought I lost you.”
Eddie pulled back for a moment and held Buck’s face in his hands so he could commit his soft smile to memory. “Yeah, next time I’ll tell the floor to not collapse under me,” Buck chuckled, leaning forward to rest his forehead on Eddie’s. They stood together like that for a while, letting all of the chaos and commotion melt away around them. They were together, safe and sound. At that moment, nothing else mattered.
“I really want to kiss you right now,” Buck mumbled.
Eddie took a step back, not missing the sigh from Buck as Eddie took his hands off of his face. He gestured to the scene around them. “You wanted a dramatic reveal, and I’d say this is about as dramatic as we’ll get.”
A goofy grin spread across Buck’s face. He met Eddie’s soft, yearning brown eyes before letting his gaze drift to his lips. He leaned in and kissed Eddie with the intensity of a man who thought his partner had died a few minutes ago. Eddie easily returned it, pouring much of his pent up emotions into the kiss.
A few wolf whistles from the 118 standing behind them broke their trance.
“Oh my god finally!” Chimney yelled just as Buck and Eddie turned to face them. “These two have made me keep that secret and suffer in silence for a month now.”
Nobody said anything, instead just looking at Chim with various levels of confusion and amusement. “You guys don’t see how crazy– how cruel that is?” Chim asked, desperate for some kind of response.
“You weren’t exactly silent about it,” Hen replied.
“And they weren’t exactly secretive about it, either,” Bobby added, pointing to Buck and Eddie who were still in each other’s arms.
Eddie shrugged. “We weren’t really planning on being secretive once Chim found out.”
“Oh wow,” Hen chuckled, “That was intentional?”
“Yep. We had been together for a week before Chim found us together after a shift,” Buck replied.
Hen barked out a laugh, amused by the stricken look on Chim’s face. “Good one.”
“So nobody cares that they messed with me for their own amusement?” Chim cut in.
Bobby shook his head with a fond smile. “We do, but right now I care more that my matchmaking as Captain finally paid off.”
Buck and Eddie’s smiles faded upon registering what Bobby said.
“...Matchmaking?” Eddie asked hesitantly.
“One of the reasons I brought you to the 118 was because I thought you’d be a good friend for Buck,” Bobby explained, “But, I clearly underestimated just how well you two would get along.”
“So you wanted us to date… from the first day we met?” Buck asked.
“Maybe not right then, but it didn’t take long for me to see that you both were clearly more than friends.”
“We all could see it,” Hen added before turning to Chim, “I even made a bet with him about whether or not you guys would actually start dating.”
Chimney groaned, catching the hint that Hen sent by bringing up the bet. “I’ll pay you when we get back to the station.”
Buck chuckled along with Eddie, but he could no longer ignore the question that has been haunting him since he started to date Eddie. “So you’re all okay with us being together?” Buck felt Eddie’s arm tighten around his torso, and he leaned further into the contact as he waited for the response.
“Of course we are,” Bobby replied, “If you’re happy, we’re happy.”
Hen and Chim nodded in agreement. “As long as you two aren’t one of those annoying couples who can’t keep their hands to themselves,” Chim added, “You have my full support.”
“We’re glad to hear it,” Eddie said before looking up at Buck, “But he might make that difficult.” He gave Buck a playful nudge to the side.
Buck ducked his head with a smile as he caught Chim’s eye roll. He had little doubt that the 118 would have a problem with his boyfriend, but having confirmation that they support them to the point of betting on it, made him appreciate his team so much more.
Chatter from each of their radios asking for assistance in the east side of the building broke up the brief silence.
“I think that’s our cue to go,” Bobby said, “Buck, you stay back with Hen to get checked out. Everyone else, with me.”
Buck gave Eddie a quick kiss before letting him go, “Be safe.”
“Of course, mi corazón,” Eddie murmured.
Hen quickly caught how Buck was wistfully watching Eddie and the rest of the 118 return to the fire. “You two really are going to be insufferable, aren’t you?”
Buck snapped out of his reverie, “What?” He blinked, finally processing what Hen said. A fond smile spread on his face. “Definitely.”